The number of wearable technologies that use sensors as medical tools to track a person’s well-being – is on the rise. All of them – need an electric charge or a battery source to operate, but a handful of researchers are trying to take batteries out of the equation. At the Texas A&M University in College Station, researchers are doing just that – looking at ways to use our own body heat to power all those sensors. Elizabeth Lee takes a look at the emerging new technology.
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Category Archives: News
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Body Heat Converted Into Electricity Powers Health Sensors
There has been an increasing number of wearable technologies that have health sensors as medical tools to track a person’s well-being. Many of these devices need to be charged or are battery-powered.
A handful of researchers want to take batteries out of the equation and instead, use waste body heat and convert that into useful electricity to power sensors.
“The average person is something like an 80-watt light bulb,” said Jamie Grunlan, Texas A&M University’s Linda & Ralph Schmidt ’68 Professor in Mechanical Engineering.
Grunlan and his team of researchers are working on using the waste heat the body gives off and converting that into useful electricity. The idea is to create printable, paintable thermoelectric technology that looks like ink and can coat a wearable fabric, similar to dyeing colors onto cloth. Once a person wears the fabric, devices such as health sensors can be powered.
“Our coating coats every fiber within that textile, and so what’s drawing it is simply that textile needs to just be touching the heat source or be close enough to the heat source to be feeling the heat source,” Grunlan said.
Military and sporting goods companies have applications for this type of technology because there is not a large battery pack worn on the body that could be a cause of injury if the person would fall.
“They would love to power health sensors off of body heat and then wirelessly transmit that data to wherever,” Grunlan explained. “You’d like to know if somebody had a concussion or was dehydrated or something like that while it’s happening in real time.”
As a person generates heat, the temperature outside is colder than what’s against the body. The temperature differential generates a voltage.
The goal is to design technology that can get one volt or up to 10 percent efficiency and beyond. So, for example, a researcher would try to get eight watts from a person who is generating 80 watts.
The ingredients in this thermoelectric recipe include carbon nanotubes, polymers and a carbon material called graphene, which is a nanoparticle.
Researchers are trying to perfect the recipe of this ink-like material.
“The one voltage is realistic, but how much material do we need to get that one voltage because we need as little as possible?” said Carolyn Long, a Ph.D. graduate student at Texas A&M.
“So, different polymers, different amounts of the multi-walled or double-walled nanotubes, adding the graphene, which order it needs to go in exactly to create the best pathway for the electrons for the thermoelectric material,” said Long of the various experiments she and her lab mates have conducted.
The aim is to create a product that can be mass produced.
“It will happen. It’s not will it happen. It’s when. Is it a year, or is it five years?” Grunlan said.
That will depend on how much funding and manpower is available to make this technology a reality.
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Ex-Trump Campaign Aide Gets 14 Days in Prison
George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser whose actions triggered the Russia investigation, was sentenced to 14 days in prison Friday by a judge who said he had placed his own interests above those of the country.
The punishment was far less than the maximum six-month sentence sought by the government but also more than the probation that Papadopoulos and his lawyers had asked for. However, defense lawyer Thomas Breen said the sentence was fair.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said that Papadopoulos’ deception was “not a noble lie” and that he had lied because he wanted a job in the Trump administration and did not want to jeopardize that possibility by being tied to the Russia investigation.
Papadopoulos, the first Trump campaign aide sentenced in special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, said he was “deeply embarrassed and ashamed’” for having lied to FBI agents during an interview last year and acknowledged that his actions could have hindered their work.
In an interview aired Friday on the CNN Papadopoulos said he does not remember informing Trump campaign officials that Russia had damaging emails about former U.S. Secretary of State and Trump presidential opponent Hillary Clinton. But he added he “can’t guarantee” he kept the information from campaign officials.
Foreknowledge of Russia’s offer to share damaging information about Clinton is at the heart of the Mueller investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign, has been a central figure in the Russia investigation dating back before Mueller’s May 2017 appointment. He was the first to plead guilty in Mueller’s probe and is now the first Trump campaign adviser to be sentenced. His case was also the first to detail a member of the Trump campaign having knowledge of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election while it was ongoing.
Trump Wants Justice Department Probe of ‘Resistance’ Writer
President Donald Trump declared Friday that the U.S. Justice Department should work to identify the writer of a New York Times opinion piece purportedly submitted by a member of an administration “resistance” movement straining to thwart his most dangerous impulses.
Trump cited “national security” as the reason for such a probe, and in comments to reporters he called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to open the investigation. He also said he was exploring bringing legal action against the newspaper over Wednesday’s publication of the essay.
“Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was because I really believe it’s national security,” Trump said. If the person has a high-level security clearance, he said, “I don’t want him in those meetings.”
It’s all but unthinkable that the Justice Department could open an investigation into the op-ed article. Though it was strongly critical of Trump, no classified information appears to have been revealed by the author or leaked to the newspaper, which would be one crucial bar to clear before a leak investigation could be contemplated.
Still Trump’s call was the latest test of the independence of his Justice Department, which is supposed to make investigative and charging decisions without political interference from the White House.
A day earlier, Trump’s top lieutenants stepped forward to repudiate the op-ed in a show of support for their incensed boss, who has ordered aides to unmask the writer.
Cabinet responses
By email, by tweet and on camera, the denials paraded in from Cabinet-level officials, and even Vice President Mike Pence. Senior officials in key national security and economic policy roles charged the article’s writer with cowardice, disloyalty and action against America’s interests in harsh terms that mimicked the president’s own words.
In an interview Thursday with Fox News, Trump said the author “may not be a Republican, it may not be a conservative, it may be a ‘deep state’ person who has been there for a long time.”
There is a long list of officials who could have been the author. Many have privately shared some of the article’s same concerns about Trump with colleagues, friends and reporters.
With such a wide circle of potential suspicion, Trump’s men and women felt they had no choice but to speak out. The denials and condemnations came in from far and wide: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis denied authorship on a visit to India; Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke chimed in from American Samoa. In Washington, the claims of “not me” echoed from Pence’s office, from Energy Secretary Rick Perry, from Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman, from Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, and other Cabinet members.
The author professed to be a member of that same inner circle. So could the denials be trusted? There was no way to know, and that only deepened the president’s frustrations.
A White House official said Trump’s call for the Justice Department investigation was an expression of his frustration with the op-ed, rather than an order for federal prosecutors.
“The department does not confirm or deny investigations,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman.
Confirmation of concerns
Some people who agreed with the writer’s points suggested the president’s reaction actually confirmed the author’s concerns, and Democrats were quick to condemn the president’s call for a federal investigation.
Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said, “President Trump continues to show a troubling trend in which he views the Department of Justice as the private legal department of the Trump organization rather than an entity that is focused on respecting the Constitution and enforcing our laws.”
But Rudy Giuliani, the president’s attorney, suggested that it “would be appropriate” for Trump to ask for a formal investigation into the identity of the op-ed author.
“Let’s assume it’s a person with a security clearance. If they feel writing this is appropriate, maybe they feel it would be appropriate to disclose national security secrets, too. That person should be found out and stopped,” Giuliani said.
And Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a key ally of Trump’s, called for the president to order those suspected of being the author to undergo lie-detector tests.
“People are suggesting it,” Trump said Friday, steering clear of explicitly endorsing the proposal. “Eventually the name of this sick person will come out.”
As the initial scramble to unmask the writer proved fruitless, attention turned to the questions the article raised, which have been whispered in Washington for more than a year: Is Trump truly in charge, and could a divided executive branch pose a danger to the country?
Former CIA Director John Brennan, a fierce Trump critic, told NBC, “This is not sustainable, to have an executive branch where individuals are not following the orders of the chief executive. … A wounded lion is a very dangerous animal, and I think Donald Trump is wounded.”
Diligence ‘from within’
The anonymous author, claiming to be part of the resistance “working diligently from within” the administration, said, “Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the author continued. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”
First lady Melania Trump issued a statement backing her husband. She praised the free press as “important to our democracy” but assailed the writer, saying, “You are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions.”
Down Pennsylvania Avenue, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he did not know of any role Congress would have to investigate, though Republican Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a Trump ally, said the legislative body could take part.
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Trump Threatens to Tax Virtually All Chinese Imports to US
U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to impose tariffs on another $267 billion worth Chinese imports, which would cover virtually all the goods China imports to the United States.
The potential tariffs would come on top of punitive levies on $50 billion in Chinese goods already in place, as well as tariffs on another $200 billion worth of goods that Trump says “could take place very soon.”
He told reporters traveling with him to Fargo, North Dakota, on Friday that “behind that, there’s another $267 billion ready to go on short notice if I want.”
“That changes the equation,” he added.
Such a move would subject virtually all U.S. imports from China to new duties.
The president’s comments came one day after a public comment period ended on his proposal to add duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Friday that the Trump administration would evaluate the public comments before making any decisions on the new proposed tariffs.
The U.S. trade representative’s office received nearly 6,000 comments during seven days of public hearings on the proposal.
The Trump administration has argued that tariffs on Chinese goods will force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States. It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cybertheft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.
China has retaliated against the U.S. tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese imports with import taxes on an equal amount of U.S. goods. It has also threatened to retaliate against any new tariffs. However, China’s imports from the United States are worth $200 billion a year less than American imports from China, so it would run out of room to match U.S. sanctions.
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A Look at Trump and the Hunt for Leaks
President Donald Trump is vowing to root out the aides, officials or others who contributed to a pair of accounts that contend some on his team question his judgment, competence and even rationality.
A book by journalist Bob Woodward and an anonymous New York Times opinion piece, Trump has said, are fiction and lies. But the president nonetheless finds them compelling enough to seek out the leakers of behind-the-scenes stories and quotes. On Friday, Trump said the U.S. Justice Department should investigate the identity of the op-ed writer.
“Eventually, the name of this sick person will come out,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
Some things to know about leak investigations:
The nature of a leak
Telling embarrassing stories about a president’s behavior is not the same thing as revealing classified information.
The first could be a political risk, which is why administration members from Vice President Mike Pence on down denied being the op-ed writer this week. Still, writing unflattering things about the president isn’t a crime.
But the Espionage Act and other federal laws do criminalize unauthorized disclosures about certain national security information, such as surveillance methods. Any leak investigations of classified information tend to go through a complex process at the Justice Department that includes determining whether the information was sensitive and known to few people.
No classified information appears to have been revealed by the anonymous op-ed author. And it’s far from clear that the vivid portraits of erratic presidential behavior described by Woodward and the op-ed writer would breach national security.
Speaking of national security …
Trump told reporters Friday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should pursue the identity of the Times essay writer.
“Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was because I really believe it’s national security,” the president said. If the person has a high-level security clearance, Trump said, “I don’t want him in those meetings.”
The FBI and Justice Department are responsible for investigating federal crimes, but there is no indication of anything illegal having been done in the publication of a newspaper opinion piece critical of the president. It is also extraordinary for a president to demand an investigation by the Justice Department, which is supposed to make investigative and charging decisions without White House interference.
The Times opted to publish the unsigned column, which alleges that a “quiet resistance” of senior administration officials is “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Trump earlier dared the Times to do what journalists scrupulously avoid: “If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” he tweeted.
Asked if he would take any action against the Times, Trump said, “We’re going to see, I’m looking at that right now.”
The fallout from these leaks
Trump was asked if, in light of the book and column, he trusted the people around him.
“I do, I do,” he said. “But what I do is, now I look around the room and I say, ‘Hey, I don’t know somebody.’ ”
Truth-telling tests
Nothing would stop Trump from directing his aides to hunt for leakers among senior officials.
Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who describes himself as a libertarian, said Trump would be justified using lie detectors to find the anonymous essay writer.
Trump wasn’t saying Friday whether he’d take the suggestion.
Lie detectors wouldn’t be reliable enough to unearth the column author or other sources for sure, studies and a massive federal report have indicated. And polygraphs aren’t acceptable as evidence in court.
“At best they are unreliable. The question is how unreliable?” said Indiana University brain sciences professor Richard Shiffrin.
‘You’d be shunned’
Meanwhile, Trump is said to be examining the language of the denials issued this week by the highest members of his administration or their spokespeople.
“Everybody very high up has already said it wasn’t me. It would be very hard if it was, if they got caught,” Trump said. “You’d be shunned for the rest of your life.”
Leak probes of the past
Trump would be far from the first president to hunt for leakers.
During his eight years in office, Barack Obama’s Justice Department prosecuted nine cases against whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with three by all other previous administrations. In one of those investigations, the government secretly seized records for telephone lines and switchboards that more than 100 reporters for The Associated Press used in their Washington bureau and elsewhere.
In June under the Trump administration, Reality Winner, 26, pleaded guilty to a single count of transmitting national security information. The former Air Force translator had worked as a contractor at a National Security Agency office in Augusta, Georgia, when she printed a classified report and left the building with it hidden in her pantyhose. Winner told the FBI she mailed the document to an online news outlet.
Deep Throat
Former FBI No. 2 W. Mark Felt first denied, then decades later admitted, being the famous source for Washington Post reporters Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate coverage that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Nixon and polygraphs
Prior to the Watergate scandal, Nixon in 1971 considered lie detector tests for an estimated 300,000 federal employees with security clearances, according to a taped presidential conversation played for the House Judiciary Committee looking at the administration’s domestic surveillance programs.
Advised the tests would result in mass resignations, he ordered the tests for about 1,000 employees of the State and Defense departments, the CIA and the National Security Council.
A June 1974 Associated Press report quoted Nixon as saying, “I don’t know much about these things, but it scares the (expletive deleted) out of them.”
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Modest Premium Hikes Expected as ‘Obamacare’ Stabilizes
Millions of people covered under the Affordable Care Act will see only modest premium increases next year, and some will get price cuts. That’s the conclusion from an exclusive analysis of the besieged but resilient program, which still sparks deep divisions heading into this year’s midterm elections.
The Associated Press and the consulting firm Avalere Health crunched available state data and found that “Obamacare’s” health insurance marketplaces seem to be stabilizing after two years of sharp premium hikes. And the exodus of insurers from the program has halted, even reversed somewhat, with more consumer choices for 2019.
The analysis found a 3.6 percent average increase in proposed or approved premiums across 47 states and Washington, D.C., for next year. This year the average increase nationally was about 30 percent. The average total premium for an individual covered under the health law is now close to $600 a month before subsidies.
For next year, premiums are expected either to drop or increase by less than 10 percent in 41 states with about 9 million customers. Eleven of those states are expected to see a drop in average premiums. In six other states, plus Washington, D.C., premiums are projected to rise between 10 percent and 18 percent.
Insurers also are starting to come back. Nineteen states will either see new insurers enter or current ones expand into more areas. There are no bare counties lacking a willing insurer.
Even so, Chris Sloan, an Avalere director, says, “This is still a market that’s unaffordable for many people who aren’t eligible for subsidies.”
Nearly nine in 10 ACA customers get government subsidies based on income, shielding most from premium increases. But people with higher incomes, who don’t qualify for financial aid, have dropped out in droves.
It’s too early to say if the ACA’s turnabout will be fleeting or a more permanent shift. Either way, next year’s numbers are at odds with the political rhetoric around the ACA, still heated even after President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans failed to repeal the law last year.
Trump regularly calls “Obamacare” a “disaster” and time again has declared it “dead.” The GOP tax-cut bill repealed the ACA requirement that Americans have health insurance or risk fines, effective next year. But other key elements remain, including subsidies and protection for people with pre-existing conditions. Democrats, meanwhile, accuse Trump of “sabotage,” driving up premiums and threatening coverage.
The moderating market trend “takes the issue away from Republican candidates” in the midterm elections, said Mark Hall, a health law and policy expert at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. “Part of the mess is now their fault, and the facts really don’t support the narrative that things are getting worse.”
Market stability also appears to undercut Democrats’ charge that Trump is undermining the program. But Democrats disagree, saying the ACA is in danger while Republicans control Washington, and that premiums would have been even lower but for the administration’s hostility.
“Voters won’t think that the Trump threat to the ACA has passed at all, unless Democrats get at least the House in 2018,” said Bill Carrick, a strategist for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose re-election ads emphasize her support for the health law.
As if seconding Democrats’ argument, the Trump administration has said it won’t defend the ACA’s protections for pre-existing conditions in a federal case in Texas that could go to the Supreme Court. A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that Americans regardless of partisan identification said those protections should remain the law of the land.
In solidly Republican Arkansas, Democratic state legislator and cancer survivor Clarke Tucker is using the ACA in his campaign to try to flip a U.S. House seat from red to blue. Tucker, 37, says part of what made him want to run is the House vote to repeal the ACA last year and images of Trump and GOP lawmakers celebrating at the White House.
Business analysts say the relatively good news for 2019 is partly the result of previous premium increases, which allowed insurers to return to profitability after losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
“They can price better, and they can manage this population better, which is why they can actually make some money,” said Deep Banerjee of Standard & Poor’s.
Repeal of the ACA’s requirement to carry insurance doesn’t seem to have had a major impact yet, but Banerjee said there’s “a cloud of uncertainty” around the Trump administration’s potential policy shifts. Yet some administration actions have also helped settle the markets, such as continuing a premium stabilization program.
April Box of Spokane Valley, Washington, lives in a state where premiums could rise substantially since insurers have proposed an 18 percent increase. In states expecting double-digit increases, the reasons reflect local market conditions. Proposed increases may ultimately get revised downward.
Box is self-employed as a personal advocate helping patients navigate the health care system. She has an ACA plan, but even with a subsidy her premiums are expensive and a high deductible means she’s essentially covered only for catastrophic illness.
“I’m choosing not to go to the doctor, and I’m saying to myself I’m not sick enough to go to the doctors,” Box said. “We need to figure out how to make it better and lower the price.”
Now in her 50s, Box was born with dislocated hips. She worries she could be uninsurable if insurers are allowed to go back to denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. She might need another hip surgery.
“It needs to be a level playing field for everybody,” said Box. “We need to have universal coverage – that is really the only answer.”
Tennessee is a prime example of the ACA’s flipped fortunes.
Last year, the state struggled to secure at least one insurer in every county. But approved rates for 2019 reflect an 11 percent average decrease. Two new insurers – Bright Health and Celtic_ have entered its marketplace, and two others – Cigna and Oscar – will expand into new counties.
Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander called that a “welcome step,” but argued rates could have been even lower if congressional Democrats had supported a market stabilization bill. Democrats blame Republicans for the failure.
To calculate premium changes, Avalere and The Associated Press used proposed overall individual marketplace rate filings for 34 states and D.C., and final rates for 13 states that have already approved them. Data was not available for Massachusetts, Maryland and Alabama. The average rate change calculations include both on-exchange and off-exchange plans that comply with ACA requirements. The government isn’t expected to release final national figures until later this fall.
Obama Tells Students Democracy Depends on Their Vote in November
Former U.S. president Barack Obama, who has maintained a low public profile since leaving office, entered the midterm election battle Friday with a simple message: “You need to vote because our democracy depends on it.”
“A glance at recent headlines should tell you that this moment really is different. The stakes really are higher. The consequences of any of us sitting on the sidelines are more dire,” Obama told students at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, where he accepted an ethics in government award.
In keeping with tradition, Obama has been reluctant to publicly comment on his successor, U.S. President Donald Trump, despite the fact Trump was a frequent critic of Obama.
The former president said the current state of Washington politics “did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years. A fear and anger that’s rooted in our past but is also born out of the enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes.”
Obama implored the students “to show up” at the polls in November, noting that only one in five young eligible voters cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election.
“This whole project of self-government only works if everybody’s doing their part. Don’t tell me your vote doesn’t matter,” he declared.
Obama’s appearance at the central Illinois university campus was the first of several campaign events in the coming weeks at which he will urge Democratic voters to cast ballots in November’s midterm elections to take control of Congress from Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
The former president also will attend a Southern California event for seven Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives in Republican-controlled districts that supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump two years ago.
Obama will campaign in Ohio next week for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, a former Obama administration official.
He will return to Illinois later this month and then appear in Pennsylvania, a key state that Democrats hope will help deliver the 23 seats needed to regain control of the House and stop the advancement of Trump’s agenda.
The Democratic and Republican parties have traditionally experienced sharp declines in voter turnout in non-presidential elections. But the November 6 election is widely perceived as a referendum on Trump, who regularly touts his accomplishments such as tax cuts and deregulation. However, a widening investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that Trump won and more frequent questions about his fitness for office have cast a pall over his presidency.
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US Adds Strong 201K Jobs; Unemployment Stays at 3.9 Percent
Hiring picked up in August as U.S. employers added a strong 201,000 jobs, a sign of confidence that consumers and businesses will keep spending despite the Trump administration’s conflicts with U.S. trading partners.
The Labor Department said Friday the unemployment rate remained 3.9 percent, near an 18-year low.
Americans’ paychecks grew at a faster pace in August. Average hourly wages rose last month and are now 2.9 percent higher than they were a year earlier, the fastest year-over-year gain in eight years. Still, after adjusting for inflation, pay has been flat for the past year.
The economy is expanding steadily, fueled by tax cuts, confident consumers, greater business investment in equipment and more government spending. Growth reached 4.2 percent at an annual rate in the April-June quarter, the fastest pace in four years.
Most analysts have forecast that the economy will expand at an annual pace of at least 3 percent in the current July-September quarter. For the full year, the economy is on track to grow 3 percent for the first time since 2005.
Consumer confidence rose in August to its highest level in nearly 18 years. Most Americans feel that jobs are widely available and expect the economy to remain healthy in the coming months, according to the Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey.
The buoyant mood is lifting spending on everything from cars to restaurant meals to clothes. Consumers’ enthusiasm is even boosting such brick-and-mortar store chains as Target, Walmart and Best Buy, which have posted strong sales gains despite intensifying competition from online retailers.
In August, factories expanded at their quickest pace in 14 years, according to a survey of purchasing managers. A manufacturing index compiled by a trade group reached its highest point since 2004. Measures of new orders and production surged, and factories added jobs at a faster pace than in July.
Not all the economic news has been positive. Higher mortgage rates and years of rapid price increases are slowing the housing market. Sales of existing homes dropped in July for a fourth straight month.
And wages are still rising only modestly, even after more than nine years of economic expansion and an ultra-low unemployment rate.
Many economists also worry President Donald Trump will soon follow through on a threat to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on $200 billion of imports from China. That would be in addition to $50 billion in duties already imposed. That move could shave as much as a quarter-point off growth over the next year, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has estimated.
For now, there’s little sign that companies are worried enough about a trade war to slow hiring. Businesses are increasingly reluctant to even lay off workers, in part because it would be difficult to replace them at a time when qualified job applicants have become harder to find.
On Thursday, the government said the number of people seeking unemployment benefits — a proxy for layoffs — amounted to just 203,000 last week, the fewest total in 49 years.
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Trump Officials Denounce Anonymous Attack From ‘The Quiet Resistance’
Top officials within the Trump administration, from Vice President Mike Pence to several key Cabinet members, have denied that they authored an anonymous opinion piece in the New York Times critical of President Donald Trump’s leadership. Publication of the column has set off a furious debate in Washington about the Trump presidency and a high-stakes guessing game as to who the mysterious dissident voice may be. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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Times’ Decision to Publish Anonymous Column Carries Risks
The coup of publishing a column by an anonymous Trump administration official bashing the boss could backfire on The New York Times if the author is unmasked and turns out to be a little-known person, or if the newspaper’s own reporters solve the puzzle.
Within hours of the essay’s appearance on the paper’s website, the mystery of the writer’s identity began to rival the Watergate-era hunt for “Deep Throat” in Washington, and a parade of Trump team members issued statements Thursday saying, in effect, “It’s not me.”
The Times’ only clue was calling the author a “senior administration official.” James Dao, the newspaper’s op-ed editor, said in the Times’ daily podcast that while an intermediary brought him together with the author, he conducted a background check and spoke to the person to the point that he was “totally confident” in the identity.
How large the pool of “senior administration officials” is in Washington is a matter of interpretation.
It’s a term used loosely around the White House. Press offices often release statements or offer background briefings and ask that the information be attributed to a senior administration official.
The Partnership for Public Services tracks approximately 700 senior positions in government, ones that require Senate confirmation. Paul Light, a New York University professor and expert on the federal bureaucracy, said about 50 people could have legitimately written the column — probably someone in a political position appointed by Trump.
He suspects the author is in either a Cabinet-level or deputy secretary position who frequently visits the White House or someone who works in the maze of offices in the West Wing.
Perhaps not
Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, tweeted that, based on her experience with the Times and sourcing, “this person could easily be someone most of us have never heard of and more junior than you’d expect.”
That would be a problem for the Times, partly through no fault of its own, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The column attracted so much attention — as much for its existence as for what it actually said — that it raised the expectation that the author is someone powerful, she said.
If the person is not among the 20 top people in the administration, “the Times just gets creamed,” said Tom Bettag, a veteran news producer and now a University of Maryland journalism instructor. “And I think it gets held against them in the biggest possible way. I have enough respect for the Times to believe that they wouldn’t hold themselves up to that.”
It would look like the Times was trying to stir the pot if it were not a high-level person, said Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press.
Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post, told Todd on MSNBC that if the author had come to the Post it would provoke a serious discussion, because the newspaper has not in the past run anonymous op-ed columns. She said no one approached the Post to hawk the column.
“When you give someone anonymity on this, you are putting your credibility on the line,” Marcus said.
News organizations have different standards for using information from unnamed sources. Frequently, they try to give some indication of why the person would be in a position to know something — the senior administration official, for example — and why anonymity was granted. In this case, the newspaper considered that the person’s job would clearly be at risk and that the person could even be physically threatened, Dao said.
He did not see much difference in the use of anonymity in news and opinion pages.
Longtime Trump target
The Times has long been a target of President Donald Trump’s vitriol. He criticized the newspaper for printing the column and said the Times should reveal its source for reasons of national security.
“There’s nothing in the piece that strikes me as being relevant to or undermining the national security,” Dao said.
The newspaper maintains a strict policy of separation between its news and opinion side, and the decision to publish the column without identifying the author was made by Dao and his boss, editorial page editor James Bennet, in consultation with publisher A.G. Sulzberger. The paper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, is responsible for the news side and was not part of the decision.
Few people at the paper know the writer’s identity, Dao said, and he could not see any circumstances under which it would be divulged.
The Times’ own news story about the column said the author’s identity was “known to the Times’ editorial page department but not to the reporters who cover the White House.”
Like hundreds of other reporters in Washington, the Times’ news staff is trying to find out the writer’s name. If the Times learns the identity, it could raise serious questions about the newspaper’s ability to protect a confidential source among people who don’t know — or don’t believe — that one part of the newspaper will keep important information away from another.
“You could write a novel about this,” said Jamieson, author of the upcoming Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President. “If they engage in successful journalism, at some level they discredit themselves.”
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Feds Lift Roadblock to Copper Mining Near Boundary Waters
The Trump administration on Thursday lifted a roadblock to copper-nickel mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of northeastern Minnesota, reversing a decision made in the final days of the Obama administration.
The Obama administration in late 2016 withdrew around 234,000 acres of the Rainy River watershed near Ely from eligibility for mineral leasing pending a two-year study, citing the potential threat from acid mine drainage to the nearby Boundary Waters, the country’s most-visited wilderness area. The move could have led to a 20-year ban on mining and prospecting on the land.
The most immediate beneficiary is Twin Metals Minnesota, which hopes to build a copper-nickel-precious metals mine south of Ely. It plans to submit its first formal mining plan to regulators in the next 18 months.
The land is part of the Superior National Forest, which is controlled by the U.S. Forest Service, an agency under the Department of Agriculture. The USDA canceled the withdrawal Thursday, saying its review revealed no new scientific information and that interested companies may soon be able to sign mineral leases in the area.
“It’s our duty as responsible stewards of our environment to maintain and protect our natural resources. At the same time, we must put our national forests to work for the taxpayers to support local economies and create jobs,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement.
The decision had been expected. President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Duluth in June that his administration would soon rescind the withdrawal.
The Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, The Wilderness Society and allied groups denounced the decision as a sellout to foreign corporate interests. They blasted the agency for failing to complete the study, despite Perdue’s assurances to a congressional committee in May 2017 that it would and that no decision would be made until it was finished.
“The Trump Administration broke its word to us, to Congress, and to the American people when it said it would finish the environmental assessment and base decisions on facts and science,” Alex Falconer, executive director of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, said in a statement.
Forest Service spokesman Brady Smith said the agency determined that there was no need to complete the assessment, based on what it had learned over the last 15 months. But he said the Forest Service met its obligations to conduct a scientific analysis that included multiple opportunities for public feedback.
U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, the lead Democrat on a subcommittee that funds the Forest Service, issued a statement accusing Perdue of breaking his promise to her panel, “bending to political pressure from a foreign mining company and abandoning sound science.” She said Perdue’s word “cannot be trusted.”
But Twin Metals, which is owned by the Chilean mining company Antofagasta, welcomed the decision, which will also give a freer hand to other companies that have conducted exploratory drilling in the area.
“This important action ensures that federal lands that have been open to responsible mining activity for decades will remain open, offering the Iron Range region the potential for thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in economic growth,” Twin Metals CEO Kelly Osborne said in a statement.
The Trump administration in May reinstated two key mineral leases for Twin Metals that the Obama administration had declined to renew. Environmental groups are challenging that decision in court.
The Twin Metals project is not as advanced as the planned PolyMet mine, which would become Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine if it gets final approval of its permits. PolyMet sits several miles away in a different watershed.
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Twitter Bans Jones, ‘Infowars,’ Citing Abuse
Twitter has permanently banned far-right media personality Alex Jones for violating its policy against “abusive behavior.”
Jones, who is known as a conspiracy theorist, has about 900,000 followers on Twitter. His Infowars website has hundreds of thousands of followers, as well.
Twitter accused Jones of violating its policy after he was seen on television berating and insulting a CNN reporter waiting to enter congressional hearings on social media policies.
Jones called the reporter a smiling “possum caught doing some really nasty stuff” and also made fun of his clothes.
Twitter had previously suspended Jones’ account, but now he is banned from posting on the social media site.
Jones has yet to comment.
Jones is one of the country’s most controversial media figures, known for saying the President George W. Bush White House was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He also called the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre a fake. Some of the parents of the murdered children are suing Jones.
The congressional hearings were focused on whether such social media sites as Google and Facebook are prepared against fake foreign accounts that may be aimed at influencing U.S. elections.
The hearings came just after President Donald Trump accused Google’s search engine of being biased against him.
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Facebook, Twitter, Step Up Defenses Ahead of Midterm Election
Facebook and Twitter executives defended their efforts to prevent Russian meddling in U.S. midterm elections before congressional panels Wednesday. The social media companies’ efforts to provide assurances to lawmakers come amid warnings from internet researchers that Moscow still has active social media accounts aimed at influencing U.S. political discourse. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
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How President Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Roils One Rural State
One of the nation’s least populated states could have one of the biggest voices in the Senate’s confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. President Trump’s pick could be the deciding vote on many issues, including Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. North Dakota’s pro-choice Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who is running for re-election, has to balance the pro-life views of many of her constituents. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports from North Dakota.
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Historic Surge in Women Running in US Midterms
Ayanna Pressley’s victory Tuesday over 10-term House member Michael Capuano in Massachusetts’ 7th District Democratic primary virtually assured that for the first time, an African-American woman will represent her state in Congress.
Pressley’s performance against Capuano was reminiscent of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New York primary win in June over veteran House member Joseph Crowley, as progressive insurgents seek to challenge the Democratic establishment.
Pressley, a member of the Boston City Council, and Ocasio-Cortez, a Hispanic community organizer, are likely to draw at most nominal opposition in the November general election.
The two women are part of a historic surge in women entering politics and running for office, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. A record number of women have won primary elections for the House of Representatives this year, according to The New York Times.
The Times reports that 200 female nominees are now headed into the general election campaign, the largest number in history.
More than three-quarters of the female primary winners are Democrats. In the current makeup of the House, less than 20 percent of the 435 seats are held by women.
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Warnings of Huge Disruption as Britain Prepares for Possible Cliff-Edge Brexit
Britain risks huge disruptions to its economy and society, including trade, transport, health care and citizens’ rights, if it leaves the European Union next March without a deal. That’s the conclusion of a new report on the short-term risks of a so-called ‘no-deal Brexit.’ The report comes as lawmakers return to London after a six-week summer break to face growing uncertainty over Britain’s future relations with the EU. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Canada’s Strong-willed Foreign Minister Leads Trade Talks
She is many things that would seem to irritate President Donald Trump: a liberal Canadian former journalist.
That makes Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland an unusual choice to lead Canada’s negotiations over a new free trade deal with a surprisingly hostile U.S. administration.
Recruited into politics by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Freeland has already clashed with Russia and Saudi Arabia. Those who know her say she’s unlikely to back down in a confrontation with Trump.
“She is everything the Trump administration loathes,” said Sarah Goldfeder, a former official with the U.S. Embassy in Canada.
Freeland, a globalist negotiating with a U.S. administration that believes in economic nationalism and populism, hopes to salvage a free trade deal with Canada’s largest trading partner as talks resumed Wednesday in Washington. The 50-year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar speaks five languages and has influential friends around the world.
“I have enormous sympathy for her because she is negotiating with an unpredictable, irrational partner,” said CNN host Fareed Zakaria, a friend of Freeland’s for 25 years.
Freeland cut short a trip to Europe last week after Trump reached a deal with Mexico that excluded Canada. Talks with Canada resumed but Trump said he wasn’t willing to make any concessions.
The Trump administration left Canada out of the talks for five weeks not long after the president vowed to make Canada pay after Trudeau said at the G-7 in Quebec he wouldn’t let Canada get pushed around in trade talks. Freeland then poked the U.S. when she received Foreign Policy magazine’s diplomat of the year award in Washington.
“You may feel today that your size allows you to go mano-a-mano with your traditional adversaries and be guaranteed to win,” Freeland said in the June speech. “But if history tells us one thing, it is that no one nation’s pre-eminence is eternal.”
Despite being the chief negotiator with the Trump administration, Freeland has criticized it when few other leaders of Western democracies have.
“She’s an extremely strong-willed and capable young woman, and I think Trump generally has a problem with that,” said Ian Bremmer, a longtime friend and foreign affairs columnist and president of the Eurasia Group. “She’s not going to bat her eyelashes at Trump to get something done. That’s not Chrystia. She doesn’t play games.”
After Freeland and her department tweeted criticism of Saudi Arabia last month for the arrest of social activists in the kingdom, Canada suffered consequences. The Saudis suspended diplomatic relations and canceled new trade with Canada and sold off Canadian assets.
Peter MacKay, a former Canadian foreign minister, said public shaming like that doesn’t work and said some Americans viewed her June speech in Washington as something less than diplomatic.
“It was around that time, within days, that the U.S. threw Canada out of the room,” MacKay said. “There is sometimes concern that she is taking the lead from her prime minister by playing a little bit to a domestic audience.”
Trudeau personally recruited Freeland to join his Liberal Party while it was the third party in Parliament in 2013. Freeland had a senior position at the Reuters news agency but was ready to move on after setbacks in her journalism career, said Martin Wolf, an influential Financial Times columnist and longtime friend.
Freeland previously had risen rapidly at the Financial Times where she became Moscow bureau chief in her mid-20s during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Freeland also served as deputy editor of the Globe and Mail in Toronto and the Financial Times. She had designs on becoming editor of the Financial Times but left after a clash with the top editor. She was familiar to many TV viewers in the U.S. because of her regular appearances on talk shows like Zakaria’s.
“She was a godsend for us, frankly, because she is so bright and so talented and articulate,” Zakaria said. “She is as about as impressive a person as I have met.”
Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage, also wrote a well-received book on Russia and left journalism for politics in 2013 when she won a district in Toronto. She has been a frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who banned her from traveling to the country in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanctions against Moscow.
She remains chummy with journalists, even bringing them frozen treats in 90-degree heat last week while they waited outside the U.S. Trade Representative office in Washington.
Bremmer, who met Freeland in Kiev in 1992, good-naturedly chided her for a strange foible: a habit of writing notes on her hands even when she has notepads.
“I have seen in her environments with foreign ministers and heads of state with stuff on her hands,” he said with a laugh.
Throughout her career, Freeland has cultivated an impressive group of friends. Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, is a godfather to one of her three children. Friends include Larry Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, and billionaires George Soros and Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group chief executive who once led one of Trump’s disbanded business councils.
“I always found her to be extremely smart and easy to talk with,” Schwarzman said. “She accessible and direct and quick. You don’t get to be a Rhodes scholar by accident.”
Summers is a mentor from Harvard.
“Her clarity of thought, straightforwardness and deep sense of principle make her an ideal leader of the international community as it responds to highly problematic American policy,” Summers said in an email.
Bremmer said Freeland has serious globalist credentials, “but right now, momentum is not with that group globally.”
When Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, he named Freeland to his Cabinet. She served as international trade minister and worked on ensuring that a free trade deal with the European Union didn’t unravel. At one point, she left stalled talks near tears after saying it had been impossible to overcome differences. An agreement was reached not long after that, and Freeland received credit.
Now she’s facing her toughest challenge with the North American Free Trade Agreement, since the U.S. represents 75 percent of Canada’s exports.
“Canada is stuck with the United States. That’s Canada’s trade,” Bremmer said. “Canadians are going to have to swallow a fair amount of pride. They are going have to pretend they like this guy a lot more than they obviously do or they risk getting much more economically punished. That’s just the reality.”
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Trump Team, Canada Officials Resume Talks to Revamp NAFTA
Trump administration officials and Canadian negotiators are resuming talks to try to keep Canada in a North American trade bloc with the United States and Mexico.
“We are looking forward to constructive conversations today,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters as she entered a meeting with U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer.
Last week, the United States and Mexico reached a preliminary agreement to replace the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement. But those talks excluded Canada, the third NAFTA country.
Freeland flew to Washington last week for four days of negotiations to try to keep Canada within the regional trade bloc. The U.S. and Canada are sparring over issues including U.S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market and American plans to protect some drug companies from generic competition.
Level Up: With Xbox Adaptive Controller, Anyone Can Play
Many people enjoy playing video games but take for granted that they can hold and easily operate game controllers. Now Microsoft is making it possible for disabled gamers to join in the fun. Tina Trinh reports.
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Verbal Senate Brawl Erupts at Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearing
Chaos, protests and partisan discord marked the first day of Senate confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh. As VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, minority Democrats repeatedly sought to postpone the proceedings, but majority Republicans were determined to plow ahead.
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No Let Up in Cyberattacks, Influence Campaigns Targeting US
Top U.S. intelligence and defense officials caution the threat to the U.S. in cyberspace is not diminishing ahead of November’s midterm elections despite indications that Russia’s efforts to disrupt or influence the vote may not match what it did in 2016.
The warnings of an ever more insidious and persistent danger come as lawmakers and security officials have increasingly focused on hardening defenses for the country’s voter rolls and voting systems.
It also comes as top executives from social media giants Facebook, Twitter and Google prepare to testify on Capitol Hill about their effort to curtail the types of disinformation campaigns used by Moscow and which are increasingly being copied by other U.S. adversaries.
“The cyberthreat to the U.S. is not limited to U.S. elections, a point that is too often missed,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a conference outside of Washington Tuesday. “The weaponization of cybertools and the relative lack of global guardrails in a cyber domain significantly increases the risk that a discrete act will have enormous strategic implications.
“Foreign influence efforts online are increasingly being used around the globe,” he added.
Others ramp up attacks
Government officials as well as those from private cybersecurity have said repeatedly over the past few months that they have not yet seen a repeat of what Coats himself described as the “robust” campaign Moscow launched in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Still, there are concerns that even if the Kremlin has eased its efforts, other countries and a variety of nonstate actors have ramped up their own campaigns, often learning from Russia’s 2016 exploits.
“I remain deeply concerned about threats from several countries to upcoming U.S. elections — the midterms this year, the presidential elections in 2020 and beyond,” Coats said.
While the director of national intelligence did not name any countries in particular, other officials have previously pointed to China, Iran and North Korea as the main culprits.
Two weeks ago, social media giants Facebook and Twitter announced they had removed hundreds of pages and accounts linked to a disinformation campaign that originated in Iran and targeted the U.S. as well as other countries.
Once major attacks now normal
U.S. cybersecurity officials warn that hacking, phishing attacks and disinformation campaigns have become increasingly popular tools for so-called bad actors’ and that they often escape the attention of the general public.
One reason is that what might have been described as a major cyberattack 10 years ago is often seen now as part of the normal threat landscape.
“We’ve crossed that threshold many, many times,” said John Rood, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy. “We are in that environment where on a near daily basis we are being challenged with those activities.”
What worries him, he said, is not the cyberattacks on their own but the prospects of someone combining cyber with a more traditional type of attack on the U.S. homeland.
“Some of our allies or friends have experienced a combination of cyberactivities, manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum and physical — air, land, sea — domain [attacks], whether that be Ukraine or Georgia.”
Small attacks just as worrisome
Yet other U.S. officials believe it is not the prospect of large-scale cyberattacks that should be the sole reason for concern.
“While I don’t see a dramatic cyberattack coming at us, every day there are small ones,” according to National Security Agency Deputy Director George Barnes.
“The problem is we focus on the big and the slow drip happens out the back,” he said. “And the slow drip is the continued theft of intellectual properties from our industries.”
Part of the problem, according to Barnes and other officials, is the extent to which government and industry in the U.S. in connected to and dependent on cyberspace, creating what they describe as a large and vulnerable “attack surface.”
And despite government efforts to reach out to private companies to share information about the threats, and even about ongoing or imminent attacks, U.S. officials fear the current level of cooperation is still not enough.
As a result, the U.S. is “continually pummeled by nation state and non-nation state sponsored malicious cyber activity,” Barnes said.
In response to the growing pace of attacks, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have become ever more vocal in identifying the perpetrators and calling attention to their exploits.
Increasingly, they are also talking out loud about hitting back.
“We are not standing idly by,” Coats said.
“Every kind of cyberoperation, malicious or not, leaves a trail,” he said. “Persistence on our part has enabled us to identify and publicly attribute responsibility for numerous cyber attacks and foreign influence efforts and then prepare for the response.”
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Pressley Wins Fight for ‘Soul’ of Party in Massachusetts House Race
Ayanna Pressley is all but assured of becoming the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, the latest example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of diversity and progressive politics as the recipe for success in the Trump era.
The 44-year-old’s upset victory against longtime Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano in Tuesday’s primary sets the stage for Pressley to represent an area once served by Tip O’Neill and John F. Kennedy. Her win comes at the tail end of a primary season in which black politicians have made a series of advances.
In nearby Connecticut, Jahana Hayes is on track to become that state’s first black woman to win a congressional seat if she prevails in November. And black politicians in three states, Florida, Georgia and Maryland, have won the Democratic nomination for governor, a historic turn for a country that has elected just two black governors in U.S. history.
Unabashedly progressive
Greeting voters at a Boston polling station, Pressley spoke of “the ground shifting beneath our feet and the wind at our backs.”
“This is a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our democracy,” she told reporters. “This is a disruptive candidacy, a grassroots coalition. It is broad and diverse and deep. People of every walk of life.”
For Pressley, as with many other ascendant candidates of color, unabashedly progressive credentials smoothed her path to victory in the primary. No Republicans were running, so only a write-in campaign in November could possibly stand between her and Washington.
She was endorsed by fellow congressional upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who knocked off veteran Rep. Joe Crowley of New York in June. Pressley backs Medicare-for-all, the single-payer health care proposal, which helped her garner backing from Our Revolution, the offshoot of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
Pressley called for defunding the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, which helped her draw support from Massachusetts’ popular attorney general, Maura Healey, who’s gained a national following for repeatedly suing President Donald Trump in an attempt to block his policies on immigration, gun control and other issues.
‘Be disruptive in our democracy’
“We have to be disruptive in our democracy and our policymaking and how we run and win elections,” she said in an interview this summer with The Associated Press, adding that Ocasio-Cortez’s victory challenged “narratives about who has a right to run and when, and who can win” in American politics.
“My mother did not raise me to ask for permission to lead,” she added.
Pressley tapped into growing cries within the Democratic Party for newer, more diverse leadership. She and Ocasio-Cortez both defeated older, white congressmen who were reliable liberal votes, but who didn’t look like many voters in their districts.
“With so much at stake in the era of Trump, tonight’s results make clear what Ayanna Pressley knew when she boldly launched her campaign against a 10-term incumbent: Change in the country and Congress can’t wait,” said Jim Dean, chair of the liberal group Democracy for America.
The district she’s competing in includes a wide swath of Boston and about half of Cambridge as well as portions of neighboring Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, Somerville and Milton. It includes both Cambridge’s Kendall Square, development there is booming, and the neighborhood of Roxbury, the center of Boston’s traditionally black community.
Pressley has bristled at the notion that race was a defining issue in her campaign.
“I have been really furious about the constant charges being lobbed against me about identity politics that, by the way, are only lobbed against women and candidates of color,” she said in one debate. “I happen to be black and a woman and unapologetically proud to be both, but that is not the totality of my identity.”
Massachusetts’ last Democratic primary upset came in 2014, when Seth Moulton defeated Rep. John Tierney in the state’s 6th Congressional District.
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Wild Blueberries Sing the Blues, With Industry in Decline
In the era of superfoods, Maine blueberries aren’t so super.
The Maine wild blueberry industry harvests one of the most beloved fruit crops in New England, but it’s locked in a downward skid in a time when other nutrition-packed foods, from acai to quinoa, dominate the conversation about how to eat. And questions linger about when, and if, the berry will be able to make a comeback.
The little blueberries are touted by health food bloggers and natural food stores because of their hefty dose of antioxidants. They’re also deeply ingrained in the culture of New England, and they were the inspiration for “Blueberries for Sal,” a beloved 1948 children’s book.
But the industry that picks and sells them is dealing with a long-term price drop, drought, freezes, diseases and foreign competition, and farmers are looking at a second consecutive year of reduced crop size.
At Beech Hill Blueberry Farm in Rockport, this year’s harvest was off by about 50 percent, said Ian Stewart, who runs the land trust that manages the farm.
“Our year was a little underwhelming. There was a lot of drought. There was a freeze at a bad time,” Stewart said. “We’re hoping it’s a blip. We’ll see.”
North America’s wild blueberry industry exists only in Maine and Atlantic Canada, and an oversupply of berries in both places caused prices to harvesters to plummet around 2015. Recent years have brought new challenges, such as particularly bad spells of mummy berry disease, a fungal pathogen, and difficulty in opening up new markets.
The blueberries grow wild, as the name implies, in fields called “blueberry barrens” that stretch to the horizon in Maine’s rural Down East region. While the plumper cultivated blueberries harvested in states like New Jersey are planted and grown as crops, harvesters of wild blueberries tend to a naturally occurring fruit and pick it by hand and with machinery.
Woes in the industry have caused some growers to scale back operations in Maine. Harvesters collected a little less than 68 million pounds of wild blueberries in the state in 2017, which was the lowest total since 2005 and more than 33 million pounds less than 2016. Last year’s price of 26 cents per pound to farmers was also the lowest since 1985, and was more in line with the kind of prices farmers saw in the early 1970s than in the modern era.
This year’s harvest was mostly wrapped by late August, a little earlier than usual, and members of the industry said they believe it was another year of lower harvest. Exact totals aren’t available yet, but signs point to a crop that’s “similar to last year, or even smaller,” said Nancy McBrady, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine.
The industry has tried to focus on growing the appeal of the health aspects of wild blueberries, which are richer in antioxidants than their cultivated cousins, but it has been a slow climb, McBrady said.
“For years, the health message and the taste message of wild blueberries has been successful,” she said. “But it’s frustrating when we find ourselves in periods of oversupply and competition.”
Nearly 100 percent of the wild crop is frozen, and the berries are used in frozen and processed foods. Prices to consumers at farm stands and grocery stores have held about steady in the face of falling prices to harvesters.
The same berries are harvested in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, and the weakness of the Canadian dollar has also hurt the U.S. industry because Canadian berries sell for less. Some companies operate on both sides of the border, and an equal exchange rate is better for business.
Such financial stress played a role in growers harvesting 5,000 fewer acres in the U.S. last year, said David Yarborough, a horticulture professor at the University of Maine. He said he expects a similar drop this year.
Other factors, such as poor pollination last year, have also held the crop back, Yarborough said. He stopped short of describing the industry as in full-blown crisis, but he said some smaller growers are in crisis mode.
The industry at large is hoping it doesn’t suffer too many more down years, said Homer Woodward, vice president of operations for Jasper Wyman & Son, a major industry player.
“I think the state of Maine is going to pick less pounds than last year. That’s the product of economic downturn,” said Woodward said. “And mother nature was cruel to us this year.”
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