News: Axios PM: Holiday shipping crunch — First MLB female GM

Friday, November 13, 2020

Axios PM: Holiday shipping crunch — First MLB female GM — 🌍 Vast new ocean sanctuary

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Axios PM

By Mike Allen ·Nov 13, 2020

Good afternoon: Today's PM — edited by Justin Green — is 391 words, a 1.5-minute read.

🚨 Situational awareness: The final electoral map is almost here.

The AP called North Carolina for President Trump.
That leaves only Georgia, where President-elect Joe Biden leads by about 14,000 votes.

1 big thing: Holiday crunch ... 7 million delays per day

Illustration of a dolly holding a giant stack of delivery boxes

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Retailers and shippers are on a mad pre-holiday hiring spree, making them one of the few industries adding jobs during COVID-19, reports Axios' Erica Pandey.

Why it matters: With the entire country turning to online shopping, shippers across the U.S. are preparing for unprecedented package volumes — around 80 million per day between Thanksgiving and Christmas — and frustrating delays.

FedEx and UPS are hiring a combined 170,000 workers, reports the AP.
DHL is adding 2,300.
Amazon and Walmart have hired several hundred thousand since March.

Between the lines: This should finally erase any distinctions between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Retailers are also quickly building out warehouses and adding alternatives to delivery.

Amazon has announced the addition of seven new warehouses in just the last month, notes Recode's Jason Del Rey.
Walmart is adding pop-up warehouses.
Kohl's and Target have doubled parking spaces for customers taking advantage of curbside pickup, per the AP.

The bottom line: 7 million packages could experience delays per day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the president of ShipMatrix, Satish Jindel, tells the AP.

2. Map du jour

Data: Axios research; Map: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios

Go deeper.

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3. Catch up quick

Election official sort ballots during an audit in Marietta, Ga. Photo: Mike Stewart/AP

The Trump campaign abandoned its lawsuit contesting the presidential vote count in Maricopa County, Ariz. Go deeper.
The Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as their GM, making her the first female and second Asian American general manager in MLB. Go deeper.
Dominic Cummings' tumultuous tenure as U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's top adviser is over. Go deeper.
🎧 Axios ReCap's Friday focus: Election day's biggest winner was its technology. Listen here.
More than 130 Secret Service officers are quarantining due to positive coronavirus tests or exposure to a co-worker who has tested positive, The Washington Post reports.

4. 1 hopeful thing: Vast new ocean sanctuary

A pair of elephant seals on the island of Tristan da Cunha. Photo: Andy Schofield/Pew Charitable Trust via AP

The waters around Tristan da Cunha, a remote island in the South Atlantic, are set to become the world's fourth-largest marine sanctuary, writes Axios' Bryan Walsh.

The new marine sanctuary will be almost three times larger than the entire United Kingdom.
90% of the waters around the island chain — which is a British territory — will become a full "no-take" sanctuary, meaning that fishing, mining and any other kind of extractive activity will be banned.

The big picture: The sanctuary will be part of a U.K. government program that already protects some 2.7 million square miles of marine ecosystems around British territory across the globe.

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