(Reuters)—Warner Bros Discovery-owned CNN’s top boss Chris Licht informed employees in an all-staff memo on Wednesday that layoffs are underway, according to an email seen by Reuters.

Licht said CNN would notify a limited number of individuals, largely some of its paid contributors on Wednesday and the impacted employees on Thursday, according to the memo.

He would follow up with more details on the changes on Thursday afternoon.

“I know these changes affect both our departing colleagues and those who remain,” Licht wrote. “And we have resources to support you.”

The job cuts have been anticipated and come at a time when companies are looking to rein in costs and trim their headcount to brace for an economic slowdown.

In October, Licht had warned CNN would be undergoing changes, citing “widespread concern over the global economic outlook.” The changes would affect “people, budgets and projects,” Licht had said.

Cable channels operator AMC Networks on Tuesday said it would cut 20% of its U.S. staff as it faces industry pressures and a challenging economy.

(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru and Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Nick Zieminski)

The post Fake News Downsizing: CNN Boss Alerts Employees of Massive Layoffs appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

With two notable exceptions, most of former President Trump’s Jewish allies have criticized him for dining with the antisemitic rapper Kanye West and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

Those two exceptions are the president’s own Jewish daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

For whatever reason, the couple has what seems to be an unlimited ability to stay quiet. Throughout his campaign and presidency, Ivanka and Kushner stayed silent, or defended Trump, at moments when a moderating voice could have made a  difference.  And now, as their father and father-in-law gives presidential imprimatur to two antisemites, neither Kushner nor Ivanka has commented in public about it. 

But now that Trump is running again, and could once again be president, their silence is even more dangerous, if not inexcusable. Ivanka, who has said she is stepping away from politics to spend time with her family, might want to consider how her father’s normalizing of vicious antisemites affects all Jewish families, hers included.

For inspiration, she might look at the child of another Republican politician.

After a woman came forward with proof that Herschel Walker, the former college football star in a close race for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia,  paid for her abortion, his son took to Twitter. 

“You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over six times in six months running from your violence,” Christian Walker tweeted on Oct. 3.

“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other people’s lives. How dare you,” he added.

Until that moment, despite their disparate childhoods, Christian had been as quiet and loyal as Ivanka and Jared. A conservative Christian, he was at Mar-a-Lago last December just after his father announced his candidacy. 

“I got to hug a future senator!” Christian tweeted. 

But his father’s glaring hypocrisy — running as a staunch conservative Christian as accusations about his past  poured in — likely compelled the son to speak up. Some lies are too much to bear, some actions too dangerous to ignore.

After Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meeting, the former president’s staunchest Jewish defenders may have felt a similar sense of duty. 

Rabbi Marvin Hier, who delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, wrote yesterday in the Hollywood Reporter that he could “not believe that a man with Jewish grandchildren” could make “such an ill-conceived decision.” Mort Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America, whose organization had just given the former president an award, said Trump’s action “legitimizes Jew-hatred and Jew haters.” David Friedman, a longtime Trump lawyer who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel under Trump, tweeted that the meeting was “unacceptable.” 

Is it unreasonable to expect Ivanka and her husband to say … something? They are an observant Jewish couple. They keep Shabbat. They send their children, the former president’s grandchildren, to Jewish schools. They, and the members of their Jewish community, are as vulnerable to anti-Jewish harrassment and antisemitic attacks as anyone. 

Not unreasonable, you could say, but not exactly unexpected. Trump and Kushner, who both held senior positions in President Trump’s administration, have, with one recent exception, refused to speak out against the man or his policies. 

Not a peep in 2018 when Trump’s administration separated children from their families at the border. When Trump refused to back down from his comment that there were “fine people on both sides” during the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Ivanka and Kushner refused, again, to speak out against his statement. 

But this time feels different.  

For at least six years, while Trump’s Jewish supporters have trumpeted his support for Israel, his Jewish critics have warned that Trump’s relationship with the alt-right is dangerous, if not a deal-breaker. 

“Donald Trump has a white supremacist problem,” I wrote in February 2016, just after he announced his candidacy for presidency. Bari Weiss warned supporters of Israel that Trump “wasn’t worth it,” considering who his allies were. After the Trump campaign tweeted a Der Sturmer-like image of Hillary Clinton and a Star of David, Rabbi David Wolpe wrote, “You need not be an anti-Semite to give anti-Semitism criminally free reign, and this Trump has done.”

Has it really taken six toxic years, an explosion of online antisemitism and a record number of violent antisemitic attacks for Trump’s Jewish allies to realize what so many of us have long warned: Donald Trump is bad for the Jews?

Maybe by speaking out, Ivanka will ensure that Trump more carefully considers with whom he consorts. A son or daughter’s voice has an impact: Christian Walker’s criticism of his father “upended the race,” according to the New York Times. Shortly after he spoke up, a poll showed Walker’s support had slipped by 4 percentage points. 

Only recently has Ivanka publicly countered her father. In her testimony before the Jan. 6 Committee, Ivanka said she supported then-Attorney General William Barr’s message to Trump that he had lost the presidential election.

“I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying,” she told the committee.

That gentle refutation of her father’s point of view prompted Trump to tweet that his daughter was “checked out” and not aware of what he continues to insist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, was widespread election fraud. 

But for Ivanka, it was a big step. With Trump yet again a candidate for president, and with every indication that he will embrace the same hateful groups and divisive rhetoric that worked for him before, it’s time for the Kushners to find Christian Walker’s courage, and speak up.

The post When will Ivanka and Jared stand up to Trump? appeared first on The Forward.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said in a tweet on Wednesday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and experiencing mild symptoms.

“I’m grateful to be vaccinated and boosted, which has kept my case mild,” he said.

Few weeks ago, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky and U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf had also tested positive with COVID symptoms.

U.S. economic activity was about flat or up only slightly from mid October through late November and there were mixed signals on the persistence of inflation and labor shortages, a Federal Reserve report showed on Wednesday.

The U.S. central bank released its latest snapshot on the health of the economy garnered from business contacts nationwide as it gears up to slow its pace of interest rate hikes at its next meeting on Dec. 13-14, with an eye to reaching a sufficiently high enough level to pause some time in the first half of next year.

The Fed has driven up interest rates this year at the fastest pace since the early 1980s in a bid to quash inflation that has been running at 40-year highs by dampening demand across the economy.

“Interest rates and inflation continued to weigh on activity, and many contacts expressed greater uncertainty or increased pessimism concerning the outlook,” the Fed said in its survey, known as the “Beige Book,” which was conducted across its 12 districts through Nov. 23. “Inflation was expected to hold steady or moderate further moving forward.”

Fed Chair Jerome Powell earlier on Wednesday cautioned the fight with inflation was far from over and that key questions remain unanswered, including how high rates will ultimately need to rise and for how long. A much-anticipated monthly measure of inflation is due on Thursday.

The central bank’s benchmark overnight lending rate currently sits in a target range of 3.75% to 4.00%. Investors overwhelmingly expect the Fed to raise that rate by another 50 basis points at the upcoming meeting.

Inflation remains more than three times the Fed’s target but the most recent reports on price pressures for inputs and labor have provided glimmers of encouragement that high inflation is slowing and may continue to do so.

U.S. job openings decreased in October but remained significantly high while the U.S. economy rebounded more strongly than initially thought in the third quarter, separate government reports showed on Wednesday.

Wall Street jumped on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank might scale back the pace of its interest rate hikes as soon as December.

The S&P 500 rallied from an earlier loss and the Nasdaq extended gains after the release of Powell’s remarks prepared for delivery at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

Powell also cautioned that the fight against inflation was far from over and that key questions remain unanswered, including how high rates will ultimately need to rise and for how long.

“(The market) has waited with bated breath, looking for that clarification in terms of duration and extent of Fed tightening. And anything that gives hope to the idea the Fed is becoming less hawkish is viewed as a positive for stocks, at least on a short-term basis,” said Chuck Carlson, Chief Executive Officer at Horizon Investment Services in Hammond, Indiana.

Bets that the Fed will reduce the size of its rate hikes, as well as recent data pointing to a mild cooling in inflation, have the benchmark S&P 500 index (.SPX) on track for its second straight month of gains.

The CME FedWatch Tool showed futures traders seeing a 75% chance that the Fed will raise interest rates by 50 basis points at its December meeting, up from a 65% chance before Powell’s comments were released. The FedWatch tool now shows a 25% chance of a 75 basis point increase.

The S&P 500 remains down about 16% so far in 2022, while the Nasdaq index (.IXIC) has lost about 29%.

In afternoon trading, Apple (AAPL.O) was up 3.4% and Nvidia (NVDA.O) jumped 5.5%.

Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) shares surged 5.4%, after China Merchants Bank International said Tesla’s sales in China in November were boosted by price cuts and incentives offered on its Model 3 and Model Y.

Data on the day was mixed as the ADP National Employment report showed private employment increased by 127,000 in November, below expectations of 200,000 jobs, suggesting demand for labor was cooling amid high interest rates.

“The ADP employment number not meeting expectations fits into the narrative that the Fed will have room and start slowing down its rate hikes, and that definitely benefits interest rate sensitive assets,” said Keith Buchanan, a portfolio manager at Globalt in Atlanta.

The Labor Department’s closely watched nonfarm payrolls data is due on Friday. A report showed U.S. job openings falling to 10.334 million in October, against 10.687 million in the prior month.

Another reading showed the U.S. economy rebounded more strongly than initially thought in the third quarter.

The S&P 500 was up 1.71% at 4,025.14 points.

The Nasdaq gained 2.87% to 11,298.98 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.93% at 34,166.10 points.

Biogen Inc (BIIB.O) jumped 4.6% after its experimental Alzheimer’s drug slowed cognitive decline in a closely watched trial.

Advancing issues outnumbered falling ones within the S&P 500 (.AD.SPX) by a 1.5-to-one ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 6 new highs and 1 new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 61 new highs and 144 new lows.

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The British royal family was roiled by another accusation of racism Wednesday.

Lady Susan Hussey, 83, longtime confidante of Queen Elizabeth II and godmother of the Prince of Wales, Prince William, has resigned from her Buckingham Palace duties after a Black charity leader revealed a racist exchange that took place at a reception hosted by the Queen consort, Camilla, on Tuesday at the palace.

Ngozi Fulani, the CEO of Sistah Space—a London-based organization that helps women of African and Caribbean heritage who have experienced abuse—tweeted a paraphrased transcript of the conversation that has racked up more than 34,000 likes and 12,000 retweets since it was tweeted early in the morning on Nov. 30.

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Fulani said Hussey touched her hair uninvited and repeatedly asked where she was from, even though she was born and raised in England.

Fulani says Hussey asked “What part of Africa are YOU from?” When Fulani said her family doesn’t have those kinds of records, Hussey pressed on. A sampling from that exchange, as Fulani relayed it on Twitter:

SH: Well, you must know where you’re from, I spent time in France. Where are you from?

Me: Here, UK

SH: No, but what Nationality are you?

Me: I am born here and am British

SH: No, but where do you really come from, where do your people come from?

Fulani told the Independent that she was initially hesitant to speak out about the encounter. As she put it, “I found myself in this place where I wanted to say something but what happened would automatically be seen as my fault, it would bring Sistah Space down. It would be ‘oh, she has a chip on their shoulder.’”

Indigo—Getty ImagesLady Susan Hussey attends the annual Remembrance Sunday Service at the Cenotaph, Whitehall on November 11, 2012 in London, England.

A Kensington Palace spokesperson for the Prince of Wales told Sky News that Hussey’s comments were “really disappointing” and “unacceptable,” stating, “it is right that the individual has stepped aside with immediate effect.” Hussey served as Queen Elizabeth II’s lady-in-waiting for over 60 years, and was appointed “Lady of the Household,” an honorary role, by King Charles.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson told CNN, “We have reached out to Ngozi Fulani on this matter, and are inviting her to discuss all elements of her experience in person if she wishes,” and on behalf of Hussey, stated, “the individual concerned would like to express her profound apologies for the hurt caused and has stepped aside from her honorary role with immediate effect.”

The incident took place at an event in which the Queen Consort condemned the “global pandemic of violence against women” in a speech to about 300 attendees.

It also happened the same day that Neil Basu, ex-British counter-terrorism chief who used to oversee royal protection, detailed the “disgusting and very real” threats that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle received because of their interracial marriage. In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 news, Basu said he had teams regularly investigating threats to her life from far-right extremists.

Read More: How Meghan and Harry’s Interview Blew Open the Monarchy’s Troubled History With Race

Markle has received such harassment and social media bullying ever since she began dating Prince Harry in 2016. The couple opened up about racism within the royal family in their March 2021 bombshell interview with media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Markle, who identifies as biracial, revealed that an unnamed member of the royal family expressed concern about how dark their first son Archie’s skin color would be. In a statement, the palace called the issues raised in the interview “concerning” and said it was taking them “very seriously” and that the family will address them “privately.”

In interviews following the Nov. 29 incident, Fulani hoped that there would be anti-racism training for people with royal duties and that the palace would not miss the opportunity for a teachable moment. As she put it to the British news site LBC, “I’d be happy to have a conversation with anybody to bring about a positive solution” and to ensure “this kind of thing does not happen again.”

Trigger warning: This story contains mentions of child sexual abuse

Casey Anthony’s trial in 2011 for the murder of her daughter Caylee Anthony was one of the most closely-watched trials in years, maybe even decades. One of the TV news reports from the time noted that there hadn’t been fervor for a case like this since the O.J. Simpson trial in the mid-1990s. And Anthony’s trial ended the same way: with an acquittal. Peacock’s new three-part docuseries, Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies, brings the trial to a new generation of viewers and marks the first time Anthony has spoken out at length about the death of her daughter since she was found not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child in July 2011.

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The new series, which begins streaming today, reveals that shortly after the verdict (which did find her guilty of providing false information to law enforcement), Anthony, now 36, went into hiding after she and her legal team received death threats. Despite the verdict, the court of public opinion had already decided that she had murdered her daughter for a few reasons: First, her daughter had been missing for 31 days before Casey’s mother, Cindy, called the police. Second, the media had published photos of Casey partying, allegedly taken while her daughter was missing. And third, she didn’t appear to be grieving in the ways people expected a mother to grieve, leading people to deem her a psychopath. (An independent psychologist determined that she was not a psychopath.)

Read More: Timeline: The Casey Anthony Saga, Spanning Three Years, Comes to a Close

More than a decade later, many are still convinced of Anthony’s guilt and are expressing strong reactions to Peacock’s new docuseries. An overwhelming majority of the tweets following the release came from people criticizing the streamer for giving her a platform to promote her innocence and introduce evidence that points to another suspect. Many said they either stopped watching early on because they felt that Anthony was lying or said they didn’t watch at all, advising others to do the same. “Shame on peacock for letting Casey Anthony create another fictional sob story in attempt to sway public opinion,” one tweet reads. “Nobody believes you and there’s a special place in hell for you.”

Another user wrote, “Casey Anthony is truly a narcissist, not reporting your daughter missing for almost a month and now coming out with a documentary? We all know what she did I still can’t believe she got away with it, should have been an open-and-shut case for that pathological liar.”

The docuseries’ director, Alexandra Dean, told USA Today that she wanted to revisit the case because Anthony had come to understand a lot after years of therapy and wanted to share her side now, and that Dean believes the investigation left many stones unturned, particularly when it came to Casey’s father. Viewers may come away from the docuseries with differing opinions on Anthony’s innocence or guilt in the case. Either way, it’s a difficult foray into a tragic case. Here’s what to know about the revelations and insights presented in Where the Truth Lies.

Caylee’s last day

In the documentary, Casey says that the last day she saw Caylee was June 16, 2008. She says she was at home with Caylee and her father when she decided to nap with Caylee in bed. Casey noted that Caylee would never leave the room without talking to her first. Casey remembers being shaken and woken up by her father, asking her where Caylee was. “I immediately start looking for her,” she says in the second episode. Casey recalls continuing to look for her, and “by the time I came back around the left side of the house, I came back towards the front porch, and [her father] is standing there with her.” Casey recalls that her daughter was “soaking wet.” At this point, Casey says she still believed her daughter was alive. Caylee would go missing later that day, according to the docuseries.

During her trial, Casey’s defense attorney suggested that it might have been possible that Caylee drowned in the pool, but in the docuseries, Casey says that wasn’t possible because the ladder wasn’t in the pool. Because it was an above-ground pool, Caylee wouldn’t have been able to climb in. When asked why the defense made this suggestion, even though Casey knew it wasn’t true, she said that her team couldn’t present the jury with nothing, so they floated the idea around. Casey also said that Caylee may have been kidnapped by a babysitter, though her lawyer later admitted she fabricated this accusation.

Casey and her father didn’t rush to call the police, and Casey said her father assured her that everything would be OK. At that point, she didn’t believe her daughter was dead and thought there was still a chance that she was alive.

Courtesy of PeacockCasey Anthony seen in Peacock’s ‘Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies’

Allegations against Casey’s father

In the docuseries, Casey talks at length about the sexual abuse that she says she faced at the hands of her father, George, and her brother, Lee (both of whom have denied all claims). She details her father’s alleged abuse, which she says happened when she was between the ages of 8 and 12, and said that he would come into her room at night and molest her, and if she tried to resist, he would smother her with a pillow until she was unconscious.

Casey says in the second episode that she had suspicions that her father might have been doing the same thing to her daughter and expressed regret for not saying anything. Multiple people interviewed in the docuseries corroborated Casey’s claim against her father: her former fiancé Jesse (whom she told about allegedly being abused by her brother), a friend she wrote a letter to from jail, and Robin Adams—a mitigation specialist working on her case in 2009. It offers a fuller context as to what might have happened to Caylee and why Casey did not appear to be grieving her daughter.

As Adams says in the docuseries, “When you’ve been a victim of sexual abuse, you pretend that nothing is wrong—it’s the separation of the mind from the actions. That’s how Casey could show up as if she had no troubles in the world during the 31 days.” Even after she was arrested, she explains, Casey believed Caylee was still alive because her dad kept reassuring her and making her believe that Caylee was just missing until it was reported that her body was found in December 2008.

Read More: Why Are Americans So Obsessed With the Casey Anthony Trial?

The Anthonys’ dead pets and the case against George

During the trial, Casey’s brother, Lee, called her defense team, saying he had something to tell them. He said that when he and Casey were young, and their pets would die, their father would bury the pets, and there was a striking similarity in how Caylee’s body was found and how their pets were buried. One of Casey’s team members recalled Lee saying, “When our family pets would die, Dad would wrap the puppy in a blanket, put it in a trash bag, duct-tape the trash bag, and we would bury them.” This is the same way that Caylee’s body was found— wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket from her bed. Patrick McKenna, one of the investigators on Casey’s defense team says in the docuseries that “George had something to do with something.”

George’s actions during this time were not inspected as much as Casey’s

The docuseries posits that while Casey’s every move during the three years between Caylee’s death and the trial was plastered all over news outlets, her father, George, was presented as a hero, and his actions were not as thoroughly inspected. Investigators say in the documentary that they noticed that George did not seem emotional when they first spoke to them; in the second episode, McKenna says things already felt off when he met George and Cindy. As he’s being introduced, Cindy is booking interviews with daytime television shows like the Today Show, and another man in the house was boasting about raising $27,000 for their foundation to help other parents find their missing kids—all of which took place after Caylee’s remains were found.

McKenna says in the documentary that he came back the next weekend to talk to Cindy. She came late to their meeting because they were out all day on a new bass boat that they were towing. It was “totally tricked-out, freshly painted, with the words ‘Call 1-800-Missing-Kids’ on the side of it,” McKenna recalls. A clip shows George saying that the boat was called the “S.S. Caylee Marie” in honor of his granddaughter. McKenna noted that it didn’t make much sense that George and Cindy bought a boat to go look for other missing kids.

Courtesy of PeacockInvestigator Pat McKenna seen in Peacock’s ‘Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies’

The docuseries also alleges that George had an affair during the trial. The woman he allegedly had an affair with took the stand during the trial and said that he “unburdened himself” to her, saying out of nowhere, “it was an accident that snowballed out of control”—presumably talking about Caylee’s death.

Casey also says that George made comments about Caylee that made her uncomfortable. In a speech during Caylee’s funeral, he described in detail the smell of her hair and how a hug from a child “gets him excited like no other.” He took the stand and remembered exactly what Caylee was wearing the day she disappeared, but not what Casey or his wife were wearing.

An investigator revisits the case

John Allen, who was a sergeant at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office during the time of Caylee’s case and supervised the investigation, is adamant about Casey’s guilt throughout the entirety of the series. His reasons include that she lied about who had Caylee at the time of her disappearance and where she worked, but also because the evidence was stacked against her. “I think she killed her daughter, and I think she didn’t want to get caught,” Allen says.

Throughout the docuseries, the audience is presented with evidence and accusations that overwhelmingly point a finger at George, who is a former police officer. In the last episode, Allen states that he believes George “had nothing to do with [Caylee’s death].” The interviewer then asks if George had ever lied to Allen, to which he responds, “Yeah, at different points and times.” Then he adds, seemingly forgetting about his reaction to Casey’s lies, “But being a liar doesn’t make somebody a murderer.”

What could happen next?

With the docuseries seeming to point a finger at George Anthony, viewers may come away wondering whether the case could be reopened. According to a legal website, Florida does not have a statute of limitations for murder. Many, including those who believe in Casey’s innocence, like her former boyfriend’s roommate Tony Lazzaro, as well as those who believe she is guilty, would like to see the case reopened.

About 140 million babies were born globally last year—the equivalent of adding an entire new Russia to the world’s population. Not counted among those typically blessed events are the number of families whose pregnancies end tragically. According to the United Nations Interagency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, about 2 million pregnancies around the world end in stillbirth each year. The causes of natal death are numerous—from fetal abnormalities to labor complications to maternal hypertension to infections to placental malformation.

Now, according to a new study in Nature Communications, there is another, particularly pernicious cause that may account for up to 39.7% of stillbirths in low- and middle-income countries: air pollution, specifically in the form of fine particles measuring 2.5 microns—or millionths of a meter—or less. The particles, about 3% of the width of a human hair, typically come from vehicle exhaust, the burning of coal and heating oil, and natural sources like wildfires.

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According to the new research, led by environmental scientist and public health specialist Tao Xue at Peking University Health Science Center in Beijing, every 10 micrograms—or millionth of a gram—of so-called PM2.5 particles per cubic meter of air increases the risk of stillbirth by 11%, with the toll greater on older mothers than younger ones.

“The United Nations calls the global burden of stillbirths a neglected tragedy,” the paper’s authors write. “Preventing stillbirths depends on a comprehensive understanding of the underlying risk factors.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has established a so-called reference level—or maximum safe exposure—of PM2.5 at 5 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Above that level, the particles can contribute to heart disease, asthma, decreased lung function, and premature death in people with pre-existing heart or lung disease. Researchers have long drawn a potential link between PM2.5 exposure and stillbirth, but what they hadn’t done, until Tao and his colleagues took the topic on, is to study how the burden falls disproportionately on people in poorer countries.

According to the World Bank, the average global concentration of PM2.5 is an alarming 46 micrograms per cubic meter—or nine times the WHO’s reference level. But the burden is not spread equally. In Australia, it’s a more tolerable 9 micrograms; in Canada, it’s just six. The Bahamas clocks in at just 5.58. It’s elsewhere, in the less developed world, that the pollution problem hits the hardest.

To conduct their study, the investigators selected 137 low- and middle-income countries in which data from the Department of Health Surveys (DHS), a division of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), show are home to 98% of the world’s incidence of stillbirths. They cross-indexed those mortality figures with other data from the WHO’s Air Quality Guidelines detailing the severity of PM2.5 pollution in each of those countries. The results drew a bright line between the particulate emissions and the incidence of stillbirths.

India, the hardest-hit country, with an annual average of 217,000 stillbirths (out of 25 million live births), had a PM2.5 concentration of 60.15 micrograms per cubic meter of air—or 12 times the WHO’s reference level. Pakistan, the second most severely affected country, with 110,000 stillbirths per year (compared to 6.075 million live births), weighed in at 63.16 micrograms of pollution. Following them were Nigeria (93,000 stillbirths, 7.8 million live births, and 69.66 micrograms); China (64,000 stillbirths, 10,6 million live births, and 51.11 micrograms), and Bangladesh (49,000 stillbirths, 2.8 million live births, and 69.58 micrograms). In addition to PM2.5 air pollution, the study also cites the possibility of naturally occurring high concentrations of dust—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and the Arabian Desert region—as another source of dangerous particles.

Maternal age played a significant role in the mortality risk. Relying on DHS data, as well as two existing meta-analyses of stillbirth incidence, the researchers calculated that mothers who lost their children at birth were, on average, 3.81 years older than those whose babies were born successfully. The greatest risk of stillbirth in high PM2.5 countries was among mothers ages 34 years or older.

Just what the mechanism is that links PM2.5 concentration to stillbirth is uncertain. “Although potential biological mechanisms for the association of PM2.5 exposure and pregnancy loss are not clear yet,” the researchers wrote, “some pathways can explain it to some extent.” The researchers propose three possibilities.

First, when a pregnant person inhales PM2.5 particles, they enter the bloodstream and may directly cross the placental barrier where they flow into the fetus, leading to low oxygen levels or immune problems in the baby, both of which can be associated with fetal death. There is also the possibility that exposure to PM2.5 can lead to the development of methemoglobin in the parent—a form of hemoglobin that does not bind with oxygen and thus does not deliver sufficient quantities of oxygen to the fetus, also leading to immune problems and potentially death in the womb. Finally, PM2.5 can lead to abnormalities or malformations in the placenta itself, preventing it from sustaining a fetus throughout pregnancy.

The outlook was not entirely bleak. The study notes that the global stillbirth rate actually decreased by 1.95% from 2000 to 2009, and fell again by 2.05% from 2009 to 2019. It attributes the trend to improved air quality in multiple countries‚ notably China, that are taking slow steps away from coal-fired power plants and cleaning up their power grid with renewable sources of energy.

In the meantime, pregnant people can take steps to reduce their exposure to PM2.5 pollution and better monitor the potential impact of the particles. Wearing N95 or KN95 masks outdoors on heavily polluted days, avoiding the outdoors when air quality is at its worst, and installing air purifiers in the home can all help. So too can improvements in prenatal care and timely intervention—including cesarean sections—in the case of premature or complicated labor.

Pregnancy and childbirth have never been easy. But more often than they do now, they should result in a happy outcome. In 137 countries at least, our own poor stewardship of the health of the planet is too often denying families that joy.

The U.S. central bank could scale back the pace of its interest rate hikes “as soon as December,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday, while warning that the fight against inflation was far from over and key questions remain unanswered, including how high rates will ultimately need to rise and for how long.

“It makes sense to moderate the pace of our rate increases as we approach the level of restraint that will be sufficient to bring inflation down. The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting,” Powell said in a speech to the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

But, in remarks emphasizing the work left to be done in controlling inflation, Powell said that issue was “far less significant than the questions of how much further we will need to raise rates to control inflation, and the length of time it will be necessary to hold policy at a restrictive level.”

While the Fed chief did not indicate his estimated “terminal rate,” Powell said it is likely to be “somewhat higher” than the 4.6% indicated by policymakers in their September projections. He said curing inflation “will require holding policy at a restrictive level for some time,” a comment that appeared to lean against market expectations the U.S. central bank could begin cutting rates next year as the economy slows.

“We will stay the course until the job is done,” Powell said, noting that even though some data points to inflation slowing next year, “we have a long way to go in restoring price stability … Despite the tighter policy and slower growth over the past year, we have not seen clear progress on slowing inflation.”

The Fed’s response to the fastest outbreak of U.S. inflation in 40 years has been a similarly abrupt increase in interest rates. With a half-percentage-point increase expected at its Dec. 13-14 meeting, the central bank will have lifted its overnight policy rate from near zero as of March to the 4.25%-4.50% range, the swiftest change in rates since former Fed Chair Paul Volcker was battling an even worse rise in prices.

That has made home mortgages and other forms of credit more expensive for consumers and businesses.

It has not, however, caused any appreciable impact on the U.S. job market, where the current 3.7% unemployment rate has led some policymakers to argue they are free to tighten rates further without much risk.

But it has also had no convincing impact yet on inflation, a fact that has left open just how much further the Fed may need to raise rates into what it refers to as “restrictive” territory designed to slow the economy.

Powell said Fed estimates of inflation in October showed its preferred measure still rising at about triple the central bank’s 2% target.

Powell’s remarks ignited a robust rally in equity and bond markets, which have taken a pounding this year on the back of the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes.

The benchmark S&P 500 index (.SPX) shot into positive territory and was last up by about 1.5% on the day, and bond yields, which move in the opposite direction to their prices, all tumbled. The yield on the 2-year Treasury note , the maturity most sensitive to Fed rate expectations, dropped to about 4.47% from 4.52%. The dollar (.DXY) weakened against a basket of major trading partners’ currencies.

In rate futures markets, traders added to the prevailing bets that the Fed would slow its pace of rate hikes at its meeting in two weeks.

“You can’t keep raising rates as quickly as they were doing it,” said Rick Meckler at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey. “That said, investors always like the comfort of hearing it directly from the (Fed) chair.” read more

Powell noted that while goods inflation has been easing, the cost of housing is likely to continue to rise into next year, while key price measures for services remain high and the labor market tight.

“Growth in economic activity has slowed to well below its longer-run trend,” Powell said. But for inflation to slow “this needs to be sustained. Bottlenecks in goods production are easing and goods price inflation appears to be easing as well, and this, too, must continue.”
But “we will likely see housing services inflation begin to fall later next year,” he said. Citing data released earlier on Wednesday that showed still about 1.7 job openings for each unemployed person, he said that “so far, we have seen only tentative signs of moderation of labor demand.”

“Despite some promising developments, we have a long way to go in restoring price stability.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday that businesses reviewing their supply chains should be mindful of the geopolitical risks surrounding China’s threats to Taiwan as well as other Chinese practices that have raised U.S. national security concerns.

Yellen told the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York that the Biden administration has made clear that it respects Beijing’s “one China” policy, but it was “extremely important” to maintain a peaceful relationship between China and Taiwan and peace in the Taiwan Strait.

Asked what would happen to American businesses if China made good on longstanding threats to seize control of Taiwan by force, Yellen said: “So this is something that certainly we would not want to see happen. But we are seeing a range of geopolitical risks rise to prominence, and it’s appropriate for American businesses to be thinking about what those risks are.”

U.S. companies are beginning to think about such supply chain risks more seriously, including over Taiwan and Chinese practices that have raised national security concerns, Yellen said.

The U.S. Treasury chief has recently encouraged the diversification of supply chains away from China to market-oriented democracies such as India, a concept she has dubbed “friend-shoring.” She said one of the goals of tax credits for electric vehicles assembled and with batteries sourced in North America was to reduce “overdependence on China” for critical minerals for EV batteries.

But she said continued strong business ties between the United States and China were important for the global economy. Yellen met with China’s central bank governor two weeks ago at the G20 summit in Indonesia in her first in-person engagement with a high ranking Chinese economic official, and said she is hoping for more frequent engagement between the world’s two largest economies.

“I expect, certainly hope and expect that there will continue to be very strong ties between China and the United States when it comes to mutually beneficial trade and investment,” Yellen told the DealBook summit. It would not be beneficial “either to the United States or to China or to the global economy to see that erode.”

Yellen, who earlier this year had advocated easing some tariffs on Chinese goods, said that most people would not notice any reductions of such tariffs in a major way.

“These tariffs on China were imposed because of unfair trade practices that still exist. It would have some impact on prices or inflation on a one-shot basis,” Yellen said. “What one should not overestimate is what impact lowering the tariffs would have.”

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office is currently conducting a four-year review of the tariffs on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports.

Yellen also said China’s persistent COVID-19 lockdowns were disrupting production and hampering efforts to end disruptions to global supply chains and rebuild goods inventories.

“It certainly is a threat to the progress we’ve made on healing supply chain difficulties, and those have really contributed importantly to inflation,” Yellen said.

She said that she does not know what the right strategy is for China to manage COVID-19, but Beijing’s policies were having a global impact.

“Certainly there’s a difficult situation that China faces in managing this and we can see that their economy is slowing, perhaps to the point where it will really negatively impact the entire global outlook,” Yellen said.