Raphael Stevens

Spending more time indoors hasn’t stopped people from wanting to wear makeup, Ulta CEO Mary Dillon told CNBC on Thursday.”We see more of what we call “above the mask,” like eyes and brows and lashes, and we see that makeup in general is starting to come back,” Dillion said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “It’s just a matter of how long will it take for people to be in a situation when they’re not needing to wear a mask in a more social situation.” In Ulta’s makeup category, consumers are purchasing more products like eyeliner, mascara and brow products. At the same time, they’re not worrying too much about products like lipstick and blush, since they go unseen under the mask.Skin care is also seeing a great surge in interest during the pandemic.”It started with things like self care. People had more time to learn about skin care to put a bunch of new skin care routines into their procedure because they have more time at home,” said Dillion, who is stepping aside in June to become executive chair.In addition, Dillon said the hair care, fragrance and clean beauty categories also fared well during the pandemic.Despite uncertainty about the pandemic, she is cautiously optimistic about the industry’s growth.”I think the spending is going to continue to accelerate, but we’re not sure when that’s going to happen, so we will be cautious for the first half of the year,” said Dillon, who will be succeeded by Ulta President Dave Kimbell.Ulta stock was down 1.4% in morning trading. More

Xavier Becerra, nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, answers questions during his Senate Finance Committee nomination hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, February 24, 2021.Greg Nash | Pool | ReutersThe Senate confirmed Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services secretary on Thursday as the U.S. aims to contain Covid-19 and achieve a semblance of normal life by summer.Becerra, California’s attorney general, won approval by a narrow 50-49 margin in a Senate evenly split by party. Nearly all Republicans opposed the former U.S. representative’s nomination, questioning his health-care experience and past support for “Medicare for All.”Becerra will be the first Latino to lead HHS. In a tweeted statement following his confirmation, Becerra said he is “honored and humbled by today’s vote” and “ready to get to work.” The support of Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, removed the need for Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tiebreaking vote.Becerra will take a major role in one of the federal government’s most daunting undertakings ever. HHS will help to facilitate Covid-19 vaccinations and testing efforts as health officials hope widespread inoculation will beat back a mutating virus and allow businesses and schools to reopen.While the virus’s spread has slowed in the U.S., the country is recording about 54,800 Covid-19 cases and at least 1,200 deaths every day, according to a seven-day average calculated by CNBC. About 15.5% of adults, and 37.6% of people over 65, are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Becerra will also have a prominent part to play if and when the Biden administration moves on to health-care reform. President Joe Biden has backed the creation of a Medicare-like public insurance option and changes to control the cost of drugs and care.Ahead of the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Becerra “has decades of standing up for working-and middle-class Americans in Congress, fighting to protect and expand Medicare, Medicaid, and working to safeguard our health care system from attacks by the Trump administration.”Becerra became the 20th member of the president’s Cabinet confirmed by the Senate. The chamber has turned its attention to filling out the executive branch since its passage of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill earlier this month.Speaking at a Senate confirmation hearing last month, Becerra said he understands “the enormous challenges before us.” He said he would work not only to contain the virus but also to boost access to affordable health care.Becerra touted his work as California’s attorney general to make Covid treatments more widely available and crack down on opioid manufacturers.He succeeded Harris as the largest U.S. state’s top law enforcement official in 2017 after her election to the Senate the previous year. Becerra won a four-year term in 2018.He represented California in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2017.Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube. More

This video shows the Capella-3 satellite’s reflector deployment, using the its boom as a “selfie stick”. The reflector is folded and compact as it reaches space and expands to a 3.5 meter diameter object.Capella SpaceSatellite imagery specialist Capella Space on Thursday released the first images captured by its two latest spacecraft launched in January.The firm is trying to tap part of an Earth intelligence market it estimates is worth about $60 billion.Capella’s business is based on combining a special type of imagery with a small, inexpensive spacecraft. The company is building a network of satellites that can capture images of places on Earth multiple times a day.The imagery — known as synthetic aperture radar — allows Capella’s satellites to capture images at any time, even at night or through cloud cover. The company plans to use its technology to capture part of the government-focused market of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, CEO Payam Banazadeh told CNBC.He estimates this so-called intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance section accounts for two-thirds, or $40 billion, of the total Earth intelligence market.”A third of that is [space-based] as of today, but what’s happening now is a rapid, really exponential growth in Earth observation and with capabilities like SAR,” Banazadeh said.San Francisco-based Capella has raised about $100 million since its founding in 2016 and has around 100 employees. The company has three satellites in orbit and plans to launch four more by year-end.Capella is not alone in the radar imagery market. Finnish start-up Iceye is also working on a network of satellites, with 10 launched to orbit. And while Capella has the upper hand in the government market as it’s based in the U.S., Iceye announced plans to expand from Finland and Poland with a new U.S. satellite factory.The SAR differenceAn overview of Capella’s synthetic aperture radar satellites.Capella SpaceThe company released the first high-resolution images from its Capella-3 and Capella-4 satellites, which launched with about 140 other spacecraft on SpaceX’s Transporter-1 mission in January.The new images show the Rybachiy nuclear submarine base in western Russia, the “Temple of Heaven” buildings in Beijing and the “India Gate” in New Delhi.This Spot image focuses on Russia’s largest submarine base, where several docked subs can be seen in the frozen Avacha Bay.Capella SpaceBanazadeh said this imagery has multiple advantages over standard optical imaging satellites, like those of Maxar Technologies or Planet Labs. For starters, it isn’t blocked by clouds or darkness.”You can have thousands of optical satellites, but you’re only limited to 25% of Earth,” Banazadeh said. “We have access to the entire Earth, all the time.”The Temple of Heaven is one of Beijing’s most important imperial temples but is also a popular tourist destination. The city’s smog often makes reliable Earth observation difficult, but high-resolution SAR brightly illuminates the city center, revealing the magnificent architecture of the circular temple complex (36 meters in diameter).Capella SpaceThe other “big factor” is that the radar-based system “is a coherent active measurement system,” Banazadeh added.That means the radar signals sent out by the satellites and reflected off the ground have “information hidden” that includes characteristics of what is in the image. The signal then comes back differently “based on the material, the texture, and the moisture,” he said.This nighttime SAR image shows the Rajpath, the large ceremonial boulevard in New Dehli, leading to the India Gate. The reflected energy shows the arch of the monument as well as a large gathering of vehicles in front of the monument. This is an important site for analysts as the hexagonal park is the site of national parades as well as protests.Capella SpaceCapella’s satellites deliver imagery with a 50-centimeter resolution – meaning each pixel in the image represents a 50-by-50 centimeter piece of the ground. So a car, which would be 4 meters by 2 meters, would be shown with eight pixels by four pixels.The government market for radar imageryCapella initially wanted to focus on commercial marketplaces — such as the insurance, energy and agricultural sectors — but the majority of the market is dominated by the U.S. government and its allies.”The biggest customer of geospatial imagery in the world is the U.S. government,” Banazadeh said. “That’s where the big opportunity in the short term is and it’s a massive market [with] unmet demand.”In-Q-Tel, the venture capital firm funded by the CIA, was one of Capella’s early investors. On Thursday, the company announced an expanded partnership with In-Q-Tel, which Banazadeh says will see Capella deliver “services and products through In-Q-Tel” to its customers.You can have thousands of optical satellites, but you’re only limited to 25% of Earth. We have access to the entire Earth, all the time.Payam BanazadehCEO, Capella SpaceTom Gillespie, In-Q-Tel managing partner of investments, said in a statement that the firm is “excited about the capabilities offered by Capella’s newest systems” in orbit.”We look forward to working with the company to help our government partners address their enduring need for reliable and repeatable imagery, despite poor weather, for applications that include disaster relief and environmental land use,” Gillespie said.Automated analyticsThe other key aspect of Capella’s offering is the turnaround time for its imagery: From the time a client requests an image, how long does it take the company to capture the photo and return the requested analytics?”I sometimes joke that, with some of the Earth observation companies, it’s faster for [a customer] to jump on a plane, pay 4,000 bucks for a business class flight over the place that you want to take a look at, literally take a look from the window, and then come back,” Banazadeh said.”On average we can get that data down within 20 minutes or so from the time that it actually gets collected,” he said.Capella has partnered with Amazon’s AWS for data storage, processing and even ground stations to return data from the satellites.Capella expects to have collected about 10 petabytes of data from its satellites by the end of the year. For context, Banazadeh compared that to Facebook generating about four petabytes of data a day.While Capella captures only a fraction of that for now, Banazadeh expects that by 2025 his company is going to collect at rate of about 480 petabytes per year.Amazon then will “scale with us,” he said, removing the need for Capella to build its own data processing services.The growth strategyCapella is vertically integrated — designing and building its own satellites, operating them in space and then connecting to customers through its software platform and analyzing data it receives.Capella will continue to build and launch satellites as it sees demand grow, he added.”Our tech has been validated, our market has been validated, our product has been validated, we’re generating revenue from assets that we have in space — and so the next phase of the company is really scaling up and growing,” Banazadeh said. More

Land owned by the Dick and Meg Latham and his sister Julia was devastated by the Pine Gulch Fire on August 27, 2020 near De Beque, Colorado. The fire burned the land so quickly and badly that in many parts nothing is left but deep ash, soot and stumps of trees and brush that had been there before.Helen H. Richardson | MediaNews Group | The Denver Post via Getty ImagesNearly half of the continental United States is in a moderate to exceptional drought, government forecasters said on Thursday, and conditions are expected to grow more severe and persistent over the next three months.It’s the most significant spring drought to grip the country since 2013 and will affect about 74 million people, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said during a media briefing announcing their spring weather outlook.The drought stretches from the Pacific Coast to the Great Plains and upper Midwest. The worst hit area is the Southwest, which experienced a La Nina event and a failed 2020 summer monsoon that exacerbated conditions.”In many of the drought impacted areas, rangeland and winter pastures have already experienced adverse effects,” said Jon Gottschalck, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, referring to a historic Arctic outbreak that brought dangerous cold and snowy conditions to the central and southern U.S. in February.Hotter-than-average temperatures this spring and low soil moisture will fuel and expand drought conditions in the southern and central Great Plains and southern Florida, forecasters said. In the northern Plains, drought conditions could grow worse depending on how much rainfall the area experiences.More from CNBC Environment: 2020 was one of the hottest years on record, tied with 2016Climate change has cost the U.S. billions of dollars in flood damage”This spring, we anticipate a reduced risk for flooding, and forecast significantly below average water supply where impacts due to low flow contribute to the continued drought,” Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, said in a statement on Thursday.Climate change has worsened droughts and other extreme weather like hurricanes and heavy flooding across the country. Researchers also suggest that global warming has pushed the U.S. Southwest into a decades-long megadrought. 2020 tied with 2016 as the hottest year on record, which marked the end of the hottest decade as global temperatures increase due to greenhouse gas emissions trapping heat in the atmosphere. More