U.S. law enforcement authorities say the pipe bombs that were mailed to several high-profile Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are crudely built devices that are similar in appearance.

The devices were placed inside manila envelopes lined with bubble wrap, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. Computer-printed address labels were on the packages as were six first-class stamps, the law enforcement agency said. The postage was more than needed for shipment, according to a New York Times report citing a former law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation.

The packages also had a return address of Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. Schultz was accused by Clinton rivals of secretly helping Clinton, who eventually won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

Suspicious packages have been seized in New York, Washington, Delaware, Florida and California.

The devices found Wednesday were about 15 centimeters long with a small battery attached, according to a law enforcement official who saw X-ray images and spoke on anonymity in order to speak about the ongoing investigation. The official also said the bombs were made with PVC pipe, covered with black tape, and packed with powder and broken glass.

As the devices are found, they are sent to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, nearly 18 kilometers south of Washington.

Authorities said Wednesday bomb technicians would try to determine where the bomb components were bought or where they were built. Technicians will also attempt to recover fingerprints or traces of DNA from the parts and the envelopes that contained the devices.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning of a new arms race if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through with his threat to pull out of a key arms control agreement. 

After talks in Moscow with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Putin said Russia would respond “in kind” if the U.S. deployed intermediate-range missiles in Europe. 

“If they will deliver them to Europe, naturally our response will have to mirror this,” Putin said, adding that the Russian response would be “very quick and effective.” 

He also cautioned that European countries agreeing to host U.S. missiles would put themselves at risk of a Russian attack. 

Meeting in November?

But Putin said he wanted to discuss the issue with Trump if the two meet in Paris next month. Both will be attending ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. 

“I don’t understand why we should put Europe in such a grave danger. I see no reason for that. … We are ready to work with our American partners without any hysterics,” Putin said. 

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday blamed Russia for violating the arms control treaty Trump wants to abandon. But he said he did not foresee a nuclear arms buildup in Europe. 

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. It bans the United States and Russia from building, testing and stockpiling ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 500 to 5,000 kilometers (310 to 3,100 miles). 

Trump has accused Russia of violating the treaty by deploying land-based cruise missiles that pose a threat to NATO. 

Russia denies violating the INF pact and says it is U.S. missile defense systems in Europe and other unprovoked steps that are in violation. 

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, who met with Putin on Tuesday in Moscow, called Russian violations of the treaty “long and deep.” 

“The threat is not America’s INF withdrawal. … The threat is Russian missiles already deployed,” Bolton said.  “The American position is that Russia is in violation. Russia’s position is that they are not in violation. So, one has to ask how to ask the Russians to come back into compliance with something that they don’t think they are violating.” 

But Bolton has implied that the INF deal with Russia might have run its course. He believes bilateral Cold War treaties may not apply to the current global security environment when other nations, including China, Iran and North Korea, have also developed missiles.
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Packages with explosive devices sent to news outlets and to prominent Democrats like former president Barack Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, highlight the challenges the U.S. Postal Service faces in responding to the threat of explosives and hazardous substances. 

The Postal Service says it processes 493.4 million pieces of mail each day, or on average, about 20.6 million pieces each hour. Over the past two decades, it has had to take steps to prevent mail handling and deliveries from turning fatal.

The Postal Service, a federal entity, has seen its employees killed in handling correspondence containing biological material. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, two employees died at a mail processing facility in Washington after being exposed to anthrax-laced letters. That same year, letters containing anthrax arrived at media organizations in New York and Florida and at the offices of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy. 

After the 2001 anthrax attacks, the government changed the way it handled such threats to keep mail centers, their staff and the public safe. The Postal Service launched a “Dangerous Mail Investigations” program to scrutinize suspicious packages nationwide. Equipment to test for airborne biological agents was installed in mail processing centers and the service began sterilizing mail addressed to federal buildings through an irradiation process. 

The U.S. General Services Administration, another federal agency that manages and supports the basic functioning of federal agencies, produced a Mail Security Guide, initially in 2002, to “protect the health and safety of federal and civilian employees in our Federal mail centers.” The guide is updated with new information “as this nation’s understanding of homeland security has evolved,” the agency says on its website.

While there is no single list of best practices federal mail centers should adhere to, the guide provides an outline of preparation “that is appropriate for a federal mail center.”

The guide has numerous elements that every federal agency should include in its mail center security protocol. They include risk assessments, staff protection and mail-screening processes, communications plans, and procedures to continue operations in the event of real or suspected threats. 

The Postal Service says letter or packed bombs “usually target specific individuals” while “placed devices are generally intended to disrupt workplaces and injure indiscriminately.”

 
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It’s a good day for Illinois farmer Bob Gehrke, as the sun shines above the brown, dried and ready-for-harvest rows of soybeans in his fields outside Elgin. 

A good day because Gehrke isn’t fighting wet weather as he spends up to 16 hours a day racing the clock and the calendar to harvest corn and soybeans.

“My biggest concern right now as we’re harvesting is not getting stuck,” he told VOA, “and that we get the crops out before Mother Nature throws snow at us.”

The S-word isn’t his only concern this year. Farmers in the American Midwest are working the fields this fall amid a trade dispute between the United States and China, once one of the largest importers of U.S. corn and soybeans. 

“The marketers’ advice even this spring never was calling for soybeans to go down this extreme. Of course, they weren’t expecting a tariff,” Gehrke said.

Chinese tariffs on U.S. grain products, a retaliatory move for U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, have pushed soybean prices down as much as $2 this year.

“That’s a big deal for a farmer who is counting on that yield and that farm income,” said Tamara Nelsen, senior director of commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau. “This is the fifth straight year of lower farm income, I think, the lowest farm income year since 2012 right now.”

Nelsen said news of a pending new trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, also known as NAFTA, so far isn’t doing much to put farmers at ease. 

“Whether or not that was achieved because of the tariff threats remains to be seen, because the steel and aluminum tariffs still remain on Mexico and Canada, and their retaliatory tariffs threatened against us still remain.”

Gehrke had hoped decades of negotiations and relationships in China would be paying off, reversing declining farm income by keeping one of the largest markets for U.S. soybeans open. So far this year, USDA tracking shows that China accounts for only 5 percent of U.S. soybean exports.

​“We built trade up to where it was working,” said Gehrke. “Now, in a matter of six months, a lot of that has been really knocked down, maybe even devastated, to where will it come back? How long will it take to come back?”

What was supposed to be a silver lining in an otherwise gloomy year for farmers was the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimated $12 billion aid package. While it helps offset his lower soybean prices — “they are saying we would get $1.60, $1.65 a bushel” — Gehrke said it doesn’t help his corn.

“It’s a penny,” he explained. “Why even bother if you are going to give us a penny? That’s more paperwork than it’s worth. And then in their package, what they present — $200 million is for market development. We had the market! That’s sort of a joke.”

Soybeans are still being sold around the world, even if they might not be going to China. Sales to Europe and Argentina are up this year. So, the question remains: Are the trade tactics adopted by President Donald Trump and his administration ultimately working? 

“I think if you ask most farmers right now, they would probably say no,” Gehrke told VOA during a rare working break. “But you ask them maybe a year from now, six months from now, they might change their mind.”

Six months from now, Gehrke himself will be in a very different mindset, shifting gears from harvesting his crops to planting seeds for a new growing season — a season he hopes is filled with more certainty.
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