Cigarette smoking kills nearly a half-million Americans every year and costs the U.S. economy $300 billion in health care and lost productivity, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To help smokers kick the deadly habit and stop kids from starting, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed rules Thursday to cut the nicotine in cigarettes to minimal or nonaddictive levels.

“This milestone places us squarely on the road toward achieving one of the biggest public health victories in modern history and saving millions of lives in the process,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Thursday.

He said the FDA has a “vision of a world where combustible cigarettes would no longer create or sustain addiction.”

Legal authority

The FDA has the legal authority to regulate nicotine levels in cigarettes, but has always been met by court challenges from tobacco companies.

Nicotine naturally occurs in tobacco. It is not deadly but is a highly addictive drug that helps make cigarettes so pleasurable to smokers.

It is the burning tobacco leaf and the numerous additives used in cigarettes that lead to lung cancer, emphysema, and other deadly diseases and cancers.

Secondhand smoke from cigarettes is also harmful to children and potentially lethal to adults.

Public comment

Gottlieb says the FDA is giving the public time to comment on the proposed mandated cuts in nicotine. He says it will help regulators answer such questions as what an acceptable level of nicotine is, whether the cuts should be introduced gradually or immediately, whether weaker cigarettes will bring on a black market for stronger smokes, and whether smokers will smoke more to compensate for the lower levels of the drug.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that if the FDA cuts the nicotine to what it regards as a nonaddictive level, 5 million smokers would quit within one year. The Journal says by the turn of the century, the number of American adults who smoke cigarettes would plummet from the current 15 percent to a minuscule 1.4 percent, saving 8 million lives.
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From: MeNeedIt

A former midlevel employee of German industrial giant Siemens pleaded guilty Thursday of conspiring to pay tens of millions of dollars to Argentine officials to win a $1 billion contract to create national ID cards.

Eberhard Reichart, 78, who worked for Siemens from 1964 to 2001, appeared in federal court in New York to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the anti-bribery Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and to commit wire fraud.

Reichart was arraigned last December in a three-count indictment filed in December 2011 charging him and seven other Siemens executives and agents with participating in the decadelong scheme, the Justice Department said Thursday. 

The men were accused of conspiring to pay more than $100 million in bribes to high-level Argentine officials to win the contract in 1998. 

As part of his guilty plea, Reichart admitted in court that he engaged in the bribery conspiracy and that he and his co-conspirators used shell companies to conceal the illicit payments to Argentine officials.

The Argentine government terminated the contract in 2001, but the Siemens executives “sought to recover the profits they would have reaped” through an illicitly obtained contract, said Preet Bharara, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in 2011. 

“Far too often, companies pay bribes as part of their business plan, upsetting what should be a level playing field and harming companies that play by the rules,” acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said Thursday.

In 2008, Siemens pleaded guilty of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with the Argentine bribery scheme, agreeing to pay the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission $800 million in criminal and civil penalties.

The company paid the German government another $800 million to settle similar charges brought by the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bars U.S. companies and foreign firms with a presence in the U.S. from paying bribes to foreign officials.

Last year, 11 companies paid just over $1.92 billion to resolve charges brought under the anti-bribery law, according to data compiled by the FCPA Blog.
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From: MeNeedIt

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Thursday that President Donald Trump would soon consider new punitive measures against China for its alleged “theft” of intellectual property.

U.S. officials, according to news accounts, are considering imposing as much as $60 billion in annual tariffs against Chinese information technology, telecommunications and consumer exports to the U.S. in an effort to trim its chronic annual trade deficit with Beijing by $100 billion. Last year, the U.S. says it imported Chinese goods worth $375 billion more than it exported to China.

“In the coming weeks, President Trump is going to have on his desk some recommendations,” Navarro told CNBC. “This will be one of the many steps the president is going to courageously take in order to address unfair trade practices.

“I don’t think there’s a single person … on Wall Street that will oppose cracking down on China’s theft of our intellectual property or their forced transfer,” Navarro said.

The new tariffs and other measures would be in addition to the 25 percent tariff on steel imports to the U.S. and 10 percent levy on aluminum that Trump announced last week, some of which affect China.

​At a political fundraiser Wednesday, Trump attacked several trading partners for the billions of dollars in trade surpluses they have built up against the U.S. He contended that China had become an economic power — the world’s second biggest economy — because of its trade surplus with the United States.

China warned it would likely retaliate against any new tariffs the U.S. imposes.

Foreign minister spokesman Lu Kang said, “History has proven that a trade war is in no one’s interest.”

He said that “if an undesirable situation arises, China has the intention of safeguarding its legitimate rights.”

Trump’s new tariffs on metal imports have led in recent days to volatility on U.S. stock exchanges, with wide day-to-day swings of hundreds of points in stock indexes. 

But Navarro said the U.S. can impose the tariffs in a way that can be good for the American people and good for the global trading system. We can do this in a way that is peaceful and will improve and strengthen the trading system. … Everybody on Wall Street needs to understand: Just relax.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Cooking is Chris Spear’s passion. He’s been professionally cooking since he was 16. Over the years, he worked for big restaurants and reached a point where he had almost 100 employees reporting to him. That’s when he missed flexibility and wanted to be more creative. So, he quit working for restaurants and founded his own catering company, Perfect Little Bites in Frederick, Maryland.

“Not that having your business is easy, but I want to have the flexibility to say, ‘It’s Valentine’s Day, and it’s more important to me to stay home with my wife,’ or to be home cooking for someone. I really wanted something that I felt was mine,” Spear explained.

Spending long hours in the kitchen doesn’t tire Spear, but he had often been concerned that becoming an independent chef would make him feel lonely. That inspired him to found Chefs Without Restaurants, an online resource for chefs. 

“I’ve been thinking about the Chefs Without Restaurants for about five years now, even before I took Perfect Little Bites full time, because I kept thinking about, ‘Well, when I do this full time, who are going to be my colleagues? Who are going to be the people who I can bounce ideas off? Who am I going to be able to [get to] do things like cater an event that’s maybe outside my range of 30 people? Like, do I have a resource where I can pull in one or two other people?’ ” he said. ” … And what I started to see was other independent chefs were referring customers to me, [and] I started to do that back to them. I kind of thought, ‘There’s got to be an easier way to do this.’ ”

Dozens have joined

Since the group started last January around 100 chefs have joined it.

“We’re caterers,” he said. “We’re personal chefs. We run food trucks. We have awesome food specialty shops.” Spear said he wanted to find an arrangement that would be beneficial to all such groups but didn’t cost them any money. 

So now he has a Facebook group where he can post information about, for instance, a potential customer who wants to arrange a dinner in a given location and within a certain price range, and he can offer interested chefs more information.

Customers can also benefit from this network. Spear said he’s building a website where customers will be able to check out profiles of the Chefs Without Restaurants members, learn about their specialties and see what kinds of events they can cater, large or small.

Lana and Bobby Browner are a wife-and-husband team who own their own catering company, Bent and Bent Events, in Frederick.

“We’ve been doing this for five years, since he graduated from a culinary school,” Lana Browner said.

“We specialize in Creole cuisine, Caribbean cuisine. So we blend flavors and bring a nice flavor, a different flavor in the field of food in Frederick County,” Bobby Browner said.

When the Browners heard about Spear’s group, they decided to become members. 

“I think the biggest hurdle for a lot of chefs is that they don’t really form an alliance because they’re all kind of competing with each other, but you don’t have that in this group,” Lana Browner said. “What we’ve experienced so far is a lot of learning about different chefs in the area. It’s even been interesting to get feedback from chefs that are not in this immediate area.”

Her husband added, “It’s a really competitive field,” but there’s “a lot of camaraderie, a lot of openness and a lot of sharing” within the group.

Shared kitchen

The group is also bringing more business to local facilities, like a shared kitchen called Maryland Bakes where members often meet and work. Terri Rowe, a food entrepreneur and owner of Maryland Bakes, said the group brings more energy to the small food businesses in the area.

“They bring connections,” she said. “They bring a variety of talents and gifts. They bring creative ideas and just the whole network of independent people joining together. So it’s a big community.”

The whole local food community seems to embrace Chefs Without Restaurants.

Oil & Vinegar Frederick is one of the local shops Spear likes. The place often hosts events to introduce cooking ideas and chefs to their customers.

Store owner Sharon Streb said small businesses should help one another succeed. 

When other chefs and businesses come to her store, “they get in front of our customers and hopefully we get in front of their customers. That’s a win-win for both of us,” she said. “It’s tough out there for a small business, and not a lot of small businesses succeed. It’s important that we can work together and be successful, both of us.”

That’s the goal for Spear, who wants to carve out a space for independent chefs on the food map in the area.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump freestyled with the facts when talking trade with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Republican described the discussion during a fundraising speech in St. Louis on Wednesday.

According to audio obtained by The Washington Post, Trump insisted that the United States runs a trade deficit with Canada.

Trump said Trudeau told him there was no trade deficit. Trump said he replied, “‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’”

Trump claimed the figures don’t include timber and energy.

However, the Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump’s recently proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum have spurred a hot debate in the U.S. that doesn’t adhere to traditional party lines. Is the administration’s move a boon to American workers or the beginning of a trade war? VOA’s Plugged In with Greta Van Susteren examines the pros, cons, impact and history of tariffs on goods imported to the United States. VOA’s Joan DeLuca reports:
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From: MeNeedIt

Amazon.com Inc.’s top television shows drew more than 5 million people worldwide to its Prime shopping club by early 2017, according to company documents, revealing for the first time how the retailer’s bet on original video is paying off.

The documents also show that Amazon’s U.S. audience for all video programming on Prime, including films and TV shows it licenses from other companies, was about 26 million customers.

Amazon has never released figures for its total audience.

The internal documents compare metrics that have never been reported for 19 shows exclusive to Amazon: their cost, their viewership and the number of people they helped lure to Prime.

Known as Prime Originals, the shows account for as much as a quarter of what analysts estimate to be total Prime sign-ups from late 2014 to early 2017, the period covered by the documents.

Viewers to shoppers

Core to Amazon’s strategy is the use of video to convert viewers into shoppers. Fans access Amazon’s lineup by joining Prime, a club that includes two-day package delivery and other perks, for an annual fee.

The company declined to comment on the documents seen by Reuters. But Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has been upfront about the company’s use of entertainment to drive merchandise sales.

The world’s biggest online retailer launched Amazon Studios in 2010 to develop original programs that have since grabbed awards and Hollywood buzz.

“When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” Bezos said at a 2016 technology conference near Los Angeles. He said film and TV customers renew their subscriptions “at higher rates, and they convert from free trials at higher rates” than members who do not stream videos on Prime.

​$5 billion in video

Video has grown to be one of Amazon’s biggest expenditures at $5 billion per year for original and licensed content, two people familiar with the matter said. The company has never disclosed how many subscribers it won as a result, making it hard for investors to evaluate its programming decisions.

The internal documents show what Amazon considers to be the financial logic of its strategy, and why the company is now making more commercial projects in addition to shows aimed at winning awards, the people said.

For example, the first season of the popular drama The Man in the High Castle, an alternate history depicting Germany as the victor of World War II, had 8 million U.S. viewers as of early 2017, according to the documents. The program cost $72 million in production and marketing and attracted 1.15 million new subscribers worldwide based on Amazon’s accounting, the documents showed.

Amazon calculated that the show drew new Prime members at an average cost of $63 per subscriber.

That is far less than the $99 that subscribers pay in the United States for Prime; the company charges similar fees abroad. Prime members also buy more goods from Amazon than non-members, Bezos has said, further boosting profit.

Amazon’s secret math

Precisely how Amazon determines a customer’s motivation for joining its Prime club is not clear from the documents viewed by Reuters.

But a person familiar with its strategy said the company credits a specific show for luring someone to start or extend a Prime subscription if that program is the first one a customer streams after signing up. That metric, referenced throughout the documents, is known as a “first stream.”

The company then calculates how expensive the viewer was to acquire by dividing the show’s costs by the number of first streams it had. The lower that figure, the better.

The internal documents do not show how long subscribers stayed with Prime, nor do they indicate how much shopping they do on Amazon. The company reviews other metrics for its programs as well. Consequently, the documents do not provide enough information to determine the overall profitability of Amazon’s Hollywood endeavor.

Still, the numbers indicate that broad-interest shows can lure Prime members cheaply by Amazon’s calculations. One big winner was the motoring series The Grand Tour, which stars the former presenters of BBC’s Top Gear. The show had more than 1.5 million first streams from Prime members worldwide, at a cost of $49 per subscriber in its first season.

The documents seen by Reuters reflect Prime subscribers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Japan, where Amazon’s programs were available before Prime Video rolled out globally in December 2016.

Analysts estimate that 75 million or more customers have Prime subscriptions worldwide, including about half of all households in the United States.

Bigger bets

About 26 million U.S. Prime members watched television and movies on Amazon as of early 2017. Reuters calculated this number from the documents, which showed how many viewers a TV series had as a percentage of total Prime Video customers.

Rival Netflix Inc had twice that many U.S. subscribers in the first quarter of last year. It does not disclose how many were active viewers.

For years, Amazon Studios aimed to win credibility in Hollywood with sophisticated shows beloved by critics. Its marquee series Transparent, about a transgender father and his family, won eight Primetime Emmy Awards and created the buzz Amazon wanted to attract top producers and actors.

Yet Transparent lagged Amazon’s top shows in viewership.

Its first season drew a U.S. audience half as large as that of The Man in the High Castle, and it fell to 1.3 million viewers for its third season, according to the documents.

Similarly, Good Girls Revolt, a critically acclaimed show about gender inequality in a New York newsroom, had total U.S. viewership of 1.6 million but cost $81 million, with only 52,000 first streams worldwide by Prime members.

The program’s cost per new customer was about $1,560, according to the documents. Amazon canceled it after one season.

Amazon is now working on more commercial dramas and spin-offs with appeal outside the United States, where Prime membership has far more room to grow, people familiar with the matter said.

The effort to broaden Amazon’s lineup, long in the works, will be in the hands of Jennifer Salke, NBC Entertainment’s president whom Amazon hired last month as its studio chief.

Amazon’s Bezos has wanted a drama to rival HBO’s global hit Game of Thrones, according to the people.

In November, Amazon announced it will make a prequel to the fantasy hit The Lord of the Rings. The company had offered $250 million for the rights alone; production and marketing could raise costs to $500 million or more for two seasons, one of the people said.

At half a billion dollars, the prequel would cost triple what Amazon paid for The Man in the High Castle seasons one and two, the documents show. That means it would need to draw three times the number of Prime members as The Man in the High Castle for an equal payoff.
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From: MeNeedIt

With the number of endangered Puget Sound orcas at a 30-year low, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday signed an executive order directing state agencies to take immediate and longer-term steps to protect the struggling whales.

The fish-eating mammals, also known as killer whales, that spend time in Puget Sound have struggled for years because of lack of food, pollution, noise and disturbances from vessel traffic. There are now just 76, down from 98 in 1995. 

Inslee said the orcas are in trouble and called on everyone in the state to do their part. His directive aims to make more salmon available to the whales, give them more space and quieter waters, make sure they have clean water to swim in and protect them from potential oil spills.

“The destiny of salmon and orca and we humans are intertwined,” the governor said at a news conference at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Seattle. “As the orca go, so go we.” 

An orca task force forming now will meet for the first time next month and will come up with a final report with recommendations by November. 

“This is a wake-up call,” said Suquamish Tribal Chairman Leonard Forsman, adding: “It’s going to take some pain. We’re going to have to make some sacrifices.”

Many people have been sounding the alarm about the plight of the closely tracked southern resident killer whales for years. The federal government listed the orcas as endangered in 2005, and more recently identified them as among the most at risk of extinction in the near future.

A baby orca has not been born in the past few years. Half of the calves born during a celebrated baby boom several years ago have died. Female orcas are also having pregnancy problems linked to nutritional stress brought on by a low supply of chinook salmon, the whales’ preferred food, a recent study found.

“We are not too late,” said Barry Thom, west coast regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries. “From a biology perspective, there are still enough breeding animals, but we need to act soon.”

Whale advocates welcomed the statewide initiative, saying it creates urgency and calls attention to the issue. But some also said it was long overdue.

“I think that everybody would have loved to have seen this five years ago,” said Joe Gaydos, science director for the SeaDoc Society. “It is a crisis. The fact that we’re responding is good.”

Under the order, state agencies will find ways to quiet state ferries around the whales, train more commercial whale-watching boats to help respond to oil spills and adjust fishing regulations to protect key areas and fish runs for orcas.

Orcas use clicks, calls and other sounds to navigate, communicate and forage mainly for salmon. Noise from vessels can interfere with that. 

The Legislature passed a supplemental budget Friday that includes $1.5 million for efforts such as increased marine patrols to see that boats keep their distance from the orcas and to boost hatchery production of salmon that the orcas prefer to eat by an additional five million.

Last year, the endangered orcas spent the fewest number of days in the central Salish Sea in four decades, mostly because there wasn’t enough salmon to eat, according to the Center for Whale Research, which keeps the whale census for the federal government.

“I applaud anything that helps (the orcas) through the short term, but the long term is what we really have to look at – and that’s the restoration of wild salmon stocks throughout Washington state,” Ken Balcomb, senior scientist with the Center for Whale Research, said Tuesday. 

Balcomb and others say aggressive measures are needed and they have called for the removal of four dams on the Lower Snake River to restore those salmon runs. 

J.T. Austin, the governor’s senior policy adviser on natural resources issues, said Inslee thus far does not support removing those dams. 

 
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Wednesday that the United States would challenge Indian government export subsidies because they hurt American workers and manufacturers.

Lighthizer said he had requested “dispute settlement consultations” with the Indian government at the World Trade Organization because the subsidies allow India to sell goods at lower prices.

He said his office “will continue to hold our trading partners accountable by vigorously enforcing U.S. rights under our trade agreements and by promoting fair and reciprocal trade through all available tools, including the WTO.”

The announcement is the latest step in President Donald Trump’s trade offensive.The White House has announced tariffs on imported steel and aluminum as well as on imports of solar panels and washing machines.

Lighthizer’s office said India offers benefits valued at $7 billion annually to domestic exporters, such as duty, tax and fee exemptions. Producers of steel, information technology and textiles are among the recipients.

Consultations are the first step in WTO’s dispute settlement process, but Trump has said he does not favor resorting to dispute resolutions at the WTO, where he contends the United States is at a disadvantage.

The administration has instead concentrated efforts on tariffs and remedies as allowed under domestic U.S. law.
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From: MeNeedIt

General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Volkswagen and Mercedes all knew of problems with dangerous exploding Takata air bag inflators years before issuing recalls, according to three class actions filed Wednesday with the federal court in Miami.

The lawsuits cite company documents obtained through previous legal actions against other automakers over faulty Takata inflators. The plaintiffs allege that automakers were informed of inflator defects during tests but delayed taking action. Allegations against GM are among the most serious. Takata documents showed that GM employees expressed concerns about inflators rupturing as early as 2003.

Messages were left Wednesday seeking comment from GM, VW and Mercedes. Fiat Chrysler declined comment, saying it had not been served with the lawsuit.

Takata uses the chemical ammonium nitrate to create small explosions to inflate air bags. But the chemical can deteriorate when exposed to high temperatures and airborne moisture. That causes it to explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and hurling shrapnel. At least 22 people have died worldwide and more than 180 have been hurt.

The problem touched off the largest series of automotive recalls in U.S. history, with 19 automakers having to recall up to 69 million inflators in 42 million vehicles. The problem brought a criminal conviction and fine against Takata and forced the Japanese company into bankruptcy protection.

The lawsuits, which consolidate individual claims that were filed previously, allege that owners paid higher prices for their vehicles than they would have if the defect had been disclosed.

They allege that manufacturers picked Takata to supply inflators because the cost was less than other air bag makers who used different, less volatile chemicals as propellants. According to the lawsuits, manufacturers had employees who questioned the quality and performance of Takata’s inflators well before any vehicles were recalled.

“These auto manufacturers were well aware of the public safety risks posed by Takata’s airbags long ago, and still waited years to disclose them to the public and take action,” Peter Prieto, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. The lawsuits “are an important step forward in holding them accountable.”

Early concerns

In an April 2003 communication with Takata, GM was concerned about “ballistic variability,” which is a tendency for the air bags to either underinflate or explode when deployed, the lawsuit against GM said. A GM engineer raised concerns about inadequate testing, moisture control and the inability of Takata to meet GM specifications after a 2003 visit to Takata’s factory in Moses Lake, Washington, according to the lawsuit.

In 2004, Takata employees met with GM officials about a tendency for the inflators to shoot flames when they ruptured, and in March of 2006, Takata reported that inflators tested for GM vehicles continued to show “aggressive behavior,” including the escape of “molten propellant” when they ruptured. A Takata employee admitted “we cannot get good results” with the inflator design, the lawsuit stated.

Yet GM didn’t issue any recalls until June of 2014 when it recalled 29,000 Chevrolet Cruze compact cars from the 2013 and 2014 model years, according to the lawsuit. That recall came after Takata reported three exploding inflators in 2010. “Defendants did nothing to meaningfully investigate the problem, notify the appropriate regulators or notify the class [car owners],” the lawsuit stated.

GM also received reports of real-world problems in 2011 and 2014, including one case in which a Cruze driver was blinded in one eye by an exploding inflator, according to the lawsuit. GM and Takata blamed the trouble on a manufacturing problem instead of the deteriorating ammonium nitrate. “Rather than publicize the truth, both Takata and New GM blamed the ruptures on a manufacturing problem,” the lawsuit alleged.

Old GM, the company that existed before seeking bankruptcy protection in 2009, knew of the problems, and New GM, the company that emerged from bankruptcy, kept employees who knew and had the same knowledge, according to the lawsuit.

More recalls

Volkswagen, the lawsuit alleged, had repeated quality issues with Takata dating to 2003, even rejecting products after an audit. Yet no recalls were issued until 2016, the plaintiffs claimed. Daimler AG, maker of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, had concerns about the integrity of Takata inflators in 2003, according to company emails. In 2004, Mercedes engineers agreed to “forego key performance variables” and allow use of Takata inflators, the lawsuit stated. The company didn’t do any recalls until 2016.

Fiat Chrysler didn’t issue its first recall until 2014, even though its engineers expressed concerns about Takata inflators during the early 2000s, the lawsuit stated.

Last year Toyota, BMW, Mazda, Subaru, Nissan and Honda settled similar economic loss class actions for millions of dollars.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. President Donald Trump is naming Larry Kudlow, a longtime conservative economic analyst and television business show commentator, as his new top White House economic adviser.

The 70-year-old Kudlow told news media he accepted Trump’s offer Wednesday to become director of the White House’s National Economic Council. Reports say a formal announcement could come Thursday.

He will replace former Wall Street financier Gary Cohn, who resigned last week after breaking with President Trump on trade policy. Cohn had lost an internal debate, among Trump advisers, aimed at convincing the president not to impose steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Kudlow, who was an informal economic adviser to Trump during the first year of his presidency, also opposed Trump’s imposition of the 25 percent levy on steel and 10 percent tax on aluminum. Kudlow, however, was also an adviser to Trump during his successful 2016 White House run and worked with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in designing the tax cut plan Trump pushed through Congress in December.

Kudlow worked decades ago in the White House of President Ronald Reagan, but has spent much of the time since then as a television show host, much like Trump, who served as executive producer of The Apprentice reality television show before turning to politics.

One of Kudlow’s first White House efforts is likely to involve the ongoing renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. pact with Canada and Mexico.

Kudlow has said that it would be a “calamitously bad decision” to end the accord, but Trump has said NAFTA has left the United States at a disadvantage in trade deals with the two countries. The president has said he wants better terms for American farmers in their exports to Canada and wants Mexico to step up its border security at the U.S. line to keep undocumented immigrants from crossing into the United States.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

YouTube will begin displaying text from Wikipedia articles and other websites alongside some videos in a couple of weeks as the unit of Alphabet Inc’s Google attempts to combat hoaxes and conspiracy theories on the service, its chief executive said on Tuesday.

Susan Wojcicki, speaking on stage at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas, displayed a mock-up of the new feature, which are called information cues.

YouTube intends to present an alternative viewpoint to videos questioning science or describing conspiracies about events such as the U.S. moon landing. She said information cues would first roll out to topics for which there are a significant number of YouTube videos.

“People can still watch the videos but then they actually have access to additional information, can click off and go and see that,” Wojcicki said.

Lawmakers and media advocacy groups have called on YouTube to help stop the spread of hoaxes and false news stories. Last year, the company adjusted its algorithms to promote what it described as authoritative sources.

Though music and gaming videos are far more popular on YouTube, the company has made addressing the criticism around news and science videos a top priority this year. 
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From: MeNeedIt