Trump said Thursday that he was naming former ambassador John Bolton, a Fox News commentator and conservative firebrand, as his new national security adviser, replacing Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
The president announced the news in a tweet, saying that Bolton would take the job starting April 9, making him Trump’s third national security adviser in the first 14 months of his presidency. […]
Bolton has been even more hawkish than Trump on Iran, pushing for the president to withdraw from the nuclear agreement that the United States and five other world powers reached with Tehran during the Obama administration.
Dow closes down more than 700 points on fear of U.S.-China trade war
Markets plunged Thursday amid fears… Trump’s new tariffs would start a global trade war, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing 724 points down as the Nasdaq Composite and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index also nose-dived.
Markets have been shaky for several weeks since the president announced a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum. Trump on Thursday announced about $50 billion in annual tariffs on a variety of goods from China. The Chinese are preparing a tit-for-tat response by placing tariffs on U.S. agricultural products such as soybeans that have big markets in China.
Trump has trouble finding attorneys as top Russia lawyer leaves legal team
Trump, whose top attorney handling the Russia probe resigned Thursday, is struggling to find top-notch defense lawyers willing to represent him in the case, according to multiple Trump advisers familiar with the negotiations.
Some law firms have signaled that they do not want the controversy of representing a divisive and unpopular president, while others have told Trump advisers they have clients with conflicting interests, according to several lawyers and three of the president’s advisers. Several prominent white-collar lawyers also have declined requests to sign on with the president in recent weeks, including former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson.
The Guardian
'Great Pacific garbage patch' sprawling with far more debris than thought
An enormous area of rubbish floating in the Pacific Ocean is teeming with far more debris than previously thought, heightening alarm that the world’s oceans are being increasingly choked by trillions of pieces of plastic.
The sprawling patch of detritus – spanning 1.6m sq km, (617,763 sq miles) more than twice the size of France – contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, new research published in Nature has found. This mass of waste is up to 16 times larger than previous estimates and provides a sobering challenge to a team that will start an ambitious attempt to clean up the vast swath of the Pacific this summer.
The analysis, conducted by boat and air surveys taken over two years, found that pollution in the so-called Great Pacific garbage patch is almost exclusively plastic and is “increasing exponentially”. Microplastics, measuring less than 0.5cm (0.2in), make up the bulk of the estimated 1.8tn pieces floating in the garbage patch, which is kept in rough formation by a swirling ocean gyre.
'Dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico will take decades to recover from farm pollution
The enormous “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will take decades to recover even if the flow of farming chemicals that is causing the damage is completely halted, new research has warned.
Intensive agriculture near the Mississippi has led to fertilizers leeching into the river, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico, via soils and waterways. This has resulted in a huge oxygen-deprived dead zone in the Gulf that is now at its largest ever extent, covering an area greater than the state of New Jersey.
A new study has found that even if runoff of nitrogen, a fertilizer chemical, was fully stemmed, the Gulf would take about 30 years to recover. Even this scenario is “not only considered unrealistic, but also inherently unsustainable”, researchers stated in the work, published in Science.
Paul Ehrlich: 'Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades'
A shattering collapse of civilisation is a “near certainty” in the next few decades due to humanity’s continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich.
In May, it will be 50 years since the eminent biologist published his most famous and controversial book, The Population Bomb. But Ehrlich remains as outspoken as ever. […]
Ehrlich also says an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen”.
The Daily Beast
‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer
Guccifer 2.0, the “lone hacker” who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia’s military intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It’s an attribution that resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.
That forensic determination has substantial implications for the criminal probe into potential collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia. The Daily Beast has learned that the special counsel in that investigation, Robert Mueller, has taken over the probe into Guccifer and brought the FBI agents who worked to track the persona onto his team.
‘Trump’s Going To War’ Now With His Political Enemies, Boasts Bannon
Fresh from his incendiary speech to Holocaust revisionist Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party in France, where he urged his wildly cheering audience to wear labels of racism and xenophobia as “a badge of honor,” President Donald Trump’s fired chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon received a somewhat cooler reception Thursday at the Financial Times’ Future of News Conference.
However, he was hardly deterred from defending his former boss as “the greatest orator since Williams Jennings Bryan” among other sterling qualities, and predicting that the shakeup of Trump’s legal team, including what Bannon characterized as the firing of Trump attorney John Dowd for not being aggressive enough, portends an escalation of hostilities with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
“I think President Trump’s going to war. I think it’s very obvious he’s going to war on this,” Bannon said about the 45th president, adding criticism of White House lawyer Ty Cobb.
Los Angeles Times
Another journalist has been gunned down in Mexico
An independent Mexican journalist who reported on politics and crime was shot dead Wednesday night in the violent coastal state of Veracruz, one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists, with 22 slain there since 2000.
Leobardo Vazquez Atzin, who previously wrote for a local newspaper and recently launched an independent news page via Facebook, was killed outside his home in the municipality of Gutierrez Zamora, state authorities said. Vazquez, 42, was shot by assailants on a motorcycle. No suspects have been arrested in the case.
Bloomberg
China Hits Back at Trump Tariffs as Trade War Arrives
China said it doesn’t fear a trade war with the U.S. and announced plans for reciprocal tariffs on $3 billion of imports from the U.S. in the first response to President Donald Trump’s ordering of levies on Chinese metal exports.
China plans tariffs on imports of U.S. pork, recycled aluminum, steel pipes, fruit and wine, according to a Commerce Ministry statement on Friday. China will also pursue legal action against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization in response to the U.S. planned tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the statement said, and called for dialog to resolve the dispute.
Reuters
EU backs Britain in blaming Russia for spy attack, recalls envoy
European Union leaders backed Britain on Thursday in blaming Moscow over a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England and recalled their envoy to Moscow in a symbolic protest.
The show of support from the EU, at a time when Britain is grappling with its departure from the bloc, will boost Prime Minister Theresa May, who has been asking other nations to match her decision to expel Russians over the attack.
In a joint summit statement, the leaders said the EU “agrees with the United Kingdom government’s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible and that there is no plausible alternative explanation”.
Global carbon emissions hit record high in 2017
Global energy-related carbon emissions rose to a historic high of 32.5 gigatons last year, after three years of being flat, due to higher energy demand and the slowing of energy efficiency improvements, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.
Global energy demand rose by 2.1 percent last year to 14,050 million tonnes of oil equivalent, more than twice the previous year’s rate, boosted by strong economic growth, according to preliminary estimates from the IEA.
Energy demand rose by 0.9 percent in 2016 and 0.9 percent on average over the previous five years.
Over 70 percent of global energy demand growth was met by oil, natural gas and coal, while renewables accounted for almost all of the rest, the IEA said in a report.
Wisconsin governor ordered to hold special elections after Democratic outcry
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker must hold special elections in two state districts, a judge ruled on Thursday, after Democrats said he was putting off the votes over fears of losing the formerly Republican-held seats. […]
Walker had argued he was not obliged to hold elections for the seats left vacant since December, but Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds said the Republican governor had misinterpreted state law and must hold votes promptly, court documents showed.
Ars Technica
Cambridge Analytica breach results in lawsuits filed by angry Facebook users
In the wake of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica debacle, Facebook has now been sued in federal court in San Francisco and San Jose. These new cases claim violations of federal securities laws, unfair competition, and negligence, among other allegations.
The pair of cases stem from recent revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British data firm that contracted with the Donald Trump presidential campaign, retained private data from 50 million Facebook users despite claiming to have deleted it. New reporting on Cambridge Analytica has spurred massive public outcry from users and politicians with CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling it a "breach of trust."
These two cases, which were filed on March 20, could be just the first among what could be a coming wave of similar lawsuits.
Five new ancient genomes tell us about Neanderthal tribes
Mezmaiskaya Cave offered shelter to Neanderthals for tens of thousands of years. The cave, located near Russia's border with Georgia, preserved Neanderthal remains so well that researchers have now been able to extract genetic information from two different individuals who lived approximately 20,000 years apart. And it's just one of the sites that's featured in a new collection of Neanderthal genomes: two from caves in Belgium, one from France, one from Croatia, and one from Mezmaiskaya.
As scientists publish more Neanderthal genomes, they’re able to start sketching more details of the long-ago drama and danger these people experienced. The new genomes are all from 39,000 to 47,000 years ago—late in the history of the population. The new data helps us piece together new details on Neanderthal population groups, their movements across Europe, and when they’re most likely to have bred with humans.
Thousands of servers found leaking 750MB worth of passwords and keys
Thousands of servers operated by businesses and other organizations are openly sharing credentials that may allow anyone on the Internet to log in and read or modify potentially sensitive data stored online.
In a blog post published late last week, researcher Giovanni Collazo said a quick query on the Shodan search engine returned almost 2,300 Internet-exposed servers running etcd, a type of database that computing clusters and other types of networks use to store and distribute passwords and configuration settings needed by various servers and applications. etcd comes with a programming interface that responds to simple queries that by default return administrative login credentials without first requiring authentication. The passwords, encryption keys, and other forms of credentials are used to access MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, content management systems, and other types of production servers.