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Elizabeth Olsen plays Wanda Maximoff in “WandaVision” on Disney +.

Disney

Kevin Feige warned us that the Marvel series on Disney + would have an impact on the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. And he kept that promise.

The fifth episode of “WandaVision” hit the streaming service on Friday, bringing with it a big cameo that made viewers think a lot before episode six comes out next week. The reveal not only impacts the sitcom-based TV show, but the entire Marvel Universe … or should I say Multiverse.

Now would be a good time to look the other way if you haven’t seen the latest episode of “WandaVision”.

** Spoiler ahead **

The fifth episode, entitled “On a Very Special Episode …”, our ragged team of FBI agent Jimmy Woo, Dr. Darcy Lewis and Captain Monica Rambeau, take a step closer to understanding the Westview anomaly.

Meanwhile, Vision, which is still part of the simulation but is now set in the 80s, is getting more and more suspicious of the world around him. The neighbors have started acting strangely, his twin sons are aging at their own will, and his wife Wanda trying to resolve his concerns only makes them grow.

Just as the newly minted husband and the newly minted wife are prepared for an overpowering argument, the doorbell rings. Wanda, confused by this phrase, answers. Pietro Maximoff is at the front, just not this Pietro Maximoff.

Elizabeth Olsen plays Wanda Maximoff in “WandaVision” on Disney + with special guest Evan Peters as Pietro Maximoff.

Disney

It’s Peter Evans, not Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who appears on the other side of the door. The actor portrayed the mutant Mercury in several X-Men films that were owned by 20th Century Fox until 2019.

It is implied that Wanda did not plan on including her brother in her sitcom simulation. After all, just a few scenes earlier, Wanda refuses to bring her sons’ deceased puppy back from the dead.

“You can fix anything, mom, fix dead,” notes a son. After the demise, even the nosy neighbor asked Agnes, who is believed to be pulling at least some of the strings in Wanda’s simulation, if she could actually do that.

“I’m trying to tell you that there are rules in life,” Wanda explains to her two boys. “We can’t just accelerate aging because it’s convenient and we can’t undo death no matter how sad it makes us. Some things are forever.”

This statement raises two questions: is Vision dead or did Wanda (or someone else) bring him back? And did Wanda accidentally bring back another Pietro or did someone else?

Both of these will likely be answered in a few weeks before the credits roll in for the final episode.

Audiences got a glimpse of what had happened prior to the Westview anomaly at the beginning of the episode when Wanda appeared on surveillance cameras and stole Vision’s body from a secret laboratory. And there are likely still many Easter eggs to be discovered that provide further clues.

Welcome to the multiverse

What about this new Pietro?

Before Disney acquired Fox’s $ 71 billion in entertainment brands, the two studios signed an agreement. Disney could use Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, but not point out that they were mutants or children of Magneto. That’s why Wanda and Pietro in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” derived their powers from an infinite stone and not genetically.

Interested viewers might have noticed in the Friday episode that Tyler Hayward, the director of SWORD, asked if Wanda had a nickname like some of the other Avengers that she didn’t. Wanda wasn’t named Scarlet Witch in any of the MCU films.

As for Fox, the studio was allowed to use Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in their films as long as there was no evidence of the Avengers. In fact, Peters’ mercury goes from Peter and not Pietro.

Elizabeth Olsen plays Wanda Maximoff in “WandaVision” on Disney + alongside Paul Bettany as Vision.

Disney

Rumors have been circulating in the past few months as Marvel executives hired some familiar faces to return in future MCU films.

Disney has already confirmed that Jamie Foxx will return as Electro from “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” with Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man. And Alfred Molina, who portrayed Doctor Octopus as the famous web slinger during Tobey McGuire’s play, is also confirmed to appear in the film.

Dr. Strange by Benedict Cumberbatch will also appear.

There has been speculation that other characters from the MCU or even from previous iterations of Spider-Man will join the cast, but Disney has not confirmed those rumors.

The return of Pietro in the form of Peters signals that Marvel is already well on its way to explore the multiverse. This was teased during San Diego Comic-Con in 2019 when Marvel announced that the sequel to Doctor Strange would be titled “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”

For the stranger, the Marvel Multiverse is just a fancy way of saying a collection of alternate universes. They are similar to each other, but with slight differences. It’s a very popular concept in comics as it allows writers to reinvent characters and storylines for new generations.

With Wanda already confirmed as part of the Doctor Strange sequel and Doctor Strange as part of “Spider-Man 3”, it’s no surprise that Marvel is throwing breadcrumbs over it early on. After all, the seeds of the infinity stones appear in “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” long before they are called such.

Marvel used the gems of mind, power, reality, soul, space and time over the course of a decade to weave new characters and situations that ultimately led to “Avengers: Infinity War” and the highest-grossing movie of all time. ” Avengers: Endgame. ”

The introduction of the multiverse in “WandaVision” works on several levels for Disney. Not only are they paving a path for future MCU movies and shows, the company is also making its streaming content a must-see television program. Fans need to watch these shows if they don’t want to miss any storylines or character introductions that are incorporated into feature films.

WandaVision may have been the first Marvel project since Spider-Man: Far From Home in July 2019, but it won’t be the last in 2021. Disney + will soon be followed by “The Falcon and” The Winter Soldier “in March,” Loki “in May and the animated series” What if …? ” in summer.

Marvel will debut “Black Widow” on May 7th, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” on July 9th, “Eternals” on November 5th and “Spider-Man 3” on November 5th. December.

Exterior view of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue on August 19, 2020 in New York City.

VIEW press | Corbis News | Getty Images

Tesla has been dubbed the “Apple of the Automotive Industry” because of the amount of technology in its vehicles.

But what does that mean for Tesla and other automakers as Apple is in talks with South Korean automaker Hyundai-Kia about an electric vehicle?

Simply put, it’s complicated. Apple is known for its secrecy and there is little information available about what its business model would be for what is known as an Apple Car. Overall, the tech giant’s entry into new segments – phones, watches, music, streaming, etc. – means there is considerable pressure for older companies to adapt their customer interface and products. A car would probably be no different.

“There’s no question that Apple, if it gets into the auto industry at all, will put pressure on the rest of the auto industry to improve the customer experience,” said Michael Ramsey, vice president, automotive and intelligent mobility analyst at Gartner .

Ramsey said Apple’s ecosystem could be “seamlessly integrated into an Apple-specific car” that no company other than Google could compete with.

“It means more competition. That’s the bottom line. It’s more competition,” said Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “And it’s a very well-funded competition too, if you choose to.”

As CNBC reported earlier this week, people familiar with the Apple and Hyundai-Kia talks said the electric vehicle is expected to go into production at a Kia plant in Georgia in 2024, despite saying the eventual rollout will be pushed back could. They said there was still no agreement between the two companies. In addition, they stressed that Apple could ultimately decide to work with another automaker separately or in addition to working with Hyundai-Kia.

Apple is already represented in millions of vehicles through partnerships with automakers for its Apple CarPlay, software that essentially mirrors much of the iPhone display on a vehicle’s infotainment screen.

But producing and selling a car even with a partner like Hyundai-Kia is not as easy as entering other consumer segments. The automotive industry is a capital-intensive industry with long lead times, stricter safety regulations, and far lower margins than consumer electronics.

“It won’t be easy for Apple to break into this area,” said Brinley. “It’s a very complex industry and just because you are Apple doesn’t make it easy.”

Bloomberg reported on Friday that talks between Hyundai-Kia had been “interrupted”. But an Apple car would likely have the same impact on the auto industry regardless of which company makes the vehicle.

Autonomous vehicles

In order to achieve the margins even approximately as the technology giant is used to with its entertainment electronics, it is expected that its “first vehicle” is autonomous, also known as self-driving. That is, it is not designed to be controlled by a human, but rather by a computer that uses a series of sensors and radar to “see” its surroundings.

Autonomous vehicles have been promised for years, but aside from a fleet of retrofitted vehicles with such technology operated by Alphabet’s Waymo in Arizona, others like General Motors, Uber, and Lyft have missed targets or have been given up entirely due to the difficulty.

An Apple car – known as Project Titan – has been on and off for years. In 2017, Apple received approval to test autonomous vehicles in California. The company used pre-built vehicles, including Lexus crossovers, and added Apple technology.

While driving seems a bit easy, people – pedestrians, bikers, other drivers – and things around us like animals can be unpredictable, making it extremely difficult to program a vehicle to respond safely in all situations.

“When you look at the driving task, the most basic driving tasks like going straight between two lines or going around a corner, it’s not that difficult,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst at Navigant. “That’s not the part that gets people into trouble. It’s when you start getting into all of the unusual scenarios, the edge cases.”

According to Abuelsamid, Apple has the money and the potential expertise to develop such a system, but it remains an extremely difficult task. He believes that an Apple car is not initially intended for consumers, but rather for services like delivery and hailing in select markets – areas targeted by many current companies developing self-driving vehicles.

“This is not going to be a mainstream product, but rather a premium product that is typical of Apple, because the only thing about Apple, no matter what products they make, is that they only deal with things that are significant Can play a role. ” Profit margin, “he said.” The auto industry is a notoriously low margin business.

Trillion dollar market potential

But that’s the traditional automotive industry. The potential for autonomous vehicles for deliveries and ridesharing is enormous. It takes the most expensive part of such businesses – the physical driver – out of the equation and enables higher profits. Cruise, a majority-owned GM subsidiary for autonomous vehicles, valued the autonomous vehicle industry at $ 8 trillion last year.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty put the global auto and mobility market even higher at $ 10 trillion.

“Smartphones have an annual total addressable market (TAM) of $ 500 billion. Apple has about a third of that market. The mobility market is $ 10 trillion, so Apple would only have a 2% share of that Market need to reach the size of its iPhones business, “wrote Huberty in a January research report.

It is currently unclear what exact plans Apple would have other than that Hyundai-Kia may produce a vehicle. Its business model has historically been to sell products to consumers, but it has evolved more into services so as to be less reliant on such sales.

CNBC has approached Apple for comment. Hyundai-Kia declined to comment.

“When I look at Apple and the potential for building a car, I’ve always been a huge fan,” said Gartner’s Ramsey. “I love the idea of ​​it. It makes sense to me when a car becomes a consumer electronics device, just like our really advanced smartphones and other devices that run on batteries and be updated by software Apple should be in this business.”

– CNBC’s Phil LeBeau contributed to this report.

Earning extra cash from a side business can be a great way to quickly improve your finances – and get the job of your choosing done. Depending on your time availability and the side appearance you choose, this can be quite lucrative too: According to a study by SunTrust Bank, the average Millennial reports make nearly $ 1,000 a month with their side appearances. That is some additional money that can be used well. Here’s how to formulate a plan for your extra income.

When you start a side gig, you’ll have to work more hours and rearrange your schedule to take on the extra work. Obviously, this can affect your ability to enjoy leisure activities, spend time with friends and family, and your energy levels.

Calvin Williams Jr., CEO and founder of Freeman Capital, suggests that the first step in creating a plan is to evaluate the type of lifestyle you want.

“Every sideline requires a different level of commitment. Would you like that lifestyle change? The first step is to genuinely assess the quality of life you want and see if your sideline is compatible with it.”

Williams recommends considering a variety of side gigs as each can require different efforts and rewards that are more or less consistent with your income priorities and lifestyle. A side gig that requires too much effort can lead to early burn-out if, for example, the rewards aren’t appropriate.

The next major priority to sort out, Williams says, is why you want the extra cash.

“Are you just looking for more cash flow or trying to increase your net worth, such as to pay off debt or build savings? By answering these questions you can move closer to the next steps.”

Invest in yourself

The extra income you generate is best used as an investment in yourself in three main ways: by improving your net worth, improving your employability, or increasing your income over the long term. If you have debts – especially high-interest debt like credit cards – Williams suggests addressing those first.

TheNo. 1 way to invest in yourself is to get a grip on your debt. Consider these two important tips: First, consider the snowball method by starting with paying off the smallest of debts and building from there Or try the debt avalanche. Pay off high-yield debt first. Either way, the goal is to use your side performance to quickly gain control of your debt. “

You can also think of your side gig as a way to make yourself more employable. Depending on your appearance, you can acquire new skills that are transferable to traditional jobs or your existing 9-5, such as: B. Learning how to market your company or use new technologies. In other cases, a side gig can provide the money to purchase new credentials.

“You can use secondary employment income to create greater value for your family: What certifications or other training can you obtain to help you with your 9-5 W2 job? Invest yourself or get certificates and increase your primary career income, “says Williams.

More of Invest in you:
The ultimate side guide for 2021
How to start a sideline during the coronavirus
5 Freelance Jobs That Can Make $ 100,000 Or More During The Pandemic

Don’t forget about the benefits of your 9-5 job once your site is up and running. Now that you have more income, increase your 401,000 contributions – to the maximum if possible, and certainly at least to the amount necessary to receive a full employer match. You can also use the HSA or FSA contributions, as these also reduce your AGI for tax purposes. Solid health, AD&D, and life insurance can protect you more completely if you can now afford to contribute to better plans thanks to your extra income.

Finally, Williams suggests using your additional income stream to produce assets that can generate income for you – that is, convert that new cash flow into assets. This can mean anything from opening a brokerage account to investing in real estate or loan platforms. The idea is to make sure that your extra income is generating money for you in the long run. Williams suggests this is especially important for families with color who have historically had less wealth and fewer opportunities to create wealth.

“There is a racial gap in this country in terms of wealth and income inequality. Personally, I believe that running a side business can help colored families build wealth to fill that gap.”

Finally, remember that a side business is real business and should be treated as such. For example, to simplify the tax time, you should keep a separate bank account for your additional income. If you use a phone for your business, or there are gasoline and mileage costs for your vehicle, these costs can be deducted as business expenses. The same goes for a home office. As your overall income and net worth grow, it may be time to get a professional accounting or financial advisory service to help you make the best decisions possible, Williams suggests.

“Treat your side gig like a real business and invest in the things that make it grow.”

A woman is given a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois on February 3, 2021.

Kamil Krzaczynski | AFP | Getty Images

Dozens of states and cities are reclaiming thousands of additional doses of the Covid-19 vaccine that were supposed to be used by CVS and Walgreens to immunize nursing home residents through a federal partnership set up by the Trump administration.

The partnership, known as the Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program, enabled states to use CVS, Walgreens, and other retail pharmacies to vaccinate nursing home residents and workers. According to Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal government has urged states to allocate “adequate vaccine supplies” to the program if they choose to do so.

But now the program has been left with “surplus vaccine supplies” withdrawing at least 32 states and cities from the program and With for the general public, said Nordlund. She added that a combination of vaccine reluctance, overestimation of the number of doses needed for the campaign, and other factors led to this an oversupply of Shots.

“Now that pharmacies have made significant strides in vaccinating the population of long-term care facilities and we have more insight into admission to facilities that have entered the program, we are working with jurisdictions to ensure they are able to excess vaccine to use easily. ” for other audiences, “Nordlund said in a statement to CNBC.

The federal partnership program has caused a headache for some state health officials. While the The pace has increased in recent weeks, and the partnership began sluggishly in December. States had to allocate doses for the program at the beginning of the rollout, so the slow pace has created frustration and the appearance that states cannot manage their recordings.

As part of the partnership, more than 4.2 million vaccine doses had been administered as of Thursday, according to the CDC. The CDC estimates that there are nearly 5 million residents and workers in long-term care in the United States.

It’s not clear how many doses will be diverted from the program, but Illinois, for example, announced this week that it would be taking 97,000 doses out of the program.

Cans in advance

Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said states would need to “schedule significant doses” for the program in the first three weeks of the vaccine launch. The partnership should be finalized in six weeks, he added, but “it has now slipped into many, many more weeks”.

The slow roll-out of this program, Shah said, has made the data look like Maine is keeping cans on the shelf and not managing all of the footage it has been distributing, when the state actually needs more cans, no less. He added that the state is now taking back doses allocated for the federal partnership.

“In Maine, we don’t sit around waiting for these doses to be used only on the schedule that retail pharmacies tell us,” he said on a conference call organized by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “Indeed, we are starting to remove these cans from the warehouse and put them into general circulation.”

Dr. Reiterating Shah’s frustration, Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi Department of Health’s health officer, said Mississippi must provide “the vast majority of our vaccine allocation” in advance of the federal program. The problem with the program wasn’t just its pace, said Michael Fraser, CEO of ASTHO, on the conference call, but it was also the number of doses states should allow for it.

“We had to assign everything in advance and it was idle for a long, long time,” he said.

Overestimation

TJ Crawford, a spokesman for CVS Health, said in an email to CNBC that the allocation of doses for the program is done by counting the number of beds in all long-term care facilities in participating states and multiplying by two to give staff to consider. He explained that some states are now in surplus because “occupancy is far below the number of beds and staffing levels remain low”.

The CDC’s Nordlund said the agency continues to work with states and jurisdictions to get a clearer picture of how many doses might be needed in the future.

“In some facilities, pharmacy partners were given the option to receive six doses from the Pfizer five-dose vials due to several factors including vaccine reluctance, active Covid-19 outbreaks, which affected the number of eligible patients received, and an excess vaccine supply due to lower than expected levels, occupancy of the facility, especially during the winter holidays, “she said.

Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacies at Walgreens, said in a statement to CNBC that despite a slower initial start, the program is accelerating rapidly.

“Walgreens has completed first-dose vaccinations in approximately 75 percent of all long-term care facilities and remains on track to complete first-doses in all facilities where Walgreens was selected as a vaccine supplier by mid-February,” he said. “Walgreens has completed or planned nearly 70,000 long-term care clinics.”