US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has generally avoided escalation in the face of Donald Trump’s relentless criticism — but in recent months, the central banker has become a rare figure to publicly resist his attacks.The change of tack was especially pronounced on Sunday night, when Powell accused the Trump administration of threatening him with prosecution to push the Fed into cutting interest rates. He warned that a new Department of Justice investigation targeting him was a threat to the central bank’s independence.”What made the statement so powerful is how rare it is,” Jason Furman, a top economic adviser to former US president Barack Obama, told AFP.”A year ago, Powell got a question about Donald Trump and the Fed, and gave a one-word answer,” added Furman, now a professor at Harvard University. “He has not wanted to be baited into a fight.”The fact that Powell felt the need to respond forcefully now “conveys just how serious the issue is,” Furman said.Powell, a 72-year-old former investment banker, took the helm at the Fed in 2018 after he was tapped by Trump to replace Janet Yellen. It was Trump’s first presidency.Powell then withstood months of withering attacks from Trump for raising interest rates.When Covid-19 took hold in 2020, the Fed rapidly slashed its benchmark rate to zero and rolled out new support measures, moves that helped to prevent a more severe downturn.His tenure won him praise and criticism from all sides as he maintained the central bank’s independence.Over that tumultuous period, Powell, who is also called “Jay,” managed to forge consensus among the diverse members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee.In 2021, the wealthy Republican with no formal economics training was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden to lead the Fed for a second term.He proceeded to oversee a series of sharp rate hikes in 2022 to curb surging inflation after the pandemic, before beginning to cautiously lower rates again in 2024 and 2025 as he eyed the price effects from Trump’s sweeping new tariffs.- ‘The guy who stood up’ -Less than a year before his time as Fed chair expires in May 2026, however, Powell has again come under fire as Trump lashes out at him for not lowering interest rates more aggressively.Trump, now in his second presidency, has called Powell a “numbskull” and “moron,” and in July went so far as to suggest he could be dismissed for “fraud” over the handling of a $2.5 billion renovation project at the Fed’s headquarters.Since Trump returned to the White House, Powell has proven willing to compromise in certain areas, such as by pulling back on the Fed’s work on climate change.But “Trump pushed him too far this time, and he came out with all guns blazing,” Brookings senior fellow David Wessel said of the Fed chief’s sharp rebuke of the Justice Department probe.Wessel expects the forceful response will cement Powell’s legacy as “a Fed chair with a spine.””He will be seen as the guy who stood up for the independence of the Fed, and the rule of law,” Wessel told AFP.Already, Powell made headlines when he appeared with Trump in July as the president toured the under-renovation Fed buildings while criticizing cost overruns.In a brief exchange in front of reporters, Powell corrected Trump in real-time as the president claimed the price tag for the revamp had ballooned to $3.1 billion. The usually stoic Fed chair was seen shaking his head on camera while Trump spoke, and responding: “I haven’t heard that from anybody.”Prior to his appointment to the central bank in 2012 by then-president Obama, Powell was a scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. The native of Washington served in the Treasury Department, in charge of financial institutions, for a brief period under Republican President George H.W. Bush.

Beyond smart watches and rings, artificial intelligence is being used to make self-testing for major diseases more readily available — from headsets that detect early signs of Alzheimer’s to an iris-scanning app that helps spot cancer.”The reason preventive medicine doesn’t work right now is because you don’t want to go to the doctor all the time to get things tested,” says Ramses Alcaide, co-founder and CEO of startup Neurable.”But what about if you knew when you needed to go to the doctor?”Connected rings, bracelets and watches — which were everywhere at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — can already monitor heart rate, blood pressure and glucose levels, with varying degrees of accuracy.These gadgets are in high demand from consumers. A recent study published by OpenAI showed that more than 200 million internet users check ChatGPT every week for information on health topics.On Wednesday, OpenAI even launched a chatbot that can draw on a user’s medical records and other data collected by wearable devices, with their consent, to inform its responses.Using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology, Neurable has developed a headset that records and deciphers brain activity.The linked app compares data with the user’s medical history to check for any deviation, a possible sign of a problem, said Alcaide.”Apple Watch can pick up Parkinson’s, but it can only pick it up once you have a tremor,” Alcaide said. “Your brain has been fighting that Parkinson’s for over 10 years.”With EEG technology, “you can pick these things up before you actually see physical symptoms of them. And this is just one example.”- Detection before symptoms -Some people have reservations about the capabilities of such devices. “I don’t think that wearable EEG devices are reliable enough,” said Anna Wexler, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies consumer detection products, although she acknowledges that “AI has expanded the possibilities of these devices.”While Neurable’s product cannot provide an actual diagnosis, it does offer a warning. It can also detect signs of depression and early development of Alzheimer’s disease.Neurable is working with the Ukrainian military to evaluate the mental health of soldiers on the front lines of the war with Russia, as well as former prisoners of war, in order to detect post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).French startup NAOX meanwhile has developed EEG earbuds linked to a small box that can help patients with epilepsy.Rather than detect seizures, which are “very rare,” the device recognizes “spikes” — quick, abnormal electrical shocks in the brain that are “much more difficult to see,” said NAOX’s chief of innovation Marc Vaillaud, a doctor by training.NAOX’s device — which has been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration — is designed to be worn at night, to track several hours of data at a time.The company is working with the Rothschild and Lariboisiere hospitals in Paris to try to better understand the links between these brain “spikes” and Alzheimer’s disease, which have been raised in scientific papers.Advances in AI and technology in general have paved the way for the miniaturization of cheaper detection devices — a far cry from the heavy machinery once seen in medical offices and hospitals.IriHealth is preparing to launch, for only about $50, a small smartphone extension that would scan a user’s iris.The gadget relies on iridology, a technique by which iris colors and markings are believed to reveal information about a person’s health, but which is generally considered scientifically unreliable.But the founders of IriHealth — a spin-off of biometrics specialist IriTech — are convinced that their device can be effective in detecting anomalies in the colon, and potentially the lungs or the liver.Company spokesman Tommy Phan said IriHealth had found its device to be 81 percent accurate among patients who already have been diagnosed with colon cancer.