EMMANUEL MACRON RIVALS TRUMP’S ‚AMERICA FIRST‘ WITH PLAN TO MAKE EUROPE GREAT AGAIN

Date: 16-06-2017
Source: Newsweek

French President Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump don’t have many obvious parallels, although they both enjoy a handshake more than is strictly necessary.

But while Macron’s platform is avowedly liberal both economically and socially, his plans for European trade have a distinctly protectionist flavor. You might even say he wants to “make Europe great again” and “put Europe first.” Or something.

More than a third of French voters backed the hard-right, Euroskeptic protectionism of Marine Le Pen in the recent election. Elsewhere in Europe, parties who want to close borders and stop globalization have surged in recent years. Macron is seeking a pro-European response to this movement, or, as he put it in his presidential manifesto, a Europe that “concentrates on major challenges and dares to defend its interests and values in the world.”

CLIMATE PACT PULLOUT REVEALS TRUMP’S TRUE BASE

Date: 02-06-2017
Source: Newsweek

Donald Trump Announces Withdrawal From Paris Climate Accord: ‚We’re Getting Out‘

They came from Exxon Mobil, Apple, Unilever. Titans of industry. They begged. They pleaded. They cajoled and threatened: Elon Musk said he would quit advising the Donald Trump. As late as Wednesday night, Ivanka and Jared’s friends were still laying out a Hail Mary pass scenario in which the president would stay in the Paris climate pact at the last minute and give all the persuasion credit to the first son-in-law, thereby perhaps placating the investigatory hounds from hell on the young man’s trail.

In the end, the titan’s pleas, Ivanka and Jared’s social future in Manhattan and the future of the planet mattered far, far less than Trump’s base. His real base. Not the coal miners or oil drilling roughnecks or even the evangelicals, who think if the world is melting, well, God Will Sort It Out.

Casual Trump watchers still believe that he’s pulling out of the climate pact because he shares with those low-information groups the notion that climate science is a Chinese hoax—and/or that he doesn’t really believe that but is cannily playing to the blue-collar, black-fingernailed coal mining and resource-extractor roughneck community that supposedly helped put him in office. 

STEPHEN HAWKING: WE NEED TO FIND NEW PLANETS TO LIVE ON

Date: 20-05-2017
Source: NewsWeek

Stephen Hawking has said our time on Earth is running out and we must start searching for new planets to live on if we are to survive as a species.

The physicist recently warned that we only have 100 years to leave Earth and start inhabiting other planets in the universe—or face the possibility of going extinct.

Speaking Friday at the Royal Society in London, U.K., Hawking elaborated on his somewhat dire forecast. “I am aware there is a good deal of speculation in the media at the moment regarding my prediction of our time left on this Earth,” he said.

HOW LONG UNTIL FACEBOOK TAKES OVER THE WORLD?

Date: 10-05-2017
Source: NewsWeek

Facebook Doubles Down On Social VR With Spaces—Now in Beta!

At some point soon, possibly even in May, the number of people in the world using Facebook is going to top 2 billion. That will mean more than half of all internet users in the world are on Mark Zuckerberg’s 13-year-old social network.

In its first quarterly earnings report for 2017 on Wednesday, Facebook stated that it had 1.94 billion monthly active users—300 million more than it had at the same time last year. According to the web-monitoring website Internet Live Stats, there are more than 3.6 billion internet users in the world—around 200 million more than there were last year. Facebook is on its way to signing them up.

Speaking after the quarterly results were announced, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke of the company’s size but did not make explicit his plans for keeping up this astonishing rate of growth. “With that foundation our next focus will be building community,” Zuckerberg said. “There’s a lot to do there.”

The word “community” only hints at his ambitions. Several initiatives the social network has launched in recent years point to his plan to connect the entire world to the internet—and by extension, to Facebook.

Some attempts, like the solar-powered internet planes it tested in Arizona last July, have had some success yet remain a long way from being realized on any significant scale. Other attempts, such as its Free Basics program in India have failed entirely—Indian regulators shut the project down in February over concerns about the social network’s potential to threaten net neutrality.

On Thursday, the technology juggernaut announced the commercial launch of “Express Wi-Fi,” which it claims will give millions of Indians access to the web at an “affordable” fee. It is designed to allow people to pay for the internet directly from local service providers and according to its website is live in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Indonesia as well as India. The initiative forms part of facebook’s Internet.org project, which launched in 2013 with the stated ambition of connecting the two-thirds of the planet without internet access.

Some activists have criticized Internet.org for the underlying implications of what is arguably Zuckerberg’s most ambitious project.

“We shouldn’t celebrate Facebook’s efforts to ‘bring the internet to all’ because that is not what they are doing,” transparency advocate David Sasaki said in a blogpost published shortly after the unveiling of Internet.org.

RICH AMERICANS LIVE 15 YEARS LONGER THAN POOR

Date: 08-04-2017
Source: NewsWeek

Wealth and health are intrinsically linked in the United States, with rich Americans living between 10 to 15 years longer than their poor counterparts, a study has found.

A series of five papers published in the medical journal The Lancet found that a widening income gap, structural racism and mass incarceration are fueling growing health inequalities.

“The USA is one of the richest countries in the world, but that reality means very little for most people because so much of that wealth is controlled by a tiny sliver of Americans,” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote in an article introducing the research.

Sanders called for reforms to the healthcare system, which he described as “the most expensive, bureaucratic, wasteful, and ineffective” in the world.

HOW GEERT WILDERS LOST POWER BUT GAINED INFLUENCE IN THE NETHERLANDS

Date: 18-03-2017
Source: NewsWeek

Populists helped move the nation’s mainstream parties to the right and transformed political norms despite falling short at the polls.

Dutch PM Mark Rutte wins election: Netherlands says no to ‘wrong kind of populism‘

As results flooded in after the Dutch general election, incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte was beaming.

The country, he said, had hit back against far-right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders and the hate he espoused. Wilders’s Party for Freedom came a distant second, with 20 seats, to Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, which won 33. “The Netherlands said: ‘Whoa!’ to the wrong kind of populism,” Rutte told supporters at a rally. Headlines proclaimed that, despite the nativist insurgencies of 2016, the Dutch had rallied in support of the liberal center.

But the truth is not that simple. Wilders is out of power, but his influence is everywhere. He has shown how populists can transform political norms, even when they lose. Rutte’s party responded to rising populism in the Netherlands by toughening its stance on immigration. Case in point: During the campaign, Rutte took out an ad in a Dutch paper that urged migrants in the Netherlands to “be normal or go away.”

GOLDMAN SACKED: HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL TRANSFORM WALL STREET

Date: 27-02-2017
Source: NewsWeek
High-earning traders will quickly become an endangered species as AI takes over the financial sector.

Will The Wolves Of Wall Street Be Out Of A Job Soon?
For the past year, we as a society have been worried sick about artificial intelligence eating the jobs of 3 million truck drivers. Turns out that a more imminently endangered species are the Wall Street traders and hedge fund managers who can afford to buy Lamborghinis and hire Elton John to play their Hamptons house parties.

So maybe “hooray for AI” on this one?

Financial giants such as Goldman Sachs and many of the biggest hedge funds are all switching on AI-driven systems that can foresee market trends and make trades better than humans. It’s been happening, drip by drip, for years, but a torrent of AI is about to wash through the industry, says Mark Minevich, a New York-based investor in AI and senior adviser to the U.S. Council on Competitiveness. High-earning traders are going to get unceremoniously dumped like workers at a closing factory.

“It will really hit at the soul of Wall Street,” Minevich tells me. “It will transform New York.”

HOW MANY DAYS BEFORE PRESIDENT PENCE?

Date: 19-02-2017
Source: NewsWeek

The vice president could make a convincing case it is too risky to leave Trump in power.

The news of the forced resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, due to the scandal that he, as a private citizen, spoke to the Russian ambassador in December after President Barack Obama issued sanctions on Russia for their aggressive behavior, has rocked the Donald Trump Presidency.

Trump, already under fire by many conservatives and Republicans for his “bromance” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is suspect as to his loyalty to traditional American foreign policy, as a result of him having hired Flynn in the first place.

Critics had observed that Flynn seemed unreliable and had poor judgment. Former colleagues darkly joked that there were “Flynn facts,” a reference to his penchant for making up stuff. Flynn had also been criticized for being too close to Putin. At the Republican convention he joined in a chorus of “Lock her up!” a reference to Hillary Clinton.

Many foreign policy professionals are shaking their head at Trump’s inappropriate behavior and language every time he speaks in public, or issues a Twitter comment, and his instability and recklessness.

His having a security meeting over the North Korean missile test in public space at dinner in full vision of other guests is a sign of his failure to act responsibly. His abrupt ending of a phone call to the Australian Prime Minister, our loyal ally in four wars in the past hundred years, is alarming.

TRUMP CLAIMS TERROR ATTACKS ‚ALL ACROSS EUROPE‘ GO UNREPORTED

  What the hell is this nutcase playing? (R.C.)

Date: 07-02-2017
Source: NewsWeek

„All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported,“ Trump told a group of about 300 U.S. troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

President Donald Trump on Monday accused the news media of ignoring attacks by Islamist militants in Europe, without giving specific examples.

Trump, who has made defeating Islamic State a core goal of his presidency, did not specify which attacks were going unreported, which news media organizations were ignoring them, or offer details to support his claims.

„All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported,“ he told a group of about 300 U.S. troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

„And, in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that,“ he added, without saying what those reasons were.

STEVE BANNON’S FEVER DREAM OF AN AMERICAN GULAG

„So utterly sick!“ (RC)

Date: 03-02-2017
Source: NewsWeek

The White House wants to build dozens of new jails for up to 2 million people along the U.S.-Mexico border.

http://europe.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-fever-dream-american-gulag-551472?rm=eu

Who is Steve Bannon? ‘The Most Dangerous Political Operative In America’

Imagine: Miles upon miles of new concrete jails stretching across the scrub-brush horizons of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, with millions of people incarcerated in orange jumpsuits and awaiting deportation.

Such is the fevered vision of a little-noticed segment of President Donald Trump’s sulfurous executive order on border security and immigration enforcement security. Section 5 of the January 25 order calls for the “immediate” construction of detention facilities and allocation of personnel and legal resources “to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico” and process them for deportation. But another, much overlooked, order signed the same day spells out, in ominous terms, who will go.

Related: Twitter users plead: ‚Stop President Bannon‘

Trump promised a week after the November elections that he would —a number that exists maiexpel or imprison some 2 million or 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal convictionsnly in his imagination. (Only about 820,000 undocumented immigrants currently have a criminal record, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. Many of those have traffic infractions and other misdemeanors.)