News Digest

 As the use of artificial intelligence is expands, more small firms say they’re harnessing AI to help their businesses. In a survey by The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Teneo, nearly every small business — 98% — said they are utilizing a tool that is enabled by AI. Forty percent said they’re using generative AI tools like chatbots and image creation, nearly double from last year’s survey. Small business owners say finding the right AI tools helps them save on personnel costs and frees up time. But they also stress that human oversight is still a necessity. “AI allows small businesses — who many times do not have the staff or resources of their competitors — to punch above their weight,” said Jordan Crenshaw, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber’s Technology Engagement Center. “It’s encouraging to see small businesses embrace technology and express optimism for the future as these platforms serve as a catalyst for innovation and resilience.” Randy Speckman, who owns San Diego-ba...

 Kay Masterson has always wanted to make her Boston-area restaurant more sustainable, partnering with an organic farm to get some vegetables close by and offering reusable containers for customers’ takeout. When Massachusetts was weighing whether to block restaurants from dumping food waste into landfills, her restaurant started composting without waiting on a law. Right away, there were challenges: $3,000 a year for bins and pickup. Busy dishwashers could contaminate an entire bag of compostable materials by missing a single butter packet. And customers in the habit of just chucking their leftovers needed signage to get uneaten food into the right place. Masterson’s operation figured out those problems, but she knows not everyone will. “What’s hard is knowing that the restaurant industry is such a difficult industry, it’s been such a challenging few years. Our costs are constantly going up,” Masterson said. “People give up.” The difficulty of cutting food waste has spoiled several...

 More than 4 million people were without power on Friday morning after the enormous ring of wind and rain known as Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and moved north. It is the latest storm to show utility companies’ increasing vulnerability to extreme weather events that are becoming more common and more intense under climate change. “There are a lot of different signs of climate-related weather risks to infrastructure,” said Catie Hausman, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. Those risks include hurricanes and flooding, wildfires, heat waves and increased tornado risks or cold snaps in regions less used to them. Extreme weather has increasingly strained the grid, and it is the No. 1 cause of major power outages in the United States. In some areas of the country, the risk of hurricane-induced power outages could become 50 percent higher in the coming decades as such storms get stronger. Source: PowerOutage.us  All times on the map are Eastern. Da...

 New York was hit with an onslaught of record-breaking rain last September, leading to flash flooding across the city. As the storm pummeled the five boroughs, a leak sprung at Pace High School in Chinatown, soaking the rubber flooring of its basement gym. When the floor dried, it was bumpy and uneven, rendering it almost unusable. For months, the school’s pleas to the City Council for funding to replace it went unanswered. Then, in December, The Pacer, the high school’s student newspaper, ran a 700-word article on the worsening issue. This time, the City Council responded, agreeing to provide $750,000 for the gym’s renovation, according to the local council member and the school’s principal. It was a big win for the 4-year-old, student-run outlet — and it exemplified a vanishing experience for New York City’s students. Only 27 percent of public high schools in the city have a student newspaper, down from roughly 50 percent in 2009. The problem is even more stark at schools with ma...

 President Biden and Vice President Harris believe that health care is a right, not a privilege, and their administration has driven the uninsured rate to the lowest point in history. New data released today by the Treasury Department illustrates just how critical those steps have been to America’s small businesses – and how devastating it would be if Congressional Republicans succeed in their efforts to repeal the ACA, roll back protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and increase American’s health care costs by failing to extend the ACA premium tax credits that President Biden and Vice President Harris passed, that are lowering health care costs by hundreds of dollars per year for millions of Americans. The fact is that millions of small business owners would lose health insurance if the ACA is repealed.   Statement from the President: “Every time someone starts a new small business, it’s an act of hope and confidence in our economy. Thanks to my and Vice Presid...

 Our nation’s lakes, rivers, streams, estuaries, and wetlands are fundamental to the health, prosperity, and resilience of our communities and are held sacred by many Tribal Nations. They are not only the sources of clean drinking water that flows into the taps of our homes, but are also economic drivers supporting jobs and outdoor recreation across the nation. By absorbing and storing carbon, our nation’s waterways and wetlands – and the forests, grasslands, and farmlands they nourish – also play a critical role in the fight against climate change. Since Day One, the Biden-Harris Administration has worked to secure clean water for all communities, protect our vital freshwater resources, and mitigate the impacts of drought. Given that communities often acutely experience the climate crisis through water-related impacts – from floods and droughts to polluted drinking sources and waterways – this Administration is making historic investments through President Biden’s Investing in Ame...

 Today, President Biden and Vice President Harris are announcing a new Executive Order directing federal agencies to improve school-based active shooter drills and combat the emerging threats of machinegun conversion devices and unserialized, 3D-printed firearms, as well as additional executive actions that advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s agenda to reduce gun violence and save lives. After the prior Administration oversaw the largest one-year increase in murders ever recorded, President Biden and Vice President Harris took action from the start of their Administration to reduce violent crime. The President and the Vice President helped deliver over $15 billion in funding through the American Rescue Plan for law enforcement, community violence interventions, and other public safety strategies. By the middle of 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration had already announced more executive actions to reduce gun violence than any other administration. Then, on June 25, 2022, Pres...

 Break-ins and thefts can happen at any small business, no matter how tight the security. In the retail sector alone, more than half of small businesses said they had been victims of shoplifting in the prior year, according to a 2022 survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And break-ins and thefts occur across all sectors. So, it is important for small business owners to prepare in advance and have a plan for dealing with a break-in or theft, to minimize damage. Roxie Lubanovic, co-founder of Frostbeard Studio in Minneapolis, which makes candles, had her studio broken into in 2016 over a holiday weekend. Thieves stole equipment and supplies, then damaged locks and doors getting in and out. Insurance covered the losses, but it was still difficult recovering. “The hardest part was feeling violated in a space we had put so much work into,” she said. How small businesses can recover from break-ins and theft | AP News

 Sometimes, panics are overblown. Sometimes, older generations are just freaking out about the youngs, as they have since time immemorial. That’s not the case, unfortunately, with kids’ learning right now, more than four years after the pandemic shuttered classrooms and disrupted the lives of millions of children. The effects were seen almost immediately, as students’ performance in reading and math began to dip far below pre-pandemic norms, worrying educators and families around the country. Even now, according to a new report released this week by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), a research group at Arizona State University that has studied the impact of Covid on education since 2020, the average American student is “less than halfway to a full academic recovery” from the effects of the pandemic. The report — the group’s third annual analysis of the “state of the American student” — combines test scores and academic research with parent interviews to paint a pic...

 Satellite data shows the U.S. releasing more and more of the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, researchers said, despite pledges to cut back. The United States’ booming fossil-fuel industry continues to emit more and more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, new research showed, despite a U.S.-led effort to encourage other countries to cut emissions globally. Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and “one of the worst performers in our study is the U.S., even though it was an instigator of the Global Methane Pledge,” said Antoine Halff, the co-founder of Kayrros, the environmental data company issuing the report. “Those are red flags.” Much of the world’s efforts to combat climate change focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which result largely from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, and whose heat-trapping particles can linger in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But methane’s effects on the climate — which have earned it t...

 Drug overdose deaths are decreasing sharply across the country, according to recent state and federal data, a dramatic improvement in the nation’s efforts to reverse the consequences of fentanyl’s spread in the illicit drug supply. Between April 2023 and April 2024, overdose deaths declined by about 10 percent nationally to roughly 101,000, according to preliminary data published recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That amounted to the largest decrease on record, according to the Biden administration. Nonfatal overdoses are also down more than 10 percent. The data suggests that some of the tools used to combat opioid overdoses, such as naloxone, the overdose-reversing medication, were having a significant impact. But researchers and federal and state health officials have puzzled over the exact reasons for the decrease, including why overdoses have fallen so much in recent months. The pace of the decline “is such an anomaly in the last 20 years,” said Nabar...

 Today, the White House launched the U.S. Strategy on Global Development to codify the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment and work over the past four years to accelerate development progress in pursuit of a world that is more free, open, prosperous, and secure.  Our approach to global development – rooted in partnership, transparency, and a commitment to sustainable outcomes – positions the United States to better meet the challenges of today and tomorrow in coordination with global partners.  The world is at a critical moment.  People around the globe are struggling to cope with the effects of compounding crises and challenges that cross borders – whether it is climate change, food insecurity, pandemics, or fragility and conflict.  At the same time, in this age of interdependence in which we must find new and better ways to work together to confront shared challenges, geopolitical competition is also reshaping the global development system.  Our affi...

 Critical minerals are essential building blocks of the modern economy and our energy security, from clean energy technologies like high-capacity batteries and wind turbines to semiconductors, advanced defense systems, and consumer electronics. Over the past several decades, China has cornered the market for processing and refining of key critical minerals, leaving the U.S. and our allies and partners vulnerable to supply chain shocks and undermining economic and national security. As the world builds a clean energy economy, demand for critical minerals is projected to grow exponentially.   President Biden recognized this challenge and took immediate action. In his first weeks in office, he signed Executive Order 14017, America’s Supply Chains, which mandated a 100-day review of U.S. critical mineral supply chains. Following the report’s recommendations, the Biden-Harris Administration has mobilized historic resources to strengthen domestic critical minerals supply chains, fro...

 The American auto industry has driven the U.S. manufacturing base for generations, and the Biden-Harris Administration is ensuring that the future of the auto industry is made in America by American union workers. Today, National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard is traveling to Detroit, Michigan to convene the Michigan Workforce Hub and announce a suite of new actions to support automakers and auto workers, with an emphasis on historic auto communities in Michigan. The Michigan Workforce Hub is one of nine Investing in America Workforce Hubs launched by the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure all Americans can access the good jobs created by the Biden-Harris Investing in America agenda. Today’s announcement builds on the actions that Vice President Harris announced in May to support small- and medium-sized auto manufacturers with access to capital to expand or retool manufacturing facilities, new workforce training resources, and new technical assistance programs. “I believe in an...

 Chinese automakers are seeking to dominate connected vehicle technologies in the United States and globally, posing new threats to our national security, including through our supply chains. The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring that our automotive supply chains are resilient and secure from foreign threats.   Today, President Biden is announcing strong action to protect America from the national security risks associated with connected vehicle technologies from countries of concern. The Department of Commerce is issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would, if finalized as proposed, prohibit the sale or import of connected vehicles that incorporate certain technology and the import of particular components themselves from countries of concern, specifically the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia.   The announcement is the next step in a process President Biden announced in February, 2024. This NPRM incorporates public feedback sub...

 Consumer demand for drinks that offer added health benefits — known as functional beverages — is booming, and manufacturers are giving us what we demand. Olipop is just one of a growing group of “prebiotic” sodas, which claim to give a boost to the good bacteria in your gut microbiome. And prebiotic sodas are themselves just one of a cascade of these so-called functional beverages that are taking up increasing space in the global drink aisle. Worldwide, the market for these products exceeds $150 billion, and it’s expected to top $200 billion in the next 4 years, with millennials twice as likely to consume them as any other age group in 2023. The proliferation of drinks in this category peaked just before the pandemic, but consumer demand for them has been on the rise ever since, jumping more than 50 percent in the US since 2020. Wanting our beverages to do more than just quench our thirst isn’t a new phenomenon (see also: coffee; booze; whatever people sipped from the Holy Grail)....

 Back in 2016, Vox asked 270 scientists to name the biggest problems facing science. Many of them agreed that the constant search for funding, brought on by the increasingly competitive grant system, serves as one of the biggest barriers to scientific progress. Even though we have more scientists throwing more time and resources at projects, we seem to be blocked on big questions — like how to help people live healthier for longer — and that has major real-world impacts. Grants are funds given to researchers by the government or private organizations, ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for a specific project. Most grant applications are very competitive. Only about 20 percent of applications for research project grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds the vast majority of biomedical research in the US, are successful. If you do get a grant, they usually expire after a few years — far less time than it normally takes to make ground...

 Obstetricians are more likely to give Black women unnecessary cesarean sections, putting those women at higher risk for serious complications like ruptured surgical wounds. That’s the conclusion of a new report of nearly one million births in 68 hospitals in New Jersey, one of the largest studies to tackle the subject. Even if a Black mother and a white mother with similar medical histories saw the same doctor at the same hospital, the Black mother was about 20 percent more likely to have her baby via C-section, the study found. The additional operations on Black patients were more likely to happen when hospitals had no scheduled C-sections, meaning their operating rooms were sitting empty. That suggests that racial bias paired with financial incentives played a role in doctors’ decision-making, the researchers said. How that bias creeps in is not entirely clear. Doctors may rush to perform a C-section faster for Black women, worried about the well-known racial disparities in chil...

 In his recent advisory on parents’ mental health, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek M. Murthy, said out loud what many parents might have only furtively admitted: Parenting today is too hard and stressful. Of course, there have always been concerns about families’ well-being. And while some of today’s parents’ fears are newer — cellphones, school shootings, fentanyl — parents have always worried about their children. So why has parental stress risen to the level of a rare surgeon general’s warning about an urgent public health issue — putting it in the same category as cigarettes and AIDS? It’s because today’s parents face something different and more demanding: the expectation that they spend ever more time and money educating and enriching their children. These pressures, researchers say, are driven in part by fears about the modern-day economy — that if parents don’t equip their children with every possible advantage, their children could fail to achieve a secure, mi...