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The argument over genetically modified food has been dominated, in recent years, by a debate over food labels — specifically, whether those labels should reveal the presence of GMOs.

The battle, until now, has gone state-by-state. California refused to pass a labeling initiative, but Maine, Connecticut, and Vermont have now passed laws in favor of GMO-labeling.

Opponents of GMO labeling, including some of the biggest food manufacturers, have turned to Congress, and this week they achieved their first notable success.

A solid majority of the House of Representatives on Thursday voted in favor of a law that would block states from mandating GMO labels.

The debate in Congress followed familiar lines. Opponents of the bill, such as Chellie Pingree, a House Democrat from Maine who is also an organic farmer, argued that it’s important for consumers to know what they are eating.

Food labels, she pointed out, already tell consumers many things. “We know how many calories are in it, thanks to the labels. We know how much vitamin C we get per serving. We know if a fish is farm-raised or wild-caught, and we want to know those things. Shouldn’t we also be able to know if the food we are buying has GMO ingredients?” she asked.

Opponents of the bill called it an infringement of the public’s right to know what’s in their food.

Congressional supporters of the bill, meanwhile, argued that mandating labels on foods containing GMOs actually is misleading, because it suggests to consumers that GMOs are somehow risky to eat — which they are not, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

“Mandatory labeling of genetically engineered products has no basis in legitimate health or safety concerns, but is a naked attempt to impose the preferences of a small segment of the populace on the rest of us,” said Republican Mike Pompeo of Kansas, the bill’s primary sponsor.

Supporters of the bill also argued that mandatory labels would raise the cost of food.

This bill now goes to the Senate, where no similar legislation has been introduced.

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Anyone who’s fought cancer knows that it’s not just scary, but pricey, too.

“A lot of my patients cry — they’re frustrated,” says Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist at the Mayo Clinic. “Many of them spend their life savings on cancer drugs and end up being bankrupt.”

The average U.S. family makes $52,000 annually. Cancer drugs can easily cost a $120,000 a year. Out-of-pocket expenses for the insured can run $25,000 to $30,000 — more than half of a typical family’s income.

“These drug prices are completely unsustainable,” Tefferi says. “Pharmaceutical companies are in greed mode, and it’s sad. It’s what I call completely unregulated.”

According to a 2013 study, these steep drug prices cause about 10 to 20 percent of cancer patients to skip or compromise the prescribed treatment. Another study found that the launch price of cancer drugs, adjusted for inflation, increased by an average of $8,500 a year between 1995 and 2013.

To make the point, Tefferi recruited 117 other doctors from across the U.S. who share his concerns. Together, they agreed on seven recommendations to make cancer drugs affordable that they want the federal government to consider. The recommendations are laid out in a commentary Thursday in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

The proposals include allowing the importation of cancer drugs across the U.S. border. Drugs are cheaper in other countries, like Canada, they argue, so why not let people with cancer bring them in for personal use?

They also favor legislation that would stop drug companies from delaying access to cheaper generic versions of their drugs. Tefferi points to Gleevec, or imatinib generically, as an example. It’s used to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia and some other cancers. “That drug should have gone generic three or four years ago,” he says. “But Novartis is doing all sorts of maneuvers to prevent it.”

The doctors recommend a change that could have an even bigger effect: creating a committee to review newly approved cancer drugs and propose a fair price based on their benefits.

“There are tons of drugs [out there] that are very expensive, but they don’t work well,” Teferri says. “There needs to be a body that does a critical assessment of a drug’s value and helps determine what the price should be based on how much it really helps. It needs to be a true, honest and transparent discussion.”

The doctors also argue that Medicare should be allowed to negotiate drug prices.

Unlike private insurance, current law prohibits the government-sponsored insurance program from negotiating the cost of drugs with pharmaceutical companies. That means the government program is overcharged and pays the high prices drug companies typically set.

For its part, PhRMA, the main trade group for drug industry, wrote a response to the doctors’ commentary that said lowering drug prices would discourage innovation. The trade group also said that cancer drugs represent only one-fifth of total spending on cancer treatment.

But Leonard Saltz, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said the doctors’ proposals are on target.

“I think they, like me and many others, have a deep concern that this is a serious problem that’s interfering with access to care,” says Saltz, who co-wrote an influential New York Times editorial on cancer drug prices in 2012 that explained why Sloan-Kettering wasn’t using a new, more expensive medicine for colorectal cancer. Saltz didn’t take part in the latest commentary.

But can a group of doctors voicing their concerns in a journal article really change anything? “This is going to be a very difficult issue to resolve,” Saltz says. “No one effort will resolve it, but any effort to engage more people in the discussion and to raise awareness will be helpful.”

Saltz adds, “Congress is the organization that’s going to be able to make a difference here.”

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A wave of wage increases in cities across the country, as well as at several major businesses, continued on Wednesday.

University of California President Janet Napolitano announced that the minimum wage for direct and contract employees in the U.C. system working 20 hours or more per week will be raised to $15 an hour over the next three years. The first hike will be to $13 an hour on Oct. 1, 2015. The minimum wage will then jump to $14 a year later, and hit $15 an hour on Oct. 1, 2017.

In a statement, Napolitano said, “… our community does not exist in a vacuum. How we support our workers and their families impacts Californians who might never set foot on one of our campuses.”

She continued, “This is the right thing to do — for our workers and their families, for our mission and values, and to enhance UC’s leadership role by becoming the first public university in the United States to voluntarily establish a minimum wage of 15 dollars.”

The move is expected to affect 3,200 workers in the university system, according to a U.C. spokesperson. The plan will also institute stronger oversight of contract employees. Spokesperson Dianne Klein told NPR that officials found some contract employees weren’t being paid adequately. “Contractors or subcontractors have been paid less than minimum wage, [and] workers have operated in poor conditions.”

On the other side of the country, a state panel in New York recommended the minimum wage for fast-food chain restaurant employees be raised to $15 an hour. The Fast Food Wage Board, appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, passed a motion to raise the wage in a 3-0 vote, with gradual increases until July 1, 2021, when the full hike would be implemented. State Labor Commissioner Mario J. Musolino can accept, reject or modify the board’s recommendation.

Bloomberg reports the panel was convened by Cuomo to bypass Republicans in the state Senate, who have fought previous initiatives to raise the minimum wage.

The New York State Restaurant Association told Bloomberg that raising wages one sector at a time is wrong.

“From day one Governor Cuomo’s wage board has sought to silence the business community and force through an unfair and discriminatory increase on a single sector of one industry,” [Melissa] Fleischut said in a statement emailed Wednesday. “The result is an extremist policy that will force business owners in this low profit margin industry to cut hours, lay off employees and use technology to help offset skyrocketing labor costs.”

In a statement to NPR, Bill Lipton, director of New York’s Working Families Party, which pushed heavily for the wage hike, said: “Two and a half years ago, $15 was considered a crazy dream — now it’s close to becoming reality for over 180,000 working families. Hopefully, not too long from now, we’ll look back with amazement that we as a society ever allowed corporations in any industry to force millions to work full-time yet still live in poverty. “

And in a third major move on the minimum wage Wednesday, Washington, D.C.’s Board of Elections approved language on an initiative that, if approved, would raise the minimum wage in the District to $15 an hour by 2020. The Associated Press reports supporters will have to gather about 23,000 signatures to get it on the ballot next year. Currently, D.C.’s minimum wage is $10.50 an hour.

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The next time you pop a Popsicle in your mouth, think about this: You’re enjoying the fruits of an 11-year-old entrepreneur’s labor.

Back in 1905, a San Francisco Bay Area kid by the name of Frank Epperson accidentally invented the summertime treat. He had mixed some sugary soda powder with water and left it out overnight. It was a cold night, and the mixture froze. In the morning, Epperson devoured the icy concoction, licking it off the wooden stirrer. He declared it an Epsicle, a portmanteau of icicle and his name, and started selling the treat around his neighborhood.

In 1923, Epperson decided to expand sales beyond his neighborhood. He started selling the treat at Neptune Beach, a nearby amusement park. Dubbed a “West Coast Coney Island,” the park featured roller coasters, baseball, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Neptune flourished in the pre-Depression days, and consumers eagerly consumed Epsicles and snow cones (which also made their debut at Neptune).

Buoyed by this success, Epperson applied for a patent for his “frozen confection of attractive appearance, which can be conveniently consumed without contamination by contact with the hand and without the need for a plate, spoon, fork or other implement” in 1924. The patent illustrates the requirements for a perfect ice pop, including recommendations on the best wood for the stick: wood-bass, birch and poplar. Eventually, Epperson’s children urged him to change the ice pop’s name to what they called it: a Pop’s ‘Sicle, or Popsicle.

A 1917 ad for Alameda’s Neptune Beach, where Epperson sold his frozen “Epsicle” treats in the early 1920s. Courtesy of Alamedainfo.com hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Alamedainfo.com

This origin story is charming, if somewhat apocryphal (sources differ on the details), but it didn’t have a happy ending for the inventor. A broke Epperson sold the rights to his creation to the Joe Lowe Company in the 1920s, much to his regret: “I was flat and had to liquidate all my assets,” he later said. “I haven’t been the same since.”

The Lowe Company went on to catapult Epperson’s invention to national success. During the Great Depression, the company debuted the two-stick version of the popsicle to help consumers stretch their dollar – the duo sold for five cents.

The patent Frank Epperson filed in 1924 for his “frozen confectionery.” United States Patent and Trademark Office hide caption

itoggle caption United States Patent and Trademark Office

But this delicious duo faced competition from Good Humor – which had recently debuted its own chocolate-covered ice cream on a stick – and Lowe was sued for copyright infringement. The court’s compromise? Popsicle could sell water-based treats, and Good Humor could sell ice cream pops. Popsicle tested the limits of the agreement, selling a “Milk Popsicle,” and the two companies tussled in court about the definitions of sherbert and ice cream over the years through a series of lawsuits.

The giant food corporation Unilever scooped up the Popsicle brand in 1989, expanding the brand beyond its original fruity flavors. It also bought Good Humor, ending the feud between the two icy competitors.

Over the years, Epperson’s childhood invention has achieved iconic status, standing in for any frozen treat the way Kleenex means a tissue. Which explains why also over the years, Unilever has worked to keep the name Popsicle its and its alone: In 2010, the company threatened legal action against artisan Brooklyn ice pop makers People’s Pops for using the word “popsicle” on its blog.

As for Epperson, he died in 1983 and is buried in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery, where he’s featured on a tour celebrating local food luminaries – including chocolate mogul Domingo Ghirardelli and mai tai inventor Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron.

But his story lives on in many forms — from the official Popsicle website, where it’s illustrated in comic form, to an inspirational Christian self-help book about trusting in God’s grand plan for your life. Epperson’s childhood invention, born randomly on a freezing night, has also proved to be even more successful than he could have imagined: These days, some 2 billion Popsicles are sold each year.

Shelby Pope is a freelance writer living and eating her way through Oakland, Calif. A version of this story first appeared on KQED’s Bay Area Bites blog.

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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has circulated an order to his fellow commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission to approve the $48.5 billion merger between AT&T and DirecTV.

In a statement, Wheeler said the move would bring more competition to the broadband marketplace and benefit consumers.

“If the conditions are approved by my colleagues, 12.5 million customer locations will have access to a competitive high-speed fiber connection,” Wheeler said. “This additional build-out is about 10 times the size of AT&T’s current fiber-to-the-premise deployment, increases the entire nation’s residential fiber build by more than 40 percent, and more than triples the number of metropolitan areas AT&T has announced plans to serve.”

Under the terms of the order, AT&T will not be allowed to place data caps on rivals offering video and other content, and it will be required to submit all completed interconnection agreements to the FCC.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department has signed off on the deal.

The two companies announced the merger in May 2014. As NPR’s Jim Zarroli reported at the time:

“The merger will unite one of the nation’s most powerful telecommunications companies with one of its leading pay-TV services. Together, the two companies will have 26 million pay-TV customers. And the deal will allow AT&T to offer a much more varied menu of services to potential customers.”

The deal would also, in the words of The Journal, lift “the shadow of AT&T’s bungled attempt to buy T-Mobile US Inc. in 2011 that was blocked by the Justice Department, a misstep that cost the company more than $4 billion in break-up fees and other penalties.”

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Andy Greenberg was minding his own business, driving a Jeep Cherokee on the highway in St. Louis when the SUV’s air vents suddenly started blasting cold air. Then the radio switched stations and began blaring hip hop at full volume. Spinning the radio control knobs did nothing. Soon, the windshield wipers turned on and wiper fluid obscured Greenberg’s view.

Then things started getting really interesting.

Let’s stop the story for a moment. Greenberg is a senior writer for Wired and he knew he was taking part in a demonstration by Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek. For years, the two researchers have been hacking cars’ onboard computers to show that modern autos are vulnerable to various cyber exploits.

You may remember that NPR’s Steve Henn reported on their experiments in 2013. Back then, Miller and Valasek demonstrated that they could jerk the wheel of a Prius or kill the brakes of a Ford Escape — using laptops wired to the cars’ computer systems.

This time, though, they didn’t have to be in the car — or anywhere near it — to wreak havoc on the controls. From miles away, the researchers were able to use a cellular connection to access the Jeep with Greenberg behind the wheel.

Now, back to Greenberg’s 70 mph drive from hell:

“As the two hackers remotely toyed with the air-conditioning, radio, and windshield wipers, I mentally congratulated myself on my courage under pressure. That’s when they cut the transmission.

“Immediately my accelerator stopped working. As I frantically pressed the pedal and watched the RPMs climb, the Jeep lost half its speed, then slowed to a crawl. This occurred just as I reached a long overpass, with no shoulder to offer an escape. The experiment had ceased to be fun… .

“Cars lined up behind my bumper before passing me, honking. I could see an 18-wheeler approaching in my rearview mirror.

Greenberg didn’t end up in an ambulance. He was able to roll the Jeep down an exit ramp and regain full control after turning the ignition off and on.

Miller and Valasek had taken over the Jeep after detecting a vulnerability in Uconnect, the computer system Chrysler uses. Greenberg explains in his Wired report:

“Uconnect, an Internet-connected computer feature in hundreds of thousands of Fiat Chrysler cars, SUVs, and trucks, controls the vehicle’s entertainment and navigation, enables phone calls, and even offers a Wi-Fi hot spot.”

Chrysler has issued a notice on its website that a free patch for the vulnerability is available for download or through dealers. “The security and confidence of our customers is important.,” the company says. “Similar to a smartphone or tablet, vehicle software can require updates for improved security protection to reduce the potential risk of unauthorized and unlawful access to vehicle systems.”

And on Tuesday, Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced legislation that would require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to “establish federal standards to secure our cars and protect drivers’ privacy.” Their bill would also establish a rating system to let consumers know how well their cars protect drivers’ security and privacy.

Earlier this year, Markey issued a report warning of wireless vulnerabilities similar to those that Miller and Valasek demonstrated.

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