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News AnalysisAmericans and allies are too dependent on China tech, as demonstrated by recent revelations that our Chinese-manufactured credit card machines are sending data back to China for no good reason.The U.S. Treasury Department says that millions of Chinese point-of-sale (POS) devices, the credit card machines found at check-out counters, could be sending customer data back to China for no good reason.Treasury Department lab tests show that the data is encrypted and sent to unknown third parties in China. The transmissions are “superfluous to normal payment transaction processing,” according to a letter from the Treasury’s Office of Cybersecurity and Critical...

The effectiveness of the three COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States has declined in recent months, with protection against infection falling under 50 percent for two of them after six months, according to a new study.Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine dropped to 58 percent in September from 89.2 percent effectiveness in March, researchers found. During the same time frame, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine fell to 43.3 percent from 86.9 percent, and Johnson & Johnson’s shot declined to 13.1 percent from 86.4 percent.Dr. Stephen Hahn, head of the Food and Drug Administration during the final portion of the Trump administration, said last year...

The White House has no plans to shut down a disputed Great Lakes pipeline that brings some 500,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada into the U.S. each day, a spokeswoman said Nov. 9.Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered the Line 5 pipeline to be shut down last year.She said the Calgary-based company that operates it, Enbridge, violated an easement granted decades ago to run a section along state-owned land below the straits of Mackinac.Enbridge sued claiming the pipeline is a federal matter.On Oct. 4, Canada backed Enbridge by invoking a 1977 transit pipelines treaty to stall the litigation.White House deputy...

Last week, 13 Republicans crossed the aisle in an inexplicable move that diffused a Democrat civil war and handed Joe Biden a big win. On Friday, enough members of the far-left “squad” were prepared to vote down the bipartisan infrastructure bill until GOP members stepped to the fore to give Pelosi what she needed.There are a lot of reasons to be angry about that as a Republican, and we’ll get to some of those. But to set things up, I want to start this clip of GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) on Fox News this morning defending her vote as...

The trial for the men accused of murdering 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia suburb began on Friday with lawyers from the prosecution and defense giving their opening statements. Monday marked the start of the full first week of testimony in the trial of Gregory and Travis McMichael, along with their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan.Upon taking the stand, Ricky Minshew, the first officer to arrive on the scene after the shooting, stated that he spoke with Bryan, who told the officer that he “blocked,” “cornered,” and “cut off” Arbery as he fled from the armed men. “Should I have been...

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, widely considered to be Senate Republicans' top recruit in the country, took a pass on the race Tuesday morning, a clear blow for a GOP that was hoping to build momentum off of their strong showing in the 2021 elections

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed a bill changing the Health Care Right of Conscience Act that drew historic levels of citizen opposition, but it doesn’t take effect until next summer.

When the United States Postal Service launched a test program in September allowing people with business or payroll checks to get them loaded onto gift cards at four neighborhood post offices, it was seen as a primitive precursor to a postal banking system. But in order for the test to be successful and mature into a pilot, it has to actually be, well, tested. According to postal employees at Baychester Station in the Bronx, one of four locations nationwide where the test is being carried out, not a single business or payroll check transaction was made between September 13, when...

240 rescuers...from at least eight teams across the U.K. brought up the 40-year-old man on a stretcher Monday to the entrance of Ogof Ffynnon Ddu, also known as the Cave of the Black Spring, 54 hours after he fell. “The caver was very unlucky here. He’s an experienced caver, a fit caver. And it was a matter of putting his foot in the wrong place,” said Peter Francis, the spokesman for the South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team. “He wasn’t in a dangerous part of the cave, it’s just something moved from under him.” The cave system is located...

General Electric, the storied American manufacturer that struggled under its own weight after growing to become a sprawling conglomerate, will divide itself into three public companies focused on aviation, healthcare and energy. It is the culmination of an arduous, yearslong reshaping of a symbol of American manufacturing might that could signal the end of conglomerates as a whole. “It’s over now," said Nick Heymann of William Blair, who has followed GE for years. "In a digital economy, there’s no real room for it.” The company has already rid itself of the products most Americans know including its appliances and last...

Ancient Earth was hit by extreme 'hothouse' periods of intense dryness, followed by massive rainstorms, a new study reveals. These rainstorms were hundreds of miles wide and could dump more than a foot of rain in a matter of hours, Harvard University scientists report.... ... for multiple periods in Earth's history, our planet experienced hothouse' periods' that were around 20°F to 30°F hotter than it is today. Earth likely experienced these periods multiple times in its distant past and will experience them again hundreds of millions of years from now as the sun continues to brighten, say they team, who...

From medications to gloves to crutches, the strains of the global supply chain are hitting U.S. health care hard. Why it matters: Shortages of health care supplies can quickly jump from a nuisance to a life-or-death proposition. They indicate serious vulnerabilities in the U.S. health care supply chain. State of play: After seeing major supply shortages for protective equipment and ventilators in the early months of the pandemic, critical supplies stabilized and, in some places, demand for domestic products later bottomed out. Now global supply chain tie-ups are rippling across the industry again, leading to extended wait times for commonly...

The United States is setting up its own version of the 'Iron Dome' on the Pacific Ocean island of Guam as it begins testing the missile-defense system on the heels of China flexing its military might. Soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas flew to the US territory weeks ago to help set up the Iron Dome, according to a spokesman for the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command. The system arrived on Guam last week. ....

Sarah Silikula's son got into the car after school one day last month, upset and confused by what his teacher had just taught him. Armed with new knowledge, the eighth grader had an announcement and a revisionist history lesson for his mother. "I'm never getting vaccinated. I'm never getting any more shots of any kind. Did you know Trump's still president?" Silikula remembered him saying. The boy's middle school history teacher unleashed a rant during an Oct. 18 class at Anacapa Middle School in Ventura, Calif., KCAL first reported. She raved against coronavirus vaccines, the criminal justice system and the...

President Joe Biden’s nominee for a key Treasury Department role admitted that oil, natural gas and coal firms need to go bankrupt to prevent climate change, a resurfaced video showed. “Here what I’m thinking about is primarily the coal and oil and gas industry. A lot of the smaller players in that industry are going to probably go bankrupt in short order, at least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change,” Saule Omarova — who the Senate is considering to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — remarked in a clip...

General Electric, the storied American manufacturer that struggled under its own weight after growing to become a sprawling conglomerate, will divide itself into three public companies focused on aviation, health care and energy. The company’s announcement Tuesday is the culmination of an arduous, yearslong reshaping of a symbol of American manufacturing might that could signal the end of conglomerates as a whole.

The leading U.S. manufacturer of xylitol-based products says the federal government is deliberately trying to conceal a nasal spray it developed that it says has been scientifically proven to be effective in treating and preventing COVID-19. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court against Utah-based company Xlear on Oct. 28, saying it has deceptively advertised its nasal spray as a treatment and preventative of COVID-19. The lawsuit asks a federal court to permanently ban the company from promoting the nasal spray as a treatment for COVID-19 and also asks that monetary penalties be levied against it....

China’s exports to the United States and the European Union now amount to nearly 30% of manufacturing GDP, after an unprecedented surge in shipments this year. US imports from China are 30% higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic, and Europe’s imports are 50% higher. These margins of increase have an important macroeconomic impact. Taiwan and South Korea, in turn, are important suppliers of industrial goods – especially electronics – to the West, and their imports from China include components that are re-exported to the US and Europe. This reflects closer economic integration among the major Asian industrial economies. In effect,...

Cadillac has largely completed a restructuring of its U.S. dealer network and expects to have 560 dealers by the end of this year, compared with about 920 three years ago, said Rory Harvey, head of the global Cadillac brand. GM (GM.N) has booked a total of $274 million in costs during 2020 and 2021 related to the effort to buy out Cadillac dealers who were not prepared to invest $200,000 to $500,000 per store in the equipment and training to support the brand's shift to an all-electric vehicle lineup, planned by 2030.

New York’s ex-creep-in-chief Andrew Cuomo lives up to the billing of his sex accusers in a scathing new tome by a female former press secretary.