Raphael Stevens

U.S. President Joe Biden waves as he and First Lady Jill Biden walk on the ellipse to board Marine One on June 09, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Joe Biden and the First Lady are traveling to the United Kingdom for the G7 Summit and will later travel to Belgium and Switzerland, as part of an eight day trip through Europe.Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesLONDON — The U.S. and U.K. have pledged to agree on a new “Atlantic Charter” to cement trade, travel and tech ties between the two nations.U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden will meet Thursday ahead of the Group of Seven (G-7) summit that begins Friday in Cornwall, in southwest England.In advance of the summit, the leaders are due to agree on a new charter, modeled on the policy statement made by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 which set out their goals for the postwar world.The original Atlantic Charter included agreements to promote democracy and free trade. In a statement released late Wednesday, the U.K. government said the 1941 charter was “one of the greatest triumphs of U.K. and U.S. relations” that “did more than any other agreement to shape the world order, leading directly to the creation of the UN and NATO.”The British government noted that the 2021 Atlantic Charter will recognize that, while the world is a very different place than 1941, “the values the U.K. and U.S. share remain the same.””Just as our countries worked together to rebuild the world following the Second World War, so too will we apply our combined strength to the enormous challenges facing the planet today — from global defence and security to building back better from coronavirus to stopping climate change,” it said.The agreements within the new charter are expected to include commitments to resume U.K.-U.S. travel, boost trade, and a “landmark” technology pact designed to facilitate cooperation between British and American tech firms.It will also address more recent challenges, such as dealing with the threat posed by cyberattacks, action on climate change and to protect biodiversity and efforts to bring an end to, and recover from, the coronavirus pandemic.The commitments made in the charter will be underpinned by a series of new policy priorities expected to be agreed upon by Johnson and Biden on Thursday, including working to open up travel between the U.K. and U.S. as soon as possible.On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased travel recommendations for more than 110 countries and territories. But the U.K. was not among that list given the spread of the Delta variant, originally discovered in India.The U.S. currently bars nearly all non-U.S. citizens who have within the previous 14 days been to the U.K., Ireland and the 26 Schengen nations in Europe that don’t have border controls.The Biden administration is forming expert working groups with Canada, Mexico, the EU and U.K. to determine how best to restart travel safely, according to a senior White House official.The U.K. said the new travel taskforce will be overseen in the country’s Transport Department and their U.S. counterparts.Airline chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly urged government officials to come up with a plan to reopen travel. The travel restrictions have contributed to record losses, and executives are holding out hope that officials will lift those rules during the peak late-spring and summer travel season.Tariff disputeBiden and Johnson will also look for ways to enhance the economic relationship between the countries, “including through a resolution to the civil aircraft dispute,” the U.K. said, reiterating hopes for an end to a long-running tariff dispute between the U.S. and Europe related to their respective aircraft manufacturing rivals Boeing and Airbus.The leaders are also expected to agree “to pursue a landmark bilateral technology agreement” to be signed in 2022.”The agreement will start a new era of strategic cooperation by reducing the barriers British tech firms face when trying to work with their U.S. counterparts. By combining our shared expertise in areas like AI and quantum technology, the U.K. and U.S. have the potential to transform the way we live.”Commenting on the charter, Prime Minister Johnson said that “while Churchill and Roosevelt faced the question of how to help the world recover following a devastating war, today we have to reckon with a very different but no less intimidating challenge – how to build back better from the coronavirus pandemic,” the statement Wednesday said.”And as we do so, cooperation between the U.K. and U.S., the closest of partners and the greatest of allies, will be crucial for the future of the world’s stability and prosperity.”—CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report. More

In this articleAMCGMECNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday that shares of GameStop and AMC Entertainment are within buying range, but cautioned investors who got in on the stocks lower to protect profits from a big run.”I’m not against [buying] GameStop or AMC at these levels. GameStop’s currently below where I told you to ring the register in January,” the “Mad Money” host said.GameStop stock moved 0.85% higher on Wednesday to $302.56, and AMC ended the session at $49.34, down 10.37% from Tuesday’s close.”If you’ve ridden them up from much lower levels, take a little off the table,” Cramer said. “These stories could always get dinged.”Shares of the beleaguered companies have shot up as part of the Reddit-fueled retail trade. GameStop has skyrocketed more than 1,500% so far in 2021. AMC has rallied more than 2,200% through Wednesday.GameStop, which reported better-than-expected results for its first quarter after the market close, was down about 7% in extended trading. The company also announced Wednesday it has hired former Amazon e-commerce executive Matt Furlong as its new CEO.”These companies now have the ability to reinvent themselves because higher stock prices have allowed them to raise capital,” Cramer said.AMC has used the momentum to issue new shares and raise capital, and GameStop said Wednesday it would consider selling 5 million shares.DisclaimerQuestions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBCWant to take a deep dive into Cramer’s world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter – Jim Cramer Twitter – Facebook – InstagramQuestions, comments, suggestions for the “Mad Money” website? [email protected] More

Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Wednesday he believes enough Americans are fully vaccinated to delay the risk presented by the Delta Covid variant.”The question is: Are there enough unvaccinated people that this could get into the population and start spreading more widely? I happen to think it’s unlikely that this is going to be a threat until the fall, perhaps,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said on “Squawk Box.”Gottlieb’s comments come as speculation grows that the U.K. could delay the lifting of all lockdown measures in England, set for June 21, due to the increasing prevalence of the Delta variant, which was first discovered in India.The most severe cases involving the Delta variant appear to be in unvaccinated people or those who are only partially vaccinated, Gottlieb said. “It does seem to be a more dangerous variant. That said, two doses of the vaccine seem to be very protective.” “People who are fully vaccinated, I think, are pretty well protected against this new variant based on the accruing evidence,” added Gottlieb, who led the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. He’s now on the board of vaccine maker Pfizer.On Tuesday, the White House’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, stressed the importance of Americans becoming fully vaccinated to protect against the Delta variant. Currently, Fauci said it accounts for more than 6% of the U.S. coronavirus infections that scientists have genetically sequenced.The Delta variant, meanwhile, is becoming the dominant variant in the United Kingdom. The U.S. and U.K. now have around 53% of adults fully vaccinated against Covid. However, Gottlieb said England’s decision to delay the administration of second doses in order to give more people initial shots “probably opened the door to this spreading a little bit more widely.” At a White House briefing Tuesday, Fauci called out as examples Covid vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca — which is used in the U.K. but not the U.S. — saying they were around 33% effective in protecting against the Delta variant after one dose. For Pfizer, that rose to 88% efficacy after the second shot, Fauci said, while AstraZeneca’s vaccine was 60% effective, according to the National Institutes of Health.”It does appear that two doses of the vaccine are more important against these variants than they were against the old strain of the virus,” Gottlieb said.Despite vaccination progress in the U.S., Gottlieb acknowledged there could be worrisome situations in the country involving the Delta variant. “If you have a community where there’s a lot of unvaccinated people and you have a super-spreading event with Delta … you could get an outbreak here.”Covid cases in the U.S. continue to fall. The country’s seven-day average of daily new coronavirus infections is around 14,400, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s about 17% lower than it was a week ago. It also represents an over 60% decline from roughly a month ago. The highest single day of new cases in the U.S. was 300,462 on Jan. 2.Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.” More

In this articleGMESELINSGROVE, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES – 2021/01/27: A woman walks past the GameStop store inside the Susquehanna Valley Mall. An online group sent share prices of GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (AMC) soaring in an attempt to squeeze short sellers.Photo by Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesGameStop’s sales rose 25% in the fiscal first quarter, as the video game retailer embarks on a turnaround strategy partially fueled by a Reddit-inspired stock rally. The company also named former Amazon executive Matt Furlong as its new CEO.Shares fell more than 12% in extended trading on Wednesday, after the company declined to provide an outlook for the year and said it may sell as many as 5 million shares.Here’s how the company did for the fiscal first quarter ended May 1, compared with Refinitiv consensus estimates:Loss per share: 45 cents per share adjusted vs. 84 cents expectedRevenue: $1.28 billion vs. $1.16 billion expectedIn the quarter, GameStop reported that its net loss narrowed to $66.8 million, or $1.01 per share, from a loss of $165.7 million, or $2.57 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company had a loss of 45 cents per share. Analysts were expecting GameStop to report a loss of 84 cents per share, according to Refinitiv.Total revenue grew to $1.28 billion from $1.02 billion a year earlier, topping Wall Street’s expectations of $1.16 billion.The company declined to provide a forecast for the year. It said sales momentum continued into the second quarter, with total sales in May increasing about 27% compared with the same month a year ago.GameStop filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to 5 million shares of its stock from time to time, in “at-the-market” offerings. The funds it raises through these stock sales will be used for general corporate purposes, investing in growth initiatives and strengthening its balance sheet, the company said.As of May 1, GameStop said, it had paid off its long-term debt and no longer had any borrowings under its asset-based revolving credit facility.The video game retailer’s stock has gyrated wildly over the past several months as retail traders have shared tips on Reddit and tried to fuel short squeezes for companies including GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & Beyond and Clover Health — collectively the group has become known as meme stocks.GameStop’s shares are up 1,506% so far this year. Its shares have swung from a 52-week low of $3.77 to a 52-week high of $483. As of Wednesday’s close, shares were $302.56. Its market value is $21.41 billion.The trading frenzy has gotten the attention of the SEC. In a filing Wednesday, GameStop said it had received a request from the SEC on May 26 to voluntarily provide documents and information. The company said it was reviewing that request and planned to cooperate.GameStop has tried to catch investors’ attention in other ways, as it focuses more on e-commerce and poaches talent from other companies. This spring, it tapped Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen to lead efforts to grow the online business. He was named chairman at a shareholder meeting Wednesday. The company also hired several former Amazon executives, including Jenna Owens, its new chief operating officer; Matt Francis, its first chief technology officer; and Elliott Wilke, its chief growth officer.Yet some analysts are unconvinced that the longtime brick-and-mortar retailer can pivot its business and believe the company has been propped up by speculation.Loop Capital analyst Anthony Chukumba dropped his coverage of GameStop earlier this year following the Reddit frenzy. He told CNBC that the video game retailer’s challenges run deep regardless of who it hires. “It’s great that these guys worked at Amazon. Amazon is a very successful retailer that I do cover, that I’m very familiar with, but at the end of the day, GameStop’s problems have very little, if anything, to do with e-commerce,” Chukumba said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “Their problem is not that they’re not a good omnichannel retailer. The problem is that gamers are increasingly downloading video games,” he added. “Look, they can hire Jeff Bezos when he comes back from space. … It’s not going to make a difference. The symptoms are not aligned with the medicine that the doctor is giving them. You can hire anyone you want from Amazon — not going to make a difference.”Read the company’s earnings press release here and its CEO announcement here.— CNBC’s Kevin Stankiewicz contributed to this story.Correction: GameStop named former Amazon executive Matt Furlong as its new CEO. An earlier version of this story misstated his first name. More

In this articleCRWDCrowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said Wednesday the cybersecurity firm has had to combat tougher challenges as adversarial hackers advance from simple online phishing scams to sophisticated ransomware attacks on large enterprises.”Now the adversaries are taking a page out of nation-state actors,” he told CNBC’s Jim Cramer. “It’s become big game hunting as opposed to just traditional ransomware.”Crowdstrike provides cloud-based services including endpoint security, threat intelligence and cyberattack response. The firm is seeing an increasing number of ransomware-as-a-service operations as the subscription economy takes off, Kurtz said in an interview on “Mad Money.”It’s the kind of attack that crippled the gasoline supply in the eastern part of the United States last month. Colonial Pipeline, a major U.S. pipeline, paid roughly $5 million ransom to restore service after DarkSide, believed to be a Russia-based criminal organization, hacked its system and held its systems hostage.Crowdstrike counts more than 11,000 customers, Kurtz said, a “tiny fraction” of the hundreds of thousands of clients that used legacy, on-site network security systems. More companies have adopted cloud security platforms amid the digital transition.”There’s a lot of them out there,” he said. “When we think about all the small businesses, all the large enterprises, there isn’t anyone in this world who doesn’t need cybersecurity.”Last week, Crowdstrike said it brought in $302 million in revenue during the quarter ended April 30, a 70% increase from a year earlier. Its subscription customer count grew by more than 1,500 during the quarter.Crowdstrike shares slid 0.55% to $213.95 Wednesday and are up about 1% year to date.Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBCWant to take a deep dive into Cramer’s world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter – Jim Cramer Twitter – Facebook – InstagramQuestions, comments, suggestions for the “Mad Money” website? [email protected] More

Moet ChampagneSource: Acker WinesWASHINGTON – A rare bottle of Champagne produced before the Titanic embarked on its doomed maiden voyage, before the globe was engulfed in its First World War and before Albert Einstein published his landmark theory of general relativity will come to auction this week.Acker, the nation’s oldest and largest wine auction house, is slated to auction 877 bottles of vintage Champagne. Among them stands a bottle of brut imperial Moet & Chandon dating back to 1911.The entire sale, which comprises more than 900 separate lots, is collectively expected to sell for a breathtaking $10 million. The Champagne vintages range from 1911 to 1943 and take the shape of 323 magnums, 10 Jeroboams, two Methuselahs and 30 half-bottles.Richard Juhlin, who holds the world record for tasting more than 13,000 bottles of Champagne, shared his tasting assessment of the 1911 Moet & Chandon ahead of the auction.”The taste is exceptional with superb length and intensity. Here, the dark forest aromas and smokiness have been accompanied by a delicious caressing sweetness from dried fruits and Crème brûlée,” he wrote, adding that the wine’s mousse was “very weak but nice when pouring.”The aromas are “deep and forest featured with layers of wet stump, molded autumn leaves and black Vaucluse truffle.”Juhlin, founder of The Champagne Club, explained that of the bottles up for auction this week, there are only two that he has yet to taste.”One of them is Salon 1928, which I have never tasted and it’s supposed to be legendary wine. The vintage is so great and at that time Salon was absolutely incredible and it’s supposed to be one of the best wines they have ever made,” he told CNBC.”The 1928 Salon and the Krug collection of 1928 and all the 1911’s which are the oldest, I think those will go for a lot of money,” Juhlin explained when asked to give more insight into the estimated sale price.”But we’re coming back from the pandemic and we haven’t seen auctions for a long time and suddenly, the biggest auction is popping up,” he said, adding that it was “so tricky to speculate on the prices.”The auction will be livestreamed at 6:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday and Thursday on the Acker site.”A significant effort was put into vetting this historic Champagne selection and any bottles deemed to have suboptimal color or conditions were removed,” Acker Chairman John Kapon said ahead of the auction.”The bottles offered in this sale are truly the cream of this collection. To offer such depth and breadth of Salon, Krug, Bollinger, Louis Roederer, Pol Roger and Pommery back to the 1920s, and Moet & Chandon back to the 1910s, is truly a rare privilege for myself as an auctioneer,” he added. More