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Trump pulls US out of the Paris climate agreement

https://twitter.com/drvox/status/869961747473473536

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Theresa May’s letter triggering Brexit shows the UK is desperate for a deal on trade

The United Kingdom is desperate to secure a trade pact with the European Union as negotiations begin on their unwinding.

That’s one takeaway from a letter delivered on Tuesday by Prime Minister Theresa May to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, that touches off what is likely to be two years of negotiations with the aim of untangling the U.K. from a pact that has governed its relations with the Continent for nearly half a century.

The six-page missive emphasizes what May terms a “deep and special partnership” between Britain and the EU that encompasses cooperation on both the economy and security. Thus, she writes, it will be necessary for the sides to come to terms on a relationship that will govern after Brexit. As May writes:

“This should be of greater scope and ambition than any such agreement before it so that it covers sectors crucial to our linked economies such as financial services. This will require detailed technical talks, but as the UK is an existing EU member, both sides have regulatory frameworks and standards that already match.”

In short, she wants a substitute for the single market that members of the EU, including Britain, currently enjoy. A failure to negotiate such a pact, would leave the U.K. to trade under rules set by the World Trade Organization. And as the Economist explains, that may present challenges for all parties.

“If Britain broke free from the EU, but kept the common external tariff in place, then a company moving parts between the EU and Britain could potentially face a tariff charge every time a border was crossed. Countries whose producers were hit by this development might make life difficult elsewhere for British negotiators.”

May warns that failure to come to terms on trade also “would mean or cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.” Though the pacts that govern security and defense tend to exist independently of the EU, both judicial cooperation and trade disputes are heard by the European Court of Justice. May has vowed that Britain will fall outside the jurisdiction of the ECJ after Brexit.

There will be plenty to hammer out besides trade. That includes the status of EU citizens living in the U.K. and citizens of the U.K. who live in Europe. It also includes the parties’ ability to preserve an open land border between the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, which belongs to the EU.

Of course, the EU has a say as well. Talks on unwinding and trade “will not happen” concurrently, Tusk said on Thursday.

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The Affordable Care Act survives 

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South Africa marks Human Rights Day

South Africa will pause Tuesday to mark the anniversary of a massacre that highlighted the horror of apartheid and led the republic to enshrine human rights.

Human Rights Day, a public holiday, commemorates the events of March 21, 1960, when the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a political party that had formed a year earlier as a breakaway from the African National Congress (ANC), called on members to leave at home the passbooks the apartheid government used to control the movement of black, Indian and coloured people in urban areas, and offer themselves for arrest in an act of mass resistance.

In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela, the ANC leader whom the government imprisoned for 27 years and who later became South Africa’s first democratically elected president, describes the demonstration in Sharpeville, a township located about 35 miles south of Johannesburg.

“In the early afternoon, a crowd of several thousand surrounded the police station. The demonstrators were controlled and unarmed. The police force of seventy-five was greatly outnumbered and panicky. No one heard warning shots or an order to shoot, but suddenly, the police opened fire on the crowed and continued to shoot as the demonstrators turned and ran in fear. When the area had cleared, sixty-nine Africans lay dead, most of them shot in the back as they were fleeing. All told, more than seven hundred shorts had been fired into the crowd, wounding more than four hundred people, including dozens of women and children. It was a massacre, and the next day press photos displayed the savagery on front pages around the world.”

The atrocity led the United Nations Security Council, for the first time, to urge the government of South Africa to promote racial equality, and began an exodus of capital from the country. The killings also  hardened the resolve of Mandela and other leaders, who went on to advocate for action aimed at disrupting the apartheid state.

After Mandela became president, the country officially declared the day a public holiday and adopted a bill of rights that guarantees equality and human dignity.

President Jacob Zuma is expected to travel on Tuesday to the Eastern Cape province, where he will honor Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid leader who died 40 years ago, at the age of 30, in a Pretoria prison after being tortured by white officers of the government’s security service.

The PAC will host a march to commemorate the massacre at Sharpeville. “This is the most important day of our time as we commemorate the lives of [the] Sharpeville 69 and the fight against pass laws,” Tshego Mosala, the group’s spokesperson, told the Citizen newspaper.

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The Trump border wall may be a barrier to public safety

The wall that the Trump administration plans to build along the southern border may be a barrier to national security.

To help pay for the wall, the administration is considering cuts to the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Washington Post reports.

The Coast Guard’s annual budget may be cut 14%, to about $7.8 billion. The cut would cover teams that detect weapons of mass destruction, detain smugglers, board suspect vessels and escort ships deemed to present or be at risk.

At TSA, the proposed budget would eliminate a program that sends agents and dogs to sweep airports, rail terminals and subway stations for explosives, as well as grants that local police departments use to pay for the cost of patrolling airports. Funds that FEMA uses to help state and local governments prepare for natural disasters and respond to emergencies would be slashed as well.

The proposed cuts reflect a reprioritization of security spending. Overall, the administration is considering boosting by 6.4%, to $43.8 billion, the budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

According to the Post, some $2.9 billion would go to funding the wall along the southern border. An additional $1.9 billon would pay for more immigration officers and border patrol agents, as well as beds for immigrants held in detention.

In February, the DHS published a preliminary blueprint for the wall that sheds light on what construction entails. In addition to planning, design, construction and maintenance, funds would pay for “attendant lighting, technology (including sensors), as well as patrol and access roads.”

As you might expect from this White House, the memos obligate the builders to consult with, among others, “nongovernmental entities having relevant experience” and to use “materials originated in the United States.”

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‘I want a president’

‘I want a president,’ Zoe Leonard (1992), The High Line
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The Trump dossier differs from an indictment

BuzzFeed itself made news Tuesday when it published a 35-page dossier detailing Donald Trump’s alleged relationship with Russia.

Most news outlets, including the Times, The Washington Post and CNN, refrained from publishing the document, which as far as I know remains unverified. Dean Baquet, executive editor of the Times, said his organization would not publish “totally unsubstantiated” allegations.

BuzzFeed said it published the dossier “so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.”

But how can readers make up their minds about the truth of the charges, which include claims of meetings between Trump aides and Russian operatives, as well as sexual acts? As Erik Wemple wrote in The Washington Post, “Americans can only ‘make up their own minds’ if they build their own intelligence agencies, with a heavy concentration of operatives in Russia and Eastern Europe.”

That intelligence agencies briefed both the president and president-elect about the allegations did not sway me either. I imagine the agencies brief the president about all sorts of unsubstantiated information – possible terrorist plots, for example – that I would be in no position to assess if I learned of them.

At the same time, the existence of the dossier was known throughout official Washington. Mother Jones reported the information in October. Senator John McCain said he passed the dossier to the FBI.

As Jack Shafer argued in Politico, “… when such a report is flung about by people in power, as this one was, and its allegations are beginning to inform governance, more damage is done to trust in government and confidence in journalism by withholding it from public scrutiny.”

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief,  appeared Sunday on CNN to defend the decision to publish. “Our job is not to be gatekeepers,” he told host Brian Stelter. Smith compared the dossier to an indictment – a charge of a serious crime – which news outlets report on all the time, usually by prefacing the allegations with the word alleged. As Smith sees it:

We are I think well within the tradition of American journalism, which is every time you use the world ‘alleged’ on your air, every time you see the word ‘alleged’ in print or on the web, that is saying we are repeating a claim we can’t verify. That is totally, within the standard particularly of covering law enforcement.

The dossier reportedly originated as opposition research commissioned by one of Trump’s Republican rivals for the White House. It was later championed by a Democrat, though not necessarily the Hillary Clinton campaign.

To bring criminal charges, prosecutors generally must have probable cause, which courts have construed as meaning they must have a reasonable basis for believing that a crime has been committed.

According to the Justice Department’s charging guidelines, the requirement of probable cause merely begins the inquiry and does not alone automatically warrant prosecution.

“On the other hand, failure to meet the minimal requirement of probable cause is an absolute bar to initiating a federal prosecution, and in some circumstances may preclude reference to other prosecuting authorities or recourse to non-criminal sanctions as well,” the guidelines instruct.

Opposition researchers do not need to worry whether an allegation will hold up in court.

That’s not to suggest that criminal charges necessarily have merit because prosecutors have assessed probable cause or that charges do not need to be substantiated. But they reflect a calculation by prosecutors, as the guidelines put it, “that the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain” a conviction.

Of course, journalists are not prosecutors. And I share the instinct to want to provide readers with primary sources. But the dossier differs from an indictment.

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Carrie Fisher

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American Airlines not responsible for damage to cheese delivered to New York from Paris, court rules

An airline cannot be held responsible for damage to cargo caused by the government’s delay, a federal court in Brooklyn has ruled.

The ruling dismisses a lawsuit filed in April by Best Value Kosher Foods, a Newark-based seller of dairy products, against American Airlines, which Best Value accused of damaging a shipment of cheese delivered to New York from Paris.

According to Best Value, the cheese arrived via American at Kennedy Airport, where the airline notified a courier service working for Best Value of the shipment’s arrival. The courier picked up the cheese six days later, by which time ice packs accompanying it had melted and the cheese itself allegedly became unmarketable, which Best Value said cost the company roughly $18,000.

Best Value’s CEO testified that the delay in picking up the cheese stemmed from a hold put on it by both the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection while they inspected the cargo. Still, American had an obligation to refrigerate the shipment until it could be retrieved, Best Value charged.

U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein disagreed, noting that both the U.S. and France are parties to the Montreal Convention, which relieves a carrier from responsibility for damage to cargo where such damage follows “an act of public authority carried out in connection with the entry, exit or transit of the cargo.”

Best Value’s CEO “testified that inspections of the shipment by the United States agencies responsible for inspecting food imports prevented Best Value’s agents from picking up the in a timely manner,” Weinstein wrote in a ruling dated Dec. 7. “Damage to the cheese falls squarely within the ‘act of public authority’ exception.”

Though Best Value and American disputed whether American refrigerated the cheese while in its possession, Weinstein rejected a contention by Best Value that American’s putting the cheese in a cooler for shipment triggered a responsibility to refrigerate the cheese until its release to Best Value following the inspection.

“Even if American’s decision to gratuitously place the cargo in a cooler gave rise to some duty to keep the cargo refrigerated at a certain temperature, American is only obligated to ‘use reasonable care’ in discharging that duty,” Weinstein said. [citation omitted] “It was unreasonable to expect American to refrigerate Best Value’s shipment indefinitely until Best Value was able to pick it up. Six days is too long to have expected American to keep the cheese at a low temperature.

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