| | | | Fareed: The Trouble with Team Trump's Middle East Strategy | | From growing economies to falling poverty and mortality rates, there's plenty around the world to be optimistic about. "But then there is the Middle East," Fareed says in his latest Washington Post column. Syria has collapsed, Yemen is suffering through famine -- and the Trump administration doesn't seem to have a viable plan to fix any of it.
"We are now seeing fighting between Turkey and American proxies, and fire exchanged between Israel and Syria. Recently, US airstrikes killed perhaps dozens of Russian mercenaries in Syria, a worrisome escalation for the former Cold War adversaries," Fareed writes.
"In dealing with the volatile situation, the Trump administration seems largely disengaged. Its strategy, if it can be called that, has been to double down on its anti-Iran stance — subcontracting foreign policy to Israel and Saudi Arabia. But recent events make plain that it is not working.
"Since 1973, when Henry Kissinger essentially expelled the Russians from the Middle East, the United States has been the preeminent outside power. It is losing that role through a combination of weariness, disengagement and a stubborn refusal to accept the realities on the ground. A different approach — engaging with Iran and working with Turkey and Russia — might return the United States to its unique place in the region and help create a more stable balance of power in what remains the world's most volatile hot spot."
| | Why Mueller's Indictment Is Historic: Graff | | The indictment of 13 Russian nationals by Special Counsel Robert Mueller over meddling in the 2016 election by no means proves collusion by the Trump campaign. But Garrett Graff writes for Wired that the impressive detailing of Russian influence operations has already created something historic: "a direct and public charge that America's main foreign adversary meddled extensively, expensively, and expansively in the core of the American democratic process, attempting to influence voters, spread disparaging information about the Democratic nominee, and 'help' presidential candidate Donald Trump take office."
Mueller has made it "untenable for Trump or the GOP to move against Mueller or [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein now that they have clearly established that the efforts to aid Trump's campaign trace directly to key Kremlin insiders," Graff writes.
"While the charging documents don't hint that anyone on the Trump campaign personally knew of Russia's efforts, the indictments make it increasingly hard for the White House to ignore Putin's meddling. Mueller's message was clear: This was no one-off effort, nor a low-profile series of misunderstandings and accidental contacts."
"Mueller's indictment stands as a historic document, a clear case that Russia not only meddled with US democracy—they spared no effort in doing so." | | From Chaos to Confidence CONTENT BY  Global executives are shifting toward a less frantic, more measured approach to innovation. A new study finds a 10 point increase from 2016 (now 65%) in businesses waiting to perfect and test their innovation before launch rather than getting to market quickly. Explore GE's 2018 Global Innovation Barometer to learn more. | | | Why Florida (and Vegas, and Sandy Hook…) Won't Change Anything | | Don't expect any real progress on gun control in light of the Florida school shooting Wednesday. Thanks largely to the political and financial muscle of the National Rifle Association, "a segment of Americans now equates any proposed limit on gun use or ownership as a catastrophic step toward the extinction of individual liberties and the dawn of a confiscatory, totalitarian state," argues James Fallows in The Atlantic.
"Americans recognize that public-safety controls on use of a car—licensing laws, speed limits, insurance requirements, DUI penalties—don't threaten the 'right to drive.' They recognize that restrictions on some prescription drugs don't threaten their right to buy aspirin, nor do limits on what they can carry onto a plane threaten their right to travel or fly. But the NRA and its allies have succeeded in making gun control an absolute issue. If you believe in the Second Amendment, then whatever the potential control—on gun-show sales, on bulk purchases of ammunition, on waiting times for background checks—it must be fought as a step not so much onto a slippery slope as over a cliff and into the abyss.
"Thus even a restriction that seemed common sense a generation ago—for instance, banning a weapon like the AR-15 that was explicitly designed for use by troops in combat, and was never meant to be in civilian hands—now is anathema."
| | You Should Care About Congo | | | The conflict in this country claimed anywhere from one million to more than 5 million lives, yet you likely heard little or nothing about it as it raged from 1998 to 2003. The place was Congo -- and it is sliding toward war again, The Economist warns in a leader.
"The state is tottering, the president is illegitimate, ethnic militias are proliferating and one of the world's richest supplies of minerals is available to loot. There is ample evidence that countries which have suffered a recent civil war are more likely to suffer another. In Congo the slide back to carnage has already begun," The Economist says.
"Congo matters mainly because its people are people, and deserve better. It also matters because it is huge—two-thirds the size of India—and when it burns, the flames spread. Violence has raged back and forth across its borders with Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, South Sudan and the Central African Republic. Studies find that civil wars cause grave economic harm to neighboring states, which in Congo's case are home to 200 million people. Put another way, if Congo were peaceful and functional, it could be the crossroads of an entire continent, and power every country south of it with dams on its mighty river." | | How Bad Is this Year's Flu Season? Ask Australia | | A particularly nasty strain of influenza has left doctors' offices and even emergency rooms overwhelmed across the United States. To understand how bad it might get, look to Australia, suggests Julia Belluz for Vox.
"The reason this year's flu season is more severe than usual is because it involves the dreaded H3N2, a strain of the influenza A virus that causes more health complications and is more difficult to prevent," Belluz writes.
"It's not yet clear what the final toll of this year's flu season will look like. But for context, in recent years, mild flu seasons tend to kill about 12,000 Americans, and severe flu seasons kill about 56,000.
"What happened in Australia, where the flu season peaks in August, might be a hint of what we're in for here. H3N2 struck there as well — and contributed to more than two and a half times the number of flu cases compared to the previous year. There were also 745 deaths, compared to the five-year average of 176 deaths, according to the Sydney Morning Herald."
| | Why Smelling Good Could Be Bad for Our Health | | Smelling good comes at a higher price than was previously thought, according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which finds that cleaning agents, perfumes and other scented consumer items "now rival vehicles as a pollution source in greater Los Angeles."
"Even though 15 times more petroleum is consumed as fuel than is used as ingredients in industrial and consumer products, the amount of chemical vapors emitted to the atmosphere in scented products is roughly the same," NOAA cites lead study writer Brian McDonald as saying.
"The chemical vapors, known as volatile organic compounds or VOCs, react with sunlight to form ozone pollution, and, as this study finds, also react with other chemicals in the atmosphere to form fine particulates in the air." | | | | | | |
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