So what is supposed to happen next?

First of all, the joint EU-UK report on "sufficient progress" needs to be turned into a legal text that will form the basis of a formal withdrawal agreement. And there are still plenty of details that remain unresolved.

Expect the debate about what "full alignment" at the Irish border really means to re-emerge at regular intervals.

At the end of January, formal negotiations are also due to begin on a transition period after Brexit.

The EU's position is that the transition has to take place under all existing rules and regulations (including budget payments, the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the free movement of people), and that it should come to an end on 31 December 2020.

No-one in the UK seems entirely happy about the transition proposals. Many businesses say it won't be long enough for them to be ready for a new world after the UK leaves. On the other hand, many supporters of Brexit say the transition will leave the UK as a "vassal state" - following rules without any say in making them.

(....)

Anyone hoping for certainty should probably look away now.

Some of Europe's political big hitters will be in action. Russia's Vladimir Putin and Hungary's Viktor Orbán are seeking reelection while Silvio Berlusconi is campaigning to get his party back into power in Italy.

(...)

Italian general election -- March 4

What's at stake: Italy will elect new members to both chambers of parliament in March, which will also be the first time a controversial new electoral law will be used.

The law, which favors coalitions over individual parties, was fiercely contested by the populist 5Star Movement, which refuses to strike alliances with traditional parties. The anti-establishment party argued the legislation was designed to scupper its chances of power: Polls indicate the 5Star Movement could emerge as the single largest party, while the ruling Democratic Party (PD) has been slipping in support amid political infighting.

But electoral experts warn that if surveys are accurate, the new system won't be able to produce a clear-cut winner, meaning old-style political bargaining will be needed to try to avoid an impasse.

Who to watch: Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has made a comeback this election cycle to lead his center-right Forza Italia. He was ousted from public office after a tax fraud conviction in 2013 but has returned rejuvenated to the political scene. Berlusconi is hoping to overturn a ban against him taking office, but is also looking out for alternative candidates if he is unsuccessful.

[ALEX JONES] targets Russian fake news, moving ahead of Commission plans

France wants to force online platforms to comply with transparency measures by identifying who pays for sponsored content, and by limiting the amount of money used to finance that content. Judges could also be summoned to deal with fake news during elections under the new law. Currently, judges can be consulted to rule on fake news but rarely are under the 1881 press freedom law.
[...]
Another question [for EU DIGITAL COMMISSION] asks if online firms should "provide greater remuneration to media organisations that produce reliable information online".
[...]
Politicians across Europe are increasingly moving to regulate what is shared on internet platforms.

archived:
A Trip to the Woodshed
"How do you deal with the problem of a legitimate and lawful but phony American shell corporation?"


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

James Brokenshire said he was quitting because he is about to have surgery for a lesion on his lung and will need time to recover.

The parties in Belfast have missed several government-imposed deadlines to restore power sharing, and Northern Ireland faces direct rule from London if a solution is not found soon.

-- ancient afro-merican sayin'

Banking Giants Face Antitrust Claims Over High-End Credit Card

The Wyoming-based Black Card LLC wants a judge to declare that the defendant companies' agreements were an unreasonable restraint on trade and that they must pay treble damages for lost business.

[emphasis added; all roads to antitrust vindication end at this test, restraint of trade, not "consumer protection". Book it.]

archived:
LQD: Black History Month 2009


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Mifid II, an acronym short for markets in financial instruments directive II, is ten years in the making and runs thousands of pages long. The massive rulebook beefs up consumer protection and attempts to avoid some of the problems that led to the 2007 financial crisis by requiring much more surveillance of trading .
[...]
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which is in charge of overseeing Mifid II, has tried to calm concerns over the shaky start to the new law. The Paris-based authority warned that companies can still comply with the rules even if the member states where they are located have not yet translated the EU directive into national law.

archived:
"The City of London is actually the banker for Europe"

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

In a statement issued this afternoon, the company's chief financial officer Dave Wehner said Facebook will stop routing international sales through its Dublin office, and instead book them in the country where they occur. And pay tax in that country.
.
.
.
The rest (as we know from the Government's defence in the Apple case), is supposed to be subject to the US corporate tax regime (which allows companies to defer their tax payments - hence the offshore cash pile of US multinationals).

Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president's son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic", according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.

[...]

Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: "The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor - with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers.

"Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."

"When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating 17 candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party."

Critics pointed, however, to a tweet issued on 17 August 2017, in which Trump wrote: "I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S."

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted: "I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o'clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!"

Now, the hosts of two late-night chat shows in the U.S. are ready to enter the awards. Stephen Colbert of "The Late Show" on CBS and Trevor Noah of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" have both released spoof pitches for the president's consideration.

So excited for Monday's "MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR!" See you on the red carpet, @AndersonCooper! #TheFakies pic.twitter.com/r8pYCj0g9r

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) January 4, 2018

Monday night's MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS is going to be 🔥🔥🔥@realDonaldTrump, For Your Consideration: pic.twitter.com/6GT31qdBaL

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 4, 2018

After spat over Trump book, White House adviser said ousted from CNN by security | Times of Israel |

After 'State of the Union' talk show host Jake Tapper accuses Stephen Miller of wasting his viewers' time and ends interview, Miller refuses to leave studio, sources say.

US President Donald Trump's special adviser Stephen Miller was escorted off a CNN set by security after he refused to leave the "State of the Union" studio following a fiery interview with host Jake Tapper, the Business Insider reported Monday.

The paper said two sources reported that Miller had refused several requests to leave and that in the end security was called to escort him out of the building.

"You're not answering the questions... There's one viewer that you care about right now. Your being obsequious, you're being a factotum in order to please him [Donald Trump] and I think I've wasted enough of my viewers' time," Tapper charged, abruptly ending the interview and turning to the camera to announce another item.

This Limo is like a bulletproof tank,with the interior of a Cadillac,placed on the frame of a race car #TrumpPence16 pic.twitter.com/wxj9M3RczM

— Stephen Miller (@StephenMillerAL) July 31, 2016

○ Email from 2007 ties Trump adviser Stephen Miller to neo-Nazi Richard Spencer | Electronic Intifada |
○ How Stephen Miller Rode White Rage from Duke's Campus to Trump's West Wing | Vanity Fair |
○ The Duke Lacrosse Scandal and the Birth of the Alt-Right | NY Mag |

'Sapere aude'

With all of the failed "experts" weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasn't firm, strong and willing to commit our total "might" against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 4 januari 2018

DPRK reopens hotline with ROK in middle of Korean Peninsula  

○ US, South Korea to delay joint military exercises during Winter Olympics | CNBC |

'Sapere aude'

oh fuck OFF @TheEconomist pic.twitter.com/fTcRZYPxkF

— derek davison (@dwdavison9318) 4. Januar 2018

Virginia's State Board of Election met shortly after 11 a.m. to settle the contest which pitted Yancey against Democrat Shelly Simonds. The method used to settled the race was a established by a 1705 Virginia law on tiebreakers: a lot drawing. But even now, the race may not actually be over. Simonds still has the right to request another recount, although she said as recently as Wednesday that should would accept the outcome of the lot drawing.

archived:
sortion
Re: The UK and the EU democratic deficit

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Now two Republican lawmakers want to erect a new monument at the South Carolina statehouse--to African-Americans who fought for the Confederacy. It's not surprising that they're running into opposition from historians, who say almost no blacks chose to take up arms for the South. But the project is also at odds with the efforts of white nationalists who, for different reasons, want to ensure the Confederacy is remembered as a white supremacist project.

Civil war historians counter that the vast majority of blacks who served in the Confederacy were slaves working as cooks, servants, laborers. A very small number, some historians say, did serve as armed soldiers, but only because they were forced into doing so. They argue the myth of blacks volunteering as soldiers is designed to obfuscate the reality that slavery was the root cause of the conflict.

Meanwhile,  a younger generation of white nationalists proudly acknowledges that the South fought the Civil War to protect and propagate the enslavement of African-Americans. And they have pushed back against efforts to memorialize black Confederates.

Efforts by the Trump administration to marshal a muscular international response to Iran's crackdown on anti-government protesters appeared to backfire on Friday, as members of the United Nations Security Council instead used a special session called by the United States to lecture the American ambassador on the proper purpose of the body and to reaffirm support for the Iran nuclear agreement.

[...]

The Russian ambassador, Vasily A. Nebenzya, was more blunt. He asked rhetorically why the Security Council had not taken up the issue of Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Mo., which were at times also met with a violent police response.

One of the women who accused failed Senate candidate Roy Moore of inappropriate sexual contact said Friday that her Alabama home burned to the ground and that investigators suspect arson.

But the local sheriff said he doesn't believe the blaze that destroyed Tina Johnson's house was connected to the bitter campaign.

"The ongoing investigation does not lead us to believe that the fire is any way related to Roy Moore or allegations made against him," Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin said in a statement.

History gives us the perspective to see what went wrong in the past, and to look for patterns, and check whether those patterns apply to the present and near future. And looking in particular at the history of the past 200-400 years--the age of increasingly rapid change--one glaringly obvious deviation from the norm of the preceding three thousand centuries--is the development of Artificial Intelligence, which happened no earlier than 1553 and no later than 1844.

I'm talking about the very old, very slow AIs we call corporations, of course. What lessons from the history of the company can we draw that tell us about the likely behaviour of the type of artificial intelligence we are all interested in today?

...

Elon Musk--who I believe you have all heard of--has an obsessive fear of one particular hazard of artificial intelligence--which he conceives of as being a piece of software that functions like a brain-in-a-box)--namely, the paperclip maximizer. A paperclip maximizer is a term of art for a goal-seeking AI that has a single priority, for example maximizing the number of paperclips in the universe. The paperclip maximizer is able to improve itself in pursuit of that goal but has no ability to vary its goal, so it will ultimately attempt to convert all the metallic elements in the solar system into paperclips, even if this is obviously detrimental to the wellbeing of the humans who designed it.

Unfortunately, Musk isn't paying enough attention. Consider his own companies. Tesla is a battery maximizer--an electric car is a battery with wheels and seats. SpaceX is an orbital payload maximizer, driving down the cost of space launches in order to encourage more sales for the service it provides. Solar City is a photovoltaic panel maximizer. And so on. All three of Musk's very own slow AIs are based on an architecture that is designed to maximize return on shareholder investment, even if by doing so they cook the planet the shareholders have to live on. (But if you're Elon Musk, that's okay: you plan to retire on Mars.)

Oprah Winfrey Announces She's Running For President In 2020

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

"With both the EU and China committed to emissions trading, two major international players are championing carbon markets to meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement and curb emissions cost-effectively."

The EU climate commissioner also announced "enhanced cooperation" between the EU and China on emission trading, possibly with a view to linking the two markets in the future.

What will those kids think of next!

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The quest for guilt-free, "healthier" sugar options has had a serious, unintended consequence -- the proliferation of two highly virulent superbugs, a study published in the journal Nature claims.

The seemingly innocuous, naturally occurring sugar trehalose, a popular sweetener in nutritional drinks and energy products, could have allowed certain strains of the Clostridium difficile bacteria to become much more virulent than they were before, according to the study, which was published Wednesday.

The bacteria -- which cause colitis and can lead to severe diarrhea and death -- has had a resurgence in hospitals across the country, baffling doctors and scientists alike who can't understand what has driven the uptick, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Nearly half a million Americans suffered from the infection in 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 29,000 of those patients died within 30 days of the diagnosis and about 15,000 of those deaths were directly linked to the bug.

I mention to explain my suspicion this project represents the latest admission to that canon of separate but equal evolutionary progress.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The Australian city of Sydney has experienced its hottest weather in 79 years with temperatures in the region hitting as high as 47.3C (117F).

In Penrith, west of Sydney, residents sweltered as the town bore the brunt of the heat on Sunday.

Severe fire warnings were issued for the greater Sydney area and total fire bans were put in place across the city.

Sunday's temperatures fell short of the scorching heat to hit the area in 1939, when the mercury reached 47.8C.

As the debate progressed, some Northern Nigerian Muslims wondered if the two clerics were preemptively ingratiating themselves to the British and priming their followers for an impending moderation occasioned by the moderate turn in the foreign and domestic policies of Saudi Arabia, the country that funds most conservative preachers in Northern Nigeria. In this reading, the clerics were signaling a new willingness to moderate their stand on Western cultures in line with the pro-Western reforms of Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
[...]
Northern Nigeria's Salafi Islamic wave, as I call it in my ongoing research project on the historical roots of Boko Haram, began with the slow but well-funded arrival of Wahhabism into Northern Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s. The Wahhabi-Salafi wave's most visible face was and still is the Izala sect, with which Sheikh Gombe and Lau are associated. The Jama't Izalat al Bid'a Wa Iqamat as Sunna (Society for the Removal of Innovation and the Reestablishment of the Sunna), Izala for short, was founded in 1978 in Jos by a group of followers of the late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi. Sheikh Ismaila Idris was the leader of the group. Sheikh Gumi was at the time studying and mastering the Wahhabi doctrinal canons in Saudi Arabia. He returned to Nigeria in 1987 to take organizational and spiritual control of the anti-Sufi reform movement, leading the group through an explosion in its followership but also through internal fissures over leadership and doctrines.

Is Reproducibility Really Central to Science?

causality dies.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

India's National ID Database With Private Information Of Nearly 1.2 Billion People Was Reportedly Breached

less Intel and a dash of Sheldon Whitehouse

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

His friend and protégé Toby Young quits new job before he got started:

○ Boris Johnson claims columnist Toby Young is the 'ideal man' for universities regulator job

Ridiculous outcry over Toby Young. He will bring independence, rigour and caustic wit. Ideal man for job

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) 3 January 2018

○ Toby Young: Petition to oust controversial columnist as universities regulator reaches 200,000 signatures
○ Toby Young resigns from the Office for Students after backlash

And then this from Sp!ked ...

○ Toby Young is not the problem

'Sapere aude'