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Luna Rossa and American Magic youth teams both booked their spot in the Youth America’s Cup Final after a thrilling day of Semi-Final racing in Barcelona The stage is set for a thrilling showdown in the UniCredit Youth America’s Cup Final, as Italy’s Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and American Magic secured their spots in the…
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to announce new proposals focused on boosting U.S. manufacturing in a speech at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, according to a senior campaign official.
The proposals are part of a broader effort to frame Harris as a partner, not an antagonist, to the business community as Donald Trump works to define her as “Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate.”
With 41 days until the November election, the Harris campaign sees the Pittsburgh address as an opportunity to erode Trump’s edge on the economy, which it believes is slipping.
Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S., September 20, 2024.
Jim Vondruska | Reuters
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to announce new campaign proposals focused on boosting U.S. manufacturing in a speech Wednesday at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, according to a senior campaign official.
The proposals are part of a broader effort to frame Harris as a partner, not an antagonist, to the business community, said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about a speech that is not yet public.
Harris’ address will outline a “pragmatic” economic philosophy rooted in capitalism, innovation and an understanding of government’s limitations, rather than one “bound by ideology,” the official said.
The vice president will attempt to present her openness to the private sector as a means of growing the middle class, which has so far been the focal point of her nascent economic platform.
The speech will serve as a direct counterpoint to attacks from Harris’ Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, who has been working to define Harris as an extremist — he referred to her as “Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate” in a social media post Sept. 12 — and a threat to the U.S. economy.
“If Kamala Harris gets four more years, she will deindustrialize the United States and destroy our country,” Trump said Tuesday at an event in Savannah, Georgia, where he also rolled out new manufacturing proposals.
During his Georgia speech, Trump said if he were elected to a second term, he would introduce an expanded tax credit for research and development expenses, appoint a specialized “manufacturing ambassador” and impose hardline tariffs on imports, which he said would incentivize domestic production.
In her rebuttal Wednesday, Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, also plans to highlight her middle-class upbringing and her political resume, the campaign official said.
She will point to her two terms as California attorney general, during which she collaborated with companies to manage privacy concerns about early mobile apps. Harris will also draw on her work as vice president to deliver more capital to community banks and small businesses.
Read more CNBC politics coverage
For most of her eight-week-old presidential campaign, Harris’ economic pitch has dovetailed neatly with President Joe Biden’s agenda.
Harris has focused on lowering the costs of food, housing and child care, in part by accusing corporate America of “price gouging,” or manipulating and inflating consumer prices to far exceed producers’ costs, resulting in soaring profit margins that are untethered from productivity.
In August, Harris went so far as to propose a federal ban on so-called price gouging in the food and grocery sectors.
But that idea was panned by economists from across the political spectrum, who argued that little evidence exists to suggest that corporate price fixing is a primary driver of high prices.
Over the past several weeks, Harris has softened her rhetoric toward corporate America.
Last Wednesday, for example, in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Harris condemned price gouging, but quickly clarified that only a handful of corporations actually engage in it.
“Some corporations, and it’s very few of them that do this, but they jack up prices to make it more difficult for desperate people to just get by,” Harris said.
Wednesday’s speech could be the latest step in Harris’ tone shift, with less of Biden’s corporate scolding, and more of his industrial policy goals.
The campaign official noted, however, that Harris will also make clear that she is “unafraid to hold bad actors accountable if she needs to.”
With just 41 days until Election Day and voters in several states already casting early ballots, the Harris campaign sees her Pittsburgh address as an opportunity to continue chipping away at Trump’s longstanding edge with voters when it comes to the economy.
Recent polls suggest Harris’ efforts on this front are already bearing fruit.
The Financial Times-Michigan Ross September poll of 1,002 registered voters found Harris with a slim 2 percentage-point lead over Trump on the economy.
The poll was taken in the two days following the first Harris-Trump presidential debate on Sept. 10.
Harris’ slight 2-point advantage was within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, but reflected Harris catching up to her Republican opponent.
Several other high-quality polls conducted after the debate show Harris narrowing Trump’s advantage with voters on economic issues by double digits, including polls from AP-NORC, NBC News and Fox News.
WASHINGTON — The Secret Service made a series of “foreseeable” and “preventable” mistakes in the lead-up to the first attempt to assassinate Donald Trump in July that allowed a gunman to fire shots that killed a Trump rally attendee and grazed the Republican presidential nominee’s ear, senators in both parties charge.The Senate Homeland Security Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a joint interim report in their investigation of the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting Wednesday that responsibilities weren’t clearly defined ahead of the July 13 rally and that personnel they interviewed who were responsible for planning have “deflected blame.”While the Secret Service has acknowledged “ultimate responsibility” for the failure to prevent Trump’s being struck by a bullet, the report says key Secret Service personnel “declined to acknowledge individual areas of responsibility for planning or security as having contributed to the failure to prevent the shooting that day.”The report also highlights the types of technological issues that are common within massive federal bureaucracies like the Secret Service.Among the errors identified by the report: The Secret Service knew that snipers with local law enforcement planned to set up inside the building where the shooter ultimately fired from, rather than on the roof. Communications were siloed, and the Secret Service “did not ensure it could share information with local law enforcement partners in real time,” the report says.Another example in the report: After a sniper with local law enforcement texted the leader of the Secret Service counter-sniper team about the man who would soon fire shots at Trump, it took seven minutes for the Secret Service leader to send an email relaying the information and photos. It’s unclear how long it then took the other members of the Secret Service sniper team to read the email — titled “Local CS BOLO,” meaning “be on the lookout” — and a counter-sniper team member said the email was “worded vaguely.”The report also noted that other components within the Secret Service rejected requests from Trump’s detail, including a request for counter-assault team liaisons to coordinate tactical teams that day.The Secret Service released its own internal report last week.Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs the investigations subcommittee, said the Secret Service engaged in an “Abbott and Costello kind of ‘Who’s on First?’ finger-pointing in the aftermath” of the attack.Blumenthal stressed that the report is interim and said there are a lot of unanswered questions, adding that the Department of Homeland Security had been “less forthcoming” than the American people need and deserve.“If I had to point to one solution here … chain of command would be at the very top of the list,” Blumenthal said.“I think that we ought to be aghast and astonished at the kind of loosey-goosey walk-through on the site, the failure to share intelligence,” he said. “What happened here was really an accumulation of errors that produced a perfect storm of stunning failure. In a sense, a lot of these individual failings, if corrected at the time, might have prevented this tragedy. And, clearly, it was a tragedy. A man died, a former president was almost killed, and it was completely preventable from the outset.”Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., noted the “interim” nature of the report as evidence that the investigation continues.“Our report was bipartisan, as well,” Peters told NBC News. “So we take the politics out of it, just look at the facts, and the more facts we put out, people will have a better idea of what actually happened.”Peters stressed that it was “absolutely important to get facts out as quickly as possible, because conspiracy theories will always arise whenever there’s a void of information.”Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a Trump supporter who previously suggested that the Jan. 6 riot was largely a “peaceful protest” aside from some “agitators,” has also suggested without evidence that the government could have played a role in the shooting. He argued Tuesday that the Secret Service was “stonewalling” the congressional investigation.”They are slow-walking this investigation. I think that this committee needs to start issuing subpoenas,” said Johnson, the top Republican on the investigations subcommittee. “This is a management problem, plain and simple. You can keep throwing money at it, but unless you fix the management problem, you’re not going to fix the problem.”The report also noted the Secret Service bureaucracy and its struggles with technological innovation and efficient communications.The agency used a Counter Unmanned Aircraft System in Butler to try to deal with unmanned drones — like the one Trump’s attempted assassin used that day — but the advance agent operating the device immediately had issues with it, according to the report. The agent then moved the device away from satellite trucks that were at the rally but still had issues. Even after an 888 tech support hotline run by the manufacturer was called, the system wasn’t working, according to the report.Eventually, someone from the tech support unit said components of the system weren’t communicating, and the agent borrowed an Ethernet cable from the Trump campaign personnel in charge of audio-visual productions and finally got the system to work at 4:33 p.m., according to the report.The only problem, according to the report, was that Trump’s attempted assassin had stopped flying his drone about a half-hour earlier, taking an 11-minute flight starting at 3:51 p.m.
Five of Imperial’s most exciting clean tech startups have showcased their innovative solutions for sustainability issues in New York City.
As part of Imperial College London’s visit to New York for Climate Week, startups led by alumni from the university’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem highlighted their work to build a climate resilient future.
“Creating deeper connections with the US will accelerate advances in science and technology to tackle global grand challenges such as climate change.” Professor Hugh Brady President of Imperial College London
The event, which brought together alumni, regional partners, policymakers, investors and founders, was hosted by Professor Mary Ryan, Imperial’s Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise), and featured opening remarks from Imperial’s President, Professor Hugh Brady, and Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Undaunted, Imperial’s climate change innovation hub, run in partnership with the Royal Institution.
The five startups who showcased at the event were:
Notpla – winners of Prince William’s £1m Earthshot Prize who have created seaweed-based alternatives to single-use plastics. Their technology has reached full industrialisation, with millions of units sold across nine EU countries and the US.
ToffeeX – leaders in physics-driven generative design used by the world’s leading engineering organisations to accelerate their path to sustainability, working with companies such as Toyota, Airbus and Rolls-Royce.
Cyanoskin – an innovative ‘living paint’ designed to transform buildings into carbon dioxide-absorbing structures, providing a cost-effective tool for reducing emissions and addressing urban pollution.
Multus Biotechnology Ltd – a technology company working on developing affordable growth media for cultivated meat products, aiming to make the production of cultivated meat accessible to all at scale.
Team Repair – an award-winning team designing electronics repair kits for children to build their confidence in STEM and teach them skills to tackle the e-waste crisis.
Antoinette Nothomb from Cyanoskin presenting at the startup showcase.
Speaking at the event, Professor Brady highlighted the importance of collaboration between the UK and the US, which is why Imperial recently announced its first physical presence in the US with a new Imperial Global hub located in San Francisco.
Professor Brady said: “Imperial Global USA will strengthen Imperial’s academic and industry partnerships, showcase our education portfolio to new audiences, engage our fantastic alumni, encourage exchange of top talent and link our founders to new innovation ecosystems.
“Creating deeper connections with the US will accelerate advances in science and technology to tackle global grand challenges such as climate change.”
Read more about Imperial Global USA here.
Sustainable Imperial
As a world-leader in climate change research, Imperial is committed to developing and supporting technologies that address the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
In addition to this work, the university announced a set of new sustainability initiatives in Spring 2024 as part of its ongoing commitment to a sustainable, zero pollution future, including an ambitious plan to achieve a net zero estate by 2040.
Imperial also recently announced that it would be among the first universities to adopt a new sustainability initiative to improve research and innovation practices – the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice.
The university’s commitment to improving sustainability on its campuses was recently recognised in the QS World University Rankings for 2025, which ranked Imperial among the world’s top ten universities for ‘Sustainability’, placing it in sixth position.
Attempting to stay clear of Washington due to its controversial approach to Liberian relations is an old playbook. No President of the West African nation has ever survived the dilemma without caving into Washington or suffering consequences since the creation of the state, but it has been more intrusive during the Second Republic. From William R. Tolbert’s “Mat to Mattress” policy to Charles G. Taylor’s “VISION 2024,” the outcomes have impacted the presidency and the stability of the Liberian nation-state — with far-reaching consequences. Any rational analysis will come to this logical conclusion — except one blinded by hypocrisy or cowardice: Liberia-Washington relations require re-evaluation, with the goal of creating a new engagement model, as cutting ties isn’t an option, and the two remain asymmetrically interdependent.
By Michael Francis Tarr
Joseph Boakai is not the first president to show signs of growing weary or to explore alliances with countries that have competing economic and geopolitical interests with Washington. China, Russia, and the former USSR have been on the horizon to exploit any kink in Liberia-Washington relations. William R. Tolbert, Samuel K. Doe, and Charles G. Taylor took the same path, with similarly catastrophic results. Recent whispers from sources close to Boakai suggest that he believes Washington will not provide substantial support for the success of his government, prompting his gradual shift toward China. But this is suicidal and may only be overlooked by those who have paid little or no attention to U.S.-Liberia relations over the last few decades. Pages 243–247 of the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report shed light on this.
Since its founding, Liberia has always been solely influenced by Washington for economic, military, and geopolitical reasons. The Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), National Security Agency (NSA), ship registry (Maritime), and the extractive sector have all been heavily influenced by this relationship. For example, when Great Britain was positioned to monopolize rubber production, Firestone’s establishment in Liberia in 1926 effectively ended that dominance. Projects like the building of the Omega tower and Roberts International Airport, among others, were all infrastructural undertakings championed by Washington for military operations to secure a foothold in Africa and beyond.
Unlike Boakai, William R. Tolbert led a country with an economy with stronger fundamentals. He believed that making the country self-reliant on food and addressing other bread-and-butter issues would improve the lives of the people. In addition, Tolbert was a strong advocate for African unity and stood firmly against neo-colonialism. He believed these were the right actions to take, and his policies began to reflect the changes and values he sought. This angered Washington, and the Progressive Alliance of Liberia (PAL), headed by Baccus Matthews, received some form of endorsement, leading to the 1979 rice riots and, subsequently, the 1980 coup. Tolbert’s major crime was re-evaluating policies and pushing for actions that would have benefited the common people.
For both Doe and Taylor, they rose to power by the sword and were ousted by it. Their leaderships were marred by a lack of foresight and depth. Doe, largely uneducated, surrounded himself with individuals who lacked forward thinking, which only deepened the divisions within the country. His adversarial stance against Washington came after he had already divided the country along tribal lines. Taylor, on the other hand, was a pale imitation of Tolbert, mimicking his style of leadership, right down to his mannerisms and rhetoric. Even before becoming president, Taylor’s friction with the West was evident. His refusal to take orders from Washington — something he openly admitted in one of his interviews — only justified his downfall. His inability to craft an independent yet pragmatic foreign policy, coupled with his defiance, made him an inevitable target for failure.
Now it is Boakai’s turn, after succeeding two immediate predecessors, Weah and Sirleaf, who did all they could to avoid direct confrontation with Washington. However, in his last days, some of Weah’s core officials were sanctioned over the High-Power Exploration (HPX) and ArcelorMittal controversial deal. HPX is a Washington-backed company. This happened because Weah didn’t have any strong insider in Washington to promote his interests. But both Weah and Sirleaf did all they could to stay on the right side of Washington, unlike Boakai, who is growing weary so early. This gradual shift has reportedly extended to negotiating deals with companies like Huawei and SUMEC Technology — both of which are blacklisted by Washington. These deals, one of which mentioned 3 billion, may sound appealing but will be clear defiance to Washington and enough justification for potential strikes.
Washington is a tricky mix of friend and foe —hard to keep too close but just as hard to push away. For Liberian presidents, navigating this complex relationship requires a critical balance between cooperation and independence. Relying on too many risks biting off more than you can chew, but pulling away too far could lead to diplomatic, political and economic backlash. The key challenge lies in managing their unpredictability, which can shift between support and pressure depending on its geopolitical interests.
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is positioning itself to become Malaysia’s leading producer of green technology through the development of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a cutting-edge initiative that harnesses the state’s vast ocean resources. According to the Energy Commission of Sabah (ECoS) chief executive officer, Datuk Abdul Nasser Abdul Wahid, feasibility studies on OTEC are currently…