Anna Edwards, Author at GanamRadio

08 Oct

Opinion | The Question of Joe Biden

Anna Edwards

Nearly two decades ago, I tried to write a group biography about the senators whose offices happened to be on the second floor of the Russell Office Building on Capitol Hill. The group included John McCain, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham and Chuck Hagel. I got to know and study each of those senators during that long-ago-abandoned project.The more I covered Biden, the more I came to feel affection and respect for him. Then, as now, he could be a tough boss, occasionally angry and hard on his staff. But throughout his life, Biden has usually been on the side of…

08 Oct

Strong U.S. Job Growth Shows Economy Is Defying Challenges

Anna Edwards

In a sign of continued economic stamina, American payrolls grew by 336,000 in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said on Friday.The increase, almost double what economists had forecast, confirmed the labor market’s vitality and the overall hardiness of an economy facing challenges from a variety of forces.It was the 33rd consecutive month of job growth, and the increase was the biggest since January.The unemployment rate, based on a survey of households, was steady at 3.8 percent. It has been below 4 percent for nearly two years, a stretch not achieved since the late 1960s.“This is an…

08 Oct

Opinion | Hamas’s Control of Gaza Must End Now

Anna Edwards

This column has been updated.It’s easy to note the parallels between Hamas’s attack on Israel on Saturday morning and the Yom Kippur war, which began 50 years ago Friday.Now, as then, Israel seems to have been taken almost wholly by surprise by an enemy whose capabilities it appears to have badly underestimated. Now, as then, Israelis have sustained losses — at least 600 dead, over 2,000 wounded and dozens of hostages taken — that go far beyond anything they suffered in recent years. Now, as then, there looms the prospect of a wider and deadlier war — the last time…

08 Oct

Amid Strikes, One Question: Are Employers Miscalculating?

Anna Edwards

The list of gains that the Hollywood writers secured to end a nearly five-month strike with studios once seemed ludicrously ambitious: not just wage increases, but also minimum staffing levels for shows, new royalties on successful series and restrictions on outsourcing writing duties to artificial intelligence.Yet far from an anomaly, the writers’ deal was the latest high-profile labor standoff that seemed to produce substantial gains for workers, and to suggest that they have more leverage than in the past.United Parcel Service employees won large pay increases for part-timers by pushing the company to the brink of a strike, while the…

08 Oct

Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out.

Anna Edwards

Steve Huckins, a native of Oregon, was preparing to move across the country when he went on Facebook to post a goodbye letter of sorts to his home state.“I had planned to die here,” Mr. Huckins, 59, wrote. “It’s a beautiful state. The mountains, the lakes, the rivers, the beaches. All are overshadowed by the societal and political climate.”Mr. Huckins and his wife, Ginger, were leaving Portland, Ore., one of the most progressive cities in the United States. They said Portland’s tolerance of homeless encampments, along with the open use of hard drugs and rising crime, had filled them with…

07 Oct

Hiring Is Rising Along With Rates. Are They on a Collision Course?

Anna Edwards

Heather Mahmood-Corley, a real estate agent, was seeing decent demand for houses in the Phoenix area just a few weeks ago. But as mortgage rates pick up again, she is already watching would-be home buyers retrench.“You’ve got a lot of people on edge,” said Ms. Mahmood-Corley, a Redfin agent who has been selling houses for more than eight years.Mortgage rates and other key borrowing costs have climbed sharply since the middle of the summer, adding to an increase that had already taken place in response to Federal Reserve policy rate moves since early 2022.The latest run-up in interest rates started…

07 Oct

Deadly India Flood Shows Danger Lurking in Melting Glaciers

Anna Edwards

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, 17,000 feet up in the Himalayas just south of India’s border with China, some slight shift started an avalanche. Snow, ice and boulders slid into a giant glacial lake a mile below, causing it to burst its banks. From there, catastrophes multiplied as the water cascaded down mountain valleys below.At least 26 people were killed in the tiny state of Sikkim, and another 142 are missing. But as much as the disaster was a shock, it was hardly a surprise. An academic paper published four years earlier predicted just such a sequence of events in…

07 Oct

Lewis the Ghoul is Taking Over Halloween Décor

Anna Edwards

He stands eight feet tall and is shrouded in a black, gauzy robe, with his monstrous, orange hands open in a welcoming gesture. His toothy grin, cloaked under a hood, is indiscernible.Move over, Freddy Krueger. There’s a new Halloween icon in the mix.Just don’t call him a jack-o’-lantern. His name is Lewis.The Halloween decoration from Target has become a popular addition for Halloween fans, sharing lawns with other decorations like a towering 12-foot skeleton sold at Home Depot and an inflatable sandworm from the movie “Beetlejuice,” as well as the more demure traditional pumpkins or chrysanthemums.But it is not necessarily…

07 Oct

How Charlotte Sena Was Rescued: A Ransom Note and a Mistake

Anna Edwards

It was 4:20 a.m., long before dawn on Monday, when a driver approached the house of a missing girl in upstate New York, placing a note in the black mailbox before darting off through a dark spider web of country roads.It might have been a note of condolence, or sympathy or even a tip. Instead, it was a ransom note, the state police said, one that led to the dramatic rescue later that day of the 9-year-old girl, found hidden in a cupboard in a rundown camper, just 14 miles from her home.The story of how state troopers, S.W.A.T. teams,…