Slack did its best to ease the working world back into their jobs this morning by breaking, ensuring that everyone’s return to the grind would be as chaotic and unproductive as possible.

Precisely when the downtime began is not clear, though problems amongst the TechCrunch staff began a little after 10 o’clock in the morning. Slack itself posted at 10:14 a.m. Eastern Time that there was a problem:

Downtime issues are not new for the workplace chat application that went public in mid-2019, before announcing a deal to sell itself to Salesforce toward the end of 2020. TechCrunch covered the service’s uptime issues in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and so forth.

The downtime is embarrassing, as Slack is in the midst of selling itself for a hefty check. For a service designed to help folks work, falling apart precisely when the users — customers! — you serve are trying to gear back up for a working year is simply awful.

I suppose we can call one another until Slack is back up.

To close, here’s the view from Redmond, with its competing Teams product:

Update: Slack sent TechCrunch a statement, saying the following:

Our teams are aware and are investigating the issue. We know how important it is for people to stay connected and we are working hard to get everyone running as normal. For the latest updates please keep an eye on @slackstatus and status.slack.com.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out the second of our two holiday eps, the most recent looking at what we think might happen this year.

What did we get into today? A great question. Here’s the rundown:

Mostly we’re still making sure that our brains still work and that the return of work really is here. Taking a break was nice. Now the news is coming back, so we are as well. Hugs, and chat Thursday.

ShareChat, an Indian social network that added Twitter as an investor in 2019, may soon receive the backing of two more American firms.

The Bangalore-based startup is in advanced stages of talks to raise money from Google and Snap, as well as several existing investors, including Twitter, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The new financing round — a Series E — is slated to be larger than $200 million, with Google alone financing more than $100 million of it, four sources said, requesting anonymity as the talks are private. The round values ShareChat at more than $1 billion, two of the sources said.

ShareChat, Google and Snap did not respond to a request for comment. ShareChat has raised about $264 million to date and was valued at nearly $700 million last year.

The terms of the deal could change and the talks may not materialize into an investment, the sources cautioned. Local TV channel ET Now reported last year that Google was in talks to acquire ShareChat.

ShareChat’s marquee and eponymous app caters to users in 15 Indian languages and has a large following in small Indian cities and towns. Twitter and Snap, on the other hand, are struggling to gain users beyond urban cities in the world’s second-largest internet market. Both Twitter and Snapchat have about 50 million monthly active users in India, according to a popular mobile insight firm.

In an interview with TechCrunch last year, Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder and chief executive of ShareChat, said the app was growing “exponentially” and that users were spending, on average, more than 30 minutes on the app each day.

If the deal goes through, it would be the first investment from Snapchat’s parent company into an Indian startup. Google, on the other hand, has been on a spree of late. The Android-maker last month invested in DailyHunt and InMobi’s Glance, both of which operate short-video apps.

Like the two, ShareChat also operates a short-video app. Its app, called Moj, had amassed more than 80 million monthly active users as of September last year, the startup said at the time. Several of these short videos apps, as well as Times Internet’s MX TakaTak (operated by MX Player), have witnessed an accelerated growth in recent quarters thanks in part to New Delhi banning ByteDance’s TikTok and hundreds of other Chinese apps last year. (Also worth pointing out: Google’s proposed check size to ShareChat is much larger than those it wrote to DailyHunt and Glance.)

Last year, Google announced that it plans to invest $10 billion in India over the course of five to seven years. Days later, the company invested $4.5 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms. Google and Facebook, which invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms last year, reach more than 400 million users in the country.

Google, Facebook, ShareChat, DailyHunt and Glance generate most of their revenue through ads. About 85% of the ad market in India is currently commanded by Facebook and Google, analysts at Bank of America wrote in a report to clients last year. “We estimate this market to be $10 billion by 2024 and see room for Facebook to increase its market-share by 4 percentage points in 4 years led by partnership with Jio. We estimate Facebook may have $4.7 billion revenues by 2024,” they wrote in the equity research report, obtained by TechCrunch.

According to a recent Verified Market Research report, the global email encryption market in the post-COVID-19 scenario is estimated to grow 24% annually to $19.27 billion by 2027 driven by the Bring...

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Arthur talks about an excellent pivot that is quite enlightening. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of...

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Bangalore-based CRED is kickstarting the new year on a high note.

The two-year-old startup, led by high-profile entrepreneur Kunal Shah, said on Monday it has raised $81 million in a new financing round and bought shares worth $1.2 million (about 90 million Indian rupees) from employees.

The Series C financing round, as first reported by TechCrunch in late November, was led by DST Global. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and General Catalyst also participated in the round, and so did a few new names, including Satyan Gajwani of Indian conglomerate Times Internet, Sofina and Coatue.

The round gave CRED — which operates an eponymous app to reward customers for paying their credit card bill on time and offers deals from interesting online brands — a post-money valuation of $806 million.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Shah said that about 10% of CRED’s cap table is currently allocated to employees, and those who held vested stocks were eligible to sell up to 50% of their shares back to the startup in its first ESOP liquidity program. “We believe that startups should think about creating wealth for every shareholder, including employees.”

CRED has nearly doubled its customer base to about 5.9 million in the past year, or about 20% of the credit card holder base in India. The startup said that the median credit score of its customer was about 830, and about 30% of its customer base today holds a premium credit card. (On a side note, more than 50% of CRED customers pay their bills using UPI.)

CRED is one of the most talked-about startups in India, in part because of the scale at which its valuation has soared and the amount of capital it has been able to raise in such a short period.

One of the biggest questions surrounding CRED is just how it makes money, given how most fintech startups in the country — and there are many of them — are struggling to find a business model.

Shah said CRED makes money by cross-selling financing products — for which it has a revenue-sharing arrangement with banks and other financial institutions — and levies a similar cut from merchants who are on the platform today. More than 1,300 brands — including big names Starbucks, TAGG, Eat.Fit, Nykaa and emerging premium direct-to-consumer brands such as The Man Company, Sleepy Cat and Crossbeats –have joined the platform in recent years.

Direct-to-consumer market in India is still in its nascent stage, though some estimates say it could be worth $100 billion by 2025.

“I don’t think we were very deliberate to make D2C happen. It just so happened that in the early days when we offered rewards for D2C brands, they started to see huge traction,” he said, adding that CRED drove more than 30% sales for some brands.

“We realized that we were able to solve the discovery problem for customers. We are approaching this with themes — work-from-home and coffee — and it’s working out well. We are now playing matchmaking role between customers and brands that otherwise had to spend a lot of money in marketing.”

One of the biggest propositions of CRED is that it has been able to court some of the most sought-after customers in India. Unlike many other startups and giants such as Google and Facebook, CRED is not going after the next billion users.

“About 20 million customers account for 90% of all online consumption in India. These are the customers we are focusing on,” said Shah, who previously ran financial services firm Freecharge and delivered one of the rare successful exits in the country. The core challenge in chasing customers in smaller cities and towns in India is that very few people have the financial capacity to buy things, Shah said.

For that model to work, the GDP of India — where the average annual income of an individual is about $2,000 — needs to grow. And for that, we need more participation from females, said Shah. Less than 10% of the female population in India are currently part of the workforce, compared to over 90% in China.

An interesting use case for CRED today is that it could potentially license to venture firms data about the traction D2C brands are seeing on its platform, which could use it as a signal to inform their investment decisions.

Shah cautioned that the startup is “extraordinarily sensitive about data” but said the team is thinking about ways to help venture firms discover these firms. “We are planning to create a newsletter to showcase many of these brands to the investor world,” he said.

And finally, will CRED launch a credit card or other banking products? “Can we partner with banks to cross-sell every product that they today offer? The answer is yes,” said Shah, though he cautioned that the startup is in no hurry to supercharge its offerings.

TMYTEK recently raised a Series A+ round of about $10 million for products that make it easier to test 5G millimeter wave equipment. So far, the company’s clients include KDDI, NTT DoCoMo and research institutions. But the Taiwanese startup has aspirations to sell its own base stations, too, competing with well-established players like Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Huawei. TMYTEK plans to use its expertise, gleaned from helping other researchers develop 5G infrastructure, to create what its chief executive officer describes as a “complete 5G industrial chain.”

Its latest funding round was led by TMYTEK’s manufacturing partner Inventec, one of the largest OEMs in Taiwan, and brings the startup’s total funding so far to $13.3 million. Other investors included Taisic Materials, ITEQ, Tamagawa Electronics, and Taiwan’s National Development Fund. TMYTEK also recently took part in SparkLabs Taipei’s accelerator program.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Su-Wei Chang told TechCrunch that it plans to raise a Series B next to develop and commercialize its base stations. To get ready for its base station business, TMYTEK recently joined the O-RAN Alliance, founded by some of the world’s biggest telecoms to create more interoperable mobile networks, in a bid to encourage the development of new technology and faster deployment.

Chang said TMYTEK’s base in Taiwan gives it a strategic advantage. 5G manufacturing is an important part of Taiwan’s economy, with exports reaching record highs during the second half of 2020, thanks in part to demand for 5G-related equipment and technology for smartphones, autonomous vehicles and smart devices.

Chang studied at University of Massachusetts Amherst and when TMYTEK was founded six years ago, he was often asked why he didn’t stay in the United States, where it would have been easier to secure startup funding. But being in Taiwan puts the company closer to many important markets, including Japan, where 30% of its current business comes from, and gives TMYTEK a good foundation to expand into the U.S. and European market, he said.

It has also given the company a supply chain advantage. TMYTEK has manufacturing partners across Asia, including Inventec in Taiwan, and factories in Vietnam and Thailand, in addition to China. Chang said this means TMYTEK was not limited by the COVID-19 pandemic or the U.S-China trade war.

Before launching TMYTEK in 2014, Chang and co-founder Ethan Lin both worked at Academia Sinica, one of the top research institutions in Taiwan, where they focused on millimeter waves even though at the time most researchers were more interested in the mid-band spectrum.

But as more devices and applications began to crowd the 4G spectrum, mmWave became less niche. With Qualcomm’s launch of next-generation 5G mmWave hardware and chips, and more carriers launching mmWave coverage, mmWave is poised to become mainstream.

Millimeter waves offer powerful signals with wide bandwidth and low latency, but drawbacks include difficulty traveling through obstacles like buildings. It also has a limited range, which is why millimeter waves need more base stations. Beamforming, which directs signals toward a specific device, and antenna array, or multiple antennas that work like a single antenna, are used to extend its coverage.

Making mmWave development faster

One of the main challenges for the millimeter wave market, however, is the lack of R&D tools to speed up their development and time to market, resulting in higher costs and slower deployment.

To keep up with market opportunities, TMYTEK transitioned from design and manufacturing projects for clients to offering 5G-focused solutions like the BBox, which stands for “beamforming box.” The BBox was created after a professor at National Taiwan University told Chang that his team was working on antenna design, but didn’t have the resources to work on beamforming technology, too. It lets researchers create 16 beams and control the signal’s amplitude and phase with software, so they can test how it works with antennas and other hardware more quickly. TMYTEK claims the BBox can save researchers and engineers up to 80% in time and cost.

Chang said TMYTEK realized that if researchers at NTU, one of Taiwan’s largest research universities, needed a solution, then other labs did, too. So far, it has delivered 30 sets to companies including KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, Fujitsu, several Fortune 500 companies and research institutions.

While the BBox was created for antenna designers, the company also began exploring solutions to help other designers, including algorithm developers who want to test beam tracking, communicate with base stations and collect data.

For that scenario, TMYTEK created the XBeam, which is describes as a “total solution,” and is meant for the mass production phase, testing modules, smartphones and base stations before they are shipped. Traditional solutions to test modules rely on mechanical rotators, but Chang said this is more suited to the research and development process. The XBeam, which is based on the BBox, electronically scans beams instead. The company claims the XBeam is up to 20 times faster than other testing solutions.

TMYTEK created the XBeam’s prototype in 2019 and launched the commercialized version in November 2020.

The BBox and XBeam will help TMYTEK build its own base station business in two ways, Chang said. First, having its own solutions will allow TMYTEK to test base stations and bring them to market faster. Second, the startup hopes building a reputation on effective research and development tools will help it market its base stations to private and public networks. This is especially important to TMYTEK’s ambitions since their base stations will be up against products from major players like Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Huawei.

“Our advantage at TMYTEK is that we’re doing the design and we have good partners for manufacturing. Inventec, our investor, is a top five manufacturer in Taiwan,” he said. “And TMYTEK also builds our own testing solution, so our value is that we can provide a total solution to our customers.”

A new North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile on parade, October 10, 2020.

Screenshot from KCTV broadcast

In October, North Korea unveiled new military hardware in a parade marking the 75th anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea.

The biggest attention-getters were, unsurprisingly, the missiles, especially the Pukguksong-4 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), and the Hwasong-16, which, if real, would be the largest liquid-fueled and road-mobile missile ever made.

But before those missiles appeared at the end of the parade, North Korea's impressive modernization of its conventional forces was on full display.

KCNA

Soldiers were seen wearing modern uniforms with new camouflage patterns, ballistic helmets, vests, and even touch-screen devices. They were also seen parading in full nuclear, biological, and chemical gear for the first time. New vehicles designed almost entirely from scratch also debuted.

Chun In-bum, a former lieutenant general in the South Korean army, described the parade as "literally a 'new look' for the North Korean People's Army (KPA) in almost every way."

The parade undoubtedly shows that North Korea's commitment to military modernization is bearing fruit, but it remains unclear just how far that modernization has gone.

New armored vehicles

KCNA

Aside from the missiles, the new armored vehicles received the most attention.

North Korea's armored force has long consisted of old Soviet models or slightly modified domestic copies. But a completely new armored combat vehicle and a new tank show that North Korea's armored force is headed in a new direction.

While little is definitively known about these vehicles, observers noted a number of things based on their appearance. The 8 x 8 wheeled armored combat vehicle, for instance, looks almost exactly like the US Army's Stryker ICV.

Two variants were shown: One armed with five anti-tank guided missile launchers that are likely copies of the Russian 9M133 Kornet, and another armed with a specially designed turret that appears to house a gun based on the D-30 122 mm howitzer, giving it a similar appearance to the M1128 Mobile Gun System.

KCNA

Both vehicles are likely intended to support anti-tank and fire-support operations, and help the KPA become more maneuverable in a similar way to the US Army's brigade combat teams.

The new tank is considerably more advanced than previous North Korean models. Its chassis looks similar to that of Russia's T-14 Armata, and the turret is reminiscent of the US's M1 Abrams. It also appears to have a number of new technologies, like composite armor.

Tubular launchers reminiscent of Russia's Afghanit active protection system (APS) appear to be mounted on the turret, meaning the tank could intercept incoming projectiles. The lack of infrared sights suggests the tank may have a thermal sight - a major improvement for North Korean tanks.

There also appeared to be smoke launchers, laser warning receivers, and crosswind sensors. Two side-mounted anti-tank missile launchers were also present on the turret of the tanks, which were strangely painted in a desert-camouflage scheme.

Accelerated modernization

KCNA

There were a number of other new systems in the parade as well.

Generals and senior officers were driven around in what looked like mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles. New 155 mm self-propelled guns were rolled out, as were new armored multiple launch rocket systems and a new anti-air defense and radar comparable to Russia's TOR system, which fills a gap in North Korean air defenses.

The parade was the latest indication that Kim Jong Un is accelerating North Korea's military modernization efforts, a trend that has been evident with its nuclear weapons and missiles.

"Kim Jong Un was able to achieve this," Dr. Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the efforts.

"Some people really underestimated him when he came into power," Terry told Insider. "But at the end of the day, all this modernization took place under him."

Kim has made strengthening his country's military his top priority and wants to prove that despite international pressure and tight sanctions, North Korea is capable of fielding a strong force.

"They want to show that since Singapore they've been making progress," Terry said, referring to Kim's 2018 meeting with President Donald Trump. "That's the main message, that they're not going to stop."

'A Potemkin parade'

Screenshot from KCTV broadcast

As impressive as the new hardware is, there is reason to believe that the parade may have been a display of systems and weapons that North Korea may not actually have, at least not yet.

"Every parade is a Potemkin parade in the sense that North Korea always wants to hype up what they have," Terry said.

For example, despite the new tank's impressive electronics, none of the boxes containing the optics were open, which means no one can be sure what is inside them.

Additionally, many of the systems have not been seen in tests or military exercises, which means they could just be mockups - especially the Pukguksong-4 and Hwasong-16 missiles. This is also the case for North Korea's ballistic-missile submarines, the Gorae-class and Sinpo-C-class.

Finally, North Korea simply may not have the resources to build and maintain such a large conventional force.

KCNA via REUTERS

"I sincerely doubt that much of that stuff is seriously propagated among the North Korean forces," said Dr. Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation.

North Korea can't fund its nuclear and conventional ambitions and the economy its elites desire, Bennet told Insider. "The money is just not there."

Despite the hype, it's clear that military modernization has "made some kind of progress," Terry said, but it's likely that only certain specialized units have benefited from it.

"I think what we saw in the parade was really very selective modernization," Bennett said. "Take those [infantry] soldiers that we saw. I'll bet they're almost all special forces."

North Korea's Special Operations Force, one of the KPA's five branches, accounts for only 200,000 of the KPA's nearly 1.3 million active-duty personnel, but it is expected to have a primary role in a conflict.

Nuclear leverage

Reuters

While the KPA's conventional military modernization is impressive, there is little doubt it remains qualitatively inferior to South Korea's military and no doubt it is inferior to the US military.

But North Korea's real power is its nuclear arsenal. Pyongyang has made clear that it has no reservations about its tactical deployment, meaning it'd likely be front and center in any combat scenario.

With an arsenal believed to be between 30 and 40 warheads, North Korea can use those weapons to destroy important infrastructure like airfields, military bases, and ports, preventing reinforcement and resupply efforts.

"The North Korean approach could impair the South Korean air capability. It could impair our deployment capability," Bennet said. "Then all of the sudden, their conventional capabilities, even if they're only very selectively modernized, might make a big difference. With [North Korea's] special forces out there with that kind of equipment, that gets a little daunting for South Korea."

That approach would most likely result in North Korea's destruction, but being able to do it gives Kim "tremendous coercive capability against the South," Bennet said.

The KPA's evident modernization, combined with Pyongyang's growing nuclear and missile arsenal, put Kim in a position to assert himself and limit the US's leverage in future negotiations.

"Kim Jong-un is a very different kind of leader," Terry said. "I think it's better for us to not underestimate him."

Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House, Friday, Nov. 13, 2020, in Washington.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Moncef Slaoui, head of the White House's Operation Warpspeed, said the new coronavirus variant "should be under control" with the vaccines. 

"This virus actually mutates as part of its normal behavior, and therefore it is normal to expect that there will be variants," Slaoui said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "Based on the information shared with us by the UK scientists and early data that we have here, we think that this virus variant should be under control with this vaccine."

A new coronavirus variant that is believed to be possibly up to 70% more transmissible was reported in the UK in late December. Since then, parts of the UK entered strict restrictions, and many countries around the world have restricted incoming travel from the country.

At least 33 countries have detected cases of the new variant, and the US reported cases of the new variant in San Diego and Colorado last week. 

Vaccine companies and health experts have said that the coronavirus vaccines, which started being distributed across the country last month, should work to protect against the new variant. The CEO of BioNTech said that there was a "relatively high" chance the company's vaccine with Pfizer will work, and AstraZeneca's CEO said that their vaccine "should remain effective." As Business Insider's Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce reported, experts have doubled down this vaccine will likely work against the new strains of the virus. 

Tetra Images/Getty Images

A Vacaville, CA police officer who was filmed punching a canine partner during a training exercise has now had the dog removed from their home, according to a statement released on the Vacaville Police Department's Facebook page.

The video, recorded by witness Robert Palomino, shows a police office restraining the dog and punching it in the face. In the original Facebook post, now deleted, Palomino wrote that the officer had punched the dog multiple times before he started recording, and stopped after Palomino started filming, according to SF Gate. 

The Vacaville Police Department said that the canine has been removed from the care of the police department and was found to have no signs of distress or injury by a veterinarian. The police department also said that the canine will remain with a third party "pending a thorough and complete investigation into the incident."

The department has not yet named the officer who punched the dog in the video.

The department's original statement noted that the officer's punch came after the dog itself became violent. 

"Yesterday evening a video surfaced of an interaction between one of our officers and his canine partner during training," the statement read. "We understand how disturbing the video appears to many who view it and the range of emotions it creates. What the video doesn't show is the moments prior, when the canine became aggressive towards his handler."

The post has now received more than 12,000 Facebook comments.

In this March 20, 2018 file photo, Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., greets President Donald Trump to speak to the National Republican Congressional Committee March Dinner.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Former Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican and the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, on Sunday spoke out against members of his own party who have hatched a plan to object to the certification of the Electoral College's December vote that re-affirmed Trump's November loss.

"All our basic rights and freedoms flow from a fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law," Ryan, who represented Wisconsin in the House from 1999 until 2019, said in a statement. "This principle is not only fundamentally American but a central tenet of conservatism. Under our system, voters determine the president, and this self-governance cannot sustain itself if the whims of Congress replace the will of the people. I urge members to consider the precedent that it would set." 

Sen. Ted Cruz is leading an effort to reject the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, and about a dozen Republican senators have said publicly they plan to do the same. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has also said he plans to reject the certification, and approximately 140 members of the House of Representatives are also believed to be planning to reject the counting the Electoral College's vote, CNN reported.

"Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden's victory strike at the foundation of our republic," Ryan continued. "It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans."

Ryan announced his retirement from the House of Representatives in 2018. He served as speaker of the House from 2015 until his exit from Congress in 2019.

Since his loss to President-elect Joe Biden in November, Trump and his allies have refused to accept Biden's win, instead alleging widespread voter fraud without providing evidence to back up the claim, lobbing pressure on officials in some states where Trump lost and filing dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits. 

"The Trump campaign had ample opportunity to challenge election results, and those efforts failed from lack of evidence. The legal process was exhausted, and the results were decisively confirmed," Ryan said Sunday.

The former House speaker also noted that the Department of Justice had also said it had not "seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election," as the president has alleged.

Some Republicans like Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan have also spoken out against the effort. A group of 10 bipartisan senators, including Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Mitt Romney of Utah, lawmakers to "move forward." 

"If states wish to reform their processes for future elections, that is their prerogative. But Joe Biden's victory is entirely legitimate," Ryan concluded.

While the lawmakers' objections will force a vote by the House and Senate, it is extremely unlikely to have any impact on the outcome of the election. Biden won 306 Electoral College votes compared to Trump's 232. A candidate must receive at least 270 votes to win the presidency.    

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to receive his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health on December 22, 2020 in Bethesda, Maryland.

Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images

A few weeks after the first coronavirus vaccine was authorized in the US, it became clear that the nation's vaccine rollout was off to a painfully slow start. 

Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's coronavirus vaccine initiative, predicted 20 million Americans would get a coronavirus shot by the end of 2020. As of December 30, less than 2.8 million people had received their first injections, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC News' Martha Raddatz on Sunday that vaccinations could speed up soon.

Fauci said there's no reason why the US can't immunize 1 million people per day right now.

That pace would put the country on track to fulfill President-elect Joe Biden's goal of vaccinating 100 million people in his first 100 days in office.

"We are not where we want to be, there's no doubt about that, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate, get some momentum going, and see what happens as we get into the first couple of weeks of January," Fauci said.

He pointed to New York City's widespread smallpox vaccination efforts in 1947 as an example.

"I was a six-year-old boy who was one of those who got vaccinated," Fauci said. "So if New York City can do 5 million in two weeks, the United States could do a million a day."

Getting vaccinations back on course 

In the absence of clear federal guidance, the US vaccine rollout has devolved into a patchwork response that places a heavy burden on already overwhelmed state health departments.

Local officials have been tasked with coordinating vaccination schedules while also confronting a tsunami of sick patients. Many health departments lack the funding to hire enough staff to administer doses in large batches. Others lack the expertise to transfer thousands of doses from local warehouses to the arms of individuals - what experts call the "last-mile" challenge.

"Vaccines sitting on shelves are doing nothing while thousands of Americans are dying," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, told Business Insider. "This is a travesty. This is the most ridiculous example of an incredible ability of our country to be innovative in producing the vaccine and yet inability of our government to help get it to people."

He added that "the Biden team is going to have a lot of hard work ahead."

Biden's 100-day target will likely require more funding from Congress, in addition to December's roughly $8 billion relief package that helps states with vaccine distribution issues. Many public-health experts say it will also require increased partnership between federal and state governments. 

"To say the federal government should do it themselves, that'll never happen," Fauci told Raddatz. "To just leave the states on their own without any help, without any instruction, without any resources, is going to be tough. You've got to have a combination of both."

Octavio Jones/Getty Images

Some progress so far offers a 'little glimmer of hope'

The US has now administered more than 4.2 million initial doses of coronavirus vaccines as of Saturday morning, the CDC reported. A good chunk of those doses were given out over the last few days.

"Some little glimmer of hope is that in the last 72 hours they've gotten 1.5 million doses into people's arms, which is an average of about 500,000 a day," Fauci told Raddatz.

He estimated that all of the nation's priority groups - including healthcare workers, nursing home residents, frontline essential workers, elderly Americans, and Americans with high-risk medical conditions - could be vaccinated by the end of March or beginning of April.

Around that time in the spring, he added, the US may "have what I call open season on vaccines - namely, anybody who wants a vaccine can get a vaccine." That's in line with previous estimates from federal officials.

"If from April, May, June, July, and August, we do the kind vaccine implementation that I'm talking about, at least a million people a day and maybe more, by the time we end the summer and get to the fall, we will have achieved" herd immunity in around 75% to 80% of the population, Fauci said.

But some experts have called for vaccinations to ramp up even further.

"For us to reach 80% herd immunity through vaccination, it will take us 10 years at a rate of 1 million vaccines a week," Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore health commissioner, recently told CNN. "Or, put in a different way, if we want to get there within six months, we have to be doing 3.5 million vaccinations a day."

A 20-year-old Nancy Pelosi and John F. Kennedy.

Pelosi Facebook

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Nancy Pelosi will begin another term as speaker of the House of Representatives.

The 117th Congress, which met Sunday for its first session of the year, re-elected Pelosi to the position, securing the majority of the total votes cast. 

Pelosi, a Democrat from California, said back in October before the 2020 election that she would seek another term as House speaker if Democrats maintained a majority in Congress' lower chamber. 

She has been in the role since January 2019, when Democrats elected her after regaining majority control of the House. To date, she is the only woman to have served as House Speaker, and has been the most powerful elected woman lawmaker in the United States. With the confirmation of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Pelosi becomes the second-most powerful elected woman lawmaker.

Within the House, Pelosi serves as the chamber's presiding officer and administrative head. 

To be elected speaker, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of the total number of votes cast. Five Democrats defected from voting for Pelosi. Maine Rep. Jared Golden voted for Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb voted for New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill, Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, and Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger voted "present" in lieu of a name.

Republican representatives generally voted for Kevin McCarthy, currently the House minority leader. Several representatives were absent because of concerns related to the coronavirus. 

Since the appointment of the 116th Congress, Pelosi has been a somewhat controversial figure in the House. 

She and progressive Congressional members have engaged in feuds in the past. Some of these tensions have escalated and carried over in recent weeks, as new and old progressive "Squad" members gave signals that they might shun her. 

Earlier in December, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York ripped into Pelosi, saying neither she nor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should lead the Democratic arm.

"We need new leadership in the Democratic Party," Ocasio-Cortez said in a podcast. During her first vote, Ocasio-Cortez withheld her vote. During the second call for her vote, she voted for Pelosi. Last year, Ocasio-Cortez also voted for Pelosi for House Speaker.

And last week, just before the start of the first session, then Reps.-elect Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman declined to specify whether they would vote for Pelosi to be re-elected to the role. 

Speaking to CNN's Dana Bash, neither Bush nor Bowman gave a concrete answer when asked whether they'd support her re-election effort in the House. 

"I am going to make sure that voices of the people of St. Louis are heard and we have what we need. And so you will find out then," Bush said.

While Bowman and Bush had previously been noncommittal, they both ultimately cast a vote for Pelosi. The first time the vote was called, Bush withhold her vote. When prompted a second time after the whole House roll was called, Bush voted for Pelosi.

Pelosi's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan speaks at BD Life Sciences on the news of Maryland's purchase of rapid Covid screening tests on September 10, 2020 in Sparks, Md.

Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, in a statement issued Sunday, criticized members of his own party for their attempts to object to the certification of the Electoral College vote on Wednesday.

"The scheme by members of Congress to reject the certification of the presidential election makes a mockery of our system and who we are as Americans," Hogan said in the Sunday afternoon statement.

Sen. Ted Cruz is spearheading an effort to reject the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, and about a dozen Republican senators have said publicly they'll back his effort. His effort is separate from that of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has also said he plans to reject the certification. Around 140 members of the House of Representatives are also believed to be planning to vote against counting the Electoral College's vote, CNN reported.

Trump and his Republican allies have since his loss in November claimed President-elect Joe Biden's win was the result of widespread fraud in the election. But neither he nor his allies have been able to substantiate such claims with proof, including in dozens of lawsuits the president and his legal team have lost. 

Read more: Secret Service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump might be hauled out of the White House if he won't budge on Inauguration Day

Meanwhile, the Washington Post on Sunday published audio of a Saturday call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. On the call, Trump, who has publicly bashed Raffensperger, pressured him to "find" the number of votes he needed to win the state in another last-ditch effort to subvert his leaving office later this month.

Biden won Georgia by about 12,000 votes in one of a few victories that were key to his beating Trump.

"President Trump and his team have had every opportunity to provide evidence supporting their claims, and they have failed to do so," Hogan, whose state voted for Biden, said. "Their allegations have been flatly rejected by Trump-appointed judges and a Trump-appointed Justice Department alike.

Hogan has previously criticized the GOP, including at the end of November when he said he was "embarrassed" more members of his own party weren't speaking out against Trump's refusal to concede the race.

"Whether or not you like the result, the process worked as it always has," he said Sunday. "What's not working is that far too many politicians in Washington seem to have forgotten the basic principle that they are beholden to the people, not the other way around."

Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

A lawsuit aimed at forcing New York City to provide WiFi for students in homeless shelters is moving forward to trial.

US District Judge Alison Nathan ruled last week that the class-action suit brought by homeless parents and the Coalition of the Homeless would proceed to expedited discovery in preparation for a trial.

"Without internet connectivity, homeless students are deprived of the means to attend classes," Nathan wrote in the opinion that accompanied the decision. "And because homeless children who lack internet access and reside in New York City shelters cannot attend school for as long as that deprivation exists, the City bears a duty, under the statute, to furnish them with the means necessary for them to attend school." 

Some homeless students are still unable to access the internet from a shelter more than nine months since Mayor Bill de Blasio first announced remote learning on March 15, 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. New York City schools have approximately 114,000 homeless students according to an Advocates for Children report cited by the judge.

The city's original plan was to provide iPads with unlimited cellular data to students without access to WiFi, first partnering with T-Mobile. After students weren't able to access T-Mobile service in many shelters, the city switched to Verizon, but some students continued to be unable to connect to school. 

On October 26, 2020 Mayor de Blasio announced that the city would install WiFi in all shelters, but officials cautioned this wouldn't be complete until the summer of 2021. 

"It should come as no surprise that the City lacked any real legal basis to prevent this lawsuit from proceeding," said Susan Horwitz, supervising attorney of the education law project at the Legal Aid Society, wrote in a press release.

"Despite months of pushing the City to address the root cause of the problem, City Hall continues to advance ineffective solutions while families in shelters suffer. We look forward to seeing all shelters equipped with working WiFi, far in advance of the city's stated goal of summer 2021." 

City officials said they are working to get WiFi to students in shelters.

"The Court's decision indicates that the City has worked hard to provide internet connectivity to the plaintiffs and is continuing to do so," Nick Paolucci, the spokesperson of New York City's Law Department, wrote in a statement to Business Insider. "The City shifted to remote learning in the context of an unprecedented pandemic and we are working hard to address the needs of all students." 

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman predicts the US economy will enjoy a strong, sustained recovery once the pandemic threat recedes.

Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2008, warned in a recent New York Times column that the next few months "will be hell in terms of politics, epidemiology, and economics." However, he expects the economic rebound to be "much faster and continue much longer than many people expect."

The economics professor and writer anticipates that once vaccines are rolled out nationwide, a combination of pent-up demand, increased household savings, technological advances, and the Biden administration's support will underpin a jobs boom.

Read more: GOLDMAN SACHS: Buy these 37 stocks that could earn you the strongest returns without taking on big risks in 2021 as the recovery and vaccine distribution get underway

Krugman laid out a "clear case for optimism" in his column, arguing the US economy will bounce back much faster than it did from the financial crisis.

There was a "Wile E. Coyote moment" in 2007 when consumers and businesses woke up to sky-high house prices and vast sums of household debt that promptly tanked the economy, he said. However, the private sector doesn't appear significantly overextended this time around, he added.

Indeed, a New York Times analysis found that Americans' personal savings grew by $1.6 trillion or 173% year-on-year between March and November last year, as disposable incomes rose by $1 trillion and household spending fell by $535 billion.

Unemployment insurance benefits, stimulus checks boosted savings, and the Payment Protection Program shoring up incomes, while lockdowns and virus fears hammered spending on flights, cruises, and other services.

Read more: Jeremy Grantham's GMO called the dot-com bubble. His firm now sees 'very odd and speculative things' going on again - and warns large US stocks could see negative returns over the next 7 years.

"I'm in the camp that expects rapid growth once people feel safe going out and spending money," Krugman said. While the pandemic has devastated the livelihoods of millions, the average American has been "saving like crazy," he added.

Krugman doesn't expect the economy to require as much support as it did under President Obama. Moreover, he predicts technological advances in sectors such as biotech and renewable energy, coupled with a president who is "actually interested in doing his job" and not anti-science or obsessed with fossil fuels, to drive growth.

The economist also took a parting shot at Republicans for undermining the legitimacy of the recent presidential election.

The party's members "keep demonstrating that they're worse than you could possibly have imagined, even when you tried to take into account the fact that they're worse than you could possibly have imagined," he said.

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