From a viral pandemic to the movement for racial justice to the worsening climate crisis, Senator Cory Booker says the massive challenges facing the US right now are all tied to a “savagely broken food system”.And last week, his most recent challenge to that system gained new momentum, when a coalition of 300 farm, food, and environmental advocacy organizations sent a letter to Congress urging legislators to pass a bill that would eventually eliminate the country’s largest concentrated animal feeding operations (Cafos).Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Booker, a New Jersey senator who ran for the democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, says: “Nobody seems to be calling out how multinational, vertically integrated industrial agricultural companies are threatening American wellbeing, and I just think that the more people learn about these practices, the more shocked they are.“I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are.“Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system.”Booker was elected to the Senate in 2013, after serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, from 2006 to 2013. During his time in the Senate he has focused his efforts on progressive issues like criminal justice reform, reducing economic inequality and increasing access to healthcare.More recently, the food system and the way it shapes inequalities in the US has emerged as one of his defining interests. As mayor of Newark, where more than 50% of the city’s residents are people of color, Booker observed a high rate of poverty and food insecurity. “I learned early in my time as mayor, when I was focused on things like criminal justice reform and economic justice, that all of these issues and injustices were intersectional, and you have to deal with them with a holistic view,” he says.“Kids who walk into bodegas can buy a Twinkie product cheaper than they can buy an apple because 90% of our agriculture subsidies go to four major monocrops,” he says. Workers exposed to dangers in meatpacking plants and to poor working conditions and pesticide exposures on farms are also disproportionately people of color, concerns recently amplified by the Black Lives Matter movement.“What’s motivating me is that I think we need to really sound the alarm in America,” he says. “There are so many crises [that relate] to public health, from global warming to economic justice to humane treatment of animals. What should not be surprising is that a senator is taking this on. What should be more surprising is that we as a country have not seen this broken food system, especially after a Covid crisis, which has so exposed the fragility of the American food system. The real question is why isn’t Congress as a whole moving to address this massive threat to public health?” Booker’s Farm System Reform Act would place a moratorium on large concentrated animal feedlots. Photograph: Jim West/AlamyThe issue of the US food system has picked up steam amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which shed light on the potential of Cafos to spread disease and contribute to antibiotic resistance, as well as the fragility of the US’s heavily consolidated food chain. There have been large coronavirus outbreaks at plants: hundreds of workers have died, thousands have been ill, and farmers have been forced to euthanize and dispose of millions of animals.Booker, unlike most politicians, is willing to call out the behaviour of powerful meatpacking companies and introduce legislation to directly disrupt and regulate their businesses. In June, Booker and Senator Elizabeth Warren launched an investigation into meatpacking companies’ actions during the pandemic, looking at the coronavirus outbreaks and the companies’ claims that keeping plants running was necessary to feed the country, at the same time as a record amount of meat was being exported to China and other countries. In July, Booker introduced a bill that would prevent the US Department of Agriculture from allowing plants to speed up their lines, but it has so far not moved forward.But the Farm System Reform Act, which would place a moratorium on new or expanding large Cafos, is his most radical piece of legislation, aimed at phasing out large Cafos altogether by 2040, and pledging support and legislative protection for farmers transitioning away from the system. It has now been introduced in the House, and has also gained support from Warren and Bernie Sanders.“The Farm System Reform Act is the bold approach we need to bring dangerous factory farming under control now, and begin the necessary transformation to a safe and equitable future for food consumers and workers alike,” Food and Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said in a press release announcing the letter sent to Congress.So far most of the enthusiasm is coming from progressive politicians: presidential nominee Joe Biden’s plans on climate and rural America do not mention Cafos at all. ‘I’ve watched the suffering of communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air’, says Booker. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/APBut, in Booker’s mind, it’s not a matter of if the largest factory farms will someday be a thing of the past, it’s when. “We are on the right side of history,” he says, comparing the fight for a better food system to other successful social justice movements like marriage equality and criminal justice reform.“This one is going to take awareness, because I just don’t think when most Americans sit down and have their dinner they realize that the food that they’re eating … is part of a system that’s hurting their environment, their health, the wellbeing of workers, and the wellbeing of animals. I just have a deep, abiding faith in the goodness and the decency of Americans, and that’s why I know when it comes to an issue of justice, that’s the way we’ll move as a society. The big question I have is how quickly can we get there?”Sign up for the Animals farmed monthly update to get a roundup of the best farming and food stories across the world and keep up with our investigations. You can send us your stories and thoughts at [email protected]

In President Trump's first year in office, ISIS has lost nearly all of its territory in Syria and Iraq. CNN's Arwa Damon reports from Mosul, Iraq, on the human cost of that victory.Source: CNN

But the gap between Trump’s claims and the reality points to a deeper question of whether the public really knows what was said in the phone call. On the one hand, the transcript is not verbatim, the White House’s cloak-and-dagger handling of records of the call betrays concern about its contents, and there are indications of elisions in the document that was released. On the other hand, the transcript that was released is incriminating enough to cast doubt on the claim that the administration was trying to hide things.The White House didn’t violate standard procedure for releasing transcripts of calls with foreign leaders; there is no standard procedure, because releasing such transcripts is effectively unprecedented. But a whistle-blower complaint referred to “the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced—as is customary—by the White House Situation Room,” suggesting that a verbatim transcript does exist. The complaint also noted that records of the call were closely guarded and kept out of circulation, a claim that has been substantiated by reporting since.In three places in the transcript, an ellipsis (a series of three dots) is used. That’s typically a marking that indicates where part of a conversation has been removed. The White House says the ellipses represent places where the speaker trailed off or paused, but current and former officials told The Washington Post that standard practice in such situations is to use dashes or “[inaudible]” in such cases.Each of the three ellipses comes when Trump is lapsing into unproven conspiracy theories—the first two during a discussion of whether Russian hacking in the 2016 election was really a Ukrainian false flag, and the third when asking about his unsubstantiated accusations of wrongdoing by the Biden family. This makes the prospect of elisions in these key areas all the more important and tantalizing. Yet it is also imaginable that Trump veered into incoherence, as he sometimes does, leaving the notetakers befuddled or unable to reconstruct his words.Many observers have noted that even though the whistle-blower was not on the call, the account that he or she offered aligns with the actual transcript, imparting credibility. It’s worth noting that the White House was aware of the complaint before releasing the transcript, though, and could have tailored its document to include only what was in the whistle-blower’s account.Skeptics of the released transcript have also noted a discrepancy between the reported length of the call and the length of the transcript, especially in comparison with transcripts of calls with two other foreign leaders that were leaked in 2017. Trump and Zelensky spoke through interpreters, which could affect the length, but it’s not clear whether interpretation was simultaneous or not.

closeVideoLindsey Graham announces James Comey will testify before Judiciary CommitteeSen. Lindsey Graham joins Sean Hannity with insight.Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced Wednesday that former FBI Director James Comey has agreed to testify on his own volition before the panel in regard to "Crossfire Hurricane" -- the counterintelligence investigation into whether President Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election.Graham told "Hannity" that Comey will appear September 30th without necessitating a subpoena:"The day of reckoning is upon us when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane," he said."I appreciate Mr. Comey coming before the committee and he will be respectfully treated but asked hard questions. We are negotiating with [former Deputy FBI Director Andrew] McCabe; we are hoping to get him without a subpoena -- time will tell."VideoGraham however expressed dismay that the former special counsel behind the Russia investigation's published report, ex-FBI chief, Robert Mueller, refused to appear on his own accord."Mueller has declined the invitation to the committee to appear to explain his report," Graham said. "[Mueller] says he doesn't have enough time."Host Sean Hannity asked whether Graham will accept that Mueller declined his invitation, noting recent reporting that Justice Department records showed the special counsel's team's cell phones were "wiped" during the Trump probe.The records show at least several dozen phones were wiped of information because of forgotten passcodes, irreparable screen damage, loss of the device, intentional deletion or other reasons -- before the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) could review the devices.Graham called that development "fishy as hell" and added he will call on the DOJ and its inspector general to look into the incidents."We've invited [Peter] Strzok to come -- he's selling a book," he added of the September 30 hearing. "[W]e will see if he will come without a subpoena. But I look forward to this hearing and I think it will be important to the American people."Fox News' Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.

Something strange happened in mid-December involving Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch. Late last year, the U.S. government signaled that it was about to level a new round of sanctions targeting people and entities linked to Deripaska, according to two Western officials with knowledge of the communication. Back in April 2018, the U.S. sanctioned the oligarch, who once lent millions of dollars to convicted Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort as part of a decades-long relationship between the two men. Over the following months, Deripaska’s allies made a deal with Treasury to limit Deripaska’s control over the companies in exchange for sanctions relief. Then Treasury lifted the sanctions on the companies—though the sanctions on the oligarch himself are still in place. In the year since then, it’s been all quiet on the Deripaska sanctions front. Until December, that is. What’s strange is that despite the signal, Treasury didn’t follow through and the sanctions—which would have targeted the unnamed people and entities because of their proximity to Deripaska—didn’t materialize. It’s been two months since the U.S. indicated that the new sanctions were about to come out, and there’s been no movement from Treasury on the oligarch. The two months of inaction has stirred suspicions of political interference in the sanctions process. “Sanctions are part of foreign policy, as directed by the president of the United States and political appointees that supervise career professionals and not the other way around,” a Treasury official told The Daily Beast. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. A State Department spokesperson said Foggy Bottom does not preview specific sanctions actions and would not confirm or deny whether any specific person or entity was being considered for sanctions. “We have and will continue to impose costs on Russia until it ceases its reckless behavior,” the spokesperson added. Brian O’Toole, formerly a senior official at OFAC, said the apparent freeze on pending Deripaska sanctions may be a case of political meddling. If Treasury canceled the sanctions because officials there thought Russian authorities were getting in line and rendering them unnecessary, then that could explain the pause, he said.“If there was no such promise made or no such deal that was struck, then I think the pulling of the action suggests that there was a political decision to pull it, not a technocratic decision,” O’Toole added. “Somebody overruled OFAC, essentially—that’s the most likely scenario.” And Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who has focused on Deripaska, said the news concerned him. “In the latest episode of the sordid spectacle of Trump helping Putin, attempted constraint of a Putin buddy has apparently once again been thwarted,” he said in a statement. “In previous episodes, Trump granted special treatment for Deripaska. A strong bipartisan House vote resolved no way. Trump sycophant McConnell blocks the resolution shortly before the announcement of a new Russian aluminum plant in Kentucky. A year later, even the Trump Treasury Department apparently recognized the wrongdoing, but doing wrong to benefit Putin is always right in the Trump Administration.”Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate with an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, entered the Treasury Department’s crosshairs in the wake of the Kremlin’s campaign to shape American opinion about the 2016 election. Manafort and Deripaska have known each other for more than a decade. Manafort said he represented Deripaska “on business and personal matters,” per a statement to CNN. In 2005, according to the AP, Manafort pitched Deripaska on a public relations campaign that would “greatly benefit the Putin government.”“Treasury’s communication about plans for additional sanctions likely indicates that as of mid-December, the department felt the current measures aren’t doing enough to change the oligarch’s behavior.”The relationship grew complicated when, per 2014 Cayman Island court documents, Manafort came to owe Deripaska $19 million. Despite that, they appear to have kept an open communication channel during the 2016 presidential campaign. Manafort’s spokesperson confirmed that he and an associate discussed sharing updates on the campaign with Deripaska during his time as chairman. “If he needs briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in one email. On April 6, 2018, the department announced sanctions on Deripaska and En+ Group, a holding company that controlled Deripaska’s Russian aluminum giant, Rusal. At the time of the sanctions, Deripaska was the majority shareholder of En+. The sanctions sent global aluminum markets into a tailspin, and many of America’s Western European allies—including Ireland and Sweden—panicked about the impact sanctions would have. Then a mad scramble commenced to find a way to punish Deripaska without upending a major sector of the global economy. Lord Gregory Barker, the chairman of the board of En+, negotiated a deal with Treasury that purported to limit Deripaska’s control of Rusal and EN+ in exchange for sanctions relief. Treasury signed on, and Deripaska began to unwind himself from En+. But the deal immediately drew criticism. A document reviewed by The New York Times indicated that the agreement would let Deripaska and his allies maintain control of En+ while also letting him get out of nine figures’ worth of debt. On top of that, Rusal—the aluminum company that En+ controls—picked up a new board chairman as part of the deal for sanctions relief. Its pick was a French national named Jean-Pierre Thomas who regularly appeared on Russian state TV and defended Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, as The Daily Beast first reported. The addition of Thomas was viewed as an apparent effort by Rusal to poke the U.S. in the eye; Treasury specifically said Russia’s enabling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attacks on civilians was part of the reason for the new sanctions. Thomas, however, had pushed conspiracy theories trying to exonerate Assad from responsibility for those very chemical weapons attacks. Two weeks after The Daily Beast story ran, he was kicked off Rusal’s board at the orders of Treasury, per the company. Treasury’s communication about plans for additional sanctions likely indicates that as of mid-December, the department felt the current measures aren’t doing enough to change the oligarch’s behavior. It’s unclear if the two months that followed got Treasury officials to change their minds or if intervention from some outside force kept them from following through. UPDATE 2/18/2020: A spokesperson for Deripaska passed along the following letter from the oligarch.Dear Ms. Swan, I am not going to comment on your bizarre political fantasies regarding the US Treasury’s collective thought processes.What does concern me is that the article repeats a number of defamatory and simply false allegations. It is a matter of public record that I have not had any dealings with Paul Manafort for several years – long before the 2016 US presidential election – as even some cursory desktop research would have revealed. The only indirect contact has been via my representatives who have been trying to get back the money that Manafort effectively stole from me.I see how it might be inconvenient for you to acknowledge this point. Without the alleged links to Manafort during the election period, your whole argument falls apart. Evidently, you decided not to let facts get in the way of what you saw as a good story.I therefore ask you to publish this letter and amend the article to clearly reflect my position.Sincerely,Oleg Deripaska

Democratic Senator Cory Booker kicked off his presidential campaign in Iowa with a call for unity, warning a crowd in Waterloo on Friday afternoon against “surrendering to cynicism” and calling for a revival of “civic grace”.“I believe in this country,” he said at Hawkeye Community College, on the first day of a weekend trip to the crucial caucus state that marks a key moment in the beginning of his bid for the Democratic nomination . “I believe in us as a people. I’ve seen what can happen when we come together.”Booker, who had appeared in Mason City earlier in the day, spoke to a crowd of about 100 as part of a roundtable discussion with local leaders. He touched on a range of issues, but devoted the most time to criminal justice reform – a signature issue for the New Jersey Democrat, who was a key champion of the First Step Act, which was signed into law by Donald Trump in a rare bipartisan win last year.Booker touted the overhaul as a success, but called for more steps to be taken to address mass incarceration and a system that has unfairly targeted low-income and minority Americans, framing over-incarceration as both a “cancer on our soul” and also a financial burden on taxpayers. Booker did not directly criticize Donald Trump during the Waterloo appearance – in fact, he didn’t even mention the president’s name – but criticized several of the administration’s policies and offered alternatives on issues like jobs, wages, and healthcare, reiterating his support for a single-system healthcare system.“There’s something almost immoral about being in the richest country on planet earth and people [don’t have access] to lifesaving medication because they can’t afford it,” Booker said. “We’re better than that as a country.”The visit came just over a week after the New Jersey senator announced his 2020 bid. He had been widely expected to run, and joined a crowded field of Democrats vying to challenge Trump with a rousing campaign video shot in Newark – his hometown.“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind,” Booker said in the video. “It is not a matter of can we. It is a matter of do we have the collective will, the American will? I believe we do.”Booker echoed that message as he began his first excursion to the key early voting state of Iowa as a presidential candidate, and sought to strike a strong rapport with both the audience and the local leaders on the roundtable.“I came to Waterloo to run for president,” Booker said. “You all have me feeling like I want to be a resident.”Booker, 49, had been a star in the Democratic party even before he was elected to the Senate in 2012, making national headlines as the “superhero” mayor of Newark. His profile has continued to rise during the Trump era, serving as a frequent critic of the president and his allies.He’s generally seen as a centrist Democrat, though he has staked out more progressive positions on criminal justice reform, the war on drugs, and social issues. He has also championed legislation to protect the Muller investigation, which Trump has called a “witch hunt”.“He’s got the right values,” said Sharon Silva, a resident of nearby Cedar Falls who was in the crowd at Hawkeye Community College. “He cares about the right things. He likes to solve problems.”Booker has also been scrutinized for his ties to Wall Street and to the pharmaceutical industry. Critics have also raised questions about his authenticity. Still, he appeared to capture the audience in Waterloo, making a strong introduction to the voters who turned up on a frigid day to get their initial impression of the senator, whose whirlwind trip to Iowa also included stops in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines.“He’s right on target,” said Lee Tolbert, a resident of Waterloo in attendance.Tolbert said he had been leaning toward Senator Kamala Harris, who recently announced her own candidacy with a powerful speech in California, but was so impressed with Booker that he now regards him as his top choice to face off against Trump.“Looking at where he’s come from along with his resume, he’s a winner,” Tolbert said. “He’s one that should be in the final round. I don’t see how anybody can take him out.” Topics Cory Booker US elections 2020 Democrats US politics Iowa news

“Rudy Giuliani is a well-known man," said Graham. "He's a crime fighter. He's loyal to the president. He's a good lawyer.”Giuliani is also under scrutiny by federal authorities. That means the Justice Department would be putting itself in the awkward position of appearing to work with someone it is actively investigating to gather potentially damaging information against one of the president's political rivals.Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to comment when asked about Graham's statements.Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Giuliani's business dealings, including whether he failed to register as a foreign agent, according to people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.Giuliani said Sunday that he has a document that relates to Biden's son Hunter, along with a memo allegedly from a Democratic Party official documenting communications with a reporter.The Democratic-controlled House impeached Trump last year, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for pressing Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, while delaying delivery of nearly $400 million in congressionally approved security assistance for the Eastern European nation. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father managed the U.S. government's Ukraine portfolio under President Barack Obama.Trump was acquitted last week by the Republican-led Senate.Graham said anything Giuliani has obtained from Ukraine needs to be given to the Justice Department or Congress' intelligence committees “because it could be Russian propaganda.”Graham said he also spoke Sunday with Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said Burr also warned him to “take very cautiously” any information coming out of Ukraine. Graham said his message to Giuliani is: “Don't give it to me.”A spokeswoman for Burr did not immediately return an email message seeking comment.Graham was interviewed on CBS' “Face the Nation” and Giuliani appeared on Fox News Channel's “Sunday Morning Futures.”———Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

"For many decades, the discussions at the international level... around drugs were completely focused on illegal drugs, to the point where the fact that these same substances also have important medical uses was just completely off the radar," Mr Lohman says.

The writer Peter Pomerantsev was 15 when his parents moved to Germany and enrolled him at the European School in Munich. The schools were set up in 1956 with the aim of educating the students to be “in mind Europeans, schooled and ready to complete and consolidate the work of their fathers before them, to bring into being a united and thriving Europe”. One of the architects of Brexit, Boris Johnson, attended one of the schools, in Brussels.Pomerantsev discusses with Anuskha Asthana his experiences at the school and what the project tells us about the EU. He wonders whether the school successfully promoted integration, or actually had the opposite effect.Plus: the Guardian’s UK technology editor, Alex Hern, on why the creators of OpenAI, an Elon Musk-backed artificial intelligence company, have decided not to release their research publicly, fearing potential misuse

CNN anchor Jake Tapper called out Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday over the Republican senator’s “confusing” position on the Ukraine scandal as the impeachment inquiry has progressed, suggesting history won’t be kind to Graham’s “political evolution.”Noting at the end of Sunday’s broadcast of State of the Union that Graham had been invited to talk about “his views of the mounting evidence that President Trump’s team was pushing Ukraine to publicly announce an investigation into the Bidens,” Tapper said that the show was told that Graham was “unavailable.” (Graham, however, did appear on Fox News for a Sunday morning interview.)“Graham’s public statements on the matter have been confusing,” the CNN host said. “On September 25th, after the White House released that rough call transcript between President Trump and Ukrainian president Zelinsky, Graham called the call a, quote, nothing (non-quid pro quo) burger.”Tapper went on to highlight other instances of Graham moving the goalposts whenever additional evidence came forth, specifically pointing out that just last month Graham told Axios that “if you could show me that Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.”“We now have reams of evidence,” the CNN anchor declared. “Testimony from multiple Trump administration diplomats and national security officials—current and former—suggesting that outside that phone call, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Rudy Giuliani, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney all were pushing Ukraine to investigate the Bidens if they wanted that aid and that White House meeting.”The CNN host then turned to Graham’s most recent defense of the president, playing a clip of the Senate Judiciary Committee chair claiming that the Trump administration was “incapable of forming a quid pro quo” because Trump’s policy towards Ukraine was “incoherent.”“Coherence is not particularly evident in Chairman Graham’s position on this impeachment inquiry,” Tapper snarked before contrasting Graham’s shifting stance on reading the transcripts of impeachment witnesses’ depositions.Tapper went on to conclude his essay by comparing Graham with former Rep. Earl Landgrebe (R-IN), who famously said during the Watergate scandal: “Don’t confuse me with the facts!”“Is Senator Lindsey Graham trying to follow in the footsteps of John McCain?” Tapper asked after showing Graham tearfully memorializing his longtime friend. “Or is he trying to follow in the footsteps of Earl Landgrebe?”

The Trump administration has conceded it separated 1,556 immigrant parents and children more than it had previously admitted in court, bringing the total count of families separated to almost 5,500. The government had originally admitted to separating about 2,800 families when a California federal court ordered it to end the practice in June 2018 as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. But it has since identified more separations; approximately 1,090 occurred after and in violation of the court order. The additional 1,556 separations disclosed on Thursday, which included 207 children under the age of 5, happened before the Trump administration implemented its “zero tolerance” policy aimed at prosecuting anyone who crosses the border without authorization. Officials have cited the zero tolerance policy as the cause of family separations. This latest count is apparently exhaustive. Over the course of the last six months, the government investigated each one of the 33,000 children who had been in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement dating back to July 1, 2017, to determine the new tally of separations, Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU, said in an interview. But the ACLU is also currently investigating potential separations that could have occurred before July 1, 2017, he added. “If we hear about separations that occurred in the first six months after inauguration, then we’re going to go back to court and ask for those,” he said. The new tally comes after a Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report published in January found many separated families had gone unidentified. The OIG report said that the “lack of an existing, integrated data system” at DHS and HHS made it difficult to ascertain just how many families had been separated. The final list of separated families was consistently revised through December 2018. Now even more separations have come to light. “It is shocking that 1,556 more families — including babies and toddlers — join the thousands of others already torn apart by this inhumane and illegal policy,” Gelernt said in a statement. “Families have suffered tremendously, and some may never recover. The gravity of this situation cannot be overstated.”The separations were a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy.” Announced in April 2018, the zero tolerance policy coincided with a shift in the demographics of migrants showing up at the border: families now make up the majority of those apprehended, rather than single adult males.The Trump administration has sent record numbers of asylum-seeking families to immigration detention. The government’s rationale was that the practice of releasing families while they awaited their court dates — formerly the typical practice, which Trump has called “catch and release” — was encouraging migrants to come to the US, and that keeping them in detention while their immigration cases were underway would deter further migration. But the US does not have the infrastructure to detain families on the scale the Trump administration has sought. There are only three facilities nationwide licensed to hold families long-term: Berks Family Residential Center in Berks County, Pennsylvania; Karnes Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas; and South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. The government also can’t hold children in adult detention facilities for longer than 20 days under the Flores settlement agreement, which came from a 1997 court case in California. After the 20-day mark, children have to be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services or another facility licensed to administer their care. Trump officials have repeatedly cited these restrictions on the detention of immigrant children as the reason why they started separating families after former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen signed a memo in April 2018 greenlighting the practice. Even after leaving office, Nielsen has continued to defend her testimony before Congress that December that the administration “never had a policy for family separation” and that the administration was merely enforcing immigration laws. Officials have also said the practice wasn’t anything new. To an extent, that’s true — President Barack Obama also separated some families. But the number of separations that occurred under the Obama administration did not even come close to the number that have occurred under Trump, and it wasn’t done under an official policy. Amid public backlash against family separations, Trump issued an executive order purporting to put a stop to them in June 2018. The California court also blocked the policy that month and ordered the government to reunify the families.

LONDON -- The Trump administration is stepping up pressure on European allies to ban Chinese tech firm Huawei from supplying next-generation mobile networks, with more officials visiting this week to press the case.The visit to London by a United States delegation highlights how China's involvement in new 5G networks is an increasingly important part of President Donald Trump's battle with China over economic and technological preeminence.Europe finds itself caught in the middle. Here is a look at key issues in the debate.WHAT'S AT STAKE?The signs are that Germany does not intend to exclude Huawei explicitly from its 5G networks in advance, though the government has not yet finalized legislation. German government officials have said consultations should wrap up soon, without giving a timeline.Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, Germany's top security official, said his country must be protected against espionage and sabotage. But he estimated that shutting out Chinese providers could delay the new networks by years.“I don't see that we can set up a 5G network in Germany in the short term without participation by Huawei,” Seehofer told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in January.The Federal Network Agency, Germany's telecom regulator, has already released draft guidelines for 5G equipment suppliers that tighten up security requirements but stop short of banning specific companies such as Huawei. And a draft law reportedly includes potentially big fines for technology companies that breach security regulations.Complicating matters, European mobile phone companies have used plenty of Huawei equipment in their 4G networks. If they do not use Huawei equipment for the initial 5G rollout, which will run on 4G gear, it could result in higher costs and delays.WHAT IS 5G?Fifth-generation cellular networks are expected to usher in a wave of technological transformation. For a start, 5G promises superfast download speeds for smartphone users. But it will be more than that — 5G sensors will be embedded into countless new connected devices such as thermostats and medical sensors. It also will be used for self-driving vehicles, “smart” factories and in critical infrastructure like power grids, presenting unprecedented new security challenges.WHAT IS THE U.S. POSITION?For more than a year, the U.S. has campaigned against Huawei over fears that China's communist leaders can use the company to tap into communications running through the networking equipment it sells globally.The American message was initially met with skepticism and now increasingly appears to be falling on deaf ears. That's forcing Washington to change up its strategy, but the result has been incoherent.Attorney General William Barr suggested earlier this month that to thwart Huawei, the U.S. government should consider taking a “ controlling stake “ in Nokia and Ericsson either directly or through a consortium of U.S. companies and private investors. But other officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, quickly walked back that idea, saying ”private enterprise” is the way to go.U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper suggested other ways the government could be involved.“We are encouraging allied and U.S. tech companies to develop alternative 5G solutions, and we are working alongside them to test these technologies at our military bases as we speak,” Esper said Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.The anti-Huawei campaign expanded into a bipartisan effort after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, joined in during visits to Brussels and Munich, when she compared allowing Huawei into a network to having “the Chinese state police right in your pocket."Last week, U.S. authorities added new criminal charges against Huawei, accusing the company of a brazen scheme to steal trade secrets from competitors in America. That's on top of a separate federal case with similar allegations against Huawei and senior executive Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Vancouver, British Columbia, but has yet to be extradited to the U.S.WHAT KIND OF COMPANY IS HUAWEI AND HOW DOES IT RESPOND?Huawei is the world's No. 1 provider of telecom infrastructure gear — antennas, base stations and other plumbing on which cellular networks run.Mobile phone companies like Huawei because it has a reputation for cheap, quality equipment. It has few rivals, namely Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson, a point European officials use to rebuff the U.S.The Chinese company has consistently denied allegations that it could facilitate spying and insists there has never been any proof that it's behind security breaches. Huawei's chief cybersecurity officer has said that the company is just a vendor providing equipment and that mobile phone companies are the ones that operate the networks.WHAT HAS THE U.K. DONE?Britain last month gave Huawei limited access to its 5G networks, in what was seen as a snub to the U.S. The British government said it would let Huawei provide 35 percent of a wireless carrier's “radio access network” of antennas and base stations, but it would not allow “high risk vendors” into the sensitive “core” — the servers that act as a network's control center.Trump administration officials indicated disappointment at Britain's decision to find a middle way. A U.S. delegation led by Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, is reportedly due in London on Wednesday to meet with officials from Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government to express their unhappiness.U.K. officials are pinning their hopes on 5G and related technologies such as artificial intelligence to help boost the economy by kickstarting lagging productivity levels.———Associated Press Writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.———For all of the AP’s technology coverage, visit this page.———Follow Kelvin Chan at twitter.com/chanman.

So we might do well to think of Mr. Manafort as a kind of outlier or cautionary tale, an extreme example of a weakness we all share, rather than as a case of exceptional vice in the midst of our more ordinary virtue.Although many of us would like to think of Mr. Manafort as a scheming, calculating, coldblooded Prince of Lies, it’s probably the case that he has told so many different stories over the course of a long career as a liar that at this point he longer quite knows what the truth is. As Nietzsche taught us, we tend to deceive ourselves about when, how and why we lie, and even about the act of lying itself. Why? At least in part because lies are more effective when we don’t know that we are lying. “There must be self-deception in order to produce a great effect,” Nietzsche wrote. If this is true, unfortunately for Mr. Manafort — and, one worries, for our president — one can become so confused about the distinction between truth and falsity that one can no longer really tell the difference.We might actually prefer that Mr. Manafort be a straightforward liar, because the unmindful liar is more dangerous, both to himself and to others. As Mr. Dryden admonishes T.E. Lawrence in “Lawrence of Arabia”: “If we’ve been telling lies, you’ve been telling half-lies. A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.”I think, in short, that we can learn from the pitiable case of Paul Manafort. The truth requires courage rather than cowardice. For us ordinary human beings, the right thing to do is most often the difficult thing to do, and this is especially so when it comes to knowing and speaking the truth. It’s almost always easier, lazier, more convenient to boast, to flatter, to lie, to fail to interrogate yourself about why you believe what you do. But we’ve seen where these habits led Mr. Manafort, over the course of his life, and none of us want to join him there.And what about Mr. Manafort? Like most liars, he’s probably feeling lonely, with only his secrets to comfort him. But if I’m right, and he no longer really knows the difference between truth and lie, he’s lost even his secrets.Clancy Martin is a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the author of “Love and Lies: An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit, and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love.”Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Mr. Papadopoulos has posited that Mr. Mifsud was “an Italian intelligence asset who the C.I.A. weaponized” as part of the unsubstantiated “deep state” plot. The president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani has claimed, also without evidence, that Mr. Mifsud was a “counterintelligence operative, either Maltese or Italian.”Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia last week alleging that one of its former diplomats who met with Mr. Papadopoulos was involved in the supposed plot. Australian officials rejected Mr. Graham’s characterization of the diplomat’s role in the episode.On Friday, Mr. Trump also raised the specter of the conspiracy. “They think it could have been by U.K. They think it could have been by Australia. They think it could have been by Italy,” he said, without elaborating on the accusations themselves or who was making them.Mr. Mifsud worked for neither the F.B.I. nor the C.I.A., former American officials said. If he had been an F.B.I. informant, prosecutors could have easily found and questioned him. If Mr. Mifsud were working for the C.I.A., the agency would have had an obligation to tell the F.B.I. as it investigated Mr. Papadopoulos.So to believe the conspiracy that Mr. Mifsud was secretly working for the C.I.A. is to believe that either the intelligence community withheld from prosecutors that he was one of their agents or that prosecutors conspired to deceive federal courts.To believe that another Western government secretly employed Mr. Mifsud as part of a plot against the president is to believe that an elaborate conspiracy entirely eluded the special counsel’s office in its exhaustive investigation, which included more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence and interviews of about 500 witnesses.

closeVideoKamala Harris speaks on phone with Jacob Blake's family during Wisconsin visitKamala Harris and Mike Pence campaign in Wisconsin; Peter Doocy reports.A report from The Washington Post raised some eyebrows as it praised Kamala Harris' "shoe choice" earlier in the week.Upon her visit to Milwaukee, Joe Biden's running mate was seen sporting, as the Post described, "black, low-rise Chuck Taylor All-Stars, the classic Converse shoe that has long been associated more closely with cultural cool than carefully managed high-profile candidacies.""By Tuesday morning, videos by two reporters witnessing her arrival had been viewed nearly 8 million times on Twitter," Post reporter Chelsea Janes wrote, "for comparison’s sake, more than four times the attention the campaign’s biggest planned video event, a conversation between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, had received on both Twitter and YouTube combined."The Post's report, which had the headline "Kamala D. Harris goes viral — for her shoe choice," Janes explained, "At this point in a presidential campaign, every move is calculated, often to convey a sense of youth and energy and fitness to reassure voters of a candidate’s ability to handle the rigors of running the country, or helping to do so."WASHINGTON POST MOCKED FOR 'ANALYSIS' ATTEMPTING TO COUNT COVID-19 DEATHS WHILE TRUMP GOLFEDAccording to Harris' sister, Chucks are her "go-to" shoes."Harris has white Chucks, off-white Chucks, black Chucks, and even hinted at a sequined pair she has yet to break out on the trail," the Post reported on Tuesday evening. Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, of California, greets supporters after a roundtable event, Monday, Sept. 7, 2020, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash) The piece on the California senator was mocked on social media."This is so embarrassing. Imagine The Post doing this in 2008 with Palin, Bachmann in 2012, or in the future with Haley or Stefanik in 2024," NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck reacted."I feel like you might want to cover the fact that Kamala Harris praised an alleged rapist and his anti-Semitic father, @washingtonpost" Ben Shapiro told the paper, referring to allegations against Jacob Blake and remarks attributed to Jacob Blake Sr. on social media.WASHINGTON POST PIECE PANNED FOR SPECULATING ONLY A 'BIDEN LANDSLIDE' WOULD PREVENT 'VIOLENCE' BEYOND ELECTION"Funny how libs can gush over fashion choices of their lib favs, but if a conservative even hints at a woman’s look, we’re sexist bigots. #DoubleStandards," Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis tweeted."Glad to see the Washington Post bringing back the high level of scrutiny readers enjoyed during the Obama years," Daily Telegraph opinion editor James Morrow wrote.Janes later defended her report amid backlash from critics.“'Who cares about her shoes' I see some of you wondering so politely?" Janes tweeted. "What’s clear in reaction to Harris and the Chucks is how much seeing themselves in a new kind of candidate — a Black woman, an Indian-American, someone who likes Chucks, whatever — matters to a lot of people."

Back in 2015, a 40-year-old synthetic biologist named Christina Smolke, along with a small team of researchers at Stanford, made a huge discovery. They proved that a genetically engineered yeast could produce opioid molecules, the core ingredients of some of the world’s most widely prescribed pain medicines.Using yeast to produce things is as old as beer and bread, but with the complete mapping of, and increasing understanding of, the entire yeast genome–the totality of its DNA–the microbes are being used to produce more complex and valuable things, like fuels and medicines. Twenty percent of bioengineered drugs are now produced with microbials, including a great many produced with organisms other than yeast. But Smolke’s mission to make opioids out of yeast is on another level of complexity, requiring many successful chemical reactions as the yeast metabolizes sugar.Smolke has spent the last 15 years of her life editing the genetic language written on the chromosomes of yeast–silencing some genes, amplifying the effects of others and, most of all, adding completely new genetic code to direct specific cellular activity. In the end, the yeast perform a completely new metabolic process–a long sequence of chemical chain reactions that starts by feeding the yeast some sugar and ends with the creation of complex opioid molecules.The implications of Smolke’s discovery were huge. Suddenly it seemed possible to mass-produce opioids in a whole new way–in bioreactors, with yeast. It raised the possibility of disrupting a drug industry that still relies mainly on materials from the poppy plant to make vital pain medicines.The whole thing was promising enough to propel Smolke and her team out of their safe confines at Stanford and into a new life as a startup company–Antheia, Inc. But the young company has a major challenge on its shoulders. It must prove that it can mass-produce opioid molecules faster, cheaper, and more reliably using yeast than the big drug companies can using the poppy.Antheia must continue improving its Frankenyeast, making edits to the genetic code to drive it to produce more and more opioid molecules. To be an industry contender, Antheia must prove that the yeast can produce at commercial levels. Imagine millions or billions of yeast quietly metabolizing opioids inside hundreds of bioreactors housed in a large, secure facility.If they succeed, Antheia may make a still more startling breakthrough later on. Smolke and her team aren’t talking about merely mimicking in the lab what the poppy plant makes in the field. They want to improve upon Mother Nature’s recipe for opioids to make them not just easier to produce, but less addictive and safer to use. As opioid addiction ravages America, just imagine that: less-addictive opioids.It’s not hard to find examples of firebrands like Antheia failing in their mission. But at a time in our history when drug overdose is the leading cause of death in people under 50 (most of them due to pain pills and heroin), there’s more than just financial reasons to hope Antheia succeeds.Living Drug FactoriesWhile Antheia is training the yeast to make opioid molecules more efficiently, it’s also developing the technology platform that manages the data needed to bioengineer the yeast.That tech platform may be used to make other high-value drugs in the future, Smolke says. The main reason Smolke started building the platform around opioid production (and not some other class of drug), is because opioid compounds are very complex and hard to synthesize.“Theoretically, we should be able to get to every other compound out there that you could point us to, because there’s nothing yet that has been demonstrated that has greater complexity,” she explains.Smolke and her team believe the same data tools and approaches they developed while creating opioid-making yeast can be used to engineer yeast that produces cancer drugs, or drugs for arthritis or Alzheimer’s.Antheia’s technology platform is essentially a collection of computational tools and reusable strings of genetic code. The computational tools are recipes for searching out (in a database) specific genes from the genomes of various organisms, like the genetic code of the poppy plant that was borrowed for use in Smolke’s opioid-making yeast. The strings of genetic code, when stitched into the yeast’s DNA, cause the organism to perform some specific function. One of these “off-the-shelf” pieces of genetic code might direct the yeast to produce a specific enzyme that embeds itself at a specific place in the cell wall at a specific time. That would be just one step in a complex process that may produce a high-value compound at the end.Smolke and her team are indeed interested in efficiently producing opioid molecules but, in a sense, the whole process of doing so is also a means of training and developing the technology platform. The platform will be able to reuse many of the tricks, techniques, and tools it developed from making opioids when it’s used to make other kinds of drugs in the future.“[We’ll] develop the base platform, and get the base platform in place to a point where it’s ready to be commercialized,” Smolke says. “Then, that’s when we’d leverage that platform to go after these newer medicines.”“This is crazy”Smolke’s working relationship with yeast began in 2003 at Caltech, where she’d taken a job teaching bioengineering. She was 28. It was her first professorship, and her first shot at running a lab. She was becoming more and more interested in the interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology, which combines biology, chemistry, engineering, genomics, and computer science. In very simple terms, this branch of biology works to rewrite an organism’s genetic code–the operating system that tells it how to grow and what to do–to make it behave in a desirable way. A synthetic biologist might, for example, copy the gene that makes a jellyfish glow and insert it into the DNA of a cat. Now Fluffy glows in the dark. (For the record, this has never been attempted. That we know of.)Smolke started working with yeast because a lot was already known about its metabolism and physiology. Actually, yeast cells are our oldest organic factories. We’ve used them to make bread and alcohol for centuries. Yeast became a lot more useful during the 19th century when scientists figured out how to isolate it from other materials to produce things like baker’s yeast.The biggest breakthrough came in 1996 when the Genome Project announced it had mapped (sequenced) the full genome of yeast, which contains 12 million base pairs. The genetic information in yeast’s natural DNA orders up the enzymes needed to do what the yeast cell normally does, which is metabolize sugar and create ethanol in a process called fermentation. But with an understanding of the DNA, scientists began to “edit” the genes in yeast to metabolize new things.In 2003, scientists were just beginning to think about producing drugs and biofuels using microbes like yeast. Smolke wanted to push the science far forward.“We say we want to build things with biology, and biology should be this amazing manufacturing platform, so one of the most important areas to be working in is medicines,” Smolke says.To do that she wanted to push the yeast to produce an extremely complex molecule. Opioids, she knew, were among the most complex, and mysterious. If the yeast could be engineered to make opioids, chances are they could produce lots of other compounds, too.Smolke recalls encountering a lot of doubters and naysayers around that time. Colleagues were constantly telling Smolke and her graduate student (and later, business partner) Kristy Hawkins, “This is crazy. You’ll never get it done.”And it was crazy.By 2004, scientists had used recombinant DNA to create yeast that could manage a few directed chemical reactions. But encoding the yeast DNA to direct a string of more than 20 chemical reactions seemed impossible.“Okay, this is impossible. Why is it impossible?” Smolke remembers asking. “What do we need to do from a technology development perspective to make it possible?”Helped by earlier research on how poppies make opium, Smolke and her team had a general understanding of the chain of chemical events that need to take place within the yeast to produce the opioid molecules. Using several huge DNA databases, they looked for genes that directed similar events in other organisms. Then they borrowed some of that genetic code, using it as a basis for directing the necessary events in yeast.But the genetic data used in other organisms’ DNA isn’t easily transferrable to the DNA of yeast. Each organism’s DNA is written using a slightly different syntax. “If you just take the DNA from plants and stick them to yeast, the yeast will say, ‘This is gibberish–I don’t know what to make of this,'” Smolke says. Then the yeast fails to create the enzyme needed to catalyze the necessary chemical event. The production line comes to a halt. The chain reaction stops. No opioids.So the genetic code has to be edited, translated into the yeast’s language, so the microbe can read it and create the right enzyme to catalyze the right metabolic chemical in the cell. It’s in the recoding of the foreign DNA that the real heavy lifting, and the real magic, happens.“We take the DNA–it’s a string of letters, A, D, T, C–then, we just basically recode it,” Smolke says. “We’ll say, ‘Okay, change this T to a C.'”Smolke and Hawkins kept asking why not, and continued to methodically overcome problems. In 2009, Smolke accepted a teaching job at Stanford, where she set up a new lab. She also added Kate Thodey and Isis Trenchard to her team–both were doing their postdoctoral work in the Stanford bioengineering department at the time.With the help of the new human, financial, and scientific resources she found at Stanford, Smolke continued the work of coaxing yeast to complete the step-by-step metabolic process of producing opioid molecules.Then in 2015, Smolke’s “crazy” idea finally succeeded.The yeast produced two key opioid molecules: thebaine and hydrocodone. Thebaine is one of the molecules produced by the poppy, but it has to be chemically altered to create a core ingredient for pain meds. Hydrocodone, on the other hand, is a more valuable molecule because it’s a finished analgesic compound requiring no further chemical alterations. To get from thebaine to hydrocodone, Smolke and her team introduced three extra genes’ worth of instructions into the yeast’s DNA.When the research was published in the journal Science on September 4, 2015, the synthetic biology world immediately knew something big had happened in the history of the nascent science.“Their study represents a tour de force in the metabolic engineering of yeast,” wrote Jens Nielsen, a chemical engineer and director of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, in Science in 2015. “It clearly represents a breakthrough advance for making complex natural products in a controlled and sustainable way.”From Science to StartupSeveral months before the publication of the research paper in Science, when it had become clear that the Frankenyeast would produce opioid molecules, Smolke decided to take a leave from teaching at Stanford and put her energy into Antheia. Hawkins, Thodey, and Trenchard came with her. It was time for Smolke and her team to turn pro.The company now lives in a small rented office space in Menlo Park, not too far from Stanford. It’s paying rent and salaries, reassuring investors, and furiously working toward some cash-positive day in the future.Antheia operates in part on four grants–two from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and two from National Institutes of Health (NIH). One of the NIH grants came from National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Most of Antheia’s funding comes from venture capital investors. The company raised $1.97 million of seed funding in 2015. Among the first investors was Ram Shriram, who was also one of Google’s first investors and a member of the search giant’s original board of directors. (Shriram declined Fast Company‘s interview requests.) In 2017 Antheia raised an “A” round of an undisclosed amount. The new investors were also not disclosed.All that money is riding on whether or not Antheia can prove that making opioids in yeast is more cost-efficient than doing so with materials from the poppy plant.It’s a tall order. Christina Agapakis, a synthetic biologist at Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston, points out that some other pharmaceuticals are already mass-produced by recombinant microbials like yeast. But, she says, since opioids require a long and complex metabolic process in the yeast, it may be technically harder for Antheia to scale up production to commercial levels. The company continues to tweak its genetic formulas in pursuit of that goal.The OpportunityIf the yeast rise to the occasion, Antheia could enter the market as a provider of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to drug companies that produce branded pain medicines and generics.It’s a large and growing market, driven by the increasing need of medications for baby boomers as they age. San Francisco-based Grand View Research says the global API market will be worth 239.8 billion by 2025. Opioid compounds are just a segment of that market, but pain medications are some of the most widely prescribed.Antheia might grab a share of the market by producing and selling opioid compounds for less than current providers do.“There are only a few routes to synthesis,” Antheia’s Thodey says, and getting there through bioengineered yeast may be the hardest.Today, the old way is still the least expensive way–that is, making opioid compounds using organic material from the poppy plant.API companies like Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals and Rhodes Technologies import raw material harvested from the Papaver somniferum or “opium poppy” grown in Tasmania, Turkey, India, and Australia. The plants grow waist-high; at the top, flowers surround a golfball-sized seed pod. After the flowers fall off, cuts are made in the seed pod to let the milky “gum” substance leak out. This opium resin is then partially dried and bagged or rolled into balls for shipment. After receiving the opium material, API companies run a chemical process on it to create active ingredients like hydrocodone. The price of opioid APIs are determined by the cost of the raw opium material and the cost of the chemical processing that needs to be done.Thodey says other people have successfully tried to synthesize opioid molecules through chemistry, but it’s proven to be prohibitively expensive at a large scale.The third route to synthesis of opioid compounds is through the use of microbials, as Antheia does with yeast. It’s possible Antheia could face competition from other startups using microbials to produce high-value compounds. But Antheia may enjoy a certain amount of protection from these would-be challengers; it’s hard to imagine a tougher or longer “barrier to entry” than the one Antheia has been crossing for the last decade, and that it continues to cross.“The stuff they’re doing is really hard. You need a small, focused team that really lives and dies by making it work,” says Karl Handelsman, investments director at the Roche Venture Fund based at Genentech, one of Antheia’s investors. “And that’s what Christina has managed to put together. She has some very good people.”A like-minded competitor would have to go through a similar (expensive) process, and would presumably have to work around the patents protecting Antheia’s work.It’s most likely that Antheia will be competing with companies that produce the core opioid ingredients using organic material from the poppy plant–and that method is itself not likely to get cheaper. The poppy, it turns out, is heavily regulated in the United States. Poppy plants can’t be legally grown in the U.S. Nor is the importation of whole poppy plants legal; only the raw organic material harvested from the plant can be brought in. After the expense of importing the raw materials, drug companies have to pay the cost of the additional chemical processes needed to convert the raw material into active opioid compounds.Though it’s yet to be seen how expensive producing opioids at scale ends up being for Antheia, one bright spot for the startup is that its yeast method is not subject to those costs. But Antheia still has to contend with lots of other costs in the production process that it may not yet be able to perfectly predict. If the process requires more bioreactors, more yeast, more sugar, and more R&D time than expected, the then costs will naturally go up and the opioid compounds Antheia makes might not be able to be sold at a price that’s low enough to undercut the incumbents.However, Thodey thinks that once you have an understanding of the yeast and the optimal conditions for producing lots of opioid molecules, you can just maintain those factors as the numbers of yeast climb upward. The company is making hundreds of tweaks to the DNA of the yeast to cause the right enzymes to create the right metabolic actions to produce as many opioids as they may need.Humanitarian PotentialSmolke says one result of building a more efficient way to make drugs is the opportunity to make vital medications available to parts of the world where they’re currently scarce. The economics of making painkillers have led the big drug makers to focus on Western markets.The biggest is the United States, which uses 80% of the global supply of painkillers–yet has only 5% of the world’s population. In many countries, opioids are reserved for very serious injuries, which leads to a lot of suffering.Making pain meds out of materials from the poppy plant, Smolke emphasizes, is costly and unpredictable: Growing and transporting materials from the poppy is expensive, and whole poppy crops can easily be decimated by inclement weather.“Our supply chains and the way that we make these medicines is totally messed up,” Smolke says. Antheia’s yeast-based and lab-based way of making opioids might prove far cheaper and far more practical than using materials from the poppy. This in turn might dramatically improve the economics of selling pain medications in poorer parts of the world.“We really do need better medicines, not just better medicines for us in the U.S., but better medicines that can really have an impact globally,” Smolke believes.But perhaps the most tantalizing implication of Smolke’s work is the possibility of engineering the yeast to produce opioids with fewer side effects, including, potentially, addictiveness.“That’s where I really see the power and value of this technology,” Smolke believes. “We can actually make what the poppy can’t make,” she believes, hoping that “thus we can get to these higher-value, more sophisticated medicines more cheaply.”Down the road, it may be possible to “design” and mass-produce medicines with all the pain relieving qualities of today’s drugs but without the addictive properties that are killing so many people. (Opioid overdose took around 58,000 lives in the U.S. last year–more than the Vietnam War). If you can make (genetically engineer) the machine (the yeast) that makes the drug, you may be able to alter the machine to make a better, less dangerous drug.The yeast could potentially be the engine behind a new paradigm in pain management characterized by drugs, one that evolves past the current devil’s bargain people who are suffering physical discomfort have to make: choosing effective pain relief despite the high risk of addiction. It could also help bring more pain medicines to more people in the developing world; in many countries, lack of access is due in large part to government policies that severely limit access to opioid medications out of fears over their addictiveness.It’s a very hard problem. Scientists have tried many ways of removing harmful side effects (respiratory depression, constipation, nausea, addiction) from opioids, but so far it’s proved unworkable. The side effects are practically intrinsic to the poppy’s natural compounds–thebaine and morphine. Synthetic chemistry has largely failed to process them out, partly because of the complexity of the opioid molecules. Antheia would have to accomplish what the synthetic chemists could not by altering the metabolism of yeast.Short of designing addiction-free pain drugs, Antheia might find a more immediate niche making nalopioid ingredients for improved pain drugs.“They’re used to make the newer formulations that are coming on to the market that are abuse-deterrent, and extended release, and basically made so that there’s less likelihood for abuse and addiction,” Smolke says. Given current abuse rates, nalopioids are very likely a growth market.Nalopioids are also the key ingredient in opioid addiction therapy drugs like Suboxone, which limit the addicts’ cravings for opiates. The problem is, the drugs are so expensive that most insurers won’t cover them, and many addicts can’t afford them.Nalopioids are more expensive because they’re harder to make than more basic compounds like morphine. “They require heavy modification of the compounds that we get from the poppy,” Smolke says. Making nalopioids with yeast (instead of from poppies) could obviate the need for the expensive modifications. That means if the yeast proved to be a far less costly means of producing nalopioids, more people might get access to drugs like Suboxone.Big QuestionsIt’s hard to predict exactly how disruptive Antheia will be to the pharmaceutical world not only because it has yet to scale its production to commercial levels, but also because the drug industry and its prices depend on an unpredictable research and development process and on the stability of the poppy supply.Big Question No. 1 is how fast can Antheia scale its platform up to commercial production and start selling product?Smolke claims Antheia’s goal of commercialization might be closer than some realize. “There’s not a large understanding within that industry of how quickly this kind of technology can move and how quickly it’s being commercialized, mainly because there just hasn’t been a precedent for this.”Big Question No. 2 is whether or not Antheia will be able to sell its opioid compounds at a price low enough to undercut incumbent API providers even if poppy material prices drop?That one’s harder to answer. One prominent investor told me that while there’s readily available organic compound, it’s not as easy to see a viable opportunity for companies like Antheia. That’s a reasonable point of view. It’s not hard to find examples of startups that sought to market bio-alternative products but ultimately failed to consistently undercut the prices of incumbents’ products made using traditional methods.For its part, Antheia’s eventual production costs will depend on the way its yeast-based production model grows up from one yeast to thousands of yeast in one bioreactor, and from there to billions of yeast in a whole facility full of bioreactors.We’ll know in a year or two whether or not Antheia’s yeast can churn out enough molecules to challenge existing base compound providers like Mallenkrodt. A lot is riding on it. More than a decade of Christina Smolke’s life, for one thing, as well as the investment money from Handelsman and others.If Antheia proves it can sell enough opioid compounds at consistently lower prices than other suppliers, that would open the door to the platform churning out molecules for other high-value drugs–including, perhaps, less expensive nalopioids needed for the treatment of overdose and ongoing treatment of addicts. It would be a breakthrough of even larger proportion than Smolke et al’s proof in 2015 that yeast could produce opioids. It might immediately increase the influence of synthetic biology in the drug industry.Smolke believes it’s a tectonic change that must come to the industry sooner or later.“We co-opted a lot of molecules that nature happens to make to be some of our most important medicines,” she says. “The fact is that most of the medicines that we need are not going to come from nature directly, because these plants are not making these compounds for medicines for humans, they’re making them for their own purposes. We’re going to hit this wall.”It may take the work of small, determined startups like Antheia to be the catalysts that lead the industry toward new ways of making better drugs. It also may take people with the moxie, single-minded focus, and total commitment of Smolke, who was a scientist long before she was an entrepreneur, and still acts and speaks like one.“If we’re saying we want to move to this bio-economy, we want to really take biotechnology and genetic engineering to the next level and be able to make things, let’s really jump in–what are the most complex molecules we can potentially make? What’s complex and valuable?”“Then, let’s figure out how to do it,” Smolke says. “Let’s address the technical challenges, and why people are saying you can’t do it. It’s impossible, let’s figure out why that is, and let’s make it possible.”

Comments Related Extras Related Videos Video Transcript Transcript for Inside the first Amazon Go store Amy, thank you. Amazon go. A brand-new kind of convenience store. Opens today in Seattle. Somewhat the idea here? Reporter: Well, the idea starts with the fact, George, that Amazon dominates online sales. Why? Because they made shopping insanely easy. Click it, buy it, done, right? To grow the reach, they're bringing the convenience to the real world. Imagine a store with no lines and no cashiers. Well, it's now a reality. Today, the Amazon go convenience store in downtown Seattle is open to the public. What would shopping look like if you could walk to a store, grab what you want, and just go? Reporter: Stoppers need the app to event territory the store. They take the pruks they want and go. No checkout. Amazon has been a trend-certificate and they're shaib shaping the way millennials shop. And what they're going to expect from rel tailers going forward. Reporter: How does it know what you have taken? There are hundreds of cameras throughout the store. Amazon has the same technologies as those in self-driving cars, computer vision, and sensor fusion. When you leave, our technology adds up your cart. Your receipt is sent to the app. And you can keep going. This style of shopping targets the millennials. They're all about Smar smartphones. Saving time speed. They're Helt conscious, they want to see the labels. Is this vegan? Is this gluten-free? Is this dairy-free? Reporter: Amazon is not the only retailer trying to make checkout lines a thing of the past. At this wall mat outside Houston, scan as you go. And then check out. You may wonder about the 3.5 million cashier jobs in the United States. Walmart and Amazon say these jobs won't be in jeopardy if the stores spread. The company will change the roels of its employees. Amazon go. No lines. No checkout. No. Seriously. Reporter: And keep many H mind, to shop in this store, you need to have the Amazon app installed on your phone. Guess what else you'll do with the app? Buy more stuff from Amazon.com, of course. Of course you will. I know they have had a test store in their headweath quarters for awhile. You checked it out? Reporter: I did. They have been testing it with employees. The feedback is interesting. It's all about the food. No sloppy nachos. Fresh food. Dressing on the side. Gluten-free options. Amazon said instead of head count for sash sheers, they want to employ a ton of food prep people to make sure they can make fresh, healthy food available in these types of convene yeens stores. It's revolutionary. A little bit of the whole foods influence. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate. Is Amazon set to acquire Target? An influential analyst predicts Amazon will buy Target in 2018. Amazon announces final cities for new headquarters More than 200 communities made the pitch to be a second home to the e-commerce giant but only 20, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, made it into the next round.

The US has softened its contentious demand for a Nafta “sunset clause”, Mexico’s incoming trade negotiator said on Saturday, potentially eliminating a key obstacle to reaching a deal to revamp the trade pact.A few hours earlier, Donald Trump tweeted that the US could reach a “big Trade Agreement” with Mexico imminently.Jesús Seade, chief negotiator for Mexico’s next government, said the new US position would allow a periodic review of the North American Free Trade Agreement without an automatic expiration unless renegotiated every five years.“It’s going to come out,” Seade told reporters outside the US trade representative’s office. “It’s no longer what the United States was putting first in any way.”Seade said he and the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, were now discussing a periodic review process that would spare Nafta from automatic expiration unless new terms were agreed.A spokeswoman for Lighthizer’s office denied he had softened his position on the sunset clause, without further elaboration. The US and Mexico have been holding bilateral talks aimed at resolving differences in the Nafta renegotiation. Canada is also part of the agreement.Trump tweeted on Saturday morning that the US “relationship with Mexico is getting closer by the hour. Some really good people within both the new and old government, and all working closely together … a big Trade Agreement with Mexico could be happening soon!”Asked about Trump’s tweet, the Mexican economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, acknowledged some progress but told reporters in Washington before beginning another day of talks that the two countries were “not there yet”.“Nothing is done until everything is truly done,” he said. “Today will be an important day.”Trump prompted the Nafta revamp more than a year ago, complaining the pact has unfairly benefited Mexico. He made renegotiating Nafta one of his top campaign pledges and threatened to withdraw if it is not reworked to the advantage of the US.The US-Mexico talks have for weeks focused on crafting new rules for the automotive industry, which Trump has put at the center of his drive to rework the 24-year-old deal. Seade said the issue of auto sector rules was “basically resolved”, although some aspects, including time frames, were still being discussed.Seade also said on Saturday that a “correct focus” on Nafta’s energy chapter has been substantially agreed.Since Mexico’s 1 July presidential election, the Mexico-US talks have been complicated by divisions between the incoming and outgoing Mexican administrations over energy policy.The Mexican president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has resisted enshrining the 2013-14 opening of the oil and gas sector enacted by outgoing president Enrique Peña Nieto in the new Nafta, people close to the talks say.López Obrador opposed Peña Nieto’s energy reform, and the issue is divisive within his own camp. Business-friendly aides back greater outside investment in the industry, while his more nationalist allies want the oil to remain in Mexican hands. Topics Mexico Americas International trade Nafta news

MUNICH -- U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed Friday to an audience in Germany for countries to steer clear of Chinese tech giant Huawei as they build their next-generation cellular networks, adding her voice to pressure from the Trump administration.“China is seeking to export its digital autocracy through its telecommunication giant Huawei,” Pelosi said during an appearance at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of foreign and security leaders from around the world.“Nations cannot cede our telecommunication infrastructure to China for financial expediency,” Pelosi said. “Such an ill-conceived concession would only embolden (President) Xi (Jinping) as he undermines democratic values, human rights, economic independence and national security."Chinese domination of 5G "would be to choose autocracy over democracy," the speaker said. "We must instead move to an internationalization.”Pelosi's remarks underlined bipartisan suspicion of Huawei in the United States.The Trump administration has raised national security concerns about Huawei, the world's largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, and is aggressively lobbying Western allies to bar the company from wireless, high-speed networks.Trump administration officials, including Cabinet secretaries, say Huawei can give the Chinese government backdoor access to data, allegations the company rejects. The U.S. has been trying to have European nations ban the gear from next-generation cellular networks, but countries are shying away from banning it altogether.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper are also at the Munich conference.

After a blockbuster debate performance in June, Sen. Kamala Harris shot up in the national polls, peaking at 15 percent voter support. Cut to five months later, and she’s announced her decision to drop out, after polling in the single digits. Her departure — which comes before several candidates who are polling behind her — prompts a major question: What happened?According to pollsters and political experts Vox spoke to, part of Harris’s polling decline was due to the fact that it’s difficult to sustain a spike after a viral moment — and Harris didn’t do enough to fully capitalize on it. Harris’s subsequent debate performances, for example, were not seen as consistent enough to maintain that surge.What this polling swing also indicates, however, is that Harris, who’s still a new face to many voters, has had trouble growing her core base of support beyond what she had ahead of the June debate. Among the reasons for this: Her less-defined ideological positioning made it tougher to carve out a niche with voters — and coded assumptions about electability also affected her campaign. Additionally, as detailed by a New York Times report, her team struggled to find an effective campaign strategy as their fundraising reserves continued to dwindle.Harris alluded to this problem herself in a Medium post announcing her decision to drop out. “I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life,” Harris wrote. “My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue. ... In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do.”Coupled with fundraising, her central struggle appears to be a lack of consistent connection with voters. “Because her bump was based largely on the one event, it wasn’t really baked in, and voters looked around for another candidate that might excite their interest,” Monmouth University polling director Patrick Murray told Vox. “The bigger problem is that she did not have the kind of base in the early states that would have helped sustained her momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire, if not nationally.”According to YouGov Blue senior political analyst John Ray, 5 percent of Democratic primary voters definitively chose Harris as their No. 1 candidate before her viral debate moment in June, which means the polling slump she experienced brought her back to where she was before, roughly.Harris’s drop in support also coincided with surges for other 2020 candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, suggesting that some voters who may have initially backed her have since switched over. Below are three factors experts said have contributed to Harris’s decline in voter support over the past few months.Some of the slide Harris has seen in the polls is likely because her supporters have switched over to other candidates who have gained momentum.Warren, for example, has seen a massive surge buoyed by her focus on corporate accountability and structural change. Biden, too, has managed to hang onto a steady lead, including among a crucial contingency of African American voters. And South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has picked up support from predominantly white voters who are interested in his centrist approach. These three candidates are the ones early Harris supporters listed as their second choices in polling — and the data indicates that some of her previous backers may have moved over to them. In a Morning Consult poll in late July, 28 percent of the California senator’s supporters listed Warren as their second choice, while 26 percent picked Biden and 12 percent selected Buttigieg.“Harris has lost support in the last few months,” said Molly McInerney, communications and sales associate at pollster Change Research. “Our numbers suggest that the majority of those voters have gone to Warren, Biden, and Buttigieg.”Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said that the first time Harris really dropped, Biden was the one candidate who really rose. “Then later, as Harris dropped a bit more, we saw Warren as the candidate who at the same time surged,” Malloy said. “So it appears that Harris voters went first to Biden and then a bit to Warren.” Electability — or the ability of a candidate to beat President Donald Trump — remains top of mind for many Democratic voters. That’s meant a bevy of electability questions for progressive firebrands like Warren or Sanders, but Harris, a black woman, faced a particular set of assumptions tied to both gender and race.“This focus on beating Donald Trump in 2020 kind of sets her up, and others deemed ‘unelectable,’ for failure,” said Howard University political science professor Niambi Carter. “For many folks in the media and the public, Harris is not the prototypical candidate. She is not white; she is not old; and she is not male. ... This belief cannot help but to penetrate the general public’s perceptions of Harris, and for those still reeling from the 2016 election, they don’t want to risk it all again on a person like Kamala Harris.”Harris has explicitly called out these questions about electability and bias during her campaign, calling them the “elephant in the room” and noting that she’s won numerous races in which she encountered feedback about whether voters were “ready” for her candidacy.“I’m here to tell you guys that this is not a new conversation,” Harris has said in her stump speech. “In fact, I’ve heard this conversation in every campaign I have — and here is the operative word — won.”Harris supporters have also pointed to bias in the type of media coverage she receives. The framing of a question about transgender rights at an LGBTQ rights forum earlier this year, especially, prompted blowback when Warren and Harris were asked similar questions, but the one directed at Harris was viewed as far more critical.“As a black woman, I know from personal experience that Kamala has to work three times as hard as some of the other candidates in this race to get half as far,” said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, an organization dedicated to promoting women of color in politics. “Like Obama before her, she has to run a competitive campaign at the same time she’s convincing people she is competitive.”Though Harris had sought to build a broad coalition of voters, something she succeeded at during her Senate run, experts have said her muddled ideological positioning prevented her from establishing a specific lane of support. Harris, who is viewed as more moderate than multiple leading candidates, has also tried to court progressive voters — with limited success. One example: She backed Medicare-for-all, but then released a plan that doesn’t go quite as far as that of Sanders or Warren in eliminating private insurance. Additionally, Harris’s prosecutorial record has prompted critiques from liberals who argue that her approach toward issues such as truancy and wrongful convictions aren’t as progressive as she’s tried to frame them.“She’s in a no person’s land,” said San Jose State University political science professor Larry Gerston. “She is to the right of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, she’s to the left of Pete Buttigieg.”Harris’s initial bet on bringing the party together did not come to fruition, in part because of how crowded the field is — and how her competitors have been able to hang onto their core contingencies of support. “Looking at it now, she probably would have been better off staying in the center,” said Gerston, who argued that Harris’s efforts to establish herself as a progressive may have ultimately hurt her. Allison, meanwhile, said her move to the center was a misstep. “I think that defining herself as a moderate in this crowded field was a miscalculation about this political moment, especially when progressives are generating excitement and momentum based on bold health care and criminal justice reform plans,” Allison said.