California state fire investigators say that a 2017 wildfire that killed 22 people in Sonoma county was ignited by a private electrical system and not by utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric.

“After an extensive and thorough investigation, CAL FIRE has determined the Tubbs Fire, which occurred during the October 2017 Fire Siege, was caused by a private electrical system adjacent to a residential structure. CAL FIRE investigators did not identify any violations of state law, Public Resources Code, related to the cause of this fire,” said a statement released Thursday.

Some details about the source of the fire and personal information about the witnesses interviewed were redacted from the official report.

The Tubbs Fire burned a total of 36,807 acres and destroyed 5,636 structures in both Sonoma and Napa counties, in addition to the 22 fatalities, the statement added. One firefighter was injured. It was one of the deadliest fires in state history.

The report’s conclusions come as welcome news to PG&E as it is expected to file for bankruptcy protection next week in the face of potential liabilities of billions of dollars related to the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the Northern California town of Paradise. The investigation into the cause of that fire is still ongoing.

In a statement the company said,

“The devastating and unprecedented wildfires of 2017 and 2018 have had a profound impact on our customers, employees and communities. Regardless of today’s announcement, PG&E still faces extensive litigation, significant potential liabilities and a deteriorating financial situation, which was further impaired by the recent credit agency downgrades to below investment grade. Resolving the legal liabilities and financial challenges stemming from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires will be enormously complex and will require us to address multiple stakeholder interests, including thousands of wildfire victims and others who have already made claims and likely thousands of others we expect to make claims.”

PG&E is California’s largest utility company.

The Tubbs Fire was one of more than 170 wildfires the state battled in October 2017.

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Attorneys for utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric say a federal court proposal to require the company to enact a major fire-prevention program could cost as much as $150 billion dollars and the removal of 100 million trees from Northern California.

Two weeks ago, Judge William Alsup proposed ordering the utility to inspect its entire electric grid — almost 100,000 miles of power lines — to determine the safety of that system and “remove or trim all trees that could fall onto its power lines” to minimize the risk that a dangerous wildfire would be ignited.

In a court filing Wednesday, the attorneys said the company “agrees with the Court that the status quo is unacceptable” and that it is “committed to working aggressively and expeditiously with state and federal officials on system maintenance and upgrades and on wildfire mitigation efforts.”

“But the path forward to mitigating wildfire risk is best designed not through probation conditions, but rather through careful coordination with state and federal regulators, after appropriate consultation with other interested parties, based on the best science and engineering advice, with policy analysis that accounts for the full range of important but often conflicting social goals,” the attorneys argued.

Alsup’s proposed order also would impinge on the authority of the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission which oversee high-power transmission lines, according to the filing.

Instead the attorneys say the company is already working on wildfire safety and “does not object to” working with a court-appointed monitor to review and monitor its progress.

In a separate filing, the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco also expressed doubts about the judge’s proposal.

The judge issued his proposed order as part of his supervision of the company’s probation related to its conviction for violating pipeline safety laws that led to the deadly gas explosion in San Bruno, Calif., in 2010.

PG&E announced last week that it intends to file for bankruptcy protection after determining that it is potentially liable for as much as $30 billion related to the California wildfires of 2017 and 2018.

The judge has scheduled a hearing on his proposals set for Jan. 30.

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A new president is elected. Within days of being sworn in, he pulls his country out of a U.N. migration pact. His path to power has been pockmarked by disparaging comments about women, including a congresswoman. His preferred choice for top posts are members of the armed forces. When he appoints a fifth military official to his cabinet, he makes the announcement via Twitter, his favored means of communications.

Sound familiar?

These are the tactics of Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who was sworn in to office on Jan. 1, 2019.

On Tuesday, Bolsonaro will headline the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an annual gathering that attracts heads of state — 65 of them this year — corporate CEOs and billionaire investors. Bolsonaro’s nationalistic rhetoric is in sharp contrast to a gathering that has long stood for globalization and has pushed to strengthen international ties.

His tactics may remind many of the American president’s. But it is actually symptomatic of a global wave that started almost a decade ago and has only strengthened in recent years. From Turkey and Hungary, to India and the Philippines, the voices of nationalism and the far right have become dominant forces that begin with the election of a charismatic, influential and powerful man.

Hungary, for instance, was once a leader in the drive for democracy in East Europe. But after strongman Viktor Orban rose to power as prime minister in 2010, Hungary’s democratic institutions have been dramatically weakened.

In his first year in office, Orban’s party amended the constitution 10 times. A wholly new constitution was put in place. It whittled down the power of courts, changed how elections are supervised and dramatically curbed media. New positions were created and filled with Orban allies. The moves have been broadly condemned, including by the European Parliament and the United States.

Orban is one of the strongest symbols of this shift. He was one of the first Western leaders to endorse Donald Trump and pursue friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last year, Orban won a third term in a landslide victory after pledging to create a “Christian homeland.”

Similarly, in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte swept to power in 2016, promising to be tough on drug criminals. As he carried out that promise, it resulted in the deaths of thousands of alleged drug dealers across the country. Human rights groups say the innocent poor have borne the brunt of these killings. Duterte uses profanities with abandon, he has compared himself to Hitler and has insulted world leaders. He too wants to change the constitution in Philippines.

And Turkey, once a bastion of secularism, today is rife with religious conflict. Its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president since 2014, has crushed dissent and jailed journalists. Last year, the government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs ordered all of Turkey’s nearly 90,000 mosques to broadcast a verse from the Koran through loudspeakers on their minarets. The move led Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, to declare that Sharia is gradually taking over long-secular Turkey.

And then there’s India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the world’s largest democracy. Under his Hindu nationalist party, the country has pursued laws that hurt the minority Muslim population. For instance, his party declared that eating beef is “against the idea of India.” This led to a ban in the sale of cows for slaughter. While beef is taboo for Hindus, it isn’t so for Muslims and the decree led to the closing of many slaughterhouses and meat shops, traditionally owned by Muslims in India.

The nationalist zeal has also led to curbing of charities operating in India. Tens of thousands of foreign-funded non-government organizations, like Greenpeace India, Ford Foundation and Amnesty International, were either put on notice or had their licenses revoked. Amnesty, which often accuses the Indian government of human rights violations, said a raid of its offices was aimed at silencing critics.

In Brazil, President Bolsonaro pushed forth an almost identical move after taking office earlier this month. He used an executive order that gave his government far-reaching and restrictive powers over non-governmental organizations working in Brazil.

Ultimately, it is moves like these that have global hackles rising for proponents of democratic values.

In almost each of these instances, the leaders have swept into power on a promise to accelerate economic growth and create new opportunities for those left behind by globalization. But the promises are often laced with undercurrents of nationalism that harp on race or religion and closing borders.

These leaders often have a strong base of support. And often they have a pro-business agenda, which stock markets cheer. The American stock market has been on a roller coaster — calmer now after a rough ride at the end of the year. But for many months after Trump’s election, investors gave the U.S. president a clear thumbs up. Brazil’s investors are doing the same, and Bolsonaro has tweeted about it.

Last year, Trump told the crowd at Davos: “I’m here to deliver a simple message: There has never been a better time to hire, to build, to invest and to grow in the United States. America is open for business.” Bolsonaro will likely echo the same sentiments.

Trump also said: “America First does not mean America alone.” Undoubtedly, Bolsonaro believes in Brazil First. And Orban in Hungary First. Likewise, Erdogan for Turkey and Modi for India. But if it is everyone for himself, and keep the others out, who really wins?

Pallavi Gogoi is NPR’s chief business editor.

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It has been a long, long time since New York City’s newsstands have been bereft of copies of The Forward. Founded as a Yiddish-language daily in 1897, the newspaper once known as The Jewish Daily Forward endured a host of major changes over its long life span — but through them all, the small publication reliably went to press with news that its predominantly American Jewish audience often couldn’t find elsewhere.

But that will change come springtime.

The paper announced Thursday that it is ending its print operation to “become a digitally focused publisher,” laying off 10 jobs — or nearly 30 percent of its staff — in the process. That includes The Forward‘s editor-in-chief, Jane Eisner.

“The Forward has never stagnated. Over our 121-year history, we have changed our format many times, launching new sections, publishing in new languages (Yiddish, English, Russian), and embracing change in our community,” the publication’s CEO and publisher, Rachel Fishman Feddersen, said in a letter to readers.

“Whereas our readers once went to the newsstand with a nickel to read the news of the day, today, the vast majority of our community connects through the digital world. That is where the Forward is and will be.”

Founded by Yiddish-speaking socialist champions of trade unions, the traditionally muckraking newspaper reached its zenith back in the early 1930s, when the paper had a nationwide circulation of upwards of 275,000 At various times it boasted the writings of future Nobel laureates Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel. In recent decades, it has adopted an English-language version and cut back to a weekly schedule as its circulation declined to the tens of thousands.

Still, despite its diminishing physical reach, The Forward has maintained an outsize impact, both among its dedicated following and occasionally with major scoops — as it did in 2017, when the paper dropped a bombshell story about President Trump’s then-counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka.

“We understand that the American Jewish story is really intertwined with so many other things that are going on across this country today,” Eisner told NPR’s David Folkenflik days after the Gorka story dropped. “And so we think we are continuing this rich journalistic heritage, but we’re writing for a much broader audience.”

Its digital reach remains sizable as well, according to Feddersen, who said in a statement emailed to NPR that more than 2 million readers a month find the publication’s work online. She said it is that audience the paper wants to focus on serving now.

“We’ve always been truth tellers at the Forward,” she added, “recognizing reality and not sugar-coating it, and knowing what it takes to serve the community.”

Still, the NewsGuild of New York, a union representing some of the staff at The Forward, isn’t buying the explanation that the move is motivated by a shift to digital.

“This is simply an excuse to justify these layoffs,” the union said in a statement released Thursday. “Our members have already been serving as a digital team, ensuring that the beloved brand remains relevant regardless of the platform, and they have been instrumental in creating a robust digital presence for the organization.”

“We are demanding transparency,” the NewsGuild added, “including evidence of reported financial losses and the strategy they claim will ‘complete its evolution’ to digital.”

The Forward‘s digital director, Dave Goldiner, who is not a NewsGuild member, also found himself among this week’s layoffs.

“I’m not an accountant, I’m not a bean counter, I’m not a businessperson, so it’s hard for me to know what they’re looking at when they looked at this,” he told NPR. “Certainly some of the things don’t make sense on the face of it.”

But Goldiner, who spent seven years with the paper, said he is willing to give its management the benefit of the doubt. “It’s a sad day,” he said, “but I do see the logic in what they are trying to do, which is to try and move faster to a bigger audience online, and to try and keep what The Forward does alive.”

And he said the storied publication’s survival, ultimately, is worth fighting for — and courting investors and donors for, too.

“If there’s someone out there listening or reading this that has a couple of million dollars in their pocket,” he added, “I can’t think of a better place to invest in the future of the truth, in the future of decency, diversity and all those values that The Forward has stood for, for 121 years — and hopefully will continue to.”

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Microsoft is investing $500 million to help develop affordable housing and address homelessness in the Seattle area as the growth of tech companies in the region continues to flood the real estate market with high-salaried workers, leaving many other people behind.

The software company made the announcement Wednesday, explaining that the windfall will be distributed over the next three years. Most of it will go toward preserving and building new homes for low- and middle-income residents. A much smaller portion will immediately go toward homeless services and programs to keep people from being evicted – as of a count conducted in January 2017, the city recorded more than 11,500 homeless residents.

“The housing situation in the Puget Sound region has reached a point where it’s appropriate to use the word ‘crisis,’ ” Microsoft President Brad Smith told NPR member station, KUOW, on Thursday.

“The lack of available housing is forcing many people — the schoolteachers, the nurses, the first responders, many others who work at companies — to endure longer and longer commutes. And we have even far worse problems for people who are homeless,” Smith added.

Research by Microsoft found that job growth has outpaced housing construction at such a rapid pace, the company said, “This gap in available housing has caused housing prices to surge 96 percent in the past eight years, making the Greater Seattle area the sixth most expensive region in the United States.”

Smith noted the long-term aim of the company, which is headquartered in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, is to ensure lower- and middle-income workers can continue to live close to where they work, instead of being priced out.

“I think when you take people who play vital roles in a community and you force them to live in another community it really saps the vitality for all of us,” Smith said.

The company will offer $225 million in low-cost loans to subsidize the preservation and construction of middle-income or “work force” housing in six cities – Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland, Issaquah, Sammamish and Renton – where the company has more than 50,000 employees. The resulting residences will target households making between $62,000 and $124,000 per year.

Another $250 million in market rate loans will support low-income housing throughout King County. These are intended for households earning 60 percent of the local median income – about $48,000 for a two-person household.

And $25 million in philanthropic grants have been allocated to tackle homelessness in the greater Seattle region, including a $5 million dollar grant to Home Base, a program created by the Seattle Mariners, the King County Bar Association and the United Way of King County, to provide legal aid for people facing evictions from their homes.

The pledge comes as Microsoft plans to expand its presence in the area by another 8,000 employees. The Seattle Times reported the software company is adding about 2.5 million square feet in new construction to the Redmond campus and plans to renovate another 6.7 million square feet.

According to Microsoft, it began working on the plan eight months ago, which means it preceded the Seattle City Council’s failed head-tax effort last year. The proposed tax would have required big businesses to help fund affordable housing and homeless services. But Amazon, the city’s other tech giant, was instrumental in killing that effort.

Microsoft’s endeavor to ameliorate the housing crisis dovetails with a recent pledge by the mayors of nine surrounding cities to take concrete steps to increase the supply of quality housing. Among the changes they’re looking to implement are changing zoning and land use regulations to increase density near public transit, streamlining and accelerating the permitting process for low- and middle-income housing developers, and providing tax incentives to encourage such developments.

Smith and Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said in a blog post they are hopeful other companies will also work with local organizations and city and state agencies to bridge the affordable housing shortfall.

“Ultimately, a healthy business needs to be part of a healthy community,” they wrote. “And a healthy community must have housing that is within the economic reach of every part of the community, including the many dedicated people that provide the vital services on which we all rely.”

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Updated at 1:00 a.m. ET Thursday

Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard who created the first index mutual fund for individual investors in 1975, died Wednesday at the age of 89, the company said.

Bogle transformed the way people invest. He believed that investors should own a mix of bonds and stocks but shouldn’t pay investment managers to pick them.

That approach to investing became what economists regard as the bedrock, most powerful tool for how everyday Americans should save and invest for the future. And over the past four decades, Bogle has drastically changed the way millions of people all over the world save and invest their money.

To see the impact Bogle has had, you need to look no further than your own retirement account — chances are you have more money in there because of Jack Bogle.

That’s because by creating that first index fund back in the 1970s, Bogle started a revolution of super efficient low-cost investing — a revolution that took on Wall Street firms and the high fees they charge investors.

Bogle also became a champion for the little guy investor, perhaps because he knew what it was like not to have enough money. His family lost everything they had in the Great Depression, “so I grew up having to earn what I got, help out with family expenses,” Bogle told NPR several years ago. “I started working when I was 9 years old.”

Today the company Bogle founded, Vanguard, manages more than $5 trillion. Some of that could be your retirement savings. And it’s structured essentially as a nonprofit.

Vanguard and its index funds are built upon a pretty simple insight.

“We live in this mythical world where we kind of believe the American way is if you try harder, you will do better — that if you pay a professional to do something, it will pay off,” Bogle told NPR in 2015. “And these things are true — except in investing!”

Bogle realized that the stock market doesn’t really have that high a return. So the fees people pay, have an enormous impact on their investing returns. “Cost turns out to be everything,” he said. “It’s just what I’ve often called the ‘relentless rules of humble arithmetic.’ Those fees can eat up half of the money you would otherwise have down the road. “The tyranny of compounding long term costs because they eat you up,” Bogle said.

Bogle showed that hiring mutual fund managers to try to pick this stock over that stock, 80-90 percent of the time, you’re going to make more money just buying the entire stock market. And that’s what a broad-based index fund lets you do — just buy a big list, an index of stocks, of say the biggest companies in the U.S. Investing that way can be 10 to 20 times cheaper than traditional mutual funds with high fees. And Bogle showed with the index fund approach you are much more likely to make more money over time.

That’s why among the most popular investments now are low-cost funds that represent the S&P 500 index of the largest American companies. The pressure that put on the financial industry to lower costs has also brought fees down on many other types of investments as well far beyond Vanguard’s own index funds.

And all this is why Bogle is celebrated as basically the George Washington of an investing revolution.

“Jack Bogle has probably done more for the American investor than any man in the country,” is how Warren Buffet summed it up at a Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting in 2017.

Buffet invited Bogle there to honor him. “I estimate that Jack at a minimum has left in the pockets of investors, he’s put tens and tens of billions into their pockets and those numbers are going to be hundreds of billions over time.” Buffet called Bogle a “hero.”

But while Bogle was a critic of greed and excess on Wall Street, he was also big fan of capitalism. He spoke out, calling for young people, the leaders of tomorrow to be more idealistic, and follow his lead, and clean up the mess: “The soul of capitalism, if you will,” Bogle said. “It’s there to be fixed.”

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