‘Fire and Fury,’ a new tell-all book about intrigue in the Trump White House, is the talk of political Washington. VOA White House correspondent Peter Heinlein reports that President Donald Trump is said to be furious with former adviser Steve Bannon, who is quoted as making some damning comments about the president and his family.
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Category Archives: News
worldwide news
As Trump Administration Expresses Support for Iran Protests, Nuclear Deal Deadline Looms
The Trump administration this week has not shied away from expressing support for the thousands of Iranians who have taken to the streets to protest government corruption and economic hardship. And while U.S. officials have threatened targeted sanctions against those who crack down on demonstrators, President Donald Trump is facing a Jan. 13 deadline on whether to reimpose economic sanctions against Iran that were suspended under the 2015 nuclear deal. VOA’s Aru Pande has more from Washington.
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Twitter Says Accounts of World Leaders Have Special Status
Social media giant Twitter has reiterated its stance that accounts belonging to world leaders have special status, pushing back against calls from some users for the company to ban U.S. President Donald Trump.
In a blog post Friday, Twitter said it would not block the accounts of world leaders even if their statements were “controversial” because of a need to promote discussions about public policy.
“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” Twitter said.
It said such a move would also not silence a world leader, but it “would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
“Twitter is here to serve and help advance the global, public conversation. Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society,” the post said.
The company has previously said that it considers whether a post is newsworthy and of public interest before deciding whether to remove it.
Twitter did not specifically mention Trump in its statement. The debate over Trump’s tweets grew on Wednesday, when he tweeted that he had a “much bigger” nuclear button than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Critics said the tweet violated Twitter’s ban against threats of violence.
Last month, Twitter began enforcing new rules to remove “hateful” content on the network, including posts that promote violence.
The company said Friday that it reviews all tweets, including those of world leaders. “We review tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly,” the statement said.
A White House spokeswoman said she did not expect there to be any White House comment on the Twitter statement.
Pete Heinlein at the White House contributed to this report.
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Businesses Delay Patch, Fear Fix Will Be Worse Than Chip Flaw
Chances that a fix to a major microchip security flaw may slow down or crash some computer systems are leading some businesses to hold off installing software patches, fearing the cure may be worse than the original problem.
Researchers this week revealed security problems with chips from Intel Corp and many of its rivals, sending businesses, governments and consumers scrambling to understand the extent of the threat and the cost of fixes.
Rather than rushing to put on patches, a costly and time-intensive endeavor for major systems, some businesses are testing the fix, leaving their machines vulnerable.
“If you start applying patches across your whole fleet without doing proper testing, you could cause systems to crash, essentially putting all of your employees out of work,” said Ben Johnson, co-founder of cyber-security startup Obsidian.
Flaws not ‘critical’
Banks and other financial institutions spent much of the week studying the vulnerabilities, said Greg Temm, chief information risk officer with the Financial Services Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group that shares data on emerging cyber threats.
The flaws affect virtually all computers and mobile devices, but are not considered “critical” because there is no evidence that hackers have figured out how to exploit them, said Temm, whose group works with many of the world’s largest banks.
“It’s like getting a diagnosis of high blood pressure, but not having a cardiac arrest,” Temm said. “We’re taking it seriously, but it’s not something that is killing us.”
Testing the patches
Banks are testing the patches to see if they slow operations and, if so, what changes need to be made, Temm said. For instance, computers could be added to networks to make up for the lack of processor speed in individual machines, he added.
Some popular antivirus software programs are incompatible with the software updates, causing desktop and laptop computers to freeze up and show a “blue screen of death,” researcher Johnson said.
Antivirus software makers responded by rolling out fixes to make their products compatible with the updated operating systems, he said. In a blog posting Friday, Microsoft Corp said it would only offer security patches to Windows customers whose antivirus software suppliers had confirmed with Microsoft that the patch would not crash the customer’s machine.
“If you have not been offered the security update, you may be running incompatible antivirus software, and you should consult the software vendor,” Microsoft advised in the blog post.
Government agencies also are watching. The Ohio Attorney General’s office is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said by email.
“Intel continues to believe that the performance impact of these updates is highly workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time,” the world’s No. 1 chipmaker said on Thursday in a release.
No significant patch impact
It cited Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s and Microsoft as saying that most users had seen no significant impact on performance after installing the patches.
The cloud vendors are among a group of firms that quickly patched their technology to mitigate against the threat from one of those vulnerabilities, dubbed Meltdown, which only affects machines running Intel chips.
Major software makers have not issued patches to protect against the second vulnerability, dubbed Spectre, which affects nearly all computer chips made in the last decade, including those from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, and ARM-architecture manufacturers, including Qualcomm Inc.
However, Google, Firefox and Microsoft have implemented measures in most web browsers to stop hackers from launching remote attacks using Spectre.
Governments and security experts say they have seen no cyber attacks seeking to exploit either vulnerability, though they expect attempts by hackers as they digest technical data about the security flaws.
One key risk is that hackers will develop code that can infect the personal computers of people visiting malicious websites, said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of cyber security firm Veracode.
He advised PC owners to install the patches to protect against such potential attacks. Computer servers at large enterprises are less at risk, he said, because those systems are not used to surf the web and can only be infected in a Meltdown attack if a hacker has breached that network.
Operating system protection
Microsoft has issued a patch for its Windows operating system, and Apple desktop users with the most recent operating system are protected. Google has said most of its Chromebook laptops are already protected and that the rest would be soon.
Apple said it planned to release a patch to its Safari web browser within coming days to protect Mac and iOS users from Spectre.
While third-party browsers from Google and others can protect Mac users from Spectre, all major web browsers for Apple’s iOS devices depend on receiving a patch from Apple.
Until then, hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users will be exposed to potential Spectre attacks while browsing the web.
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Brits Call for ‘Latte Levy’ to Reduce Cup Waste
Britain should charge a 25-pence ($0.34) levy on disposable coffee cups to cut down waste and use the money to improve recycling facilities, a committee of lawmakers said Friday.
Chains Pret A Manger, Costa Coffee, Caffe Nero and Greggs alongside U.S. firm Starbucks are among the biggest coffee-sellers in Britain, rapidly expanding in the last 10 years to meet increasing demand.
Although some outlets give a discount to customers using their own cup, only 1-2 percent of buyers take up the offer, according to parliament’s environmental audit committee, which said a “latte levy” was needed instead.
2.5 billion cups a year
“The UK throws away 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups every year; enough to circle the planet 5½ times,” said chair of the committee, Mary Creagh.
“We’re calling for action to reduce the number of single-use cups, promote reusable cups over disposable cups and to recycle all coffee cups by 2023,” she said.
The committee said that if the recycling target is not met then disposable coffee cups should be banned.
Bag levy success
In October 2015, Britain introduced a charge of 5-pence on all single-use plastic bags provided by large shops, which led to an 83 percent reduction in UK plastic bags used in the first year.
On Friday the environment ministry said the government was working closely with the sector and had made progress in increasing recycling rates.
“We are encouraged by industry action to increase the recycling of paper cups with some major retail chains now offering discounts to customers with reusable cups,” said a spokeswoman.
“We will carefully consider the committee’s recommendations and respond shortly,” she said.
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Tech Startups Hope to Impress at CES
The Consumer Electronics show opens this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada. There are a host of new tech startups descending on the city, hoping to become the next big thing. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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US Suspends Security Aid to Pakistan
The United States says it is suspending security aid assistance to Pakistan until the country takes action against terrorist organizations, including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, a move that was criticized by Islamabad. VOA State Department Correspondent Nike Ching reports.
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Report: Trump Tried to Keep Sessions at Helm of Russian Inquiry
President Donald Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The conversation between Don McGahn, the president’s White House counsel, and Sessions took place on the president’s orders and occurred just before the attorney general announced that he would step aside from the ongoing inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to a person with knowledge of the interaction. Two other people confirmed details of the conversation between McGahn and Sessions.
All three people spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to avoid publicly discussing an ongoing investigation.
Mueller aware of conversation
The episode is known to special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors and is likely of interest to them as they look into whether Trump’s actions as president, including the May firing of FBI Director James Comey, amount to improper efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation. Investigators recently concluded a round of interviews with current and former White House officials, including McGahn.
The New York Times first reported that Trump had McGahn lobby Sessions against a recusal.
Sessions announced on March 2 that he would recuse himself from that probe. He said at the time that he should not oversee an investigation into a campaign for which he was an active and vocal supporter. The recusal also followed the revelation that he had had two previously undisclosed interactions during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
McGahn speaks with Sessions
But soon before the announcement, McGahn spoke to Sessions by phone and urged him against recusing himself from the investigation.
During the conversation, according to people familiar with the matter, McGahn argued to Sessions that there was no reason or basis at that time for him to recuse. One person said McGahn also told him that recusal would do nothing to resolve concerns over whether Sessions had given a misleading answer at his confirmation hearing weeks earlier when he said he had not had any contacts with Russians.
Sessions ultimately declined the urging, and McGahn accepted the conclusion of officials who believed that Sessions should recuse.
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Apple to Issue Fix for iPhones, Macs at Risk From Chip Flaw
Apple Inc. will release a patch for the Safari web browser on its iPhones, iPads and Macs within days, it said Thursday, after major chipmakers disclosed flaws that leave nearly every modern computing device vulnerable to hackers.
On Wednesday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other security researchers disclosed two major chip flaws, one called Meltdown affecting only Intel Corp. chips and one called Spectre affecting nearly all computer chips made in the last decade. The news sparked a sell-off in Intel’s stock as investors tried to gauge the costs to the chipmaker.
In a statement on its website, Apple said all Mac and iOS devices were affected by both Meltdown and Spectre. But the most recent operating system updates for Mac computers, Apple TVs, iPhones and iPads protect users against the Meltdown attack and do not slow down the devices, it added. Meltdown does not affect the Apple Watch.
Macs and iOS devices are vulnerable to Spectre attacks through code that can run in web browsers. Apple said it would issue a patch to its Safari web browser for those devices “in the coming days.”
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Who Is Michael Wolff?
Michael Wolff, an American author, essayist and journalist, has written Fire and Fury, a book that portrays a chaotic initial year for the presidency of Donald Trump. What’s his background?
Michael Wolff
Age: 64
Early life: Wolff was born in New Jersey to a father who worked in advertising and a mother who was a newspaper reporter. He attended Columbia University in New York and worked as a copy boy at The New York Times while in school.
The journalist: Wolff published his first book of essays, White Kids, in 1979. He was most recently a media critic and columnist for USA Today, Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine and, before that, Vanity Fair and Newser.
In 2011, he briefly was at the helm of AdWeek magazine, but left after less than a year.
The author: In 1997, he wrote the bestseller Burn Rate, about his early dotcom company Wolff New Media.
In 2004 he published Autumn of the Moguls, about the decline of mainstream media that would occur later in the decade.
He was perhaps best known for his 2009 biography of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News.
Accolades: Wolff has won two National Magazine Awards, which recognize excellence in the magazine industry in both print and digital mediums.
One of the awards was for a series of columns he wrote from the Middle East at the start of the Iraq War in 2003.
Controversies: Wolff’s work has often drawn criticism from his fellow journalists as well as his subjects. Just before the publication of The Man Who Owns the News, Murdoch took issue with several parts of the book, just as U.S. President Donald Trump has over Wolff’s latest work.
In a 2004 cover story for The New Republic, reporter Michelle Cottle characterized Wolff’s writing by saying that “even Wolff acknowledges that conventional reporting is not his bag.” Rather, she said, “he absorbs the atmosphere and gossip swirling around him at cocktail parties, on the street, and especially during those long lunches.”
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Investors Skittish, but Marijuana Growers, Sellers to Stay the Course
Marijuana-related stocks plummeted, cannabis boosters worried about the industry’s future and defiant growers and sellers vowed to keep operating after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled a tougher approach Thursday to federal pot enforcement.
The plunging stock prices reversed a weekslong rally driven by optimism for legal recreational sales that started Monday in California. Several marijuana stocks saw double-digit losses in the hours after Sessions’ announcement, including the largest pot-producing company that is publicly traded.
Canopy Growth, a Canada-based company with the ticker symbol WEED, lost $3.58 a share, or 10 percent, to close at $32.32 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Shares of garden-supply company Scotts Miracle-Gro also skidded Thursday, following a steady rise last year after it added fertilizer, lights and other products to serve marijuana growers. The company’s share price fell by as much as 7 percent before closing down 2.3 percent, or $2.49, to $106.17 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Investors spooked
“Jeff Sessions’ decision to rescind the Cole memoranda puts the marijuana industry and marijuana legalization efforts in a precarious position,” said Aaron Herzberg, a California lawyer and founder of the cannabis investment company CalCann Holding, referring to an Obama-era memo that limited U.S. crackdowns on pot in states where it’s legal.
Brent Kenyon, a consultant who helps advise and establish recreational marijuana businesses in Oregon, said his phone had been ringing all Thursday with calls from worried clients. Investors, including some who are involved in his businesses, are spooked, he said.
“I’m just telling people to hold off. We need more information, we need to see what the president is going to say about this,” he said by phone from a cannabis conference in Hawaii.
Andy Williams, CEO of the Medicine Man Denver dispensary, is taking a wait-and-see approach to the new policy but pointed out the economic impact of legal pot.
“This industry around the United States has attracted a lot of investment. Billions of dollars in investment,” he said. “Just talking about what Sessions wants to do today has dropped the market.”
’Business as usual’
Steve DeAngelo, owner of California’s largest marijuana retailer, said it will be “business as usual” at his Harborside dispensary in Oakland.
“I think the main impact of this is really going to be on investors, more than anything else,” he said. “Some investors might get a bit nervous about putting more money into the cannabis industry until the situation resolves itself.”
Another of California’s largest marijuana operators said it also plans no changes in response to Sessions’ announcement.
“For this industry and for this community, we are really based on resilience, going against the tide. This is no different,” said Michael Steinmetz, CEO of Flow Kana, which distributes cannabis products from small, outdoor farmers. “From my perspective, things don’t change.”
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Intel Shares Fall as Investors Worry About Costs of Chip Flaw
Intel Corp shares fell nearly 2 percent Thursday as investors worried about the potential financial liability and reputational hit from recently disclosed security flaws in its widely used microprocessors.
The largest chipmaker had confirmed Wednesday that flaws reported by researchers could allow hackers to steal sensitive information from computers, phones and other devices. Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and other software makers have issued patches to protect against the vulnerabilities.
Intel may be on the hook for costs stemming from lawsuits claiming that the patches would slow computers and effectively force consumers to buy new hardware, and big customers will likely seek compensation from Intel for any software or hardware fixes they make, security experts said.
“The potential liability is big for Intel,” said Eric Johnson, dean of Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. “Everybody will be scrambling over the next few days to figure out just how big it is.”
Intel has said that the patches for the bugs would slow its chips down somewhat but that most users will not notice.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the largest seller of cloud computing services, said in a statement it does not “expect meaningful performance impact for most customer workloads.”
Microsoft and Alphabet Inc’s Google both said in statements on their websites that they expect few performance problems for most of their cloud computing customers.
Financial repercussions
But the incident is likely to spur cloud companies to press Intel for lower prices on chips in future talks, said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, which owns shares in Intel.
“What [Intel’s cloud customers] are going to say is, ‘You wronged us, we hate you, but if we can get a discount, we’ll still buy from you,'” Forrest said.
Forrest also expects Intel will have to increase its chip development spending to focus on security.
Government agencies and security experts said they knew of no cyberattacks that had exploited the vulnerabilities.
Financial services firms were studying information on the vulnerabilities to determine how to best respond, said the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a global industry group known as FS-ISAC that shares data on cyberthreats.
Banks and other firms are trying to understand what it will cost to respond to the issue, FS-ISAC said in an emailed statement.
“In addition to the security considerations raised by this design flaw, performance degradation is expected, which could require more processing power for affected systems to compensate and maintain current baseline performance,” FS-ISAC said. “There will need to be consideration and balance between fixing the potential security threat vs. the performance and other possible impact to systems.”
Lawsuit filed
Lawyers filed a lawsuit in San Jose, California, federal court on Wednesday that sought class-action status and compensation for people who had bought vulnerable Intel chips or computers that came with them already installed.
Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday about the lawsuit.
While more lawsuits are expected, Intel’s biggest customers are likely to quietly seek compensation for any harm caused by the vulnerabilities, including costs to patch machines or replace microprocessors, Johnson said.
Legal experts said that consumers would have to prove concrete damages and harm to proceed with claims.
Intel shares fell 1.8 percent, following a 3.4 percent decline Wednesday.
Shares in rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc climbed 4.9 percent as investors speculated the No. 2 maker of microprocessors would woo customers away from Intel.
Still, researchers had said some of AMD’s chips had one of the two vulnerabilities disclosed on Wednesday, as do processors from ARM Holdings.
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Wall Street’s Love of Tax Cuts Drives Dow to 25,000 Mark
Wall Street sure loves the tax bill, even if polls show most Americans don’t.
The Dow Jones industrial average surged past 25,000 Thursday, a strong signal of investor enthusiasm for President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut. The milestone comes less than a year after the Dow topped 20,000.
“We broke a very, very big barrier,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. “Every time you see that number go up on Wall Street it means jobs, it means success, it means 401(k)s that are flourishing.”
It’s easy to see why investors like the tax overhaul: Businesses will benefit from a steep cut in the corporate tax rate. They’ll also be able to fully deduct the cost of major purchases from their taxable income, reducing the amount they owe. And companies with large stockpiles of cash overseas can bring the money back to the United States at new, lower rates.
All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index by roughly 8 percent this year. That’s much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6 percent that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center.
“All else being equal, this should go straight to the bottom line,” said David Joy, chief market strategist for Ameriprise Financial, a financial services company based in Minneapolis. Improved corporate profits contributed to the market’s gains last year.
The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26 percent in support.
Where profits will go
Still, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, nearly 20 large companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees.
Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economy’s long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees.
Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors’ hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the U.S. and overseas, haven’t always led to higher wages.
For Wall Street, it’s all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Whether businesses pass most of the extra money to workers or to shareholders, consumer spending should increase and lift economic growth.
Trump has repeatedly made highly optimistic claims about the impact of his tax cuts and other policies on the economy, speculating that they would lead to annual growth of 4 percent or higher.
Expectations
Last month, the Treasury Department estimated that the economy will expand at a 2.9 percent annual rate for the next decade.
Private economists, as well as the Federal Reserve, forecast a more modest impact. Most expect growth will be closer to 2.5 percent in 2018 and slower than that in subsequent years.
Some companies and sectors will likely benefit more than others, particularly if they derive most of their income from the United States. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that large banks will see their earnings rise by 13 percent as a result of the corporate rate cut. Wells Fargo will likely see the biggest gain, at 18 percent.
Analysts at Stifel, an investment bank, project that some restaurant chains could see earnings boosts of 20 percent or more, including Chipotle, Wingstop and Domino’s Pizza.
Barclays, another bank, says that technology and pharmaceutical firms, which are already paying lower taxes because they have lots of cash overseas, will see much smaller increases of less than 4 percent.
The legislation’s corporate tax cut is not necessarily as dramatic as it seems, because most corporations don’t end up paying the full 35 percent rate. Barclays estimates that the “effective” tax rate — what companies actually pay — will drop from 26 percent to 20.1 percent.
Shareholders vs. investment
Joy and other analysts think that most of the money brought back from other countries will go to shareholders, rather than investment. That’s what happened in 2004, when companies were given a one-time low rate on repatriated cash as an inducement.
Opinions differ, however, when it comes to the additional profits that result from the tax cut. Many economists expect that most of those dollars will also be passed on to shareholders.
Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia Business School and former top economist for President George W. Bush, says the corporate tax cut will eventually benefit workers through higher pay. That will also boost the economy and most businesses by lifting spending.
“Any way you slice it, it’s good for companies,” Hubbard said.
For much of last year, the stock market’s gains were helped by a synchronized global recovery, with economies from Europe to Asia to Latin America expanding simultaneously for the first time in a decade.
Since November, investors’ anticipation of a tax cut has pushed markets higher, said Keith Parker, an analyst at UBS.
Still, the market’s outsize return only benefits a narrow slice of the population. According to research by Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University, just 10 percent of the population owns 84 percent of the stock market’s value.
“That benefit won’t accrue to everybody, certainly,” Joy said.
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YouTube Star Logan Paul Steps Away From Posting After Outcry
YouTube star Logan Paul has stepped away from posting videos following an outcry when he uploaded images of what appeared to be the body of someone who killed themselves in a Japanese forest.
Paul took to Twitter on Wednesday to say he was suspending his video blog “for now” and “taking time to reflect.”
A petition on Change.org that demands his YouTube channel be deleted had been signed by more than 125,000 people by Thursday morning.
Paul created a furor when he posted a video of him in a forest near Mount Fuji showing what seemed to be a body hanging from a tree.
The video was viewed some 6 million times before being removed from Paul’s YouTube channel, a verified account with more than 15 million subscribers.
A storm of criticism followed despite two apologies, with commenters saying Paul seemed disrespectful and that his initial apology was inadequate.
In Paul’s initial apology, he said he had wanted to raise awareness about suicide and possibly save lives, and he denied his goal was to drive clicks to his social media content.
“I thought I could make a positive ripple on the internet, not cause a monsoon of negativity,” he said in his Twitter post.
“I don’t expect to be forgiven. I’m simply here to apologize,” he said on the more somber video apology uploaded on YouTube and Twitter late Tuesday. “None of us knew how to react or how to feel.”
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New Year, New Start? Not in President Trump’s Washington
So much for a new year, new start.
For Donald Trump, that energy-sapping 2017 cocktail of blistering presidential tweets, salacious White House infighting and jaw-dropping feuds with foreign adversaries has given way to, well, more of the same.
“We are off and running,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It’s amazing that the pace that we set in 2017 has continued with equal vigor.”
Indeed, the first three days of 2018 – yes, just three days – brought a new array of targets for the president and the return of some familiar foes. As part of a 17-tweet barrage on Tuesday, Trump picked a fight with the “deep state” within his own government that he believes is trying to undermine his presidency, and he raised the specter of war with North Korea by asserting that his “Nuclear Button” was bigger than that of Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un.
By Wednesday, Trump had turned on his former top adviser Steve Bannon, accusing him of having “lost his mind.” The scathing attack, issued with the formality of an official White House statement, followed the publication of excerpts from an unflattering book in which Bannon accuses the president’s namesake son of holding a “treasonous” meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign.
Across Washington, holiday cheer was suddenly a distant memory.
“I feel exhausted,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist who advised Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in his campaign against Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. “I feel like the year has got to be over by now.”
Trump rattled Washington in his first year in office by blowing past the guardrails that have traditionally governed what a president does and doesn’t say and by frequently picking fights that seem far less consequential than the weighty issues that land on a commander in chief’s desk. He needled friendly foreign leaders like Britain’s Theresa May, accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper and spread rumors about media personalities he deemed overly critical.
To be sure, no one in Washington expected Trump to be a different man when he returned from Christmas vacation at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. By now, Washington has largely come to grips with the reality of a president who often starts and ends his day with tweets on topics that are a mystery to even his closest aides until they pop up on their smartphones. And while some Trump advisers have grown beleaguered by the president’s seemingly insatiable appetite for a feud, few expect that to change or put much effort into trying to hold him back.
Yet there was still a hope, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill, that the president might return to Washington eager to build on the passage of a sweeping Republican overhaul of the tax code in the waning days of December. The bill passed with only Republican votes, and polling shows the complicated legislation is deeply unpopular with Americans, leaving the president and his party with a tall task if they hope to ride the tax overhaul to electoral victories in the midterm elections.
Trump has tweeted a handful of messages in 2018 about the tax bill. But he generated far more attention with his missives taking aim at the media and his unfounded claim of credit for the fact that no commercial airlines crashed in 2017.
Some Republicans cringed. Tyler said that in the early days of 2018, the White House had already “lost the communications war over what tax policy is designed to do.” And he put the blame squarely on Trump, saying the president “cannot be trusted with his own message.”
On Capitol Hill, where the Senate returned to work, most GOP lawmakers girded themselves for another year of what has become their familiar ritual: carefully critiquing Trump’s most sensational comments without criticizing the president himself. Asked about Trump’s North Korea button bluster, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said simply: “It’s probably better not to tweet about such things.”
Just 361 days to go until the calendar flips again.
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Dow Breaks 25,000 Barrier for First Time
The Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through the 25,000-threshold for the first time Thursday, and notched another 1,000-point milestone. The index of blue-chip stocks is studded with industrial heavyweights such as Boeing and Caterpillar.
Among the biggest gainers were technology companies and banks. Wells Fargo jumped 1.9 percent and Microsoft rose 0.7 percent.
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning, “Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.”
The Dow increased 118 points, or 0.5 percent, to 25,037. The Nasdaq edged up 16 points to 7,081.
This latest record came in early trading Thursday — only five weeks after closing above 24,000 points for the first time.
Other major indexes also rose to new levels, driven by a strong report on private jobs.
The recent rally has been spurred by faster economic gains around the world, along with a more optimistic outlook from businesses and consumers.
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Trump to Push Immigration Plan in Meeting With Republican Senators
Immigration is the focus for President Donald Trump’s meeting with some Republican senators as he pushes his overhaul plan.
Trump wants to shift from a family-based immigration system to one based on merit, as part of any deal to extend legal status for young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last year. He set a March deadline for Congress to act.
A White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, says an updated approach to immigration should “serve the needs of American workers, families and taxpayers.”
The senators expected at Thursday’s meeting are John Cornyn of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
US, South Korea Delay Military Drills Until After Winter Olympics
The United States and South Korea have decided to delay joint military exercises until after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics next month, according to officials from both countries.
South Korea’s Blue House (executive office) said the decision came during a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and President Moon Jae-in earlier on Thursday.
A White House statement said both leaders “agreed to de-conflict the Olympics and our military exercises so that [the] United States and Republic of Korea forces can focus on ensuring the security of the games.”
Earlier on Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Robert Manning said, “The Department of Defense supports the president’s decision and what is in the best interest of the ROK (Republic of Korea) — U.S. Alliance.”
The annual joint military exercises known as Foal Eagle are usually held between February and April and are one of the world’s largest such drills.
The exercises combine ground, air, naval and special operations to increase readiness to defend South Korea and the region. North Korea routinely objects to the exercises.
During Thursday’s phone call, the White House said President Trump and President Moon “agreed to continue the campaign of maximum pressure against North Korea and to not repeat mistakes of the past.”
Earlier, Trump tweeted his “firm” and “strong” leadership was the impetus for a scheduled resumption of talks between North and South Korea.
On Wednesday, North and South Korea reopened a cross-border hotline that had been shut down since 2016 after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to send a team to the Winter Olympic Games hosted by the South next month. After the reopening, South Korea confirmed that officials from both countries talked for 20 minutes, according to the Associated Press.
Seoul also responded to Kim’s overture by proposing high-level talks next Tuesday to discuss matters of mutual interest, including the North’s possible participation in the Winter Olympic Games the South is hosting in February.
North Korea has drawn increased scrutiny from the international community in recent months because of a number of missile launches and its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.
Pyongyang has dismissed new sanctions and tough talk from the Trump administration as it continues to develop its weapons program, which North Korea has said is being developed to defend against U.S. aggression.
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Chicken Waste Could Generate Power Plant Electricity
Coal-fired power plants release greenhouse gases into the air, causing pollution and contributing to climate change. But as much as 10 percent of the coal used in power stations could be replaced … by chicken waste. VOA’s Deborah Block has a report.
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Australia Plans Legal Cannabis Exports to a Lucrative World Market
Australia said Thursday it planned to become the fourth country in the world to legalize medicinal marijuana exports in a bid to score a piece of the estimated $55 billion global market.
Cannabis cultivation in Australia is still relatively small, as recreational use remains illegal. But the government hopes domestic medicinal use, legalized last year, and exports will rapidly boost production.
“Our goal is very clear: to give farmers and producers the best shot at being the world’s No. 1 exporter of medicinal cannabis,” Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters in Melbourne.
Company shares rise
Shares in the more than a dozen Australian cannabis producers listed on the local exchange soared after the announcement.
Cann Group ended the day up 35 percent; AusCann Group rose nearly 54 percent; and BOD Australia closed up about 39 percent. All were record highs for those companies. Hydroponics Company finished up 30 percent, hitting its highest price in five weeks.
Peter Crock, chief executive of Cann Group, which cultivates cannabis for medicinal and research purposes, said medicinal marijuana production had been stymied by limited demand from Australian patients.
“While the Australian patient base is growing, it is very small,” Crock told Reuters. “Being able to export will allow us to have the scale to increase production.”
Hunt said the new legislation would include a requirement that growers first meet demand from local patients before exporting the remainder of their crop.
Three countries export
Despite growing demand, only Uruguay, Canada and the Netherlands have so far legalized the export of medicinal marijuana. Israel has said it intends to do so within months.
The Australian government’s proposal needs to pass federal parliament when it returns to session in February. The country’s main opposition Labor Party has signaled it would support the move. Exports would then likely begin within months.
Fuelled by a growing acceptance of the benefits of marijuana to manage chronic pain, moderate the impact of multiple sclerosis and to soften the effects of cancer treatment, several countries and 29 states in the United States have legalized cannabis for medicinal use.
Australia’s chief commodity forecaster does not publish data on cannabis production, but rough estimates by the University of Sydney estimated the legal industry at A$100 million ($78 million), well below the C$4 billion ($3.19 billion) that Canada estimates its market to be worth.
U.S. consultants Grand View Research last year forecast the global medicinal cannabis market would be worth $55.8 billion by 2025.
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Trump Dissolves Election Fraud Commission
President Donald Trump has dissolved a government commission tasked with investigating what he says was massive voter fraud.
A Trump spokesperson said Wednesday that “despite substantial evidence” of fraud, states have not cooperated with the commission’s demands for voter lists.
“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission,” Trump said through his spokesperson.
Trump said he would have the Department of Homeland Security “review these issues and determine the next course of action.”
Trump won the White House in 2016 by winning the Electoral College, but he got 3 million fewer popular votes than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Trump reacted by forming the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He insisted Clinton won the popular vote because she got the support of millions of people who were either unregistered to vote or who voted multiple times.
Trump has yet to present any evidence to back up his charges of voter fraud.
Only a handful of states turned over voter rolls to the commission to use in its investigation.
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US Auto Sales Decline, Ending Record Streak
Auto sales in the United States fell by 2 percent in 2017, the first decline in seven years.
Ford Motor reported Wednesday that its new vehicle sales fell 1 percent, as did those of General Motors. Fiat Chrysler reported a decline of 8 percent compared with 2016. Volkswagen said its sales in the U.S. rose by 5 percent.
But even with the decline, the industry sold 17.2 million cars, making 2017 the fourth-best sales year in U.S. history, after 2000, 2015 and 2016, according to Kelley Blue Book.
For the 36th straight year, Ford’s F-Series pickup truck remained the top-selling vehicle in the country. Mercedes-Benz was the top selling luxury brand, even with a sales decline of 1 percent.
Analysts expect auto sales to fall in 2018 because of higher interest rates. But they say the vehicles themselves are to blame for some of the decline. The newer models are more durable so drivers are holding on to their cars longer. The average age of vehicles on the road has climbed to 11.6 years, up from 8.8 years in 1998.
Despite the decline, the industry remains robust. The average price of a new vehicle reached an all-time high last year of $36,113, as drivers bought bigger SUVs with more sophisticated technology.
“It’s still a buoyant industry and the underlying factors that drive it are still very positive,” Ford’s U.S. sales chief, Mark LaNeve, said.
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Security Flaws Put Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk, Researchers Say
Security researchers on Wednesday disclosed a set of security flaws that they said could let hackers steal sensitive information from nearly every modern computing device containing chips from Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and ARM Holdings.
One of the bugs is specific to Intel but another affects laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets and internet servers alike. Intel and ARM insisted that the issue was not a design flaw, but it will require users to download a patch and update their operating system to fix.
“Phones, PCs — everything is going to have some impact, but it’ll vary from product to product,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday afternoon.
Researchers with Alphabet Inc.’s Google Project Zero, in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries, discovered two flaws.
The first, called Meltdown, affects Intel chips and lets hackers bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer’s memory, potentially letting hackers read a computer’s memory and steal passwords.
The second, called Spectre, affects chips from Intel, AMD and ARM and lets hackers potentially trick otherwise error-free applications into giving up secret information.
The researchers said Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. had patches ready for users for desktop computers affected by Meltdown. Microsoft declined to comment and Apple did not immediately return requests for comment.
Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers at Graz University of Technology in Austria who discovered Meltdown, said in an interview with Reuters that the flaw was “probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found.”
Specter a long-term issue
Gruss said Meltdown was the more serious problem in the short term but could be decisively stopped with software patches. Specter, the broader bug that applies to nearly all computing devices, is harder for hackers to take advantage of but less easily patched and will be a bigger problem in the long
term, he said.
Speaking on CNBC, Intel’s Krzanich said Google researchers told Intel of the flaws “a while ago” and that Intel had been testing fixes that device makers who use its chips will push out next week. Before the problems became public, Google on its blog said Intel and others planned to disclose the issues on January 9.
The flaws were first reported by The Register, a tech publication. It also reported that the updates to fix the problems could cause Intel chips to operate 5 percent to 30 percent more slowly.
Intel denied that the patches would bog down computers based on Intel chips.
“Intel has begun providing software and firmware updates to mitigate these exploits,” Intel said in a statement. “Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time.”
ARM spokesman Phil Hughes said that patches had already been shared with the companies’ partners, which include many smartphone manufacturers.
“This method only works if a certain type of malicious code is already running on a device and could at worst result in small pieces of data being accessed from privileged memory,” Hughes said in an email.
AMD chips are also affected by at least one variant of a set of security flaws but that can be patched with a software update. The company said it believes there “is near zero risk to AMD products at this time.”
Google’s report
Google said in a blog post that Android phones running the latest security updates are protected, as are its own Nexus and Pixel phones with the latest security updates. Gmail users do not need to take any additional action to protect themselves, but users of its Chromebooks, Chrome web browser and many of its Google Cloud services will need to install updates.
The defect affects the so-called kernel memory on Intel x86 processor chips manufactured over the past decade, allowing users of normal applications to discern the layout or content of protected areas on the chips, The Register reported, citing unnamed programmers.
That could make it possible for hackers to exploit other security bugs or, worse, expose secure information such as passwords, thus compromising individual computers or even entire server networks.
Dan Guido, chief executive of cybersecurity consulting firm Trail of Bits, said that businesses should quickly move to update vulnerable systems, saying he expects hackers to quickly develop code they can use to launch attacks that exploit the vulnerabilities.
“Exploits for these bugs will be added to hackers’ standard toolkits,” said Guido.
Shares in Intel were down by 3.4 percent following the report but nudged back up 1.2 percent to $44.70 in after-hours trading, while shares in AMD were up 1 percent to $11.77, shedding many of the gains they had made earlier in the day when reports suggested its chips were not affected.
It was not immediately clear whether Intel would face any significant financial liability arising from the reported flaw.
“The current Intel problem, if true, would likely not require CPU replacement in our opinion. However the situation is fluid,” Hans Mosesmann of Rosenblatt Securities in New York said in a note, adding it could hurt the company’s reputation.
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Blackberry Surges on Deal With Baidu for Self-driving Cars
BlackBerry Ltd and Chinese internet search firm Baidu Inc on Wednesday signed a deal to jointly develop self-driving vehicle technology, sending BlackBerry’s Toronto-listed shares up 13 percent to a four-year high.
The deal follows similar agreements with firms including Qualcomm Inc, Denso and Aptiv Plc to develop autonomous-driving technology with BlackBerry’s QNX software, which are expected to start generating revenue in 2019.
Investors and analysts are closely watching what comes of those agreements amid expectations that QNX could become a key technology in the burgeoning self-driving vehicle industry, serving as the operating system for computer chips used to run self-driving vehicles.
QNX will be the operating system for Apollo, a platform for self-driving vehicles that Baidu announced in April and has billed as the “Android” of the autonomous driving industry.
“The opportunity is global, it’s for a very large market and I think it’s a very solid win for BlackBerry,” said CIBC Capital Markets analyst Todd Coupland.
Apollo has since signed up several major automakers, including Ford Motor Co, Hyundai Motor Group and several Chinese carmakers.
QNX has long been used to run car infotainment consoles. BlackBerry has recently developed the software to run sophisticated computer chips for autos that manage multiple safety-critical systems.
BlackBerry shares rose 13 percent in Toronto to C$16.95, their sharpest one-day gain since April and highest close since March 2013.
The two companies said they will also integrate Baidu’s CarLife, a leading smartphone integration software for connected cars in China, its conversational AI system and high definition maps with BlackBerry’s infotainment platform.