Month: May 2019

President Donald Trump is threatening to start a trade war with Mexico, but Mexico’s populist President Andrés López Obrador isn’t having it.

Trump warned Thursday evening, over Twitter, that he would soon start taxing imported goods from Mexico if the government doesn’t do more to stop the flow of migrants from Central America who are seeking asylum at the US border.

López Obrador responded within a few hours with a scathing letter that he posted on Twitter. He invoked Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out that those US presidents respected Mexico’s sovereignty — a veiled warning for Trump …

In a couple of dramatic tweets, backed up by a briefing call featuring acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, the Trump administration rolled out a new policy aimed at coercing Mexico into halting the flow of Central American asylum seekers into the United States — a 5 percent tax on Mexican imports rising steadily to 25 percent unless Mexico cracks down on migration.

There appears to be, as is …

It happens every spring: As the five broadcast TV networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and The CW — solidify their programming lineups for the next TV season, they must also decide which of their existing shows to renew and which ones to cancel.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine will be back for the 2019–’20 season. So will NBC’s The Good Place and ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat.

Alas, ABC’s well-liked Speechless isn’t so lucky; it’s been canceled, as has NBC’s Trial & Error.

The 2019–’20 TV season will also see a handful of long-running series air planned final seasons, including …

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Mueller holds a surprise news conference; the Mount Everest death toll is alarmingly high this year.

Mueller finally speaks up

Alex Wong/Getty Images

• A long-awaited statement from special counsel Robert Mueller finally came during a surprise news conference on Wednesday. [AP / Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo, and Chad Day]
• The main takeaway from his speech (which mostly revolved around the published

Someone graduating from college this year with a computer science degree has pretty good job prospects. But “not everybody should be a coder,” and those who don’t code may find themselves more in demand over time, investor Mark Cuban says.

“Creativity, collaboration, communication skills: Those things are super important and are going to be the difference between make or break,” Cuban said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, in a joint interview with Revolution CEO Steve Case. “In an AI world, you have to be knowledgeable about something, right?”

He went on to say …

Again and again during her MSNBC town hall Tuesday night, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) reminded voters and was reminded herself that the United States Senate is a sizable obstacle to any Democratic agenda.

“2020 is about the White House but it’s also about the United States Senate,” Harris told the audience in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

The California senator made the case for her 2020 presidential candidacy. Harris defended her plan to stop states from restricting abortion rights, called the family separation crisis “a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government” and promised to prosecute the case …

Soon after Amy Smith* started thinking about having a baby a few years ago, she wondered what she’d do about her marijuana habit.

Smith had deployed twice with the US Army, and had returned from Iraq with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. At one point, her doctors at the VA had her taking 22 pills to help her sleep and quell her depression and anxiety.

Then she discovered marijuana. Smith went off all the prescription medication and began self-medicating by smoking cannabis. “It was amazing — how it helped me get out of bed. I wasn’t terrified of being at the …

Less than two months after finalizing her divorce from the world’s richest person, MacKenzie Bezos has indicated that she intends to be a far more generous philanthropist than her husband has ever been.

MacKenzie Bezos announced in a letter on Tuesday that she had signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment to give half of her $35 billion in assets, or at least $17 billion, to charity over her lifetime or in her will. Despite facing criticism for being the world’s richest man but having donated only a tiny fraction of his wealth, Bezos’ ex-husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has …

Earlier this month brought a mind-blowing announcement in the world of power plants and pollution.

In a nutshell: A nonprofit artificial intelligence firm called WattTime is going to use satellite imagery to precisely track the air pollution (including carbon emissions) coming out of every single power plant in the world, in real time. And it’s going to make the data public.

This is a very big deal. Poor monitoring and gaming of emissions data have made it difficult to enforce pollution restrictions on power plants. This system promises to effectively eliminate poor monitoring and gaming of emissions data.

And it …

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a close ally of President Donald Trump, suggested the president take a tough stance in dealing with the ongoing Venezuelan crisis: A US invasion similar to the one executed by Ronald Reagan in Grenada back in 1983.

“Trump said rightly, Maduro’s not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. The entire region supports the Trump approach, that Guaidó is the legitimate leader,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday. “I would do exactly what Reagan did. I would give Cuba the ultimatum to get out of Venezuela. If they don’t, I would let the Venezuelan military know, …