Hasta La Gadget!

Bernie Sanders has become an off camera but all-important supporting character for the drama surrounding a primary contest in southern New Jersey.

Donald Norcross, the first term Democratic US Representative for 1st Congressional District, is facing a challenge from 25 year old political newcomer Alex Law. Law is a self-described “anti-corruption Democrat for progressive policy, smarter government, and campaign finance reform” who has tied his candidacy to the Sanders campaign’s message of a more liberal Democratic Party.

The two men have been fighting over the support of Sanders campaign for the past few weeks.

Norcross’ campaign brought the primary contest some low level national notoriety last week when a campaign flyer made its way online. The mailer, which mostly refers to the candidate’s positions on gun control, features a button on the bottom left touting support from both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns.

There’s just one problem- the Sanders campaign has not endorsed Norcrosss.

As an anonymous source inside the New Jersey Sanders campaign put it:

“[The campaign] doesn’t want to touch a lot of these races against incumbent Democrats” in a state that is about to hold a primary.

It’s a solid strategic move. The Sanders campaign, which is soldiering on in a bid to influence the Democratic Party’s platform at the Philadelphia Convention in late July, needs all the support it can get from party operatives to achieve its goals. Making enemies on either side of a primary in a safely Democratic district would be an error.

So how does Norcross’ campaign get away with claiming the endorsement of the Sanders campaign? The answer lies in a very specific endorsement of the Congressman from John Wisniewski, the New Jersey Chairman for the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Wisniewski, a two-decade veteran of the New Jersey General Assembly (the state’s House of Representatives) endorsed Norcross in January:

“I support Donald Norcross for congress,” said Wisniewski. “When I was state chairman he was a Democratic National Committee member, so I had the opportunity to serve with him in a political capacity. So, certainly, he’s a friend.

“My support for Bernie Sanders is my support for Bernie Sanders. Everybody else, I wish them well.

The endorsement was seen as a blow to Law, who had worked alongside “Wiz” for the Sanders campaign, but he appeared to take the setback in stride:

“As a progressive leader and the chair of Bernie’s efforts in this state, I expected him to show his appreciation for his values….

“Despite his decision in this matter, we are both committed to working towards seeing a President Bernie Sanders. In this, I look forward to working with Assemblyman Wisniewski as we make sure New Jersey can #feelthebern.”

Wiz officially endorsed Norcross on April 7:

“Donald has long been a leader on progressive issues and a fighter for all of New Jersey’s working families,” Wisniewski, a former chair of the state’s Democratic party and current chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, said in a statement.

Law wasn’t happy:

“Real Bernie supporters around the state have got to be confused as to why his state chair … would be there actively supporting someone who is the embodiment of everything Bernie is against,” said Law in a statement. “Bernie supporters around the state have already been looking at [Wisniewski’s hometown of] Sayerville skeptically, as Mr. Wisniewski has been unable to put together the kind of robust coordination that Bernie needs in New Jersey, and I am sure this will add to their mistrust.”

This infighting all came before the mailer.

In a phone interview on May 13, Wisniewski told me that his support for Norcross was given individually in his capacity as Assemblyman, not as chair for the Sanders campaign. When I pressed him on the endorsement, which is widely understood to be the reasoning behind the button touting the Sanders campaign’s support, Wiz stood firm.

For Alex Law, Norcross’ use of the Sanders campaign in a re-election mailer was a bridge too far. The primary challenger has a petition on his website that calls on Sanders to clarify who, if anyone, he is endorsing in the primary.

Again, as my source in the New Jersey Sanders campaign told me, Sanders will not be endorsing either candidate.

In fairness, Norcross hasn’t said that he is endorsed by the candidate himself, a point I brought up to Law when we spoke on Friday.

I asked Law about the discrepancy between his petition’s claim that Norcross is touting Bernie Sanders’ endorsement and the flyer’s claim of the candidate’s campaign’s support. He replied that “[Norcross] says Endorsed by the Sanders Campaign, that means Bernie. Otherwise, any staffer on the campaign could issue an endorsement and you’d be able to claim that the Sanders campaign did it.”

In response, I pointed out to Law that his campaign’s petition could also be seen as deceptive by claiming Norcross said that he was endorsed by Sanders despite the absence of such a claim. Law replied that “To me and most people that read it, it does [say that]. Thanks for your interest in this!”

Repeated attempts to get Law to clarify his point or to engage further were ignored (but seen! thanks messenger). Repeated attempts to reach the Norcross campaign were met with silence.

The Sanders campaign won’t be endorsing either candidate in New Jersey’s 1st District in the 2016 Democratic primary, but that won’t stop both Law and Norcross from using the issue of the popular presidential candidate’s endorsement as a campaign issue until the election.

“Law has the better claim to the endorsement; his campaign started out of a Bernie field office & most of his volunteers are former early Bernie volunteers,” my Sanders campaign source said, speaking as an private Sanders supporter and New Jersey native. “We’d back people like him in races against Republicans, but not against incumbent Democrats.”

The New Jersey primary will be held on June 7.

This article first appeared on my site.

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Last week in Nairobi, over 700 people gathered to discuss how information and communications technologies (ICTs) are being utilized around the world to accelerate achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The annual ICT for Development (ICT4D) Conference hosted by CRS, NetHope, and others, highlighted the role that ICTs play in delivering critical services across a range of sectors, informing policy decisions, as well as improving monitoring and evaluation.

At ICT4D, many non-profit organizations and aid institutions described how their operations, and thereby their impacts, improve with Internet access. But many of the organizations also noted that the dominant models of access do not suit their or their customers’ current needs. In fact, nearly four billion people worldwide are not connected to the Internet because of a range of issues, including lack of availability (no Internet infrastructure in their geographic location) or unaffordable access. Extending connectivity to those individuals, and the organizations supporting them, requires concerted effort and innovative thinking on the part of development agencies, governments and the private sector alike.

For example, the Human Needs Project at the Kibera Town Center in Nairobi provides a range of basic services (such as clean water, toilets, showers, laundry) as well as training, employment and skills development. John Gage, the Chief Science Officer for the project, shared how Internet access improved the delivery of these services, and the Center connects via low-cost commercial Wi-Fi from a fiber access point.

In Mukuru, another urban settlement in Nairobi, the Red Cross has pioneered a system of connected sensors to accelerate live-saving responses to fast-moving fires. Fires can spread quickly in densely populated urban slums because of the use of open fires to cook, burn trash and keep warm. The Red Cross and its partners developed a low cost fire detection solution deployed in family dwellings that can detect a fire and send alarms across the entire connected network via LoRa and text messaging.

Further afield in northern Kenya, a local Internet service provider (ISP), Mawingu, is providing low-cost Wi-Fi Internet service in an area without wireless macro cellular connectivity. Mawingu uses long-distance Wi-Fi for its backhaul network infrastructure from one of the many fiber points of presence (POPs) in Kenya. The company has also pioneered the use of TV white spaces (TVWS) in the local access network, which is currently used for students’ Internet access in local schools.

Each of these examples shared at the conference highlights innovative business and technology models to extend Internet connectivity. A new report launched today by USAID, mSTAR, FHI360 and SSG Advisors, “Business Models for the Last Billion“, goes even farther to describe a range of innovative, low-cost business models to connect the unconnected. The report highlights developments in back-haul network infrastructure, ISP business model innovation providing service to those in the base of the economic pyramid (BOP), the rise of low-cost Internet access devices, locally-relevant content, complementary services offered to BOP customers (such as charging stations) and effective policy and regulation to extend service.

While highlighting that innovative companies servicing the BOP have emerged, the report identifies the significant challenges that remain. First, existing models of delivering Internet access have their limits, hence the need for other innovative business models and service delivery mechanisms. Second, “existing models have succeeded at a relatively small scale but face a lack of early-stage financing, limited partnership opportunities, and unfamiliar or restrictive regulations.” And finally, to scale these innovative solutions, partnerships will be needed to “bring together the large set of diverse organizations with an interest in universal connectivity.”

It is important to note that the sharp rise in Internet adoption in low and middle-income countries has been achieved in strong part by the spread of mobile broadband via macro cellular connectivity. Already over 90% of the world’s population is covered by 2G mobile signals, and over two-thirds is covered by 3G connectivity which provides sufficient bandwidth for rich Internet browsing and video streaming. But to further increase adoption, partnerships such as the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) as well as the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL), are focusing attention and effort on the policy issues and the digital tools needed to expand Internet access. As the global community coalesces around major efforts to extend access to every person on the planet, such partnerships will be key to ensure coordination and complementary action. The ICT4Development conference last week and the new report launched today stress the importance of ICTs and reiterate the need to expand Internet connectivity for global development.

The Sekenani Community Knowledge Center & Computer Lab connected via long distance Wi-Fi. Sekenani, Narok, Kenya. Credit: John Garrity

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Food production has literally changed the face of the planet – it’s the leading cause of deforestation, changes in land use and biodiversity loss. Getting our food to our plates accounts for 70 percent of all human water use and contributes to a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution. All of the environmental destruction, climate change and pollution are not only problematic in their own right, but they’re actually making food production more difficult and unpredictable.

In other words, the act of producing food to feed 7 billion people is having such a profound effect on the environment that it’s jeopardizing our ability to continue to produce food.

That reality should be raising a lot of concern. Yet a new study by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) at the University of Oxford found that out of 83 countries with government-issued food recommendations, only four consider the environmental impact of dietary choices in their official guidelines: Brazil, Germany, Qatar and Sweden. Two others, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, have more recently started including sustainability concerns in their food guidelines.

Notably, the report identifies the United States as a place where the alarm was sounded only to be silenced by meat industry interests:

“Industry groups – primarily representing meat producers – focused significant resources on lobbying and argued that sustainability matters should be ruled outside the scope of the guideline’s legal mandate. This argument was accepted and publically endorsed by the US Secretary of Agriculture shortly after the publication of the DGAC’s report and was ultimately the basis on which sustainability was ruled out of the 2015 DGAs. Importantly, the actual research showing the link between dietary patterns and environmental impacts was never significantly contested by industry.”

In a blog post, the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Health and Human Services claimed that the dietary guidelines weren’t the “appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation about sustainability.” Seven months later, no one from the administration has stepped up to identify where that conversation should be taking place.

In the meantime, we just had the hottest April on record, marking a 7-month streak of breaking global temperature highs, and researchers have shown that we can’t meet international climate targets without reducing meat consumption.

The Center for Biological Diversity, where I work, just released “Extinction Facts” labels highlighting the environmental cost of three of the most popular meat products on American menus: hamburgers, chicken breasts and bacon. The numbers are staggering. In addition to the carbon footprint of our meat addiction, our appetite for bacon alone results in 331 billion pounds of pig manure – enough to fill 60,667 Olympic-sized swimming pools every year.

How much longer can we test the limits of our environment? We’re not only playing a dangerous game with the future of our climate and endangered species, but with our own food security, too.

The U.S. Dietary Guidelines are only updated every 5 years, but we shouldn’t have to wait until 2020 to get sound – and sustainable – dietary advice from our government.

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee already provided the research and recommendation on the need to reduce meat and dairy consumption. Now it’s up to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to pick up where it left off and have the policy conversation on how to create a more sustainable American diet. The study on dietary guidelines outlines some excellent models for how to get started. Instead of clinging to our spot at the top of the list of most environmentally destructive dietary patterns, tell the USDA to become a leader in promoting a diet that’s better for us and the planet.

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Benjamin Lloyd is putting his tattoos where his heart is.

The artist plans to ink patients at Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, with gorgeous temporary tattoos — for free.

How this came about is perhaps the best part of social media. Lloyd, of Tauranga, New Zealand, took to Facebook on Sunday to declare, “Nothing brings me more joy than boosting a kids confidence with a custom tattoo.” He pledged to provide the service gratis for the hospital, as long as he got 50 likes on Facebook.

Needless to say, the response was far beyond what he had hoped. The post has been liked and shared hundreds of thousands of times.

Lloyd told Seven Sharp that he began “tattooing” children a few years ago after the death of his stepson. He choked back tears during the exchange and didn’t elaborate. But as he began working on the kids, he said, “It just made me realize how much it makes children happy.”

Seven Sharp says the hospital is reaching out to Lloyd to perhaps work out an arrangement.

Lloyd assures that the ink he uses is safe and washes off in the shower.

“The only bad thing is that they don’t want to take a shower afterwards,” he said, per Bored Panda.

Here’s video Lloyd posted of the process:

 H/T Elite Daily

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For those who came of age 1980s, frozen food meant a segmented meal of sliced processed meat, potato product, and even a small dessert square of questionable fruit gel. Often referred to as a “TV dinner,” these meals were the staple of the two-parent working family’s latchkey children, along with the infamous ‘pot pie.’ Now that these latchkey kids are now parents and busy working professionals themselves, the need for fast, easy weekday meals has stayed the same…but the solution has changed.

According to a 2012 report by AMG Strategic Advisors, 99 percent of American households contain frozen foods. However, frozen meal sales started to fall beginning in 2008 – and every year since, they have either decreased further or stayed flat. After six decades of steady growth, this data signifies a real shift in the mind of the modern American consumer.

The AMG report cites various reasons for the decline in sales, including: higher prices and smaller packaging, competition from pizza delivery, fewer young shoppers in the aisles, and the perception of the frozen food section as difficult to navigate. Consumers are also restricting their diets and eliminating frozen foods – which they perceive as unhealthy – and, for the same reason, cooking more at home using fresh ingredients.

Another reason cited in the study was a lack of innovation among frozen food products offered. Consumers simply don’t see anything new coming from the large frozen food manufacturers other than breakfast items.

The frozen food giants have a plan to turn these declining sales and dismal trend around. Ad Age reported in 2013 that Big Food manufacturers including General Mills, H.J. Heinz, ConAgra, Kellogg Co., and Nestlé USA, along with retail heavyweight Wal-Mart, are sponsoring a campaign of up to $50 million to combat the image that frozen food is unhealthy and associated with high sugar, sodium, preservatives, and calories. The ad campaign, entitled “Frozen. How Fresh Stays Fresh,” launched in May 2014 with television ads, digital and print advertising, a dedicated website and retail promotion activities under the industry’s lobbying and trade association, the American Frozen Food Institute.

But away from the large manufacturers, another game-changing frozen food revolution was brewing. Small, family owned companies began entering the category with nothing more than a great idea – and some early support from key healthy-food mega retailers such as Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Costco.

In 2013, a small California husband-and-wife company called Veggie Mama received a bidding war to expand financial backing for their business, courtesy of ABC’s “Shark Tank.” After some early success with Sprouts and local Costco stores in their home area of Orange County, owners Theresa and Robert Fraijo walked away with $75,000 in exchange for a 20 percent stake in their company, which makes healthy frozen veggie treats.

Ethnic foods are also a growth category for small companies seeking a wider audience in the frozen food aisle. San Francisco-area based Ling Ling began when customers asked the proprietors of a popular Taiwanese restaurant to sell frozen versions of their meat and vegetable potstickers to enjoy at home. The family convinced Costco to test market their product, and the line eventually expanded to include egg rolls and spring rolls as well, made in small batches using fresh ingredients. After tremendous growth, the brand was acquired by Ajinomoto in 2014 and generated $67 million this year in North America alone. Today, it is considered America’s number one potsticker brand.

Fortune reports in its June 2015 issue that major food manufacturers are losing ground as large retailers replace their stagnating traditional bestsellers with options from smaller companies. Spins, a data provider, also found that sales of natural products are growing in mainstream retailers across nearly every category, as over half of their conventional counterparts decline.

Customers are shopping for natural, healthy food in the frozen food aisle and “Big Food” is taking note. In June, industry website FoodDive.com reported that major manufacturers are adopting the adage of “buy, not build” and acquiring smaller companies with the credibility and reputation that appeals to millennial consumers (and of course, the built-in market share among this key group). In June 2015, Coca-Cola assumed a 16.7% stake in energy drink maker Monster Beverage Corp., following its 2014 minority stake purchased in coffee pod maker Keurig Green Mountain. Another example is Hormel Foods Inc.’s strategic acquisition of natural and organic meats producer Applegate Farms.

Cable influencer Food Network has capitalized on this trend by launching their program “Food Fortunes” to find the next generation of what they term ‘culinary entrepreneurs.’ This could be the reason that a recent IRI scan shows that total frozen food sales are up 0.6 percent in the past 52 weeks and 1.3 percent in the latest twelve weeks. As small business owners try to launch their dreams of frozen food innovation into the hearts and minds of modern consumers, you can bet that the CEOs of Big Food will be watching as well.

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