Stay Alive and Graduate. Emperors Discuss Nuclear Weapons. Serving Your Country.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.” – Socrates

President Trump has fired David Shulkin, the Secretary of Veteran Affairs. And the Secretary of Veteran Affairs has fired right back with an op-ed in The New York Times: “Privatizing the V.A. Will Hurt Veterans.” Shulkin ends his essay with a cautionary note: “As I prepare to leave government, I am struck by a recurring thought: It should not be this hard to serve your country.”

The Hermit Emperor and the Chinese Emperor Discuss Nuclear Weapons: North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un travelled to Beijing for a three day visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Kim had not left his country since taking power in 2011. This “unofficial” visit signaled a thaw in the frosty relationship between the two communist allies over Kim’s nuclear program. The official press agency of the People’s Republic of China, New China News, reported that Kim told Xi: “If South Korea and the United States respond with goodwill to our efforts, and create an atmosphere of peace and stability, and take phased, synchronized measures to achieve peace, the issue of the denuclearization of the peninsula can reach resolution.” As one North Korea expert summed up: “‘The nuclear issue is the only obstacle’ to good relations between China and North Korea.”

Once before, in 2005 during talks hosted by China, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear program. But by 2009, Pyongyang had stopped participating in the talks and threatened never to give up its nuclear ambitions. Tensions between North Korea and the United States rose to alarming levels after President Trump took office. But earlier this month, South Korea announced that Kim was willing to halt his nuclear program and enter into talks with South Korea and the US.

Hungary’s Far Right Emperor: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is up for re-election April 8th. He’s been in office eight years and is expected to win again easily in this year’s general election. Orban is a hero of the far-right around the globe. Earlier this month Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former strategist, described Orban as “the most significant guy on the scene right now.” The prime minister is extremely anti-immigrant and has been using many tools to bend public opinion away from inclusion and toward nationalism. His brand of “illiberal democracy” is spread via billboards, radio, TV, and even school textbooks.

Orban has worked diligently to undermine his country’s democratic institutions, rewriting the national constitution, reshaping the judiciary, and tinkering with the electoral system to favor his Fidesz party. Many artistic institutions, universities, and other cultural and philanthropic organizations are dominated by his party’s appointees or supporters. Orban has especially attacked pro-democracy organizations funded by Hungarian-American investor turned philanthropist George Soros.

Critics and opponents see the changes Orban has made as the “unraveling of democracy.” A German research group published a report this month that concluded Hungary was “nearing” the threshold of autocracy. Opposition politicians and grass-roots activists are attempting to mobilize protest votes from the half-million Hungarians living in other EU countries, particularly Great Britain.

– The UN Secretary General has described Eastern Ghouta as “hell on earth.” The devastating Syrian conflict has rained down on civilians in this rebel-held enclave outside Damascus some of the worst war has to offer. Apocalyptic setting aside, some students still strive to get a degree. And thanks to the University of the People, the US-based, tuition-free, online university started by an Israeli entrepreneur, they still can–provided they can find electricity, an internet connection, and stay alive. (BBC)

– Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame, 44, a distinguished member of the Gendarmerie Nationale, responded to a terrorist attack at a supermarket in Trebes, France last Friday. He offered to change places with a hostage, which helped bring an end to the siege, but cost Beltrame his life. He was awarded France’s highest accolade, the Legion d’Honneur, by President Emmanuel Macron at a national memorial service in Paris. (BBC)

– Thousands of Ghanaians flooded the capital’s business district to protest the country’s new cooperative defense deal with the US. It was a rare public display against the growing foreign military presence protesters say threatens Ghana’s sovereignty. (Reuters)

– The Israeli military has deployed more than 100 sharpshooters on the Gaza borderin anticipation of a massive 6-week-long demonstration by Palestinians scheduled to begin Friday, coinciding with the beginning of Passover, the week-long Jewish holiday. The protest is over a right claimed by Palestinian refugees, as many as five million, to return to land that is now part of Israel, something Israel has rejected for fear that an influx of Arabs would eliminate its Jewish majority. (Reuters)

– Following the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, the UK’s Home Office had to reverse its plan to trim its Border Force. Brexit has created a huge strain on the department, which not only must begin patrolling the borders, but also must register EU nationals living in Britain and grant them permanent residency. New plans are now underway to hire 1,000 new customs and immigration staff to ensure border security. (Bloomberg)

President Trump Bakes Possible Political Pardon Pies and Legal Rigamarole Casserole: It was revealed Tuesday that President Trump’s recently-resigned personal lawyer, John Dowd, had spoken last summer with attorneys representing former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort about potential presidential pardons for both men. Speculation is that the president’s lawyers were concerned about what the men might reveal to Special Counsel Robert Mueller were they to cooperate with the investigation in exchange for leniency. The question now becomes whether or not Dowd was offering the pardons to forestall any decision the men might make to plead guilty and cooperate with Mueller, a move that could be interpreted as obstructing justice.  

On Wednesday, Dowd denied that he had discussed pardons with lawyers for Flynn and Manafort, although three different people said that he had. Manafort was indicted in October on charges of money laundering and other financial crimes. He pleaded not guilty and was said to have been uninterested in a pardon because he believes he has done nothing wrong and that the government has overstepped its authority. Flynn pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI about conversations he’d had with the Russian ambassador. He received favorable sentencing terms.

Mueller released a document Tuesday detailing communications running up to the 2016 election between Rick Gates, a Trump campaign official, and a business associate believed to be a former Russian intelligence officer the FBI suspected was actively linked at the time to Russian spy services.

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– If you are a parent or grandparent with a rubber duck, then you might want to toss it out. And we can just see the side-eye or eye roll you’re giving after reading that sentence. Oh great, another overprotective millennial parent! But the data don’t lie – the “murky water released from four out of every five ducks tested included Legionella along with Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, often associated with infections acquired in hospitals.” (The Guardian)

– Speaking of killer diseases and our regularly scheduled loose nuts section, “a man in the UK has caught the world’s “worst-ever” case of super-gonorrhoea. He had a regular partner in the UK, but picked up the superbug after a sexual encounter with a woman in South East Asia.” A doctor commented that “this is the first time a case has displayed such high-level resistance [to antibiotics].” (BBC)

– In the race between diseases (human foibles and mother nature) and science (human innovation), scientists may be discovering – just in time – that a “new drug tested on mice could be used to treat human infections that no longer respond to routine antibiotics.” (The Guardian)

– Meanwhile, some scientists claim they’ve made quite the discovery – a new organ. “The Interstitium, the Largest Organ We Never Knew We Had. The human body was thought to have 79 organs—until researchers stumbled on a strange phenomenon that could turn medicine and what we thought we knew about the body upside down.” (Daily Beast)

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.” – Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

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