After campaigning on a promise to “cancel” the Paris climate change agreement, President Trump announced he would make a decision in the coming weeks. Senior officials within the administration remain divided on the issue, but the decision is clear: get out. Get out now.The agreement aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, largely by switching away from affordable, dependable energy sources that emit carbon dioxide to expensive, intermittent ones. For the US

May 21, 2017

The Washington Post recently put American security at risk, but let’s point the finger at President Donald Trump instead. The Post did.It printed a story saying Trump divulged classified, endangering information to Russians, and maybe he did, but any risk to security was hugely magnified by the Post’s divulging much of it to everyone else. It may even have created a risk that otherwise would not exist.This episode begins with Trump meeting in the Oval Office with two Russian officials, Foreign M

May 21, 2017

It‘s been an excellent few months for startups in China’s sharing economy. Perhaps too good. The bike-sharing industry landed its first unicorn, and companies that allow phone users to share battery packs have raised at least $150 million in recent weeks. But at the same time, one startup recently announced that it expects to share at least 500,000 umbrellas in Guangzhou this year while a Jiaxing-based basketball-sharing company is getting positive coverage in the state media. No doubt, given th

May 21, 2017

President Donald Trump has frequently denounced the North American Free Trade Agreement, promising either to renegotiate it with extreme prejudice or terminate it altogether. On Thursday his administration served official notice that he is serious, notifying Congress that it intends to start negotiations with Canada and Mexico in 90 days.So Nafta is as good as doomed? Maybe not. The agreement can easily be changed in ways that enlarge rather than shrink opportunities for mutually beneficial trad

May 21, 2017

During Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Washington, his “bodyguards” viciously beat and kicked Kurdish protesters outside the Turkish Embassy. It happened on a busy news day, to say the least, around the time of the revelation that President Donald Trump had asked the FBI director to stop investigating a former national security adviser‘s ties to Russia. But this shameful episode shouldn’t be allowed to escape analysis and serious follow-up. Federal law enforcement must investig

May 19, 2017

If there’s a silver lining to the toxic cloud hovering over the White House, it’s that our science-denying president hasn’t caused too much damage to the environment. Yet.　But nearly four months into the Trump administration, the risks to the nation’s air, land and water are large and looming, as is the threat to the country’s belated -- and still insufficient -- efforts to combat catastrophic global warming. If Trump supporters believe this is an overly regulated nation, they better prepare the

May 18, 2017

The particularly nasty computer program dubbed WannaCry that attacked hospitals, businesses and government agencies around the world this past weekend was like a cybercrime highlight reel, a compilation of by-now familiar elements that played out on an epic scale.　What is different this time is that the conscience-free hackers apparently had considerable, albeit unwitting, help from the US government. They used a stolen tool reportedly developed by the National Security Agency to exploit a hidde

May 18, 2017

It sounds like a ghost story: a huge cargo vessel sails up and down the Norwegian coast, silently going about its business, without a captain or crew in sight. But if all goes as planned, it’s actually the future of shipping.Last week, Kongsberg Gruppen ASA, a Norwegian maritime-technology firm, and Yara ASA, a fertilizer manufacturer, announced a partnership to build the world’s first fully autonomous cargo containership. Manned voyages will start in 2018, and in 2020 the Yara Birkeland will se

May 18, 2017

Think of the intelligence community and its fragile array of secret relationships as a china shop. Think of President Trump as a bull, restless and undisciplined. For months, we’ve been watching the disastrous collision of the two. Trump’s latest self-inflicted spy scandal was the disclosure this week that he had boastfully revealed to Russian visitors his knowledge of highly classified reports about threats by the Islamic State to attack planes with undetectable bombs hidden in laptops. This is

May 18, 2017

President Donald Trump’s administration has announced a deal with China to open its markets across a range of industries, from beef to financial services. “This is more than has been done in the whole history of US-China relations on trade,” declared Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, with Trumpian modesty.Rhetoric aside, Trump has put China on notice that he intends to target a long list of protectionist economic policies. Given the industries covered, it seems likely that President Barack Obama’s

May 17, 2017

In Beijing, the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping has held its first-ever international cooperation conference under the theme of its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, by which it seeks to establish a huge economic bloc.This scheme was proposed by Xi in the autumn of 2013. The initiative aims to link Asia to Europe by reviving the ancient trade routes of the overland Silk Road and maritime Silk Road as a central pillar of the plan, thereby improving infrastructure in countries along

May 17, 2017

It is interesting to look at the new situation on the Korean Peninsula and, in particular, America’s relationship with the various parties there -- South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan and even Russia -- in light of the election last week of relatively liberal Moon Jae-in as president of South Korea. He succeeds the more conservative President Park Geun-hye, ousted in March.Moon, the flag-bearer of the Democratic Party, won in a field of 13 candidates, the first liberal to occupy presidency in

May 17, 2017

President Donald Trump seemed to threaten the former FBI director, James Comey, last week, insinuating -- on Twitter, of course -- that he might release tapes of their conversations at a dinner in the White House and twice over the telephone.　Scary!　A lot pivots on this, of course. Trump says that Comey assured him that he was not a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. News accounts hav

May 17, 2017