U.S. economic growth accelerated in April, May, and June, expanding at a 2.6 percent annual rate, says a new report by the Commerce Department.

The gross domestic product data, published Friday, says consumer and business spending helped boost growth.  IHS Markit economist Sara Johnson says U.S. growth was also helped by an accelerating global economy that improved American trade.  

The GDP counts up all the goods and services produced in the nation, and is considered the broadest assessment of economic health. This report is based on preliminary data, and could be revised as more complete information becomes available. Such an adjustment was made in the GDP growth for January, February, and March, which showed growth back then was even slower than first thought.  

U.S. President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to boost economic growth to 3 percent or higher by cutting regulations, taxes, and a major health care program while boosting spending on infrastructure. While he has cut some regulations, much of the rest of the Republican president’s economic agenda is stalled in Congress, even though both houses are controlled by his fellow Republicans.

A separate study by the University of Michigan says consumer sentiment declined in July, but remains at a “favorable” level.  Economists track consumer attitudes closely because consumer demand drives most U.S. economic activity. 
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Japan says tariffs on U.S. imports of frozen beef will rise to 50 percent next month, from the current 38.5 percent.

“The tariff will take effect automatically as the volume of the imported U.S. frozen beef exceeded the quota set by law,” Finance Minister Taro Aso said Friday.

Under World Trade Organization rules, Japan can impose safeguard tariffs when imports rise more than 17 percent, year-on-year in any given quarter.

Japan, known for its world-famous Kobe beef, prized by chefs around the world for its tenderness, flavor and marbled fat, uses tariffs and other measures to protect its farmers from competition.

Peter Seng, chief executive of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, said in a statement the 50 percent tariff has implications for U.S. beef exports that are “significant.”

Australia, however, which exports almost as much beef to Japan as the U.S., is not facing the emergency tariffs because it has a free trade agreement with Japan as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP trade agreement shortly after taking office.
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The surge in far-flung and destructive cyber attacks is not good for national security, but for an increasing number of hackers and researchers, it is great for job security.

The new reality is on display in Las Vegas this week at the annual Black Hat and Def Con security conferences, which now have a booming side business in recruiting.

“Hosting big parties has enabled us to meet more talent in the community, helping fill key positions and also retain great people,” said Jen Ellis, a vice president with cybersecurity firm Rapid7 Inc., which filled the hip Hakkasan nightclub Wednesday at one of the week’s most popular parties.

More tech, more jobs

Twenty or even 10 years ago, career options for technology tinkerers were mostly limited to security firms, handfuls of jobs inside mainstream companies, and in government agencies.

But as tech has taken over the world, the opportunities in the security field have exploded.

Whole industries that used to have little to do with technology now need protection, including automobiles, medical devices and the ever-expanding Internet of Things, from thermostats and fish tanks to home security devices.

More insurance companies now cover breaches, with premiums reduced for strong security practices. And lawyers are making sure that cloud providers are held responsible if a customer’s data is stolen from them and otherwise pushing to hold tech companies liable for problems, meaning they need security experts too.

1.8 million skilled workers needed

The nonprofit Center for Cyber Safety and Education last month predicted a global shortage of 1.8 million skilled security workers in 2022. The group, which credentials security professionals, said that a third of hiring managers plan to boost their security teams by at least 15 percent.

For hackers who prefer to pick things apart rather than stand guard over them, an enormous number of companies now offer “bug bounties,” or formal rewards, for warnings about vulnerabilities that leave them exposed to criminals or spies.

​New ways to make money

One of the outside firms that handle such programs, HackerOne, said it has paid out $18.8 million since 2014 to fix 50,140 bugs, with about half of that work done in the past year.

Mark Litchfield made it into the firm’s “Hacker Hall of Fame” last year by being the first to pull in more than $500,000 in bounties through the platform, well more than he earned at his last full-time security job, at consulting firm NCC Group.

In the old days, “The only payout was publicity, free press,” Litchfield said. “That was the payoff then. The payoff now is literally to be paid in dollars.”

There are other emerging ways to make money too. Justine Bone’s medical hacking firm, MedSec, took the unprecedented step last year of openly teaming with an investor who was selling shares short, betting that they would lose value.

It was acrimonious, but St Jude Medical ultimately fixed its pacemaker monitors, which could have been hacked, and Bone predicted others will try the same path.

“Us cyber security nerds have spent most of our careers trying to make the world a better place by engaging with companies, finding bugs which companies may or may not repair,” Bone said.

“If we can take our expertise out to customers, media, regulators, nonprofits and think tanks and out to the financial sector, the investors and analysts, we start to help companies understand in terms of their external environment.”

Chris Wysopal, co-founder of code auditor Veracode, bought in April by CA Technologies, said that he was initially skeptical of the MedSec approach but came around to it, in part because it worked. He appeared at Black Hat with Bone.

“Many have written that the software and hardware market is dysfunctional, a lemon market, because buyers don’t know how insecure the products they purchase are,” Wysopal said in an interview. “I’d like to see someone fixing this broken market. Profiting off of that fix seems like the best approach for a capitalism-based economy.”
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U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told them he will defer to President Donald Trump on the timing of a decision on new steel import curbs, likely meaning further delays and deliberations on the issue.

Members of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee attending a briefing with Ross said he did not specify a timetable for releasing a long-awaited report that will lay out options for shielding the steel industry from imports on national security grounds.

Ross had originally hoped to release the steel “Section 232” report at the end of June but the timing has slipped amid disagreements among White House aides over the merits of restricting imports that could hurt steel consuming industries.

A House Democratic aide who attended the briefing said Ross repeated President Donald Trump’s comments in a Wall Street Journal interview this week that the decision on potential steel tariffs would take more time and could come after congressional debates on health care, tax reform and infrastructure spending.

“I can only follow my leader,” the aide said Ross told the briefing.

The Commerce secretary also told lawmakers the issue had a lot of complexities and that he was considering the interests of both steel makers and steel users and concerned about potential trade retaliation against U.S. agricultural products. The lawmakers said Ross told them he was taking a similar approach to a parallel national security probe into aluminum imports.

“I think it’s a good sign that they’re actually slowing down and taking a long look, not trying to mix this in with these other issues that have to be lifted,” said Republican Representative Jackie Walorski.

“I think that Secretary Ross is committed to making sure that we’re doing no harm, that we’re getting this right. I need it to be right when it comes to aluminum,” Walorski said, adding that the recreational vehicle industry in her northern Indiana district does not want to higher aluminum prices due tariffs.

Representative Judy Chu, a California Democrat, said Ross told the lawmakers that the Trump administration also wanted to pursue negotiations with other steel-producing countries to address the problem of excess capacity that was causing a flood of dumped imports.

But Ross and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last week failed to secure commitments from their Chinese counterparts to make specific commitments to cut steel production capacity.

China, which produces half the world’s steel, is widely viewed as the source of much of the metal’s excess production.
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A proposed border tax in the House of Representatives was killed on Thursday, bringing relief to retailers and other large importers whose profits faced threats and removing a hurdle that had kept negotiations on the long-promised Republican overhaul of the U.S. tax code from advancing.

The border adjustment tax was part of a broad reform of the tax code being pushed by House Republican leaders. It was meant to discourage companies from manufacturing products overseas and then importing them into the United States for sale instead of producing goods in the U.S.

The tax would have generated roughly $1 trillion in revenue, allowing tax-code writers to slash the corporate tax rate without increasing the nation’s deficit.

Removing the controversial provision could make it easier to pass tax legislation, but likely narrows the scope of what could become law. It suggests Republicans are more likely to implement simple rate cuts and not accomplish sweeping tax reform on the scale of the last major overhaul in 1986, such as moving to a territorial tax system, in which companies would pay tax only on profits earned in the United States.

Without a new source of revenue, it will make it more difficult for Republicans to make tax code changes permanent and deficit-neutral. The Republicans are looking to use rules that would require passage of a tax bill only with a simple majority – meaning they would not need any Democratic votes. Those rules restrict creating long-term deficits, so if the bill is not deficit-neutral the tax cuts would likely carry an expiration date.

The group of six Republican negotiators working on tax reform on Thursday did not announce any agreement on their target for corporate rate cuts – a signal that tax lobbyists said shows continuing divisions among Republicans about the closely watched rate.

Corporate profits are currently taxed at 35 percent, but President Donald Trump wants them slashed to 15 percent, which he says will promote business spending, economic growth and job creation.

“While we have debated the pro-growth benefits of border adjustability, we appreciate that there are many unknowns associated with it and have decided to set this policy aside in order to advance tax reform,” the “Big Six” Republican tax negotiators said in a joint statement.

Large retailers and other importers had lobbied aggressively against the border tax proposal, including a coalition that included automakers like Toyota and stores like Target , Autozone and Best Buy.

The retailers argued that the border tax would drastically increase consumer prices, hitting low- and middle-class households the most.

The Big Six is comprised of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, the head of the National Economic Council – both representing Trump – House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the heads of the two tax-writing committees in Congress, Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Kevin Brady.

In addition to killing the border tax, the group offered other vague goals but no details, saying they remain committed to increased expensing for corporations, or allowing them to write off the cost of new equipment more quickly, and to return profits held by American companies overseas, known as repatriation, at a lower tax rate than the current 35 percent.

The statement offered no specific goals or targets on the personal income tax code.

“We have always been in agreement that tax relief for American families should be at the heart of our plan,” the Big Six said.

Trump has vowed to finish a tax overhaul by the end of this year.

Republicans leaders in Congress are hopeful that the current debate on repealing and replacing Obamacare, which is now before the Senate, can be completed quickly, allowing Congress to then turn its attention to the tax code.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the announcement as progress toward an ultimate goal of overhauling the code.

“We’re pleased, but we’re not satisfied until we get an outcome,” said Neil Bradley, the head of policy for the business group.
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Financier Bill Browder testified Thursday before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the “richest man in the world,” a result of “terrible crimes” Putin’s government committed without the threat of retribution.

“I believe he is worth $200 billion,” Browder said, testifying in the Senate panel’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. “The purpose of the Putin regime has been to commit terrible crimes in order to get that money, and he doesn’t want to lose that money by having it frozen. So he is personally at risk of the Magnitsky Act.”

Browder said that to protect the vast amounts of money, some of which he said was in American banks, Putin launched a campaign to repeal the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law that imposed sanctions on Russian officials whom the U.S. held responsible for the 2009 death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail after being retained by Browder to investigate corruption.

Browder is the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment firm that was once the largest portfolio investor in Russia.

Fraud, money-laundering case

Browder testified that Kremlin-linked Natalia Veselnitskaya was the “family lawyer” for the Russian family that owns Prevezon Holdings Ltd., the target of a $230 million fraud and money-laundering case that Magnitsky had exposed.

Veselnitskaya once represented a military unit run by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), the country’s primary intelligence agency. She also met last June with Donald Trump Jr., presidential senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, promising incriminating information about 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Although Trump Jr.’s publicly released emails show Clinton was to be the the primary topic of discussion at the Trump Tower meeting, Trump Jr. has maintained the topic was instead the adoption of Russian children.

Browder testified that when Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, Putin retaliated by imposing a ban on Russian orphans. The goal of the meeting, Browder said, “was to repeal the Magnitsky Act” and the sanctions that were associated with its imposition.

Under questioning by Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Browder affirmed that talk of adoption was effectively Russian code for lifting the sanctions.

“Nobody was talking about adoption,” Browder said. “They were talking about the repeal of sanctions, so that Russian torturers and murderers could freely travel and keep their money in America.”

No adoption talk, he says

When Sheldon asked whether Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort would have known about the code language, Browder responded, “I don’t want to put thoughts into anybody’s head, but I can say with certainty that nobody was talking about adoption.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the Putin government was not committed to any particular U.S. political party. He told Fox News that the Washington-based intelligence company Fusion GPS, which commissioned a dossier of salacious allegations against Donald Trump, has also been supported by Russia. Graham reiterated the Russians hacked into Democratic National Committee emails and that Veselnitskaya was “actually working for the Russians.”

“So they’re trying to play both sides against the middle, and I hope the country wakes up to the threat Russia presents to us all,” Graham said.

The Justice Department settled the $230 million case against Prevezon, which was represented by Velnitskaya, for $6 million in May, two days before the case was scheduled to go to trial.

The settlement prompted 17 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to send a letter to the Justice Department on July 12, demanding an explanation for why the agency had settled the case.

“Two days before this trial was set to begin, the department agreed to settle this $230 million case for less than $6 million and no admission of wrongdoing,” the letter said.

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas asked Browder whether “commercial entities that are really fronts for state-owned enterprises and people like Vladimir Putin” should be required to register under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires agents of foreign countries to disclose their financial and political activities.

Transparency ‘essential’

Browder responded, “It’s absolutely essential that they do, and it’s absolutely essential that there’s transparency about who people are talking to and about what their interests are.”

He added, “We have a free society, free press, democracy, open ideas, amendments, et cetera, and they’re taking advantage of that.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in last year’s U.S. presidential election with the intent of helping Trump win, resulting in several congressional investigations and a Justice Department probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Putin complained Thursday that the probes were a reflection of an escalation of anti-Russian sentiment.

“We are just seeing a rise in anti-Russia hysteria,” Putin said at a news conference in Finland. “It’s a great pity that Russian-U.S relations are being sacrificed to resolve questions of domestic politics.”
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Компанія «Міжнародні авіалінії України» подала два позови: перший спрямований до Міністерства інфраструктури та компанії Ryanair, другий — до Міжнародного аеропорту «Львів» та Ryanair, заявив на прес-конференції у Києві адвокат МАУ Олег Бондар.

Президент МАУ Юрій Мірошников у свою чергу зазначив, що компанія вітає можливі позитивні наслідки від приходу компанії Ryanair на авіаринок, але вступають проти створення ефективних умов діяльності лише для однієї авіакомпанії.

«Насправді в діях МАУ немає нічого того, що могло би призвести до зупинення польотів Ryanair в Україну на умовах, які будуть доступні не лише для Ryanair, а й для всіх інших авіакомпаній. Так, ми вважаємо, що наші інтереси під загрозою, і під загрозою – не внаслідок фактора початку польотів компанії Ryanair, а внаслідок того, яким чином та на яких умовах це робиться», – сказав він.

Міністр інфраструктури України Володимир Омелян заявив 26 липня, що приватна компанія «Міжнародні авіалінії України» (МАУ) позивається до очолюваного ним міністерства через імовірний прихід на ринок авіаперевезень лоукост-компанії Ryanair.

За його даними, компанія МАУ вимагає скасувати контракт Ryanair з аеропортом Львова та заборонити міністерству інфраструктури надавати сприяння Ryanair в Україні.

10 липня компанія Ryanair заявила, що скасовує планований прихід до України через недотримання раніше досягнутої угоди з Міністерством інфраструктури України і посадовцями аеропорту «Бориспіль».

Перед цим гендиректор аеропорту «Бориспіль» Павло Рябікін заявив, що аеропортові не вигідний контракт із Ryanair у тому вигляді, як його домагалася компанія. За його словами, виконання певних вимог могло б призвести аеропорт до збитків у два мільярди гривень щороку.

Міністр інфраструктури Володимир Омелян вважає, що за позицією керівника аеропорту «Бориспіль» стоїть компанія «Міжнародні авіалінії України».

У самій МАУ заперечують створення перешкод іншим авіаперевізникам. «МАУ офіційно заявляє, що не є учасником переговорів між двома господарчими суб’єктами – аеропортом «Бориспіль» та Ryanair, а тому не має жодної можливості впливати на перебіг цих переговорів», – заявила компанія 11 липня.

В уряді заявили про намір поновити переговори з Ryanair. Зокрема прем’єр Володимир Гройсман заявляв, що під час переговорів із компанією Ryanair їй потрібно запропонувати продовжити співпрацю зі львівським аеропортом.
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We know that staying active and involved with family and friends can help keep our brains healthy as we get older. A new study in Portland, Oregon, combines those activities to gauge their effectiveness in warding off dementia. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The U.S. central bank remains upbeat about the US economy, choosing to keep interest rates unchanged at historic lows after concluding its 2-day meeting Wednesday. Amid an improving job market but weak inflation, the Fed characterized US economic growth as “moderate” — far slower than what President Donald Trump promised. But now six months into his presidential term, there’s still very little action on the president’s economic agenda. Mil Arcega has more.
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The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is boosting security measures by requiring any carry-on electronics larger than a cellphone to be screened separately at U.S. airports.

Security officers will ask travelers to take all larger devices out of their bags and put them in a bin by themselves, similar to the screening of most travelers’ laptops, TSA announced Wednesday.

‘An increased threat’

TSA cited an “an increased threat to aviation security” as the reason for the move. The change will not apply to PreCheck lanes.

The new rule eliminates one benefit of leaving laptops at home and traveling with a tablet. In the past, travelers weren’t required to fish out those smaller  electronics from their carry-on bags to be X-rayed.  

In May, the TSA said it was going to test additional screening measures for tablets at 10 U.S. airports. That pilot program was successful and the agency said it planned to expand the rules nationwide “during the weeks and months ahead.”

Worried about laptops

Airlines for America, a trade group representing American, Alaska, Atlas, Federal Express, Hawaiian JetBlue, Southwest, United and UPS airlines “remain committed to working collaboratively with DHS officials to strike the appropriate balance of maintaining the efficiency of the system, while ensuring the highest levels of security are in place.”

The threat of terrorists hiding explosives in laptops prompted the Department of Homeland Security in March to ban electronics larger than cellphones in carry-on bags on direct flights of nine airlines at 10 Middle East airports to the U.S.  That ban has since been lifted as each of the airlines tightened its screening.

John Kelly, the secretary of Department of Homeland Security, then announced tighter security for all 180 airlines flying directly to the U.S. from 280 airports worldwide. The measures that went into effect July 19 applied to 325,000 passengers on 2,000 daily flights.
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A decade-long battle by luxury brands to defend their image neared an end on Wednesday when an adviser to Europe’s top court said Coty can block a German retailer from selling its beauty products via online marketplaces.

“A supplier of luxury goods may prohibit its authorized retailers from selling its products on third-party platforms such as Amazon or eBay,” Advocate General Nils Wahl at the European Union’s Court of Justice said in a non-binding opinion.

Wahl’s view relates to a dispute between the German business of Coty, whose brands include Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein and Chloe, and German retailer Parfumerie Akzente, which sells Coty’s goods on sites including Amazon against its wishes.

Luxury brands say they should have the right to choose who sells their products to protect their image and exclusivity.

Judges at Europe’s highest court, who follow their advisers’ opinions in four out of five cases, will rule on the case “Coty Germany GmbH v Parfumerie Akzente GmbH” in the coming months.

Coty did not respond to a request for comment.

Denis Waelbroeck, a lawyer at Ashurst, said there is a rationale to the luxury brands’ arguments against so-called free riders, companies who may benefit from others’ marketing efforts without paying the costs.

“I don’t think free riding deserves a particular reward. Competition rules do not allow free riding on heavy investments made by luxury goods companies,” he said.

EU antitrust regulators crafted rules in 2010 which allow brand owners with less than a 30 percent market share to block online retailers without a bricks-and-mortar shop from distributing their products.
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