News of the Day

For the first time, a fusion device at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has generated plasma, inching one step closer toward using nuclear fusion as a a new source of carbon-free energy.

The university’s physicists and engineers have been building and testing the device at a lab in Stoughton for the last four years, which is referred to as the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror or WHAM. The magnetic mirror device became operational on July 15. Researchers worldwide have been working for decades to harness energy from nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun and the stars. That reaction relies on heated plasma, which is a gas of hot ions and free-moving electrons.

Cary Forest, a UW-Madison physics professor, said generating plasma is an exciting step.

Until now, nuclear power has come from fission reactors that split atoms. Fusion reactors would join atoms together.

Unlike current nuclear plants, Forest said fusion would not produce radioactive waste, adding it’s also safer. Forest said the university lab’s success in generating plasma is an important development toward harnessing fusion as a new carbon-free energy source.

“In addition to wind and solar, we’re going to need these hard, intense, always-on systems for making things and heating houses in the dead of winter,” Forest said.  “There really isn’t an alternative to either this or something like nuclear fission if we really want to get rid of carbon in our energy supply. It’s fission or fusion.”

President Biden announced Sunday that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.

“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for my term,” Mr. Biden posted in a statement on social media.

Shortly after the announcement, he endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination, although Mr. Biden cannot appoint a nominee himself. A source familiar said Mr. Biden and Harris spoke multiple times earlier Sunday ahead of his announcement. There was an emergency meeting of senior Democratic National Committee members happening Sunday.

“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” Mr. Biden posted on social media. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is cracking down on so-called paycheck advance programs, which have grown popular with workers in recent years.

Such programs, also known as earned wage access, allow workers to tap their paychecks before payday, often for a fee, according to the CFPB.

The CFPB proposed an interpretive rule on Thursday saying the programs — both those offered via employers and directly to users via fintech apps — are “consumer loans” subject to the Truth in Lending Act.

More than 7 million workers accessed about $22 billion in wages before payday in 2022, according to a CFPB analysis of employer-sponsored programs also published Thursday. The number of transactions jumped more than 90% from 2021 to 2022, the agency said.

If finalized as written, the rule would require companies offering paycheck advances to make additional disclosures to users, helping borrowers make more informed decisions, the CFPB said.

Perhaps most important, costs or fees incurred by consumers to access their paychecks early would need to be expressed as an annual percentage rate, or APR, akin to credit card interest rates, according to legal experts.

The typical earned-wage-access user pays fees that amount to a 109.5% APR, despite the service often being marketed as a “free or low-cost solution,” according to the CFPB.

Retail sales were unchanged in June from May, after being revised upward to a 0.3% increase in May, according to the Commerce Department report Tuesday. Last month, April sales were revised downward — a 0.2% decline, from unchanged. Sales rose 0.6% in March and 0.9% in February. That comes after sales fell 1.1% in January, dragged down in part by inclement weather.

Sales at gas stations and auto dealerships weighed down the figure. Excluding gas prices and auto sales, retail sales rose 0.8%. Sales at gas stations were down 0.3%, while business at auto stores fell 0.2%, as dealerships were disrupted by a multiday outage after cyberattacks on a software supplier.

The snapshot offers only a partial look at consumer spending and doesn’t include many services, including travel and hotel lodges. But the lone services category – restaurants – registered an uptick of 0.3%.

Elsewhere, plenty of areas were strong. Online sales rose 1.9%, while clothing and accessories store sales rose 0.6%. Department stores posted a 0.6% increase. Stores selling building materials and garden supplies rose 1.4%.

The return of Obama-era net neutrality rules is temporarily halted through the beginning of next month, according to a court of appeals order released Friday.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit put a temporary stay until August 5 on the rules the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to restore in April.

The temporary halt put in place comes after multiple broadband providers filed a motion in favor of a stay on the FCC’s restored rules.

Net neutrality rules aim to bar broadband providers from blocking or throttling internet traffic to some websites and speed up access to others that pay extra fees.

The rules were put in place under former President Obama in 2015, but the Trump administration repealed them in 2017.

Supporters of net neutrality, like Democratic FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, say the rules help to ensure a fair and open internet. But critics such as Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr argue the rules expand government control over the internet to solve a problem that has not been as pervasive as supporters of the rules warned.

The Labor Department said Friday that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it reaches consumers — rose 0.2% from May to June after being unchanged the month before. Excluding food and energy prices, which tend to bounce around from month to month, so-called core wholesale prices increased 0.4% from May and 3% from June 2023.

The June increase was attributed to a sharp rise in final demand services, specifically trade services margins, which soared 1.9% from May and offset lower energy prices and still-falling goods production prices. It’s the largest monthly increase for trade services since March 2022.

“The increase was broad-based among wholesalers and retailers of fuel, autos and other goods, but almost certainly is not the start of a resurgence in margins,” Ian Shepherdson, chairman and chief economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote in a note to clients on Friday. “The data are volatile and often revised a lot. Margins will come under increasing pressure as growth in consumers’ spending continues to slow.”

All five of Wisconsin’s major electric utilities are on pace to hit their carbon reduction goals by the end of the decade, according to a new draft report from the state’s utility regulator.

Every two years, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin prepares the Strategic Energy Assessment, a report compiling information on electricity demand, the state’s energy mix, affordability and environmental impact. The new draft report is based on data utilities provided to state regulators in fall 2023 as well as historical data.

For Wisconsin Public Service, We Energies, Xcel Energy and Madison Gas and Electric, hitting their goals means reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Alliant Energy, meanwhile, has a goal of a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2030.

All five major utilities hope to achieve a 100 percent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by 2050.

Coal continues to make up the largest share of Wisconsin’s energy generation, but it’s decreased significantly in recent years, according to the PSC draft report. Coal went from about 54 percent of the state’s energy generation in 2015 to 27 percent in 2022, the draft report said.

Natural gas, wind and solar have all grown in the same time frame. Natural gas went from 19 percent of the state’s energy generation to 26 percent, wind increased from 6 percent to 19 percent and solar increased from less than 0.1 percent to 3 percent.

By the end of the decade, the PSC’s draft report estimates 13 percent of the state’s energy generation will come from coal, 28 percent from natural gas, 24 percent from wind and 14 percent from solar.

The Labor Department on Thursday said that the consumer price index (CPI), a broad measure of how much everyday goods like gasoline, groceries and rent cost, dropped 0.1% in June from the previous month. It marked the first monthly decline since May 2020. Prices remain up 3% from the same time last year.

Another data point that measures underlying inflationary pressures within the economy also moderated last month. So-called core prices, which exclude the more volatile measurements of gasoline and food in order to better assess price growth trends, increased 0.1% in June. From the same time last year, the gauge climbed 3.3% — the lowest reading since April 2021.

The softer-than-expected report comes as Federal Reserve policymakers look for evidence that high inflation has been successfully tamed as they contemplate when to start cutting interest rates. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during congressional testimony this week that more “good” inflation data would bolster the case for rate cuts this year.

“Incoming data for the first quarter of this year did not support such greater confidence. The most recent inflation readings, however, have shown some modest further progress, and more good data would strengthen our confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” he said.

Starting July 14, a First-Class Forever stamp is set to go from 68 cents to 73 cents. Because Forever stamps hold their value forever (as their name suggests), you can buy as many as you want at the current price, before they each get 5 cents more expensive. Any you already have at home will also still be valid after the price hike.

The USPS has been increasing rates of many of its mailing services repeatedly over the past few years. Just recently, in January 2024, the price of a Forever stamp went up by 2 cents.

The increases have all been incremental and small, but when totaled together they have driven up the price of a Forever stamp 33% since the start of 2021.

Other postage price changes set to take effect this week include:

More than 150 Republican lawmakers are calling on the Biden administration to rescind a rule that’s expected to make more of the nation’s truck fleet electric.

In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the House and Senate Republicans wrote that the rule will “disrupt the heavy-duty truck industry by forcing the broad adoption of heavy-duty zero emission vehicles on an extremely aggressive timeline.”

The rule in question, issued by the EPA in April, would be expected to make new sales of the nation’s heaviest trucks more than 20 percent electric around 2040.

The truck rules do not explicitly mandate a shift toward electric vehicles (EVs). Instead, they set average pollution limits for truckmakers, which are expected to push them toward electric and other lower-emitting technologies such as hybrids.

It’s not totally clear how they will comply. However, one scenario modeled by the EPA projects that in the year 2032, new sales of lighter heavy-duty trucks could be 60 percent electric, medium heavy-duty trucks could be 40 percent electric and heavy heavy-duty trucks could be 30 percent electric.