FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — A smoke alarm is credited with saving the lives of a Ferguson family, days after the alarm was installed.
Mary Thomas-Johnson woke up Sunday to an alarm going off. She could smell smoke and followed it to a basement door. Smoke was gushing out.
Thomas-Johnson and a 35-year-old nephew who lives in the home woke her 71-year-old uncle, grabbed the dog, and they all got out safely.
The family is temporarily displaced but the alarm allowed firefighters to arrive in time to save the house from being destroyed.
The Ferguson Fire Department and the American Red Cross installed three smoke detectors in the home eight days before the fire as part of an effort to get smoke alarms in homes that lacked them.
A dozen Republican lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump, asking him to send final legislative language on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement to Congress as soon as possible. They want Congress to be able to vote on it before Democrats take control of the House in 2019. A Bloomberg report says the legislators think the final passage of the trade pact will be “much more difficult” in 2019 as Democrats have already asked for revisions. So far, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t shown much interest in dealing with the agreement before the end of the year. Should the president pursue congressional approval this year, the senators say “we commit to working with you in a consultative manner to draft implementing legislation that will win votes in a majority of the House and Senate.” Bloomberg says the White House declined to comment on the long-shot attempt by the 12 Republicans to get the trade agreement over the finish line. All three countries plan to sign the pact at the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Argentina, which begins on November 30th. The pact requires U.S. congressional approval, as well as approval from lawmakers in both Canada and Mexico.
Both the United States and opponents of tariffs put in place by President Donald Trump confirmed they want to take their disputes to the World Trade Organization. Those confirmations kickstarted the procedure for the WTO to set up dispute hearings. China, the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Russia, and Norway all confirmed that they will take their disputes to adjudication proceedings. The Unites States also confirmed it wants dispute panels set up for trade disagreements with Canada, China, and the EU. Reuters quotes a U.S. trade official as saying, “The United States cannot abide this level of hypocrisy.” That was in response to each challenge to the steel and aluminum tariffs at the center of the trade disputes. Trump first put the tariffs in place by saying they were a national security issue, and as such are exempt from WTO rules. The other countries don’t agree, calling the tariffs thinly-veiled protectionism that has damaged U.S. rivals globally. They want the U.S. to compensate them for damages and imposed their own tariffs in response. WTO dispute panels are set up to settle disputes as peacefully as possible by encouraging each country to bring their policies in line with WTO rules, rather than litigating.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer says China hasn’t taken action to correct the practices that led to American tariffs on Chinese imports. The tariffs are currently in place on $250 billion in goods. The trade chief made the announcement at the same time his agency released a 53-page update to its report on its own investigation into China’s intellectual trade practices. “We completed this update as part of the administration’s stronger monitoring and enforcement effort,” Lighthizer says. “The update shows that China hasn’t altered its unfair, market-distorting practices that were the focus of the report in March of this year on our Section 301 investigation.” The announcement from Lighthizer comes just ten days before a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires during the G20 summit. The South China Morning Post website says the discussions could either pause the trade dispute between the two largest economies in the world or it could potentially lead to further escalation.
New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand says President Trump should reject any farm bill that does not include a refund for dairy farmers who participated in the Margin Protection Program. The farm bill conference committee is reportedly nearing completion of the farm bill, leaving a final version to be passed by the House and Senate before heading to the president’s desk. Senator Gillibrand urged Trump in a letter this week to only support a final bill that includes her Dairy Premium Refund Act, that she says would “issue a refund to farmers who participated in the failed Dairy Margin Protection Program.” Gillibrand says that Since 2014, thousands of New York dairy farmers paid millions of dollars to USDA for coverage, but when milk prices and feed prices fell at the same time, most farmers “lost money on every pound of milk they sold and never received a payment.” Gillibrand serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee and is considered a hopeful candidate for President in 2020.
The Missouri Department of Agriculture announced it will not pursue Special Local Needs (24c) labels for the use of Engenia, FeXapan and XtendiMax for the 2019 growing season. This announcement follows the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to extend the registration of these three Dicamba products for another two years with additional safeguards.
