THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

With more and more common medications losing their ability to fight dangerous infections, and few new drugs in the pipeline, the world is facing an imminent crisis that could lead to millions of deaths, a surge in global poverty and an even wider gap between rich and poor countries, the United Nations warned in a report on Monday.

Drug-resistant infections already claim 700,000 lives a year, including 230,000 deaths from drug-resistant tuberculosis, the report said. The rampant overuse of antibiotics and antifungal medicines in humans, livestock and agriculture is accelerating a crisis that is poorly understood by the public and largely ignored by world leaders. Without concerted action, a United Nations panel said, resistant infections could kill 10 million people annually by 2050 and trigger an economic slowdown to rival the global financial crisis of 2008.

The problem threatens people around the world. During the next 30 years, the United Nations experts said, 2.4 million people in Europe, North America and Australia could die from drug-resistant infections, making routine hospital procedures like knee-replacement surgery and child birth far riskier than they are today.

“This is a silent tsunami,” said Dr. Haileyesus Getahun, director of the U.N. Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, which spent two years working on the report. “We are not seeing the political momentum we’ve seen in other public health emergencies, but if we don’t act now, antimicrobial resistance will have a disastrous impact within a generation.”

The report’s dire predictions seek to raise public awareness and shake political leaders into action. It proposes a series of measures that health officials say could help stem the rise of drug-resistant pathogens. The recommendations include a worldwide ban on the use of medically important antibiotics for promoting growth in farm animals; financial incentives for drug companies to develop new antimicrobial compounds; and more stringent rules to limit the sale of antibiotics in countries where drugs can often be bought at convenience stores without a prescription.

The report also highlights underappreciated factors in the spread of drug-resistant germs: the lack of clean water and inadequate sewage systems that sicken millions of people in the developing world. Many of them are too poor to see a doctor and instead buy cheap antibiotics from street vendors with little medical expertise. Sometimes they unknowingly purchase counterfeit drugs, a problem that leads to millions of deaths, most of them in Africa.

// posted by montag @ 1:50 PM 0 Comments

Congress last passed a broad disaster relief package in February 2018, when lawmakers slipped nearly $90 billion into a wide-ranging spending agreement. In the year since, record-breaking natural disasters have ravaged the country: wildfires in California, hurricanes in Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas, and floods across Iowa, Nebraska and much of the rest of the Midwest.

But efforts to wrangle a relief package through Congress — typically a seamless feat of bipartisanship — have repeatedly failed, not because senators do not want to help people like Mr. Cohen, some of whom cannot yet reach their land, but because President Trump does not want to give more money to Puerto Rico.

Democrats are not giving up their effort to increase aid to the island, a United States territory devastated by hurricanes in 2017, as Democratic senators push to match what their House counterparts have already approved. But Senate Republicans, wary of challenging Mr. Trump, say they have acquiesced enough — and unlike the states covered in the package, Puerto Rico has already received some financial aid.

And even with some discussions among staff members over the recess, Congress’s return on Monday is unlikely to yield a quick resolution, leaving hundreds of farmers who have already been battered by Mr. Trump’s trade war and low commodity prices stranded during prime planting season.

“In a time of crisis, you’re supposed to let that kind of stuff go so you can run toward the fire with water and help,” said John K. Hansen, the president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “We still have folks fighting over whether you should use a bucket.”

In interviews this past week, several farmers across the country said the debate hundreds of miles away in Washington had left them in limbo, wary of moving forward without the promise of federal aid. Outside their state governments, which have allocated money, and their delegations, the farmers said, few politicians understand the scope of the damage for their families and their communities.

And some worry that the less tangible consequences — their ability to provide food to the country, support their communities and maintain the legacy of agriculture for their children — will go unnoticed.

“There’s heritage in this stuff,” said Jeff Jorgenson, 43, a third-generation farmer, as he stood in front of one of the submerged corn fields he oversees in Fremont County, Iowa. “We have to take care of what came before us.”

“I hope I can have the next generation do this,” he said.

Even when aid packages reach the president’s desk, it often takes months for the money to make it to farmers. Some in Georgia who lost crops in the 2017 hurricane season did not start receiving money allocated in the February 2018 package until the end of that summer, before Hurricane Michael — making landfall as a Category 5 storm — swept away what many deemed to be a perfect crop of cotton and downed pecan trees days away from harvest.

“To say they’re dissatisfied is to say it very lightly,” said Gary W. Black, Georgia’s commissioner of agriculture. “I think it’s grossly unfair to them.”

// posted by montag @ 1:44 PM 0 Comments

If Italy had its way, there would be no such thing as Ukrainian parmesan. Or American parmesan. In fact, there would be no generic parmesan whatsoever — only Parmigiano-Reggiano, produced inside a small patch of Italian countryside, under exacting specifications, at one of 330 dairies whose cheese wheels are tested with percussion hammers and then branded with markings of authenticity if they pass muster.

Italy is doing what it can to reclaim its signature cheese, as well as other mimicked food and alcohol products, in a campaign combining old food traditions and some new nationalistic sentiment.

In Brussels, Italian diplomats are pressing the European Union to protect Italian foods in trade deals being negotiated with other nations. In Rome, the government team of self-described food cops is signing agreements with online marketplaces to crack down on the Internet sale of faux Italian wines, sausages, cheeses, among others. And the country’s populist leaders — with their “Italians First” slogans — are bashing “Made in Italy” food knockoffs while extolling the greatness of Italian cuisine.

Within the European Union, foods and wines linked historically to a particular region are categorized as “geographical origin” products. And they are fiercely protected inside of the bloc. The sale of generic parmesan, for instance, is banned in Europe. Other foods with European protection include Asiago, Roquefort, Morbier, the ham called Prosciutto di Parma, and Grana Padano, a Parmigiano cousin. When hashing out trade deals, Europe has tried to press other countries to apply a version of those protections.

But in the many places where European rules don’t apply, parmesan has become the perfect emblem for the debate over whether a nationally significant food can and should be appropriated, and even tweaked, by foreigners. Parmigiano-Reggiano is trademarked in the United States and most other countries, and the term cannot be used for non-Italian cheese. With parmesan, though, producers have nothing stopping them.

Much of the cheese-loving world says Italy is refusing to let food culture evolve. You might need healthy cows and good workers to make delicious parmesan, they say, but you don’t need Italian soil.

Italians, though, say their defense of Parmigiano is rooted in a mix of good taste, economics and sense that they are upholding culinary commandments. The consortium that regulates domestic Parmigiano production estimates Italy is losing billions of euros because of “counterfeits.” Dairy farmers and producers here worry that foreigners have gotten accustomed to weaker-tasting, imitation parmesan — and could lose faith in a cheese whose name means, literally, “From Parma.”

// posted by montag @ 1:39 PM 0 Comments

Over the past two years, nearly 1,200 of the state’s dairy farms have stopped milking cows and so far this year, another 212 have disappeared, with many shifting production to beef or vegetables. The total number of herds in Wisconsin is now below 8,000 — about half as many as 15 years ago. In 2018, 49 Wisconsin farms filed for bankruptcy — the highest of any state in the country, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The fate of Wisconsin’s farmers is a high-stakes political predicament for Mr. Trump, who narrowly won the pivotal swing state in 2016 and hopes to keep it red in 2020. On Saturday, Mr. Trump will travel to Green Bay, Wis., for a campaign rally where he is expected to trumpet his trade policies, like the revised North American Free Trade Agreement, which is supposed to bolster American dairy exports to Canada.

But Mr. Trump’s trade approach has pushed many of Wisconsin’s already struggling dairy farmers to the edge. Milk prices have fallen nearly 40 percent over the past five years, the byproduct of economic and technological forces that have made milk easier to produce and state policies that ramped up production and sent prices tumbling.

That has coincided with Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, which were intended to help American manufacturers but have set off retaliatory tariffs from Mexico, Canada, Europe and China on American dairy products. Most painful for Wisconsin’s dairy farmers has been a 25 percent tariff that Mexico placed on American cheese, which is made with a significant volume of the state’s milk production.

Mr. Trump has insisted that any short-term pain from his trade war will pay off in the long run through improved access to foreign markets. And he has tried to mitigate the effect by providing federal aid to farmers whose products have been hurt by the trade war. But the crumbling of Wisconsin’s flagship dairy industry has some farmers questioning whether Mr. Trump’s promises will come true in time to save their farms.

“Low dairy prices have made it so hard for small farms to hang on,” said Josh Murray, 22, who is studying animal science and helping his family try to transition the farm to beef. While the Murrays received about $400 from Mr. Trump’s farm aid program, it was not enough to keep their milking operations afloat.

“In every aspect, it’s not worth it — it’s not worth the fight,” he said.

For many farmers who have been transitioning away from milk to other products, the trade wars have been the final straw. The warning signs have been flashing for a while, as milk prices declined precipitously in the last five years to below $17 per 100 pounds from almost $26. The rise of corporate farms and more efficient milking processes have led to an oversupply as consumption of milk has waned nationally.

// posted by montag @ 1:47 PM 0 Comments

The Pentagon is preparing to approve a loosening of rules that bar troops from interacting with migrants entering the United States, expanding the military’s involvement in President Trump’s operation along the southern border.

Senior Defense Department officials have recommended that acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan approve a new request from the Department of Homeland Security to provide military lawyers, cooks and drivers to assist with handling a surge of migrants along the southern border.

The move would require authorizing waivers for more than 300 troops to a long-standing policy prohibiting military personnel from coming into contact with migrants.

The Pentagon has approved only one previous request to waive the policy since the beginning of Trump’s recent border buildup, in order to provide migrants with emergency medical care if required. There are about 2,900 active-duty and 2,000 National Guard troops along the border.

According to internal Pentagon documents obtained by The Washington Post, the requested expansion of military activity along the border would cost an estimated $21.9 million through the end of fiscal year 2019. [To come from one of the many Pentagon slush funds]

In a sign of the sensitivities surrounding a move that might be seen as putting troops in a law enforcement role, the documents note that military personnel would remain in a “segregated driver’s compartment” when driving migrants to detention facilities. Customs and Border Protection officials would provide security on those trips.

Likewise, when they are asked to distribute food to migrants in detention facilities and periodically “document the provision of care” of those detained migrants, they would be accompanied at all times by law enforcement personnel.

As part of the proposal, military attorneys meanwhile would assist with deportation hearings in New Mexico, Louisiana and New York.

All of those activities, the documents note, require Shanahan to “grant a temporary exception to the ‘no contact with migrants’ policy.’ ” The documents also note that military personnel are barred from undertaking law enforcement activities in keeping with the Posse Comitatus Act.

// posted by montag @ 1:40 PM 0 Comments

In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election.

President Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president.

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections.

As a result, the issue did not gain the urgency or widespread attention that a president can command. And it meant that many Americans remain unaware of the latest versions of Russian interference.

This account of Ms. Nielsen’s frustrations was described to The New York Times by three senior Trump administration officials and one former senior administration official, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. The White House did not provide comment after multiple requests on Tuesday.

The opening page of the Worldwide Threat Assessment, a public document compiled by government intelligence agencies that was delivered to Congress in late January, warned that “the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections.”

“Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians,” the report noted. It also predicted that “Moscow may employ additional influence tool kits — such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-and-leak operations or manipulating data — in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions and elections.”

By comparison, cyberthreats have taken a back seat among security priorities at the White House.

Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator at the White House last year, leaving junior aides to deal with the issue. In January, Ms. Nielsen fumed when 45 percent of her cyberdefense work force was furloughed during the government shutdown.

Ms. Nielsen grew so frustrated with White House reluctance to convene top-level officials to come up with a governmentwide strategy that she twice pulled together her own meetings of cabinet secretaries and agency heads. They included top Justice Department, F.B.I. and intelligence officials to chart a path forward, many of whom later periodically issued public warnings about indicators that Russia was both looking for new ways to interfere and experimenting with techniques in Ukraine and Europe.

One senior official described homeland security officials as adamant that the United States government needed to significantly step up its efforts to urge the American public and companies to block foreign influence campaigns. But the department was stymied by the White House’s refusal to discuss it, the official said.

// posted by montag @ 1:19 PM 0 Comments