Talk is Cheap, But So Are Tweets

Brazilian Congress Votes ‘No’ To Putting President Michel Temer On Trial:Opposition lawmakers in Brazil’s lower house of Congress failed to obtain the two-thirds majority vote needed to put President Michel Temer on trial for corruption. Temer was accused of accepting $12 million in bribes from the owner of a large meatpacking firm, allegations he denies. 263 voted against the motion to try the president, and 227 voted in favor, well below the 342 votes needed for the motion to pass. The congressional session was heated, as lawmakers shouted at and pushed each other. Temer stated the vote was “clear and incontestable” and that with “the support the lower house has given me, we will pass all the reforms that the country needs. Now it is time to invest in our country. Brazil is ready to start growing again.” He vowed to complete his term, which ends in December 2018.

Trump Plans To Give China Something To Talk About: Back in early April, President Trump had Chinese President Xi Jinping over for dinner at Mar-a-Lago. All went well, and Trump asked Xi to please take care of the pesky North Korea thing. Now it’s four months later and, well, let’s just say Trump is not a happy camper.

And it’s not just the North Korea thing. It’s all that intellectual property theft and forcing US and foreign companies to share their technology China’s insisting on in return for access to its huge and growing (but slowing) market. Enter the rarely used Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers Washington to investigate Chinese trade practices and impose sanctions, including tariffs, which the administration now wants to employ. Add support from three Senate Democrats and bingo! A rare recipe for bipartisan agreement that might just cook up a lot of American jobs.

Meanwhile, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross outlined a slew of grievances against both China and the European Union that he said contributed to the global US trade deficit in goods to the tune of $725.5 billion in 2016, prompting somebody over in the Commerce Department (maybe) to suggest another sorta old law that The New York Times says officials are thinking of using, specifically the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Also enacted during the 1970s, that law gives the president wide powers to take action after declaring a national emergency.

During his campaign, Trump railed against Chinese trade practices, saying: “Predatory trade practices, product dumping, currency manipulation and intellectual property theft have taken millions of jobs and trillions in wealth from our country.” Once in office, he softened his stance for a while. Now it appears the Trump-Xi honeymoon is over for sure, since the president recently tweeted: “I am very disappointed in China. Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade and yet they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk.”

Another Round of Applause for Hamilton!: Researchers working with a non-governmental and bipartisan transatlantic project called the Alliance for Securing Democracy launched a website Wednesday that aims to track Russian-supported propaganda and disinformation on Twitter. Analysts identified a pool of 600 Twitter accounts whose users spread English-language Russian propaganda. The “Hamilton 68” website displays a “near real-time” analysis of tweets sent from this pool. It is part of a growing effort to curtail Moscow’s ability to meddle in future US and European elections and was launched in response to the Trump administration’s apparent reluctance to address alleged Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential election. The website’s name refers to Federalist Paper 68, written in 1788 by founding father Alexander Hamilton and published anonymously to defend the US Constitution to the American public.

Think about all of those books piling up on your nightstand. How do you feel? Stressed? Anxious? Like you failed your high school literature teacher? Life is busy and it’s hard to find the time to read. That’s why there’s Blinkist, an app that has revolutionized book reading for over 2 million people and counting.

Blinkist distills best-selling nonfiction books into quick reads, so you can get all the essential ideas and concepts in 15 minutes or less. There’s audio too, so you can use it while commuting, working out, or doing house chores. Find out why and how people are completely remaking the way they read.

You Say Macedonia, I Say Macedonia…So Why Can’t We Call The Whole Thing Off?: 26 years ago, Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia. In those 26 years, the country has not had an official, internationally agreed-upon name, because of Greece’s objections to the name “Macedonia,” which is also the name of Greece’s own Macedonia, a large province in the northern part of the country (which borders Macedonia). Greece refuses to let Macedonia join NATO or the EU until it changes its name, which it says is a signal that the country has territorial ambitions over Greece’s own Macedonia and is “a blatant attempt to lay claim to Greece’s national heritage.” Macedonia, on the other hand, argues that its people trace their roots back to the ancient kingdom of Macedon, once ruled by Alexander the Great, and that the name Macedonia is therefore an “obvious choice.”

Since 1994 (yes, that’s 23 years), one 78-year-old US diplomat, Matthew Nimetz, has been working to solve this intractable international dispute. Contrary to what people might think, Nimetz has “not spent every waking moment of the past 23 years” thinking about the word ‘Macedonia.’ He does concede that: “I have probably thought about it more than anyone else–including in the country. But I have to disappoint anyone that thinks it’s my full-time job.” A long list of new names has been proffered, among them New Macedonia, Nova Makedonija, Slavo-Macedonia, or the Republic of Skopje (the capital of Macedonia). Macedonia needs to find a solution to the problem (the sooner the better) so that it can join both NATO and the EU.

Despite the “glacial” pace of negotiations and over two decades of trying to resolve this issue, Nimetz has never seriously thought of giving up and believes a solution can and will be found. But for the moment, he is busy planning a vacation “up above the Arctic Circle to a lodge where the caribou migrate.” Time to get far away from disputes about territorial claims and national heritage, right? “Well, actually,” he says, “Maybe not, when you think about the First Nations of Canada…” Nimitz then excitedly begins explaining Canada’s debate over indigenous self-government, and it quickly becomes clear that his love and respect for the universal questions of national identity and self-determination are the reasons why he has been able to “work on a dispute about just one word for the past 23 years.”

Please support Daily Pnut!