5: Can a Facebook Group of 120,000 Lawyers Save America from Trump?
Lawyers for Good Government became an overnight Facebook sensation, but its founder wants it to be much, much more than that.
After Donald Trump’s narrative-shattering, world-upending election victory in November, Traci Feit Love, like a lot of people upset or unmoored at the results, spent some time scrolling through Facebook, reading personal narratives of dread and notes about how to oppose the next president. Love, a Harvard Law grad who was then vice president of 180 Legal, a company that helps smaller law firms with marketing, noticed that a lot of lawyers were saying important things that were being ignored in the flood of rage and fear.
Vice News
4: EU nations react to Donald Trump’s remarks
European Union member nations have reacted with surprise and defiance to comments by US President-elect Donald Trump, who has said in an interview that he believes NATO is “obsolete” and that more member states will leave the 28-nation EU.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, speaking on Monday before a meeting of EU foreign ministers, said Trump’s view on NATO and criticism that allied members were not paying their fair share has “caused astonishment”.
Aljazeera
THE LEADER OF the UK’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called for a “de-escalation” of tensions between NATO and Russia, adding in a BBC interview on Thursday: “I want to see a de-militarisation of the border between them.” Along with the U.S., the UK has been rapidly building up its military presence in the Baltic region, including states which border Russia, and is now about to send another 800 troops to Estonia, 500 of which will be permanently based.
In response, Russia has moved its own troops within its country near those borders, causing serious military tensions to rise among multiple nuclear-armed powers. Throughout 2016, the Russian and U.S. militaries have engaged in increasingly provocative and aggressive maneuvers against one another. This week, the U.S. began deploying 4,000 troops to Poland, “the biggest deployment of US troops in Europe since the end of the cold war.”
The Intercept
2: WEF: environment dominates threats to global economy
The world’s fast degrading environment now represents a major threat to the global economy, the World Economic Forum warned on Thursday.
Its annual Global Risks Report lists extreme weather, water shortages, natural disasters and a failure to prepare for climate change2 as four of the top five perils of 2017 in terms of impact.
“Weapons of mass destruction” topped the list – a nod to rising tensions on the Korean peninsula and fast-cooling relations between Russia and Europe.
Despite agreement on a UN climate pact in 2015, the “pace of change is not fast enough” said the report, released every year ahead of the two-day World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Climate Change News
1: ‘Europe’s fate is in our hands’: Angela Merkel’s defiant reply to Trump
Angela Merkel has responded curtly but defiantly after Donald Trump cast further doubt on his commitment to Nato and gave strong hints that he would not support EU cohesion once in office.
“We Europeans have our fate in our own hands,” the German chancellor said after the publication of the US president-elect’s interviews with the Times and German tabloid Bild. “He has presented his positions once more. They have been known for a while. My positions are also known.”
The Guardian
