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Trump's first 100 days on the global stage

Trump's inauguration

The 45th president entered office raging against a post-WWII order built by the United States, pledging instead that he would put "America First.

The US, President Donald Trump said during his campaign, could no longer afford to be the world's policeman. On the stump he also dismissed core alliances in Europe and Asia, raged at trade pacts, derided international organizations such as the UN and trash-talked allies (Mexico) and competitors (China) alike.

But since his inauguration, Trump has steadily reversed course on those fronts and a host of others.

First 100 days

The populist president has now embraced NATO, reaffirmed relationships with allies, reinforced international norms against chemical weapons use by bombing Syria and has sent more US troops to help rein in global conflicts.

Almost 100 days after Trump entered the White House dismissing the international system, Trump seems to be assuming a US president's traditional foreign policy role: being that system's biggest defender.

"It's a total 180," said James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey. "And to a certain degree, it's right."

Rhetoric hits reality

Analysts in Washington and overseas say a number of factors are at work, including the reality of dealing with global events, appeals from foreign leaders and the rise of experienced foreign policy mavens to Cabinet positions.

But some caution that the President, with no foreign policy experience, hundreds of unfilled national security staff positions and a reliance on equally inexperienced family members, is a reactive and tactical leader who still lacks a strategic vision -- preferring to disseminate his thoughts in 140-character bursts.

They also point to the fact that many of the problems shadowing Trump's presidency in these first few months are tied to potentially compromising connections his circle has with global entities. The FBI is investigating whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow while Russia was allegedly hacking Democratic organizations to benefit the Republican candidate during 2016. Trump's first national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, had to step down after a controversial call with the Russian ambassador, while his work as a foreign agent during the transition has drawn scrutiny. Meanwhile, the Trump family still maintains myriad international business holdings.

Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said these ties should check the optimism of any observers who think Trump is adopting a reassuringly standard approach to foreign policy.

"We're comforting ourselves that this is normal and we should resist that view," she said. ...

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Tue Aug 08 2017 10:55

Neymar: Leaving Barcelona 'one of the toughest' decisions of my life

Neymar at PSG

Neymar says the decision to leave Barcelona was "one of the toughest" of his life after completing a world-record move to Paris Saint-Germain and has insisted his move was not motivated by money.

The forward completed his $263 million transfer to the French capital Thursday, just a week after Barcelona officials had said he was "200%" staying with the Catalan club.

Unveiled to the media Friday, the Brazilian said the decision to join the French club came from his desire for a bigger challenge.

Technology is breaking everything we know about staying safe

Tech Street

The tech visionaries have redoubled their warnings about how we could destroy ourselves with technology. But they’re not talking about deliberately pushing buttons to trigger annihilation—Kennedy and Khrushchev could have done that back in ’62. They mean accidentally killing ourselves with something that we invent for our own benefit, that later acquires a mind of its own and a shirty attitude.

But there’s no need to wait for the next big existential threat. We’re already designing a whole new world of ways to accidentally off ourselves, and no one seems worried about it.

As biochemists concoct new life-extending medications, calls to Poison Control after swallowing the wrong pills or the wrong number of the right pills have recently doubled. We put a smartphone in every hand, and now more than 1,000 distraction-related crashes happen on our roads every day (also steadily rising). Kids and pets succumb to heatstroke inside cars that are more environmentally sealed than ever—we’re on track to set a new record for hot car deaths in 2017. Falling off of ladders? Even those numbers are climbing, and if you’re wondering how that could possibly be related to technology, well, read on.

It’s a little embarrassing to have to admit that accidental deaths are increasing in a world that our forebears made safer for hundreds of years. Our grandparents saw the invention of the automobile, the blender, the bulldozer, and the radial arm saw—and they made them all safer. Is what we’re inventing today really more dangerous than that stuff? We may not have to worry about sentient A.I. any time soon, but our innovations are quietly outpacing our ability to figure out how to not get wiped out by them.

We rely on instincts—our common sense—to tell us what’s dangerous and what’s safe. Before technology came along, hazards were mostly self-explanatory. Bears, snakes, sharp sticks, cliffs—it’s hard to get any of this stuff wrong. And our instincts became exquisitely tuned to them across millennia. But the hazards we face today can be more subtle, harder to recognize, and even counter-intuitive.

We instinctively take a step back when we see something large, but technology is turning our fear of size on its head. Technology progresses by packing more and more power into smaller and smaller packages. One errant wave of a laser pointer and you could bring down an airliner. The number of people who visit emergency rooms following physical interactions with television sets is rising. It’s not hard to see why. In the old days, TVs weighed a ton, and they sat in the corner, mostly unbothered. Now TVs are light and portable. They invite us to pick them up, sit them on stuff, or hang them on the wall. And they’re shaped like giant guillotine blades. Put the TV in a phone and it’s more dangerous still. The lighter the TV, the less we fear it, and the higher the body count.

Invisible hazards lurk in the logic and code used to implement our technology. We place blind trust in complex systems that reveal little about how they work. Our medication prescriptions pass through computer systems accessed by professionals who majored in something other than computer science. Patient safety advocates loudly remind us that we are potential victims of human and machine error and that we need to think and ask questions before we swallow pills. But not many people are heeding their advice, and medication errors run rampant.

More insidious still, we create technology that assumes we have superhuman cognitive abilities, and consumers seem willing to play along. Put a phone, a latte, and a steering wheel in front of us doing 80 mph, and we’re proud multitaskers. Sure, other people on phones are dangerous, but you can smoothly switch your attention and notice when anything scary pops up, right? A psychologist in a gorilla suit debunked that idea some years ago, but we pound our chests in defiance. We imagine ourselves able to accurately assess risks in complex situations after watching a news story about a 15-pound flying sausage crashing through the roof of someone’s house. We even think we’re good at seeing oncoming trains while wearing earbuds.

The hazards of yesteryear gave us immediate feedback when we screwed up. When we misjudged a bear, the bear instantly let us know. But technology can place the consequences of our missteps at a distance. Delayed reactions, complex chain reactions, hidden reactions—these are all part of how technology works. But adapted to a world of instant feedback, we cruise through the day on autopilot, seldom stopping to consider what could go wrong later down the road. Worse still, technology is even hacking our feedback system. We get a blast of dopamine when we check our phone behind the wheel. Edith Harbaugh, whose company, LaunchDarkly, specializes in the controlled release of new technology into the wild, pointed out that we’re creating a dangerously lopsided system of actions and rewards: “We’re not given snow cones every time we do something safe.”

The age of life- and limb-threatening technology is upon us.

Technology is even reshaping our safety culture. My grandfather, a craftsman, taught me how to use tools. If I used a ladder wrong, I was quickly corrected. But then technology moved more than half of all grandparents into office jobs. Today people are firing up tools again in record numbers because DIY is in fact cool and arguably good for your soul. But we’re now getting hurt more while doing it.

Few stop to realize how much we have come to rely on the work of concerned, dedicated consumer product designers and the lawyers who incessantly sue them. But today we’re inventing stuff faster than we can design safety features. A town in Germany just installed sidewalk traffic lights to alert phone-immersed pedestrians. But what happens when wearables and VR kits come along and we’re looking up and through a device rather than down at it?

Even the government stepped in on our behalf to create safety standards. But our technology may now be even outpacing our ability to establish new standards. There’s a scene in Anchorman 2 where Will Ferrell flips on the cruise control and leaves the driver’s seat of his motorhome. When Paul Rudd points out that cruise control only handles the speed, not the steering, chaos ensues. But that confusion isn’t just a Hollywood comedy routine. Kelly Funkhouser at the University of Utah recently inventoried the names that car manufacturers are giving to speed control, lane-keeping, and blind-spot monitoring functions. She found that similar names are being given to different combinations of these functions across manufacturers. Hop in the wrong rental car, push a button, whip out your phone, and boom … you’re Anchorman.

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More than 80,000 hit Sydney streets for City2Surf fun run

Sydney's City2Surf

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Pastor Chris and Pastor Benny Hinn Minister LIVE from LoveWorldUSA Studio

Pastor Chris & Pastor Benny

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NewsOVER!com

NewsOVER!com

NewsOVER!com

Trump's first 100 days on the global stage

First 100 days

See also: Trump voters clash over his shifting views

Rhetoric hits reality

Neymar: Leaving Barcelona 'one of the toughest' decisions of my life

See also: Barcelona fans react to Neymar transfer

Technology is breaking everything we know about staying safe

The age of life- and limb-threatening technology is upon us.

More than 80,000 hit Sydney streets for City2Surf fun run

Pastor Chris and Pastor Benny Hinn Minister LIVE from LoveWorldUSA Studio

Join many in the LoveWorldUSA Studio and millions around the world for a one-of-a-kind ministration.

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