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On Aug. 22, 2019, Seoul announced its withdrawal from the General Security of Military Information Agreement, an intelligence-sharing pact between Japan and South Korea signed in November 2016. Recently, the relationship between these two neighbors has deteriorated to its lowest point since the end of World War II.

These past efforts to mend ties make the downward trajectory of the relationship between the two U.S. allies even more puzzling.

Some observers have argued that Seoul and Tokyo tend to set aside differences and cooperate when the U.S. security commitment to the region appears weak. But while this may be true, the size of the gap to be bridged continues to widen, due to the rise of China and the Japanese and South Korean reactions to increasing great power tension.

In 1976, the Argentine military overthrew the government of Isabel Perón, the widow of populist president Juan Perón. It was part of a larger series of political coups called Operation Condor, a campaign sponsored and supported by the United States.

The Dirty War was fought on a number of fronts. The junta dubbed left-wing activists “terrorists” and kidnapped and killed an estimated 30,000 people.

The government made no effort to identify or document the desaparecidos. By “disappearing” them and disposing of their bodies, the junta could in effect pretend they never existed.

In 1977, a group of desperate mothers began to protest.

Soon, the government turned against the protesting women with the same brand of violence they had visited on their children. In December 1977, one of the group’s founders, Azucena Villaflor, was kidnapped and murdered. Twenty-eight years later, her relatives received confirmation that she had been killed and dumped in a mass grave. Several other of the group’s founders were also kidnapped and presumably killed.

But the women didn’t stop. They protested throughout the 1978 World Cup, which was hosted by Argentina, and took advantage of international coverage to make their cause known.

Of the 538 species studied, 44% of them have already experienced an extinction in a particular local area.

While many species were able to tolerate a moderate increase in maximum temperatures, 50% of the species had local extinctions if maximum temperatures increased by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. That number rose to 95% if temperatures increased by more than 2.9 degrees Celsius.

With January going in the record books as the warmest January in 141 years and statistical analysis done by NOAA scientists predicting 2020 to be one of the five warmest years on record, the researchers believe there will be more local extinctions across the globe.

The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 by ministers from 195 countries from around the globe.It committed these countries to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and below 1.5 degrees, if possible.

"Based on our sample of 538 species, we projected a loss of 30% of the species under a more extreme warming scenario, but only about 16% if we stick to the Paris Agreement," Wiens told CNN. "So, think in 1 in 6 species, not 1 in 3."

The Paris Agreement is an international pact aimed at curbing global emissions of heat-trapping gases.Unfortunately, studies have shown that so far, many countries are failing to meet the emissions cuts they set to limit climate change.

"Some researchers have estimated that two-thirds of all species of plants and animals could be lost due to tropical deforestation alone," Wiens said. "If you combine that with climate change (which can impact species in protected forests and other reserves), then it really is terrible. Even from our data alone, there are extreme warming scenarios where 55% of the species would be lost from intact habitats. And note that deforestation also increases global warming. It is a double whammy against biodiversity."

This insecurity, anxiety, is especially affecting young people, who rightly fear for their future, fear that the current system is pushing the Earth beyond its ecological limits.

Understandably we try to place the future of climate crisis within the images of our present conditions—that this way of life will continue, saved by technological solutions or planting millions of trees.

While this vast devastation unfolds across Australia, its politicians—paid by climate deniers—are in the process of developing a huge new open coal mine helped by Siemens, which also profited from the Holocaust as a leading corporate participant in Hitler’s “death through work program,” despite the protests of Fridays for Future activists;

What will our world look like two, or three degrees warmer? We can already see signs of a future few of us want to imagine.

The good news is that part of this overall drag may disappear before the end of 2020, boosting American GDP growthby at least half a percentage point.What about the longer-term benefits of the trade deal?The purchase of $200bn of additional US exports in the energy, agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors, spread over two years, will reduce the bilateral trade deficit with China. But many of these exports will probably be redirected from elsewhere and will not boost US domestic output in those sectors. Longer term, China’s business restrictions, including alleged unfair trading practices, appear to be easing. Given the political boost from the phase one deal, Chinese economic reformers such as vice-premier Liu He may be in the ascendancy in Beijing for a while. 

The trade war has significantly damaged US growth in 2018-19Since President Donald Trump became more aggressive in his threats about trade protection early in 2018, US tariffs on Chinese goods have risen markedly, prompting retaliation from China. There have been only a few comprehensive studies on the overall impact of tariffs on the US growth rate. A notable exception is the work of Jan Hatzius’s US economics team at Goldman Sachs. They have estimated the possible impact of rising tariffs on net trade flows, real incomes, financial conditions and business confidence, and have combined these effects to produce the aggregate growth estimates shown in the graph below. As the negative effects of rising tariffs fade in 2020, the US growth rate is expected to be boosted by at least half a percentage point.

Some of the anti-Trump signs read, “Trump is a danger to our Democracy,” “Impeach the Mother f-cker,” “Arrest Trump,” and “All these Women yet Trump is the only b-tch.”

In front of Trump Tower, about 200 protestors gathered from a group called Out Now. They chanted, “We cannot rely on the election, we cannot rely on the normal channels, because Donald Trump is a fascist…We have to drive him out.”

Like many women at the march, “access to health care” was the only policy they could name that had anything to do with women’s rights, and it was always used as a euphemism for abortion.

I agreed with many of the women at the march that unfettered access to abortion is in danger. Trump has done a lot to see that abortion is no longer funded by taxpayers, and many states are requiring abortion to meet the same safety standards as other medical procedures.