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Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on July 28, 2021.

Jaber Abdulkhaleg | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The World Health Organization is calling for $ 7.7 billion, which officials say is badly needed to help low-income countries survive the Delta-Covid variant through the provision of vaccines, oxygen and medical care.

The funds will be used for the WHO’s Access to Covid-19 Tools program, or ACT, accelerator program that provides critical medical supplies to fight the coronavirus worldwide, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO director-general, during a question and answer session with WHO officials, streamed a live stream on their social media accounts on Tuesday.

Aylward said the funds are needed to partially cover a $ 16.8 billion shortfall that hampers WHO’s ability to fight the pandemic in developing countries with little or no access to vaccines.

“Aside from the moral question – people shouldn’t die if the technology is available elsewhere, you know, technology should help humanity as a whole – there is also the problem that we can’t solve this pandemic in one country at a time. “Said Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO Deputy Director General for Access to Medicines, Vaccines and Medicines.

“That’s the reality,” she continued. “We have to help the countries move closer together. Otherwise we will live with this virus much longer than necessary.”

WHO officials have set a goal to vaccinate at least 10% of the world’s population by the end of September, at least 40% by the end of this year, and 70% by the middle of next year. Some nations around the world have not yet started their vaccination campaigns, while wealthier countries like the US and Israel have already fully vaccinated more than half of their populations.

Aylward said people in poorer countries who have a fever or other symptoms don’t have the test materials to know if it’s Covid or other diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia or HIV. In addition to providing doses of vaccine, Aylward said the funding will also include Covid testing, oxygen treatments and masks.

Wealthy nations have spent trillions of dollars to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, he said. “Your economy tells you to vaccinate the world and of course we didn’t listen,” he said.

The WHO previously said it was in dire need of $ 7.7 billion to run the ACT Accelerator, and at that point was calling for an additional $ 3.8 billion to buy 760 million doses of Covid vaccine for delivery the next Year, reported Reuters.

“This is the defining moment of our time,” said Aylward. “At some point we look back and that will be the question: How did you behave in those crucial moments?”

A damning new U.N. report warning of certain devastation from climate change has been dubbed humanity’s “final wake-up call” by environmental experts.

Speaking to CNBC Tuesday, environmentalists outlined the role companies, countries and individuals can play in stemming the crisis. They also shared their hopes for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, known as COP26, in November.

The U.N.’s IPCC climate panel released a highly anticipated report on Monday, warning that efforts to limit global warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or even 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, “will be beyond reach” in the next two decades without immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Implementing ‘ambitious action now’

Meeting policymakers’ 2050 temperature targets will be difficult but achievable, said Emily Kreps, global director of capital markets at CDP, a non-profit which helps companies manage their climate impact.

However, it would require “ambitious action now” from companies, governments and capital markets, she told “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday.

This should be viewed as our final wake-up call.

Emily Kreps

global director of capital markets, CDP

The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold outlined in the report is a crucial global target because beyond this level, so-called tipping points become more likely. Tipping points refer to an irreversible change in the climate system, locking in further global heating.

“This should be viewed as our final wake-up call,” said Kreps, who encouraged companies to set “concrete and specific targets.”

Ulka Kelkar, director of climate at the World Resources Institute India, agreed that the pace of change needs to “accelerate rapidly.”

The phasing out of fossil fuels and implementation of renewable energies needs to happen at five-times their current pace, for instance. Meantime, the development of new, more sustainable technologies needs to ramp up, she said.

That is especially pressing in developing countries like India, that have an opportunity to bypass environmentally damaging practices.

“Over here we need to start thinking one step forward, we need to leapfrog,” she told “Street Signs Asia.”

“(That means) more renewable energy used to produce hydrogen at (a) large scale, which can be used in all of our industries” — from fertilizers and chemicals to steel production, she added.

Expectations for COP26

The report comes as a series of extreme weather events have wreaked havoc globally.

In the past few weeks alone, floods have battered Europe, China and India. Wildfires have also devastated the U.S., Canada, Greece and Turkey.

The UN report makes it “unequivocal that these events are connected to climate change and human influence on climate,” Mans Nilsson, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, told “Squawk Box Europe.”

Developed countries (need to) seal the deal on a long-overdue climate finance package.

Ulka Kelkar

director, World Resources Institute India

World leaders are set to discuss the issue further when they meet at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November.

Kreps said she hopes the conference will produce nationally determined contributions and “science-based targets.”

Meantime, Kelkar’s expectations were three-fold.

“Developed countries (need to) seal the deal on a long overdue climate finance package,” particularly for adapting to extreme events seen lately, said Kelkar.

“The second big area is clean technology partnerships: something like green hydrogen, something like the circular economy that is using materials more efficiently. The third is the rules of carbon trading, which is a market-based instrument which allows all this mitigation to happen,” she added.

— CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report.

A new survey conducted by CNBC and Momentive suggests that small businesses across the U.S. must be at little risk of being victims of a hack, or they are supremely overconfident about their place in the growing, national cybersecurity threat.

For Main Street customers, not knowing the answer to that question may be unsettling.

The CNBC | Momentive Q3 Small Business Survey includes what seem to be a series of contradictory findings.

Among America’s small business owners, a net 56% said they are not concerned about being the victim of a hack in the next 12 months, and among those, 24% said they were “not concerned at all.”

Among the 42% who are net concerned, only 13% described themselves as being “very concerned.”

Small business owners also are majority confident (59%) they can quickly resolve any cyberattack. Only 37% were net not confident and only 11% “not confident at all.”

And yet, only 28% of small businesses said in the event of a cyber attack they have a plan in place for response. Almost half (42%) said they have no plan; 11% revealed they were “not sure” if their business had a plan in place. Only about one-quarter (26%) say they carry cyber insurance.

An encouraging sign: 14% said that while they currently have no cybersecurity response plan, one is in development.

The CNBC | Momentive Q3 2021 Small Business Survey was conducted July 26-August 3 among over 2,000 small business owners across the U.S.

“It’s a heads-in-sand moment for lots of these business,” said David Kennedy, founder of cybersecurity company TrustedSec and a former hacker himself.

Kennedy said the highest demographic of incident response for his firm is small- and medium-sized businesses — as high as 85%.

The headlines about nation-state or nation-state-backed attacks on major companies, such as the recent JBS meat packing and Colonial Pipeline attacks, can lead small businesses to conclude they are too small to be targeted, but there are hackers of all sizes targeting all sizes of businesses, Kennedy said.

“We’ve seen one-person family pizza shops be fully compromised. We’ve seen one-person retail shops compromised. Independent Uber drivers targeted,” he said.

The various types of “bad actors” out there include those just starting out in building their hacking infrastructure and pulling off the equivalent of hacking petty crimes before generating the cash to invest in more sophisticated attacks. The lowest levels of organized cybercrime and individual hacks successfully use business email compromise schemes to extract money from small firms.

“They will go after mom-and-pops and may only get $3,000 or $5,000, but that’s how it all starts. That’s how ransomware started, grandma and grandpa in churches, and how they invested more in hacking infrastructure,” Kennedy said.

He said not having a plan in place to respond to a cyberattack is the No. 1 issue.

“Every organization is susceptible,” he said, and it is not only that many don’t have plan, but have just “a few IT guys and no one dedicated to security.”

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Derek Manky, chief, security insights & global threat alliances at Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs, said small businesses are increasingly in a vulnerable position as the attack surface continues to grow with IoT, remote work, and the explosion of endpoints that must be managed. And, small businesses are often in one of the least favorable positions based on the in-house resources available to them to resolve an attack.

“The risk has never been higher for SMBs,” he said, citing a 2019 data point showing that small businesses are target No. 1 for criminals and represented 43% of all 2019 data breaches.

So far, many small businesses have been lucky. Only 14% of small businesses say they have been hacked, according to the results of the Q3 CNBC | Momentive Small Business Survey. But recent events suggest that could rise in the future as more businesses were forced to adopt digital platforms during the pandemic as a mainstay as well as allow workers to operate on a remote basis.

If you’re doing business today and have any IT footprint you have to be doing security as part of it. You are basically playing Russian Roulette and it is only a matter of time before you are hit.

David Kennedy, founder of cybersecurity company TrustedSec

The ransomware attacks that made recent headlines don’t seem to have hit the small business sector by and large. When asked if they have ever been the victim of a ransomware attack, only 7% of small businesses tell CNBC and Momentive that they had been in 2020 or 2021. About half of those (51%) said they paid the ransom — 24% paid it on their own; 27% said cyber insurance covered it.

“Once an attack is successful, the average time to detect the threat sits over 210 days while the mean time to contain/respond is 75 days,” Manky said, citing IBM data.

The big misunderstanding, in Kennedy’s view, is business owners and boards not viewing cybersecurity as a core risk like any other business risk, such as the supply chain or hiring. And he stressed that spending more in cybersecurity does not necessarily mean a firm is better preparing itself. It is more about the awareness and planning process.

In the survey, 67% of small businesses said they are spending the same on cybersecurity as they spent last year; 22% said they are spending more.

“If you’re doing business today and have any IT footprint you have to be doing security as part of it. You are basically playing Russian Roulette and it is only a matter of time before you are hit,” Kennedy said.

Any small business that thinks patching their software and installing the latest antivirus will be enough to protect them and their clients is not viewing cybersecurity as a business risk, according to Kennedy.

“That isn’t going to protect your organization,” he said. “I can guarantee you that from the 59% of your survey audience that said they were confident about responding to an attack, more than half have an inadequate security program.”

One survey finding that at least shows if your Main Street business is hacked, you will hear about it: 76% of small business say they should be required to disclose a hack to customers.

Noam Galai | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron has set an optimistic target for the 2021 domestic box office.

During an earnings call Monday, Aron said AMC could post positive cash flow at the theater level as soon as the fourth quarter if the domestic box office reaches at least $5.2 billion. This means that AMC’s theaters would generate enough money to cover all of its operating costs.

Industry insiders, however, are not convinced the goal is attainable, particularly, as a new Covid-19 variant has forced local governments to reinstate health and safety measures like mask mandates. Experts are also keenly aware that the availability of many major blockbusters on streaming platforms at the same time as theaters has eaten into ticket sales.

As of Sunday, the domestic box office has tallied $1.76 billion in ticket sales, according to data from Comscore. This means that Hollywood would need to generate around $3.4 billion in revenue in the final 20 weeks of the year — a feat that many box-office analysts say is overly optimistic.

For comparison, during the last 20 weeks of 2019, the box office generated around $4 billion from titles like “Joker,” “It: Chapter 2,” “Frozen II,” ” Jumanji: The Next Level” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”

The last four months of this year are packed with some highly anticipated films. However, movies such as “Matrix 4,” “Dune” and “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” will debut in cinemas and on streaming on the same day, which could dampen ticket sales. Others, like “No Time to Die,” “Eternals,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” will have exclusive theatrical releases.

“2021’s final months have more potential than any prior period to inch closer toward pre-pandemic levels of business,” said Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice.com. “But everything hinges on the state of variants and audience comfort levels, a higher share of vaccinated people, and of course, studios remaining committed to their existing release schedules. Everything is fluid right now and probably will be for the foreseeable future.”

Robbins said that $5 billion is a possible, but “optimistic” target.

Wedbush’s Alicia Reese said her firm’s estimate for the 2021 domestic box office was $4.9 billion at the end of July. However, more headwinds have arrived in recent weeks, which Reese expects will make moviegoers reconsider going to theaters.

“Studios may give more thought to day-and-date releases for Q4, or perhaps push their releases yet again if this continues to get worse into the holiday season,” she said. “There are still many variables that make 2021 domestic box office a moving target, but it looks unlikely from the beginning of August that the domestic box office will hit $5.2 billion for the full year.”

Crunching the numbers

Comscore’s senior media analyst, Paul Dergarabedian, broke down the week-by-week box-office receipts for the last three years and determined that in order for the 2021 slate to reach that figure, it would need a “perfect rest of the year.”

“The fall would have to behave like summer in order to get us to a number approaching $5 billion,” Dergarabedian said. “It would appear, at this point, an incredibly heavy lift to even approach such a benchmark by the end of the year.”

Between May and August 2019, the box office generated $4.3 billion from titles like “Avengers: Endgame,” “Aladdin,” “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “Toy Story 4,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “The Lion King.”

“It’s a stretch, but it’s possible,” said Eric Wold, senior analyst at B. Riley Securities.

Wold noted that his firm is not currently projecting the box office to reach this mark. After all, the domestic box office is currently down 75% from 2019 levels and the third quarter is expected to be down around 50% compared with the pre-pandemic period.

He projects the domestic box office will reach between $4.4 billion to $4.5 billion for the whole of 2021.

“This would imply that [fourth-quarter] box office would have to be equal or down only 5% from 2019 levels to get to $5.2 billion for the year,” he said. “We think that is unlikely at this point given continued near-term traffic uncertainties.”

At present, only around 85% of North American theaters are open to the public, compared with 2019 levels. Some have imposed capacity restrictions, which limits how much cinemas can make per showing. Theaters that are closed are either shuttered completely due to the pandemic or are waiting for more favorable conditions to reopen.

Higher ticket prices, more theaters

As of the end of June, all of AMC’s 593 U.S. theaters were open to the public and 335 of its international theaters, or about 95%, were operational.

Around 22 million guests visited AMC’s theaters during the quarter, much larger than the 7 million that attended during the first quarter. However, it’s a far cry from the company’s all-time quarterly record of 97 million during the second quarter of 2019.

Audiences are returning, which has aided the chain’s revenue in recent months, but crowds have not yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

“We are still losing money,” Aron said on the call Monday. “We are still burning cash. We’re burning less of it. But we’re using cash not generating cash.”

In the second quarter, AMC posted its sixth consecutive loss. This means losses date back to the third quarter of 2019 — before Covid-19 spread around the globe and studios began focusing on new streaming services.

Revenue has been flat since AMC bought rivals Carmike and Nordic Cinema Group in 2016 and 2017, respectively, despite its investments in premium recliner seats and in-theater dining options. These efforts have weighed heavily on the company’s bottom line and its cash flow.

AMC has amassed more than $1.8 billion in cash, mostly from stock sales, that it is using to further upgrade its theaters and lease new locations. But payments for its massive debt, which is in excess of $5 billion, have been pushed out. It does not have any maturities coming due until 2023.

The chain has tried to boost revenue by raising ticket prices by 5%, or about 50 cents per ticket, in some U.S. theaters last week. The hope is that increasing prices and adding locations will benefit AMC as more films arrive in theaters and studios begin to ease away from day-and-date streaming releases.

“As we we look to 2022 when vaccine distribution should be wider and, more importantly, studios return to exclusive theatrical windows, we are projecting only a mid-teens percentage decline in domestic box office from 2019 levels — which would easily return the exhibition group to positive [adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] and cash flow,” said Wold of B. Riley Securities. “And given that strong cash balance in hand for AMC at this point, they are well positioned to make it to that point and beyond.”

Jordan Siemens | Stone | Getty Images

When the coronavirus pandemic brought almost all travel to a standstill, Anwar Ali was forced to store a fleet of cars, which he rents through the Turo car sharing platform, in an unused gym in Kauai, Hawaii.

Now his company Ali’i Rental Cars is well booked for the month and has a waiting list. Even after adding 20 cars to his fleet, when travel demand picked up again and tourists discovered that traditional car rentals were solidly booked.

In the Atlanta and Chicago area, car sharing hosts have similar stories. Tatiana Pisarski, a Turo host in Charlotte, North Carolina, said she had rental inquiries two to three times a week. This year’s bookings are more than the last three years combined, she said. In June, she felt confident enough to order a Tesla Cybertruck and plans to rent it when it is finally delivered by the dealer.

The lack of available reservations with major car rental chains this summer, as well as the desire for a unique rental experience, are factors driving travelers to turn to car sharing platforms like Turo and GetAround. In response to increased demand, some car sharing providers are doubling their business by expanding their fleets. Some succeed by providing their customers with a personal touch that Hertz, Enterprise, and other big chains can’t.

“As summer travel has risen, Turo has become a critical platform supporting both growing consumer demand and business opportunity,” said Andre Haddad, CEO of Turo, in July. “With traditional rental car companies having limited inventory and skyrocketing prices for their cars, our hosts were able to capitalize on this moment, build thriving businesses by listing their personal cars on Turo and scaling their businesses to serve their goals.”

On Monday, the company, which is supported by Daimler, submitted confidential documents to the regulatory authorities for an IPO in the USA.

A pop-up ad triggers an idea

Ali was a youth pastor and his wife was expecting their first child when he performed an Isuzu rodeo on Turo in 1998. Within 24 hours, the car he had named Ruby was booked for the week. It was the family’s second car, and he was hoping he would live in Lihue, a tourist hot spot on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, to make a little extra money.

Ali heard about peer-to-peer car sharing through a pop-up ad on Mint. It was just the minimal business opportunity he was looking for. Other companies he was considering took a lot of capital to get started. With that, he took an idle car he already owned and made $ 200 on his first transaction.

Soon he added the couple’s other vehicle to the platform and that income paid for the family’s home for the month. Now, seven years later, Ali said he made five digits in the first quarter of 2021. Due to his current reservations by the end of the year, he predicts that it will be well into the six-figure range. This spring he broke ground for his family’s new home in Kauai. He also plans to pour his profits from his car sharing business into an Airbnb property.

For those who want to get into peer-to-peer car sharing. Not all platforms are created equal.

Customers of the competing platform GetAround often do not own a car, but need a vehicle to run errands or to pick up an oversized object in the neighborhood. These customers are only allowed to rent the vehicle for a few hours or a day.

Adjustment of the rent

Turo customers are looking for a unique car sharing experience rather than the usual airport terminal pickup. Hosts may receive requests to drop off a vehicle at a hotel, or they may be looking for a specific type of vehicle.

When DeAnthony Hill rented a Tesla Model X for his son’s eighth birthday, hostess Pisarski put the hawk wing doors in the upper position for an extra birthday surprise when she delivered the vehicle to Hill in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bookings are also increasing for car sharing customers who are interested in buying an electric vehicle but are not sure whether it fits their lifestyle. For example, you can rent a Tesla S for a week to test your commute and see how quickly it recharges. While charging stations for electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular in office buildings and public parking lots, there can still be some anxiety while charging.

Car-sharing host Ryan Hagler uses Turo to deliver what he calls what he calls a “luxury car rental experience.” Its seven-part inventory includes a Mercedes Benz C300, a Land Rover Defender 110 and several Teslas.

“I was just a fan of the site five or six years ago,” he said, explaining how he started his business, Aloha Luxury Car Rental. Then he had an idea: “Wouldn’t it be cool to have some nice luxury cars and rent them on this platform, because then I can have a luxury car that I would normally never buy for myself. And then I can drive it and make some money with it – or at least pay for it. “

Before starting his car sharing business, Hagler owned a coffee shop franchise with multiple locations in Portland, Oregon. He sold the business in 2018, took a year off and moved back to Maui, where he met his wife 20 years ago.

Logo for the peer-to-peer car sharing service Getaround on the side of a car in the Silicon Valley town of Mountain View, California, August 24, 2016.

Smith / Gado Collection | Stock photos | Getty Images

Hagler began testing Turo by renting a Tesla that he bought for his wife in 2019. He hired someone to help run the day-to-day business so he could rent cars while traveling and get a feel for the company’s running costs. But then Covid struck and travel – including for himself – was put on hold and he temporarily sidelined the business.

He restarted it in October 2020 and gradually increased the number of vehicles he rented.

“For now, this is a proof of concept for a location,” said Hagler. “I plan to have 15-20 EVs as 80% of my inventory and the remaining 20% ​​hybrid vehicles. … Our mission is to get a facility that is completely solar powered. My goal was to make a profit of $ 1,000 per vehicle, “per month.”

In June, Aloha Luxury Car Rental was 95% booked, making between $ 1,500 and $ 2,000 per month in profit per vehicle. Hagler’s inventory was booked out for more than 30 days in May, but the pace slowed to about 10 days in July as new people joined the Turo platform, Hagler said. His expenses also increased as he leased a lot to park his vehicles and added the equivalent of a full-time employee.

Car sharing vehicle rental prices fluctuate based on various market factors including the level of insurance chosen by the user and the length of the rental. GetAround works with Apollo Underwriting, while Turo has an insurance contract with Liberty Mutual.

Travelers who rent through a car sharing service will note that some vehicles allow unlimited mileage while others may have a daily or weekly mileage limit.

While tourist demand for car rental companies has led some to try these services, GetAround says its core business remains customers who want to replace car ownership and rent cars when needed.

“We’re definitely benefiting from the uptrend in travel … but since we have both use cases (travel and everyday use), we see success on both sides of the equation,” said Pat Notti, vice president of Marketplace at GetAround and Operations.

Correction: Tatiana Pisarski is a Turo host in Charlotte, North Carolina. An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated their location.