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Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley - TODAY.com - 0 views

  • Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley
  • President Trump is walking back plans to impose new economic sanctions against Russia announced Sunday by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The planned sanctions were an attempt to punish Russia for its support of Syrian President Bashar Assad after a chemical weapons attack earlier this month. {"1222314563954":{"mpxId":"1222314563954","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Positive","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","description":"Daughter of former New York Gov. 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  • Amid the historic developments formally ending the Korean War, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised to close down a nuclear test site in May. NBC’s Keir Simmons reports for TODAY from London. {"1222314563954":{"mpxId":"1222314563954","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Positive","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","description":"Daughter of former New York Gov. 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  • ...1 more annotation...
  • North Korea to close down nuclear test site in May
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Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley - TODAY.com - 0 views

  • Trump does deserve credit for North Korean talks, Chuck Todd says
  • Meet the Press Moderator joins Sunday TODAY’s Chuck Todd and says President Donald Trump deserves credit for helping create conditions to start talks of denuclearization with North Korea, but says some questions still loom. {"1222279235816":{"mpxId":"1222279235816","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Neutral","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","description":"Jacob Cartwright, a truck driver in Oregon, accidentally plugged the wrong address into his GPS and wound up lost more than 100 miles out of his way. 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GOP senator: Trump did not make 's---hole' comment | TheHill - 0 views

  • I’m telling you he did not use that word, George. And I’m telling you it’s a gross misrepresentation. How many times do you want me to say that?” Perdue said after host George Stephanopoulos pressed him for an answer.Perdue was one of several lawmakers participating in a meeting with Trump last week when the president reportedly referred to immigrants from African nations, El Salvador and Haiti as coming from "shithole countries."
  • Trump allies see 's***hole' controversy as overblownTrump allies see 's***hole' controversy as overblownPlay VideoPlayMute0:00/0:43Loaded: 0%0:00Progress: 0%Stream TypeLIVE-0:43 SharePlayback Rate1xChaptersChaptersDescriptionsdescriptions off, selectedCaptions
  • "Following comments by the President, I said my piece directly to him yesterday. The President and all those attending the meeting know what I said and how I feel. I've always believed that America is an idea, not defined by its people but by its ideals," Graham said. 
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Opinion | Three Weeks Inside a Pro-Trump QAnon Chat Room - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “We have to trust that there’s going to be military tribunals and we’ll get to watch all kinds of executions.”
  • As President Biden’s inauguration ticked closer, some of Donald Trump’s supporters were feeling gleeful. Mr. Trump was on the cusp of declaring martial law, they believed. Military tribunals would follow, then televised executions, then Democrats and other deep state operatives would finally be brought to justice.
  • These were honestly held beliefs.
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  • Participants tend to revere Mr. Trump and believe he’ll end the crisis outlined by Q: that the world is run by a cabal of pedophiles who operate a sex-trafficking ring, among other crimes. While the chat room group is relatively small, with only about 900 subscribers, it offers a glimpse into a worrying sect of Trump supporters. Some conspiracists like them have turned to violent language in the wake of Mr. Trump’s electoral loss.
  • Listening to the conspiracists — unfiltered and in their own voices — makes that digital conversation disturbingly real.
  • “I just read somewhere that Biden just lowered the age of consent to age 8. Has anybody heard anything about that?”
  • Sometimes the chat is lighthearted, like when supporters swap details about grocery runs or wish one other happy birthday. But the conversation can also turn dark, like when they speak longingly about “brutal” televised executions or simply ask, “Can the people declare war inside the country if they wanted to?”
  • As the rally began, participants uploaded dispatches from the ground. The mood was positive, even emotional. In the chat, they shared their real-time reactions as Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.
  • They believed Mr. Trump would use his Washington rally to announce mass arrests and release long-awaited evidence supporting Q’s theories. None of that happened.
  • Mr. Trump needed to allow the vote to be certified to spot his enemies. He could use the Insurrection Act at any moment, putting America under martial law and using the military to seize control of the government.
  • They had been through this cycle so many times before, with promises of lawsuits that could overturn the election or a Supreme Court intervention that Mr. Trump had planned for months. None of it came to pass. Still, they had hope.
  • “We know not to watch CNN. We know not to watch these people. But when we have people that we trust on the right, and we’re pushing that information out — because we don’t have many media sources, so the ones that come out, they need to be pretty damn good. And for them to take advantage of people’s hope? We cannot have that.”
  • Rather than re-evaluate their approach in the wake of Q’s failures, many doubled down. The problem wasn’t that the whole worldview was false, just that they had been led astray by inaccurate reports and misinterpretations. Their response was to improve their process. They would develop a list of sources, vet credentials, link to original material, and view unconfirmed information skeptically. They were, in a sense, inventing journalism.
  • Theories spread that Q was actually part of a deep state plot to keep Mr. Trump’s supporters complacent
  • After the inauguration, Ron Watkins, one of the main pushers of QAnon’s theories, whom some suspect is actually Q, seemed to signal the end of the movement. In a message to followers, he focused on the strength of the community, writing, “As we enter into the next administration please remember all the friends and happy memories we made together over the past few years.”
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Size and duration of empires growth-decline curves, 3000 to 600 b.c. - ScienceDirect - 0 views

  • Area changes of about 30 best known empires and states
  • Size-time integral, maximum stable size, adulthood date, and duration are defined operationally and are listed for 20 empires.
  • A criterion is given for distinctness of successive empires.
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  • A world-wide territorial concentration index is tabulated. It increases during the period considered from 0.08 to 1.4% of the world dry land area
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Sundown in America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.
  • When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth.
  • we are now state-wrecked. With only brief interruptions, we’ve had eight decades of increasingly frenetic fiscal and monetary policy activism intended to counter the cyclical bumps and grinds of the free market and its purported tendency to underproduce jobs and economic output. The toll has been heavy.
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  • The modern Keynesian state is broke, paralyzed and mired in empty ritual incantations about stimulating “demand,” even as it fosters a mutant crony capitalism that periodically lavishes the top 1 percent with speculative windfalls.
  • The future is bleak. The greatest construction boom in recorded history — China’s money dump on infrastructure over the last 15 years — is slowing. Brazil, India, Russia, Turkey, South Africa and all the other growing middle-income nations cannot make up for the shortfall in demand. The American machinery of monetary and fiscal stimulus has reached its limits. Japan is sinking into old-age bankruptcy and Europe into welfare-state senescence. The new rulers enthroned in Beijing last year know that after two decades of wild lending, speculation and building, even they will face a day of reckoning, too.
  • what’s at hand is a Great Deformation, arising from a rogue central bank that has abetted the Wall Street casino, crucified savers on a cross of zero interest rates and fueled a global commodity bubble that erodes Main Street living standards through rising food and energy prices — a form of inflation that the Fed fecklessly disregards in calculating inflation.
  • The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would necessitate a sweeping divorce of the state and the market economy. It would require a renunciation of crony capitalism and its first cousin: Keynesian economics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the business of imperial hubris, economic uplift and social insurance and shift its focus to managing and financing an effective, affordable, means-tested safety net.
  • All this would require drastic deflation of the realm of politics and the abolition of incumbency itself, because the machinery of the state and the machinery of re-election have become conterminous. Prying them apart would entail sweeping constitutional surgery: amendments to give the president and members of Congress a single six-year term, with no re-election; providing 100 percent public financing for candidates; strictly limiting the duration of campaigns (say, to eight weeks); and prohibiting, for life, lobbying by anyone who has been on a legislative or executive payroll. It would also require overturning Citizens United and mandating that Congress pass a balanced budget, or face an automatic sequester of spending.
  • It would also require purging the corrosive financialization that has turned the economy into a giant casino since the 1970s. This would mean putting the great Wall Street banks out in the cold to compete as at-risk free enterprises, without access to cheap Fed loans or deposit insurance. Banks would be able to take deposits and make commercial loans, but be banned from trading, underwriting and money management in all its forms.
  • It would require, finally, benching the Fed’s central planners, and restoring the central bank’s original mission: to provide liquidity in times of crisis but never to buy government debt or try to micromanage the economy. Getting the Fed out of the financial markets is the only way to put free markets and genuine wealth creation back into capitalism.
  • If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is.
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What if We're Looking at Inequality the Wrong Way? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • By defining income as “post-tax, post-transfer, size-adjusted household income including the ex-ante value of in-kind health insurance benefits,” Burkhauser and his co-authors achieved two things: a diminished degree of inequality and, perhaps more important, a conclusion that the condition of the poor and middle class was improving
  • Burkhauser has come up with statistical findings that not only wipe out inequality trends altogether but also purport to show that over the past 18 years, the poor and middle classes have done better, on a percentage basis, than the rich.
  • You get different answers depending on whether you measure income before or after taxes and transfers, whether you count fringe benefits (mainly health insurance), and whether you look at families or households, and whether you count the big hitters as the top 20% or the top 1 percent. Counting health care mutes the increase in inequality, but that really means that most of the increase in working class incomes has been siphoned off to medical providers. Looking at households has the same effect.
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  • In his 2013 paper, Burkhauser and his two co-authors have completely upended the thrust of Figures 1 and 2.
  • Burkhauser’s 2011 methodology worked to make the pattern appear far less extreme, as illustrated by Figure 2:
  • First, take a look at Figure 1, a 2011 Congressional Budget Office chart showing significant inequality in the distribution of income gains from 1979 to 2007. Many on the left consider work done by the C.B.O. to be the gold standard of inequality measurement:
  • If — a virtually impossible if — the economic and policy-making community were to reach even a rough consensus in support of Burkhauser’s 2013 analysis, the victory for the right would be hard to overestimate.
  • If Burkhauser’s approach was accepted, it would render moot the basic political and philosophical tenets of the Obama presidency
  • Not only would Burkhauser lay waste to a core liberal argument — inequality is worsening — but his claim that a declining share of income is going to the wealthy could be used to justify further tax cuts for the affluent in order to foster top-down investment and growt
  • Burkhauser et al. achieve their reversal of past income distribution data by amending the definition of income developed in their 2012 paper — “post-tax, post-transfer, size-adjusted household income including the ex-ante value of in-kind health insurance benefits” — to incorporate another accounting tool: “yearly-accrued capital gains to measure yearly changes in wealth.”
  • it is a game changer.
  • Burkhauser attempts to measure the year-to-year increase in taxpayers’ assets — stocks and bonds, housing and privately held businesses – and to count those annual increases as income. Increases in the value of such assets do not show up in tax data because they are taxed by the federal government only when the asset in question is sold and the increased value is realized as taxable gains.
  • The Burkhauser approach does a number of things. First, it spreads and flattens income from capital gains over the duration of ownership. For a wealthy individual who makes a huge killing selling stock or a businesses, his or her income does not spike in the year of the sale, but emerges instead as a series of yearly incremental gains.
  • For assets that have been held for a long time, the Burkhauser system effectively backdates much of currently realized capital gains onto earlier years. This is especially significant in calculating income gains from the current sale of assets purchased in the 1980s and 1990s, since much of the added value was acquired in those earlier decades.
  • I raised the following question: Is it a fair measure of a person’s well-being to include unrealized capital gains? Their house or other assets may have increased in value, but their standard of living has not changed.
  • The unfairness of Burkhauser’s approach is clearly acute at the bottom and middle of income distribution. The most common large asset for those on the bottom rungs is a house. Burkhauser would increase the income of those below the median lucky enough to own a home by the annual appreciation in the value of the home through 2007. For many of these families, however, selling their home is not an option. In Burkhauser’s view, their income goes up even if their living conditions remain unchanged.
  • Burkhauser is respected by his peers; his critics, including some friends, do not accuse him of ideological bias. In addition to A.E.I, he has received support from such center-left institutions as the Pew Foundation, Brookings Institution and the Russell Sage Foundation.
  • the “problem is that in such things, especially when it is a difficult task based on lots of new data sources, the devil is in the details. It’s pretty hard to judge those details without doing a substantial amount of work.” Acemoglu’s conclusion: “Bottom line: conceptually there is a valid point here, and this is a serious paper. The rest is to be determined.”
  • “Rich Burkhauser’s work is really the state of the art — the most important research on inequality being done, in my view,” Scott Winship, of the Brookings Institution, e-mailed me. Winship voiced some concern over the reliability of the statistical data used by Burkhauser, but concluded:All that said, I think Rich’s paper is incredibly disruptive for many fields of research in labor economics and other social sciences, and potentially it could change our entire view about rising inequality over the past few decades.
  • Burtless continued:The problem with the authors’ estimates of accruing capital gains is that those numbers are wholly made up based on a prediction that everyone is equally successful in finding homes, stocks, bonds and other assets to invest in.  But they’re not:  Some people are wildly successful, and get into the 1%; others are horribly unsuccessful and become paupers (or receive foreclosure papers); and most earn mediocre returns that are — surprise! — a bit lower than the economy-wide average.
  • Burkhauser et al. measure the period from 1989 to 2007 because those are both peak years in the business cycle. This timing results in a failure to account for the consequences of the 2008-9 financial crisis and the subsequent struggle toward recovery accompanied by persistent high levels of unemployment.
  • During the post-crisis years 2009-11, according to the Pew Center, the wealthiest mean of the nation saw the value of their assets grow by 28 percent, to $3.17 million from $2.48 million, while the bottom 93 percent saw their net worth drop by 4 percent, to $133,816 from $139,896.
  • Wealth trends since the 2008 crash, shown in Figure 5, demonstrate an extraordinary growth in inequality, suggesting that Burkhauser’s findings — restricted to his carefully tailored definition of income — are fatally flawed as an instrument to assess the current real-world position of the poor and middle class compared with the very rich:
  • A key purpose in measuring both wealth and income is to determine what kind of standard of living is possible for those at the top, the middle and the bottom. Do individuals, families and households have enough to provide for themselves, perhaps most importantly for their children? Do they have the financial resources to enter the highly competitive global marketplace?On that score, Burkhauser’s use of “yearly accrued capital gains” fails the test of measuring what is most significant to know in policy making and in assessing the true quality of life in America.
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Exclude Hungary from EU, says Luxembourg's Asselborn - BBC News - 0 views

  • Exclude Hungary from EU, says Luxembourg's Asselborn
  • Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has called for Hungary to be suspended or even expelled from the European Union because of its "massive violation" of EU fundamental values.
  • "Hungary is not far away from issuing orders to open fire on refugees," he suggested.
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  • "becoming impatient, it is not my personal approach to show a member state the door".
  • The EU could not tolerate "such inappropriate behaviour", he said, and any state that violated such basic values "should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary for ever, from the EU''. It was "the only possibility to protect the cohesion and values of the European Union,'' he said.
  • "could not be taken seriously".
  • The head of Hungarian diplomacy described his Luxembourg counterpart as a "classic nihilist" who worked tirelessly to destroy Europe's security and culture. By way of contrast, Hungary was defending not only its own territory, but that of the EU as well, the foreign minister insisted.
  • "Only Hungarians have the right to decide who they wish to live with."
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Syria conflict: UN suspends all aid after convoy hit - BBC News - 0 views

  • Syria conflict: UN suspends all aid after convoy hit
  • The UN has suspended all aid convoys in Syria after a devastating attack on its lorries near Aleppo on Monday.
  • Russia and Syria have both insisted that their forces were not involved.
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  • But UN chief Ban Ki-moon launched a stinging attack on the Syrian government, saying it had killed the most civilians in the civil war.
  • UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura also said there was still hope but said delegates from the Syria Support Group, which includes Russia, had agreed it was in danger.

  • "Everything shown in the video is the direct result of a fire which mysteriously began at the same time as a large scale rebel attack on Aleppo," he said.
  • A media activist who witnessed the attack told the BBC Arabic service that Russian reconnaissance planes had been spotted, apparently filming the passage of the convoy.
  • Just a day ago, aid workers in Geneva were "almost celebrating" one said, because all the necessary permits had been received, all the warring parties had been notified, and a convoy was finally going to Aleppo province.
  • The 31 lorries were carrying supplies for 78,000 people in Urum al-Kubra. But this morning, the optimistic mood had changed.
  • He called the attack on the aid convoy "sickening, savage and apparently deliberate" and called for those responsible to be held to account.
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Triumph of the Unthinking - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “Words,” wrote John Maynard Keynes, “ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”
  • It’s true that in practice Mr. Obama pushed through a stimulus that, while too small and short-lived, helped diminish the depth and duration of the slump. But when Republicans began talking nonsense, declaring that the government should match the belt-tightening of ordinary families — a recipe for full-on depression — Mr. Obama didn’t challenge their position. Instead, within a few months the very same nonsense became a standard line in his speeches, even though his economists knew better, and so did he.
  • Like Mr. Obama and company, Labour’s leaders probably know better, but have decided that it’s too hard to overcome the easy appeal of bad economics, especially when most of the British news media report this bad economics as truth.
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  • What nonsense am I talking about? Simon Wren-Lewis of the University of Oxford, who has been a tireless but lonely crusader for economic sense, calls it “mediamacro.” It’s a story about Britain that runs like this: First, the Labour government that ruled Britain until 2010 was wildly irresponsible, spending far beyond its means. Second, this fiscal profligacy caused the economic crisis of 2008-2009. Third, this in turn left the coalition that took power in 2010 with no choice except to impose austerity policies despite the depressed state of the economy. Finally, Britain’s return to economic growth in 2013 vindicated austerity and proved its critics wrong.
  • every piece of this story is demonstrably, ludicrously wrong
  • Yet this nonsense narrative completely dominates news reporting, where it is treated as a fact rather than a hypothesis. And Labour hasn’t tried to push back, probably because they considered this a political fight they couldn’t win. But why?
  • Mr. Wren-Lewis suggests that it has a lot to do with the power of misleading analogies between governments and households, and also with the malign influence of economists working for the financial industry, who in Britain as in America constantly peddle scare stories about deficits and pay no price for being consistently wrong. If U.S. experience is any guide, my guess is that Britain also suffers from the desire of public figures to sound serious, a pose which they associate with stern talk about the need to make hard choices (at other people’s expense, of course.)
  • The fact is that Britain and America didn’t need to make hard choices in the aftermath of crisis. What they needed, instead, was hard thinking — a willingness to understand that this was a special environment, that the usual rules don’t apply in a persistently depressed economy, one in which government borrowing doesn’t compete with private investment and costs next to nothing.
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China and Taiwan leaders hail historic talks - BBC News - 0 views

  • The leaders of China and Taiwan have held historic talks in Singapore - their first in more than 60 years.Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou shook hands at the start of the talks, which were seen as largely symbolic.
  • China views Taiwan as a breakaway province which will one day be reunited with the mainland. But many Taiwanese see it as independent and are concerned at China's growing influence.
  • The meeting "has opened a historic chapter in the cross-Strait relations, and history will remember today", he added.The meeting took place in neutral territory on the sidelines of a state visit by Mr Xi to Singapore. Relations between China and Taiwan have improved under Mr Ma since he took office in 2008, with better economic ties, improving tourism links, and a trade pact signed.
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  • The two sides split in 1949 when the Kuomintang lost to the Chinese Communist Party in the civil war and set up a new government in Taiwan.
  • Mr Ma proposed reducing hostility across the Taiwan Strait, expanding exchanges and establishing a cross-strait hotline, according to Taiwan's central news agency. He said this was part of consolidating the "1992 consensus" - the agreement under which both sides recognise the principle of "one China" but define it in their own ways.Similar remarks were made by Mr Xi, who said upholding the consensus would help "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".
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Nasa seeks new class of astronauts as US nears return to crewed space missions | Scienc... - 0 views

  • A new class of astronauts is being sought by Nasa, now that a return to crewed missions from American soil is on the horizon.
  • The US space agency said it would accept applications for its astronaut corps from 14 December to mid-February 2016 and announce the successful candidates in mid-2017.
  • Since the space shuttle was mothballed in 2011, the only way to get into space has been to secure a seat aboard the three-person Russian Soyuz capsule and fly from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. While the Soyuz will continue to ferry people to and from the International Space Station, other vessels are on course to take over some of the trips. Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are developing the CST-100 Starliner and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively. Meanwhile, Nasa is building the Orion deep space exploration vehicle.
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  • Nasa’s chief administrator, Charles Bolden, said the new class of space-farers would work on missions that will pave the way for putting humans on the surface of Mars. The agency last advertised for astronauts in November 2011.
  • Flights on the Boeing and SpaceX vessels are expected to allow a seventh person to live on the International Space Station, meaning the equivalent of one astronaut can work full time on scientific research in space. One priority of space station science is to understand more completely how long duration space travel takes its toll on the human brain and body. Two crew members, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, are taking part in the One Year Mission on the station, the results of which could help devise ways of keeping astronauts healthy on the way to and from Mars.
  • Before they can hope to join the 47 active astronauts in the corps, candidates need a bachelor’s degree in maths, engineering, biological or physical sciences, but preferably an advanced degree too. On top of that, to meet the basic requirements, at least three years’ professional experience is needed, or at least 1,000 hours piloting a jet plane.
  • “This next group of American space explorers will inspire the Mars generation to reach for new heights, and help us realise the goal of putting boot prints on the Red Planet,” he said.
  • Nasas new rocket, the space launch system, along with its Orion capsule, are expected to take astronauts into lunar orbit for missions that will act as stepping stones for the far more ambitious, and technologically challenging, trip to Mars.
  •  
    Nasa is now hiring astronauts for a manned mission to Mars in the near future.
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US election 2016: Trump and Sanders win New Hampshire - BBC News - 0 views

  • US election 2016: Trump and Sanders win New Hampshire
  • Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders have shaken up the US presidential race with decisive victories in the New Hampshire primary.
  • Senator Bernie Sanders, who beat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by a huge margin, said his victory showed people wanted "real change".
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  • On Tuesday Ohio Governor John Kasich came second in the Republican vote, with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio all vying for third place.
  • Mr Trump's lead in New Hampshire is the first time the New York businessman - who has never held political office - has translated his widespread support in opinion polls into an election victory.
  • "he wants to give away our country, folks!"
  • With close to 90% of the votes counted, Senator Sanders has a lead of more than 20 percentage points over Mrs Clinton in the two-horse race for the Democratic nomination.
  • "What the people here have said is that given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for the same old, same old establishment politics and establishment economics," Mr Sanders told cheering supporters.
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In Flint, Mich., there's so much lead in children's blood that a state of emergency is ... - 0 views

  • For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?
  • To find out, all it takes is a prick of the finger, a small letting of blood. If tests come back positive, the potentially severe consequences are far more difficult to discern.
  • That’s how lead works. It leaves its mark quietly, with a virtually invisible trail. But years later, when a child shows signs of a learning disability or behavioral issues, lead’s prior presence in the bloodstream suddenly becomes inescapable.
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  • According to the World Health Organization, “lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”
  • The Hurley Medical Center, in Flint, released a study in September that confirmed what many Flint parents had feared for over a year: The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source, in 2014.
  • The crisis reached a nadir Monday night, when Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency. “The City of Flint has experienced a Manmade disaster,” Weaver said in a declaratory statement. 1 of 11 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × fa fa
  • The mayor — elected after her predecessor, Dayne Walling, experienced fallout from his administration’s handling of the water problems — said in the statement that she was seeking support from the federal government to deal with the “irreversible” effects of lead exposure on the city’s children. Weaver thinks that these health consequences will lead to a greater need for special education and mental health services, as well as developments in the juvenile justice system.
  • To those living in Flint, the announcement may feel as if it has been a long time coming. Almost immediately after the city started drawing from the Flint River in April 2014, residents began complaining about the water, which they said was cloudy in appearance and emitted a foul odor.
  • Since then, complications from the water coming from the Flint River have only piled up. Although city and state officials initially denied that the water was unsafe, the state issued a notice informing Flint residents that their water contained unlawful levels of trihalomethanes, a chlorine byproduct linked to cancer and other diseases.
  • Protesters marched to City Hall in the fierce Michigan cold, calling for officials to reconnect Flint’s water to the Detroit system. The use of the Flint River was supposed to be temporary, set to end in 2016 after a pipeline to Lake Huron’s Karegnondi Water Authority is finished.
  • Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system.
  • That call was finally made by Snyder (R) on Oct. 8. He announced that he had a plan for coming up with the $12 million to switch Flint back to the Detroit system. On Oct. 16, water started flowing again from Detroit to Flint.
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Congressional Republicans worried about Trump backlash - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • GOP front-runner is presenting on the campaign trail.
  • Republicans publicly and privately began warning that they would not unite behind Trump, highlighting the growing rift
  • "This is a time of turmoil, the likes of which we've never seen no matter how long we've been in the game,"
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  • "I think I prefer others who have a better grasp in my view of the challenges we face," McCain said, adding that he will stay neutral through the duration of the primary.
  • suggesting he'd need to separate himself from the top of the ticket. Kinzinger, a Jeb Bush supporter, said he was "very concerned" about the rhetoric from Trump and what it would mean in a general election.
  • "I think his tone has been bad -- it's not an inclusive tone," said Kinzinger, a leading moderate. "Only 30-something percent, maybe of Americans identify as Republicans,
  • "What she ultimately is trying to do is talk about how do we have a message that's inspiring, inclusive, hopeful, optimistic and that unites the country," Ryan said.
  • They want to harness the energy of the grassroots that is powering the candidacies of Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz,
  • Nowhere is that more urgent than the race for the Senate, where 24 GOP seats are in contention, including in states like Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Florida. To stay in the majority,
  • Our presidential candidates are out there beating each other up at the moment, and that's going to solve itself at some point during the process,"
  • McConnell's remarks comments came after the choice of the GOP leader and House Speaker Ryan -- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
  • "We don't want to have another President like this one who divides our country," Ryan told reporters.
  • North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a member in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said Haley was a "very articulate speaker, a very persuasive speaker."
  • I think the American people don't want that -- whether you are an unaffiliated voter, Democrat of Republican they want it to be about what affects them on Main Street not necessarily what affects those who end up in Washington, D.C."
  • "If Republicans are afraid to bring their standard-bearer's policies up for votes, Democrats will hold Republicans accountable by seeking floor votes on Trump's policies ourselves," Reid said.
  • "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," McConnell said.
  • Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, an ally of party leaders, said congressional Republicans are very mindful that whoever the nominee is "going to be is the most important single factor in whether or not we retain majorities in the Senate and the House."
  • "telling everyone it's going to be 'awesome or great and huge' is not going to cut it all the way through November."
  • their own alternative health care reform proposal, a major overhaul of the tax code
  • But multiple members and aides said no decisions were made about whether the House and Senate will actually vote on new proposals they intend to unveil in 2016 to contrast with Democrats.
  • Trump would listen to their ideas, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California,
  • Still, by promoting conservative ideas, they believe, it will be enough to differentiate Republican lawmakers from the likes of Trump.
  • "What we are trying to do is ensure that our members are well-positioned to make their argument about why we need to continue to have a Republican majority,"
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Bob Corker Says Trump Is 'Debasing' the Country - Video - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Bob Corker Says Trump Is ‘Debasing’ the Country By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Oct. 24, 2017 | 0:54 After being attacked on Twitter by President Trump, Senator Bob Corker went on national television and said that the president struggled with the truth.
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BBC - Future - The lifespans of ancient civilisations - 0 views

  • In the graphic below, I have compared the lifespan of various civilisations, which I define as a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political structure
  • Given this definition, all empires are civilisations, but not all civilisations are empires.
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Rex Tillerson Managed to Outlast Hope Hicks - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Policy differences with your boss, especially if he is the president, are one thing; reportedly calling him a “moron” and declining to say whether he represents American values are quite another. And yet a little more than a year after Rex Tillerson was sworn in as the U.S. secretary of state, and amid umpteen stories of his imminent departure from that position, including in The Atlantic, he’s still in his job while high-profile Trump loyalists such as Hope Hicks are out.
  • “I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view, and I certainly have that,” Trump said at a news conference with the Swedish prime minister when he was asked about potential staffing changes at the White House. “And then I make a decision. But I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it’s the best way to go. I like different points of view.”
  • Tillerson’s imprimatur has been the clearest in some of the thorniest issues facing the United States: the future of the Iranian nuclear deal, which is still alive despite Trump’s opposition to it; Qatar’s impasse with its Arab neighbors; and, of course, North Korea, where Tillerson has advocated dialogue from almost the beginning—and pursued a low-key but effective campaign to get other countries to cut ties or exert economic pressure on North Korea.
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  • Kennedy told me that at one point she believed Tillerson would leave after the State Department’s redesign (a process that’s not yet complete) and use that contribution as his legacy. But it seemed as if the incessant leaks made “him dig his feet in … to stick with the job whether he was enjoying it or not.”
  • Tillerson and some of his colleagues may be safe for now—but there’s no guarantee that the president will be satisfied with them in the near future. When Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, asked Trump last November about Tillerson, the president said his secretary of state was “working hard” and “doing his best.” But when she asked Trump whether the secretary would last for the duration of the president’s term, Trump replied: “We’ll see.”
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Hawaii told to fix its alert system after false missile alarm - BBC News - 0 views

  • The US state of Hawaii has been told it did not have "reasonable" safeguards in place to prevent the false missile alert that caused panic on Saturday.
  • Residents and visitors to Hawaii were shocked to receive the false alert of an incoming ballistic missile, sent to their mobile phones early on Saturday morning. Apologising afterwards, Hawaii's Governor David Ige said a member of staff had pressed the wrong button, releasing the alert which was also broadcast on TV and radio stations.
  • "False alerts undermine public confidence in the alerting system and thus reduce their effectiveness during real emergencies," he said.
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  • State officials said a "cancellation template" would be created to address the problem, the New York Times reported.
  • So Hawaii has reintroduced Cold War-era warning sirens. During a test last month, it was reported that 93% of them worked properly, although some could hardly be heard and 12 mistakenly played the ambulance siren. Media playback is unsupported on your device
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The National Security Strategy Papers Over a Crisis - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • In off-the-record conversations with outsiders, the Trump administration’s senior national-security officials all stay in the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy. They recognize the threat from Russia, often with great passion. They reject the notion they are protectionist, instead championing bilateral deals as an alternative to mega trade pacts such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They steadfastly back U.S. allies, especially those in NATO. They even make favorable reference to the much-derided liberal international order.
  • Trump’s silence followed a remarkable story last week in The Washington Post that said the president cannot stand to be briefed on the Russian political threat to the United States and has refused to do anything to counter it. He was furious at the new sanctions imposed on Russia, blamed Congress for the downturn in relations with Moscow, and has done everything in his power not to implement them. We also know that Russia wasn’t even on the agenda at the NATO summit earlier this year, so nervous were U.S. allies of antagonizing the president.So, we’re left to ponder the question once more: Who to believe? Is the United States serious about countering Russian power? Or is it asleep at the switch? The answers are yes and yes—parts of the administration are actively working to counter Russia, even as one important part is not and prefers to embrace Putin.
  • The notion that Trump is weak and ineffective is the unstated assumption behind the school of thought—particularly prevalent among conservatives sympathetic to him and some foreign governments—that this is all going to work out okay. Of course, they never say that outright, but it’s what they mean. They always point to the bureaucrats and the “actions” (as if Trump’s actions do not count), and never the president himself.
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  • The story of year one is that of a president who remains as radical, erratic, and thin-skinned as ever. He entered office with no Senate-confirmable foreign-policy loyalists. He turned to the military and titans of industry and they constrained him and took control of the bureaucracy. He has had to tolerate being handled, but he is not happy about it. He breaks out whenever he can—defying them on Iran or on Jerusalem or with a phone call or in a speech.
  • The main lesson of the launch of the National Security Strategy is that U.S. foreign policy is still in crisis and will remain so for the duration of the Trump presidency. Some brave men and women on the inside are trying to chart a course toward safety, but there are no guarantees they will succeed in containing Trump or that they will remain at their posts. The most testing days of this crisis still lie ahead.
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