Aamer Madhani, David Jackson and Tyler Jett USA TODAY Published 9:58 PM EDT Sep 20, 2019 CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA – Former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday accused President Trump of  “abhorrent” behavior amid news reports that the president pressured Ukraine’s president to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the country. Biden’s comments come in the wake of multiple news reports that a whistleblower from the intelligence community filed a complaint with the inspector general overseeing the community concerning a phone call Trump made with a foreign leader. Lawmakers are separately…

In the wake of Hurricane Dorian, the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas is offering sanctuary for survivors of the category 5 storm that razed entire neighborhoods and decimated the islands last week. Thousands of people remain missing, and the death toll, currently at fifty, is expected to rise. Despite damage to the museum’s building as well as some of its art—a comprehensive assessment has yet to be conducted—the cultural space has become a donation collection site.Staffers have teamed up with groups such as Equality Bahamas and Women United to collect…

In recent years, trade actions by US president Donald Trump have gradually transformed the world’s free trade system into one of managed trade, focusing on outcomes rather than being rule-based. Measures such as tariffs, quotas (to escape tariffs), commitments to buy, and export and investment controls are becoming normal. The narrative has also widened from trade war to industrial policy war — efforts to promote certain high-tech sectors to become globally dominant.So far, the industrial policy war has been remarkable for its negative aspects. Basically, the US has used trade,…

Savannah Behrmann USA TODAY Published 10:18 PM EDT Sep 20, 2019 WASHINGTON– On the same day that the Department of Homeland Security added violent white supremacist extremism to its list of terror threats for the first time since the agency’s creation after the 9/11 attacks, a controversial African American conservative commentator told Congress that “white nationalism is not a problem that is harming” communities of color in America. Candace Owens, who has previously dismissed white nationalism and has said Hitler was “OK” until he “had dreams outside of Germany”, downplayed the threat of white supremacy…

Pace’s new 75,000-square-foot flagship space opens to the public this weekend. Located at 540 West Twenty-Fifth Street, the eight-story building encompasses a 2,200-square-foot gallery that will host Pace’s new multidisciplinary performance program, Pace Live; a 10,000-volume research library; and an outdoor sculpture terrace. Inaugurating the gallery are exhibitions dedicated to the work of Yto Barrada, Alexander Calder, David Hockney, Loie Hollowell, Peter Hujar, and Fred Wilson.At a press conference at the space on Tuesday, Pace president and CEO Marc Glimcher said: “We work for the artists. The artists made this…

Singer-songwriter and artist Daniel Johnston, known for his candid lyrics and winsome Magic Marker cartoons, was found dead of a presumed heart attack on Wednesday at his home in Waller, Texas, at age fifty-eight. Johnston rose to indie-rock fame in the early ’80s by handing out tapes recorded at home and illustrated by hand, becoming a beloved inspiration for further generations of bedroom-pop practitioners.Born into a Christian fundamentalist family in Sacramento, California, in 1961, Johnston moved to Austin, Texas, around 1983 after encountering the city during a five-month stint as…

Michael Collins USA TODAY Published 8:42 PM EDT Sep 20, 2019 WASHINGTON – What a difference a couple of years – and a couple of elections – can make. President Donald Trump, who famously hung up on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a protocol-shattering phone call just a week after taking office, gave the red-carpet treatment to Turnbull’s successor, Scott Morrison, at the White House on Friday. Morrison and his wife, Jennifer, were feted with a formal state dinner – only the second of Trump’s presidency. Dinner was served al…

The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island, has appointed six new trustees: contemporary artist, designer, and activist Shepard Fairey; Gabrielle Bullock, a principal at the Los Angeles–based firm Perkins & Will and the second African American woman to graduate from the school’s architecture program; the Pakistani-born interdisciplinary artist Shahzia Sikander; Norman Chan, the founder and managing director of the architectural and interior design firm BTR Workshop Limited in Hong Kong; Michael Rock, the cofounder of the New York City design consultancy 2×4; and William Schweizer III,…

Savannah Behrmann USA TODAY Published 7:27 PM EDT Sep 20, 2019 WASHINGTON– After Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson reportedly made offensive remarks about transgender people earlier this week, Julián Castro, former Obama HUD secretary and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, had some choice words.  “19 Black trans women have been killed this year because comments like Ben Carson’s normalize violence against them,” Castro tweeted.” As HUD Secretary, I protected trans people, I didn’t denigrate them.”  According to the Washington Post, during a stop at HUD’s San Francisco office on Tuesday,…

Valuations of US stocks have reached historical extremes, relative to those of other markets. It is hard to see how this situation can be maintained — but just as difficult to predict when the reckoning will come.Companies listed in America have always commanded a premium, so that much is not new. Our proprietary price/earnings multiple for US equities currently stands at 26, compared with 15 for non-US equities.But the size of the disconnect has grown. The ratio between those two earnings multiples, at 1.7 today, compares with a 20-year average…