Latest news with #Edesia
Boston Globe
07-08-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
McDonald's sales return to growth, pushed by promotions
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up NONPROFITS Advertisement Federal government restarts order for R.I.-based Edesia to ship food to children in Africa Edesia Nutrition CEO Navyn Salem walks past a delivery truck sitting idle at the company's North Kingstown, R.I., facility where they make Plumpy'Nut, a nutritional lifesaving peanut paste sent to malnourished children worldwide, on March 14. David Goldman/Associated Press After months of limbo, a backlog of 185,000 boxes of food intended for malnourished children around the globe that have been sitting in a Rhode Island warehouse following the dismantling of US Agency for International Development earlier this year will finally be on their way to Africa. Navyn Salem, CEO of the North Kingstown-based nonprofit Edesia Nutrition, wrote in an email on Wednesday that the US State Department issued a tender on Tuesday for 11,285 metric tons of Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic, or RUTF, — 'enough life-saving food for 818,000 severely malnourished children in Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mali, South Sudan, Chad, Madagascar, Niger, Sudan, Djibouti, and DRC.' The food is the first new federal government order to the nonprofit in months, and Edesia expects another order soon, Salem confirmed. Separately, Salem wrote the '185,535 boxes that have been sitting in our warehouse in RI have been assigned to Nigeria and the Central African Republic and will be on their way very soon.' 'We persevered,' Salem wrote. 'By not letting up or giving up, we held America to its ideals as a force for good in the world.' — CHRISTOPHER GAVIN Advertisement TECH Trump announces Apple investing another $100 billion in US manufacturing Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks as President Trump looks on in the Oval Office on Aug. 6. Alex Brandon/Associated Press Apple CEO Tim Cook joined President Trump at the White House on Wednesday to announce a commitment by the tech company to increase its investment in US manufacturing by an additional $100 billion over the next four years. 'This is a significant step toward the ultimate goal of ensuring that iPhones sold in the United States of America also are made in America,' Trump said at the press conference. 'Today's announcement is one of the largest commitments in what has become among the greatest investment booms in our nation's history.' As part of the Apple announcement, the investments will be about bringing more of its supply chain and advanced manufacturing to the United States as part of an initiative called the American Manufacturing Program, but it is not a full commitment to build its popular iPhone device domestically. 'This includes new and expanded work with 10 companies across America. They produce components — semiconductor chips included — that are used in Apple products sold all over the world, and we're grateful to the President for his support,' Cook said in a statement announcing the investment. The new manufacturing partners include Corning, Coherent, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments and Broadcom among others. Apple had previously said it intended to invest $500 billion domestically, a figure it will now increase to $600 billion. Trump in recent months has criticized the tech company and Cook for efforts to shift iPhone production to India to avoid the tariffs his Republican administration had planned for China. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement RETAIL Claire's, teen jewelry chain, files for bankruptcy a 2nd time People shop at a Claire's in New York in 2018. Seth Wenig/Associated Press Claire's, the jewelry chain that was once an inescapable part of life for many teens, filed for bankruptcy a second time Wednesday, joining other retailers who have struggled amid the growth of online shopping and the uncertainty set off by tariffs. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. It said in a statement that it also planned to start insolvency proceedings in Canada that would allow it to restructure. 'This decision is difficult, but a necessary one,' said Chris Cramer, Claire's CEO, adding that the company was discussing its future with 'potential strategic partners.' He cited increased competition, consumer spending trends and the company's debt obligations. Stores in North America will remain open as the company explores alternatives, the statement said. Claire's, which is based in Hoffman Estates, Ill., operates more than 2,750 stories in 17 countries across North America and Europe, according to its website. — NEW YORK TIMES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Advertisement OpenAI offers ChatGPT for $1 a year to US government workers The OpenAI logo. Gabby Jones/Bloomberg OpenAI is providing access to its ChatGPT product to US federal agencies at a nominal cost of $1 a year as part of a push to get its AI chatbot more widely adopted. The move comes after the General Services Administration announced it approved OpenAI, along with Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Anthropic, as vendors in its new marketplace allowing federal agencies to buy AI software at scale. OpenAI is offering the enterprise version of its ChatGPT product, which includes enhanced security and privacy features. The US government's central purchasing arm has used its buying power before to negotiate discounts with software providers like Adobe Inc. and Salesforce Inc. But the $1-a-year pricing from OpenAI is the deepest yet, and the first for an artificial intelligence company, according to a GSA official familiar with the matter. The terms of the contracts with Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude haven't been disclosed. Besides encouraging more applications of its ChatGPT product — which now has nearly 700 million users a week — OpenAI executives said the government discount would help deliver on the White House's action plan for federal agencies to integrate new AI tools in their work. 'The focus of this effort is not to gain a market advantage over competitors. It is to scale the adoption of artificial intelligence across the federal workforce,' said Joe Larson, vice president of government at OpenAI, said in an interview. 'The private sector is embracing AI. We don't believe the government should be left behind.' — BLOOMBERG NEWS HIGHER EDUCATION College applications rise outside US as Trump cracks down on international students Graduating students take photos outside Senate House at Cambridge University in England on May 17. 2024. Joe Giddens/Associated Press In China, wait times for US visa interviews are so long that some students have given up. Universities in Hong Kong are fielding transfer inquiries from foreign students in the United States, and international applications for British undergraduate programs have surged. President Trump's administration has been pressuring US colleges to reduce their dependence on international enrollment while adding new layers of scrutiny for foreign students as part of its crackdown on immigration. The US government has sought to deport foreign students for participating in pro-Palestinian activism. In the spring, it abruptly revoked the legal status of thousands of international students, including some whose only brush with law enforcement was a traffic ticket. After reversing course, the government paused new appointments for student visas while rolling out a process for screening applicants' social media accounts. The United States remains the first choice for many international students, but institutions elsewhere are recognizing opportunity in the upheaval, and applicants are considering destinations they might have otherwise overlooked. The impact on US universities — and the nation's economy — may be significant. New international enrollment in the United States could drop by 30 percent to 40 percent this fall, according to an analysis of visa and enrollment data by NAFSA, an agency that promotes international education. That would deprive the US economy of $7 billion in spending, according to the analysis. Many international students pay full price, so their absence would also hurt college budgets. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement
Boston Globe
29-07-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
With USAID gone, R.I.'s Edesia Nutrition is shipping food for starving children with support from private donors
Advertisement David Sarlitto, executive director of Ocean State Job Lot's Charitable Foundation, said Edesia's supplement is called a 'miracle food' by relief groups who said it can bring children on the brink of starvation back to nutritional normalcy. Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up 'One case of this product equates to a human life,' Sarlitto said. 'That's not over-dramatizing what's going on.' On Tuesday, a convoy of Ocean State Job Lot trucks — escorted by the Rhode Island State Police — departed for New York with Edesia's fortified supplement Plumpy'Nut. The food aid will then be taken by an ocean freightliner to South Sudan. Regan Communications Group Tuesday's delivery was made without the help of the federal government, Salem said. There are 185,000 boxes of Edesia's lifesaving nutritional paste still waiting in a Rhode Island warehouse, she added, and the organization has not been told where the boxes will go. 'They are aging but not at risk of expiration,' she said. 'We need food to be traveling to children, not sitting in warehouses.' Advertisement Edesia said it expects 1.6 million children in South Sudan to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2025, the group said in a press release. Last year, 85 percent of Edesia's business was from Related : Sarlitto said multiple agencies stepped up to ensure the delivery could quickly make its way down one of the nation's busiest traffic corridors, including Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee, Connecticut Governor Ned LaMont, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul who ordered state police to escort the convoy. 'Protecting global health and safety is everyone's responsibility,' Governor Dan McKee said in a statement to the Globe. 'Thank you to Ocean State Job Lot, Edesia and Provision Ministry for meeting the moment and delivering Plumpy'Nut nutrition to the starving families who need it desperately. RI State Police was proud to assist.' Edesia Nutrition CEO Navyn Salem walks past shipping boxes piled high alongside raw materials for Plumpy'Nut, a nutritional lifesaving peanut paste sent to malnourished children worldwide, at the company's warehouse in March in North Kingstown, R.I. David Goldman/Associated Press Salem is planning to continue self-funded operations to aid children in need. 'This is what we do to be creative while we wait for the US government to reestablish processes and supply chains we used to depend on,' Salem said. 'The State department has been building teams over the last 30 days to put new systems in place with how Edesia will be able to continue our work. It's positive and promising but we need something to be created in the interim.' US Representative Gabe Amo, who represents Rhode Island's First Congressional District, released a statement Tuesday thanking Edesia and OSJL for their food aid to South Sudan. Amo called on President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to support American farmers and aid producers by delivering Edesia's food aid to children and renewing contracts with Edesia so it can continue essential work. Advertisement 'Thanks to Ocean State Job Lot and Edesia Nutrition, working on coordination with the World Food Program, American can still answer the call when aid is needed,' Amo said in his statement. 'By partnering together, these organizations are filling the massive gap left by President Trump in delivering needed food assistance to children around the world.' Amo said he has 'pressed' Secretary Rubio and the State Department to resurrect America's aid programs. US Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, both Rhode Island Democrats, joined 40 US Senators in pushing for humanitarian aid in Gaza and resumption of diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire in the region. 'The acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza is also unsustainable and worsens by the day. Hunger and malnutrition are widespread, and, alarmingly, deaths due to starvation, especially among children, are increasing. The 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation' has failed to address the deepening humanitarian crisis and contributed to an unacceptable and mounting civilian death toll around the organization's sites. To prevent the situation from getting even worse, we urge you to advocate for a large-scale expansion of humanitarian assistance,' the 40 US Senators Carlos Muñoz can be reached at
Boston Globe
28-06-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Food for starving children worldwide is still sitting in a Rhode Island warehouse. It's a case study in DOGE aftermath.
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But the backlog remains. The nearly 200,000 US government-branded boxes are stuck in North Kingston, and Edesia's founder, Navyn Salem, says she has no idea when—or if—they'll be shipped. Each box can bring one child back from starvation. Advertisement 'What are children supposed to do when we tell them that they need to keep their hearts beating for another six months?' Salem said in an interview. 'Can you imagine if your child dies because you didn't have the equivalent of $1 a day to give them this life-saving food?' Edesia has spent months trying to get answers on a system broken by the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk formerly ran. And even if the government reversed course tomorrow, it will still take weeks, if not months, to get any of the medicinal food to the children worldwide who need it. Advertisement Edesia's plight has become a case study not only in how quickly DOGE disrupted the federal government, but how long it is taking to undo its mistakes. Despite repeated public statements from top officials that they've resumed the program, deep spending cuts and an overhaul of the foreign aid apparatus have left Edesia in limbo. In the meantime, Edesia and supportive Democratic lawmakers have been trying every avenue — including recruiting Republican colleagues — to correct the issue. Edesia and a similar organization based in Georgia, MANA Nutrition, have for years made a fortified peanut-based paste called to digest regular food. Edesia, named for the Roman goddess of food, says it has fed 25 million children since its opening in 2010. Most of the nonprofit's funding came from USAID. In January, after DOGE decimated USAID, Edesia Eventually, the money came, but now Salem says the product, which is technically owned by the US government, is sitting in her warehouse because the shipping and distribution system that sent the food around the world was run by USAID experts. With the agency's staff essentially terminated and its work set to transition to the State Department as of July 1, Salem has spent weeks contacting anyone in government she can reach through a 'a patchwork of emails and phone calls' to try to get food around the world. Advertisement 'The only thing the government has to do is sign a piece of paper that says, 'It's going to ship here,'' Salem said. 'It's sitting here. It's been paid for by taxpayer dollars. If we're trying to gain efficiencies, we're not being successful, currently.' The State Department denies that it is the hold up, but it did not explain where the breakdown occurred. They referred the Globe to a 'We are proud to continue working with our local partners to deliver life-saving ready-to-use therapeutic food,' a State Department spokesperson said in an unsigned statement. 'As for the warehouse, this is simply stock waiting for pickup, but they aren't waiting on the State Department.' Edesia's cause has been taken up in Washington by Rhode Island lawmakers including Representatives Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo. Magaziner has given a speech on the House floor every day it is in session since late April to try to bring attention to the issue. He's at 26 and counting. He has been working closely with Republican Georgia Representative Austin Scott, who represents MANA Nutrition, to try to get the administration's attention through a more ideologically friendly messenger. Advertisement 'Every time he talks to the administration they say the right thing and then a few weeks go by and nothing has changed,' Magaziner told the Globe. 'The damage that was done by Elon Musk in just a couple months is going to take a long time to undo. … Irrespective of whether he found any actual waste or not, a lot of good programs were hurt in the meantime and no doubt many innocent lives were lost.' Amo, who sits on the committee that oversees the State Department, had a fiery exchange with Rubio last month at a hearing in which Rubio insisted the problem was fixed and denied his agency was the source of any further issues. 'No children are dying on my watch,' Rubio told Amo as he asked about the boxes in Edesia's warehouse. 'That food is being distributed now.' Calculating the human toll of the delayed food has been difficult, but Amo has been in regular contact with the State Department about Edesia's ordeal. He believes the administration staff are trying to resolve the problems but failed to understand the complexity of the network. USAID's systems were for not just paying for the RUTF, but they also were also identifying where it was needed and distributing it in dangerous and impoverished parts of the world. Advertisement 'It's a little bit of Whac-A-Mole,' Amo said. 'You have an interlocking set of contracts and agreements that can be upset when you make arbitrary decisions that don't see the whole enterprise of how this moves from farm to human being.' Scott, the Georgia Republican working with Magaziner, defended the administration's mission of identifying waste and said he's confident the issues with MANA Nutrition and Edesia will be resolved. 'If you read the book on Elon Musk, I mean, the way he built his companies is to tear it down to the minimum and then build it back up,' Scott said. 'I would have preferred that we measure twice and cut once, if you will, but ... a lot of things they exposed about where US tax dollars were going, that they shouldn't have been going, needed to be done.' Senator Shelly Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican who worked to get DOGE cuts in her state and others reversed, said she's helping some Democrats now, but under Democratic administrations, they've also had to help her. 'I don't think that's so highly unusual,' she said. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who has been working to restore shipments and payments to MANA Nutrition, said he has personally spoken with Rubio, a former Senate colleague, and some progress was made as a result. But he feels the administration still doesn't understand the urgency and importance of the situation. 'What we saw was an administration that came in literally with a chainsaw and cutting without knowing or caring what they were cutting,' Warnock said. 'And so now, not only are millions of lives at stake, not only are children literally dying as a result of this, the tragic insult and irony is that they're dying while these products, literally, sit on shelves. Make it make sense.' Advertisement Tal Kopan can be reached at
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Food For Millions Rots in Storage After Trump's USAID Cuts
Roughly 60,000 metric tons of food—enough to feed 3.5 million people for a month—is sitting unused at the risk of going bad after the Trump administration slashed funding to USAID earlier this year. According to sources speaking to Reuters, the rations are spread across four warehouses in Houston, Djibouti, Durban, and Dubai and made up of cereals, pulses, and cooking oil. The food, valued at $98 million, was intended for emergency distribution in hunger-stricken regions including Gaza, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most of it will now end up in incinerators or as animal feed. Nearly 500 tons of high-energy biscuits in Dubai are set to expire in July, one former USAID official told Reuters. They could have fed 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month. The failure stems from USAID's rapid dismantling by the Trump administration and a pause on the contracts and funds needed to ship supplies to where they are needed. 'USAID is continuously consulting with partners on where to best distribute commodities at USAID prepositioning warehouses for use in emergency programs ahead of their expiration dates,' a State Department spokesperson said. Internal proposals to release the food remain on hold, awaiting sign-off from the Office of Foreign Assistance, now headed by 28-year-old Elon Musk appointee, Jeremy Lewin. Navyn Salem, founder of Edesia, a company manufacturing the energy paste Plumpy'Nut, said that her organization is now sitting on $13 million worth of food. She is 'hopeful' that a solution will be found soon to get her product to those who desperately need it. The U.S. is the world's largest aid donor, accounting for nearly 40 percent of United Nations contributions. Millions are reliant on the provisions it brings. The charity Action Against Hunger has reported that the cuts are already costing lives, with six children starving to death in the DRC alone after it was forced to suspend its operations. 'If a child's in an inpatient stabilization center and they're no longer able to access treatment,' said Jeanette Bailey from the International Rescue Committee, 'more than 60 percent of those children are at risk of dying very quickly.'
Boston Globe
08-05-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
US Representative Magaziner blasts ‘absolute cruelty' of Trump budget
'The good news is that historically — under both Democratic and Republican presidents, including the first Trump administration — the president's budget is ignored by Congress,' Magaziner said. The more immediate threat, he said, is Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up Magaziner said nearly one-third of Rhode Islanders get their health insurance from Medicaid. Advertisement 'This would be devastating,' he said. 'If these cuts go through, not only will it hurt the thousands of Rhode Islanders who get Medicaid insurance, but it also would hurt health care providers. So nursing homes would be losing revenue and might have to shut down.' Some Republicans see the political peril of such proposals, Magaziner said. 'I think it's starting to dawn on some of these Republican members that if they kick thousands of their own constituents off of health care or cut food benefits or cut education in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich, they're gonna pay for it in the midterms,' he said. Advertisement He said he is urging GOP colleagues to instead only extend tax cuts that help the middle class, while ending tax cuts for the wealthy, thereby avoiding deeper spending cuts. But, Magaziner said, 'The bulk of the Republican conference in the House is sort of still stuck in the old mode of thinking every tax cut is a good tax cut, no matter how rich the recipient is. And we've got to get them off of that and make them feel some pain if they go forward with it.' Meanwhile, Magaziner said he plans to speak on the House floor every day the chamber is in session until federal funding is restored for the peanut paste that Rhode Island's Based in North Kingstown, Edesia is one of two plants in the United States that manufactures the Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food, along with MANA Nutrition in Fitzgerald, Ga. Edesia CEO Navyn Salem sent out an email Sunday, saying, 'I am waiting for a piece of paper' and 'if I do not receive it, it could mean a death sentence for 123,188 children in Sudan.' She said more than 120,000 boxes of the peanut paste have been sitting in Edesia's Rhode Island warehouse since February, but she can't ship it to Sudan until a transportation contract is signed by a 28-year-old acting director of the State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance, who won't meet with her. Advertisement 'It is just so incredibly frustrating,' Magaziner said. 'Over the last decade-plus, 25 million kids around the world have had their lives saved by this product made right here in Rhode Island. Under the Trump administration, the shipments have been stopped.' The Trump administration has said it plans to continue this program, he said, but the delays continue. And, he said, 'Every day that this stuff is sitting in a warehouse in Rhode Island is a day when thousands of kids are unnecessarily wasting away.' Related : On the podcast, Magaziner also spoke about why he To get the latest episode each week, follow Rhode Island Report podcast , , and other podcasting platforms, or listen in the player above. Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at
