Media Coverage

Covid-19 cases are accelerating around the country, reaching new daily highs in states including Texas and Arizona and spurring concerns about prospects for an economic and social revival. Thirty-three states, from Oklahoma to South Carolina and Washington, had a seven-day average of new cases on Tuesday that was higher than their average during the past two weeks, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.

The first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t even over and U.S. preparations for the second wave are nowhere to be seen. Political leaders like Vice President Michael Pence have said there won’t even be another resurgence, but fresh evidence suggests otherwise: Seven states, including Arizona, Florida and South Carolina, are experiencing new daily cases that more than doubled from two weeks ago. Regardless of whether a second wave is on its way, one thing is clear: The U.S. health care system is still struggling.

The pandemic has exposed one of the major weaknesses of many supply chains: the inability to react to sudden, large-scale disruptions. This lack of resiliency has been especially notable in the supply chains of the life sciences, health care, and food industries. The resulting turmoil has generated calls for companies that had offshored production to Asia (and China, in particular) to bring it back home. But this approach is no panacea. For one thing, given the huge size of the Chinese market, most global companies will need to keep a presence there to serve it. For another, since China is now a dominant, if not sole, source, for thousands of items, reducing dependence on it in many cases will take considerable investment and time.

Dr. Julie Swann, head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University talks to FOX23's Michelle Linn about the rising cases of COVID-19 in Tulsa, the virus's second wave, and the potential effects of President Donald Trump's recent rally.

Singapore ranked 54th in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020 rankings, below countries such as Bangladesh and the United States. The Ministry of Manpower announced this year that the adjusted pay gap between men and women in Singapore in 2018 was 6 per cent. The pay gap widens in the late 30s, when most Singaporean women choose to have children. The unadjusted gender pay gap here increased from 16 per cent in 2002 to 16.3 per cent in 2018.