Reacting to Donald Trump’s fury over a New York Times report that said the FBI investigated whether the president was working for Russia after he fired James Comey, Comey himself tweeted a quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” the former FBI director wrote on Saturday, adding an attribution: “FDR.”It soon became clear the tweet almost exactly matched one by Trump, issued on 21 November 2012, when the then reality TV star was digesting the re-election of Barack Obama.“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” Trump wrote, adding a slightly longer attribution: “Franklin D Roosevelt.”The quote is from a speech in Portland, Oregon, on 21 September 1932, in which Roosevelt, then a candidate for the White House, attacked the behaviour of owners of public utilities. According to documents made available online by the 32nd president’s library, he told his audience: “My friends, judge me by the enemies I have made”, and was greeted with “cheers, prolonged applause”.The Times article, published on Friday night was greeted with a mass intake of breath. It concerned FBI attempts to determine whether the president was a Russian asset. The president’s reaction to the report included a failure in a Fox News interview to deny he had “ever worked for Russia” and familiar abuse of the FBI director he fired in May 2017. It all made the congruence in their tweets seem amusing.But it seems Comey might have been making a sharper point. 21 November 2012, the date of Trump’s FDR tweet, was also the date of a presidential memorandum issued by Obama. Its subject: “National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs.”In the memo, Obama defined its purpose as “to provide direction and guidance to promote the development of effective insider threat programs within departments and agencies to deter, detect, and mitigate actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security.“These threats encompass potential espionage, violent acts against the Government or the Nation, and unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”According to White House practice, the memo followed a 2011 executive order on “Structural Reforms to Improve the Security of Classified Networks and the Responsible Sharing and Safeguarding of Classified Information”.The Times report said the FBI was worried about Trump’s behavior, including repeatedly linking the firing of Comey to investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump aides and Moscow, and in an infamous Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister shortly after the firing.Trump attacked the report again in his Saturday night interview with Fox News, saying it was “a great insult and the New York Times is a disaster of a paper. It’s a very horrible thing they said.”Also on Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Trump has “gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations” with Vladimir Putin, including “on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired”.In the 2012 memo, Obama wrote that he wanted to “reinforce our defenses against both adversaries and insiders who misuse their access and endanger our national security”.Obama appointed Comey director of the FBI in 2013. At the time of the order and memorandum, he was out of government. Since his firing by Trump, he has published an explosive and bestselling memoir and stringently criticised the president.The memo and Trump’s tweet being issued on the same day could of course be a coincidence. But on Sunday, a source who worked in the first Bush justice department told the Guardian that either way, “Comey is making a point: ‘Trump’s my enemy. That says plenty about me.’”Comey did not immediately comment further on Saturday but he did tweet about a trip to see a Broadway show: “The perfect day to see To Kill a Mockingbird … Amazing cast and vital message: ‘All rise.’” Topics James Comey Donald Trump Barack Obama US politics news

"Whatever we have been doing is not enough ... It's shameful for our whole society," Rijiju said.India was ranked the most dangerous country in the world to be a woman in a survey published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June.JUST WATCHEDString of attacks in India sparks outrageReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHString of attacks in India sparks outrage 01:20According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 39,000 rapes in India in 2016, a rate of roughly one rape every 13.5 minutes. The total marked a 12% spike over the previous year.The push to establish the registry follows mass protests in support of tougher measures to reduce the levels of sexual violence.In April, thousands of people took to the streets across India in reaction to the rape and killing of an 8-year-old girl in the isolated Himalayan district of Kathua. The girl was drugged, gang-raped and strangled before her body was dumped in the forest five days later. Three police officers and a former government official were among the eight men arrested in the attack.In another shocking case, an 11-year-old girl in Chennai was drugged and gang-raped in July by 17 men, ranging in age from their 20s to 60s, who worked in the building where she lived, according to police.With the launch of the NDSO, India joins a small number of other countries, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, in maintaining a record of convicted sex offenders.However, unlike in the US, where the database can be accessed by the public, the NDSO will be available only to law enforcement agencies.But anti-sexual violence campaigners have voiced concerns about its misuse, in particular the potential for government overreach.Enakshi Ganguly, co-founder of the HAQ Center for Child Rights, a Delhi-based NGO, said that database would not "be helpful for India.""Everything that is an instrument of change can be used to target the same people and used for corruption. Can you imagine police having access to this level of information?" said Ganguly. She suggested that corrupt police could use the information to target individuals for crimes they may not have committed. "The only saving grace is that it's not going to be a public registry," she added.The database will be maintained by India's centralized National Crime Records Bureau, the government agency responsible for collecting and analyzing national crime data. JUST WATCHEDSeries of rape cases spark protests in IndiaReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSeries of rape cases spark protests in India 03:08India on Thursday also launched an online portal to report complaints relating to online sexual abuse, child pornography and sexually explicit content such as rape.The portal will enable people to anonymously make a complaint, which will be handed to police in the complainant's respective state or union territory. In spite of introducing new measures and legislation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come under fire for failing to publicly address the issue of sexual violence. Rijiju told CNN it was "more than a political issue.""When it is a case of rape ... don't link it to any political party or religious group. Just treat it as a heinous crime and the accused as a criminal," said Rijiu."It's a social issue...it's not one party's issue."

She drew a toothless old man with an evil look, squeezing a bird in his hands. “Wow,” the interrogator said, as the others crowded around, impressed. “This is us. We do this.” Afraid, the artist demurred, saying, “This is not you, this is someone else.” “No, no,” he replied. “This is what we do. We know it, we are happy with it.” “And this,” he said, pointing to the crushed bird, “is you.” Conditions improved when Ms. Abo Rebieh was moved to Adra, an official prison, where she was finally able to persuade guards to bring her paper and pencils, and she began drawing the people she was confined with:“There were no mirrors inside the prison, so the drawings I made of the women made them see how they look. They are even more beautiful than the way I draw them. There is nothing to do, so you make up your face, your hair; some girls ask their parents to buy them makeup. They are very young. They dance at night, and compete over who dances better. Sometimes they cry when they dance.On New Year’s Eve, the guards let us have a party. I drew on the girls’ faces, one a cat, one a butterfly. The guards agreed to allow it for one night only. So we wrote them a card, saying ‘The ladies of Cell Number 4 congratulate you on the New Year.’When the guards saw that we called ourselves ‘ladies,’ they went crazy. They said, ‘You are terrorists, not ladies.’”

Around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police in India every day, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. There were nearly 39,000 alleged attacks in 2016, an increase of 12% on the previous year. "Any time a small girl is sexually assaulted, it is painful for all us," Modi said in London. "But can we compare the number of rapes in different governments? We can't say there were this many rapes in our government and that many in yours. There cannot be a worse way to deal with this issue." Fallout from recent cases, including two alleged unrelated attacks on girls aged 16 and eight, is threatening to overshadow Modi's visit to the UK. On Wednesday, hundreds of protestors gathered outside Downing Street and the British Parliament, waving placards reading "go home Modi" and "hang the rapists" as the Indian leader prepared to meet with UK Prime Minister Theresa May. Modi's arrival in the UK comes as violent clashes between protesting students and police continued in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the scene of therape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl, with demonstrators demanding justice for the young victim.In Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district Thursday, security forces fired warning shots into the air and launched teargas shells to disperse the crowd. As many as twelve people were taken to hospital where they are in stable condition, hospital officials said. The alleged gang rape was originally reported in January but it wasn't until April 11, when a group of lawyers and right-wing Hindu activists attempted to forcibly block investigators from filing charges against the accused, that the case began to attract nationwide attention.The girl, who belonged to a Muslim nomadic community known as the Bakarwals, was abducted while grazing horses in a meadow in the isolated Himalayan district of Kathua on January 12. From there, it is alleged she was taken to a Hindu temple, where she was drugged, held captive and repeatedly raped for five days by different men.Police have arrested eight suspects in connection with her death, all of whom are Hindu. Seven of the eight have pleaded not guilty, while the eighth will be tried separately as a minor.The arrests of the men, who investigators allege plotted the girl's abduction as a means of scaring the predominately-Muslim nomads into vacating the region, has proved a lightning rod in a part of India simmering with religious tension. Last Friday, two BJP ministers in the Jammu and Kashmir state government who had participated in the protests in support of the accused outside the courthouse were forced to resign from office, amid accusations of political interference and religious discrimination.In another case, a state lawmaker from Modi's own Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stands accused of raping a teenager. Kuldeep Singh Sengar, an elected BJP member of the Uttar Pradesh state legislative assembly, was arrested last week as police investigate claims he raped a 16-year-old girl in June 2017. A week after the attack, the girl was allegedly abducted and repeatedly raped by others allegedly known to Sengar, who has denied the allegations.Prior to his arrest, Sengar told India's CNN News 18: "I have done nothing wrong. I will be proved innocent after the investigation. The rape allegations are false and baseless."A participant holds a placard during a protest against recent incidents of rape in the country, in Mumbai, India, Sunday, April 15, 2018. The alleged involvement of a BJP member in one of the recent cases has amplified calls for action from Modi, with opponents rounding on the prime minister for his apparent reluctance to properly tackle what is fast becoming a policy crisis.Speaking to CNN Thursday, the spokesperson for India's opposition Congress Party, M.V. Rajeev Gowda, accused Modi of "ignoring his party's people's complicity in this whole matter.""There is a very, very active BJP involvement in all of this. But Modi has referred to them [the separate cases] only as small incidents, basically sending a signal to many rapists ... that they can continue to do what they want. It is a let down to the people of India and the women and girls involved in these incidents."Speaking toThe Indian Express Wednesday, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Modi "should follow his own advice to me and he should speak more often. Through press [reports] I know that he used to criticize me for not speaking up."After several days in which he failed to publicly address the cases, despite widespread protests, Modi finally broke his silence during a speech in Delhi on April 13, promising justice for "our daughters."Indian women's commissioner on hunger strike over rape lawsHis comments came after a day after Swati Maliwal, the head of Delhi's Commission for Women, published anopen letter to Modi, in which she called on rape to be punishable by death. Maliwal has been on a hunger strike since April 13 to push for stricter laws for rape in India.Vrinda Grover, a lawyer and women's rights activist, told CNN the issue should be the "single most important agenda of the government.""If a prime minister is to be held accountable for basic security and exercise of right to life and liberty for half the population of this country, then it should be a problem for Modi," said Grover, adding the apparent defense of an accused rapist is symptomatic of "polarization and hate ideology" in the country's political system."A sitting legislator is yet to be removed by the party. There is therefore some kind of overt or covert political patronage," she said."The signal from the top is that there is impunity for sexual violence."

By contrast, allies of Mrs. Kirchner, who has denied any wrongdoing, characterized the new forensic report as an effort by the current government to further undermine her image. Mrs. Kirchner faces charges in several corruption investigations.But in the run-up to the election, Mrs. Kirchner has a mystery of her own to point to: The disappearance of Santiago Maldonado, an indigenous rights activist who, supporters say, vanished after border guards took him into custody.The disappearance has outraged many Argentines, and Mrs. Kirchner contends that the government is simply putting forward the new allegations about Mr. Nisman’s death in order to distract attention from the case now unfolding on its watch.“This is an immense smoke bomb to hide Santiago Maldonado,” Mrs. Kirchner said in a radio interview. Mr. Maldonado’s family and human rights groups have called for a protest on Sunday to mark the two-month anniversary of his disappearance.The latest forensic investigation into Mr. Nisman’s death was carried out by a team of 28 experts. Over the course of nine months, they reconstructed the scene where his body was found in his bathroom, with a single gunshot wound to the head. They concluded the prosecutor was killed by two people, according to the senior judicial official, who has seen the report.The forensic experts discovered several injuries on Mr. Nisman’s body — including a nasal fracture, a hematoma in his kidney, lesions on his legs and a wound on the palm of his hand — that they say are consistent with an attack on the prosecutor before he was killed. According to the official, investigators also said they found ketamine, an anesthetic, in Mr. Nisman’s blood, which they suspect was used to sedate the prosecutor before he was shot. No gunpowder residue was found on his hands, which they said made the suicide theory implausible.

An Italian mother has posted an open letter on Facebook attacking a far-right leader.Gabriella Nobile said her adopted children were facing "moments of terror" thanks to Matteo Salvini's anti-immigrant rhetoric.His populist Northern League, rebranded as League (Lega), is expected to do well in this Sunday's general election.Mr Salvini responded to the post by defending his policies and offering to have coffee with Ms Nobile.On Sunday, Ms Nobile posted the open letter on Facebook (in Italian) following a League rally in Milan the previous day.The letter, addressed to Mr Salvini, "thanks" him for scaring her two adopted children.The 49-year-old entrepreneur says that her daughter asked: "If he wins, will I be sent back to Africa?" Italian election dominated by immigration debate Italy election: Rival protests spark tensions ahead of vote She adds that her son has faced racist abuse on the bus while travelling to football practice.Speaking to the BBC on Thursday, Ms Nobile said her son was told "If Salvini wins, you will go home," and was called a racial slur.Ms Nobile's son, originally from Congo, was adopted at the age of two, while her daughter, originally from Ethiopia, was adopted at the age of one."My children are black," Ms Nobile said. "They cannot go outside with a tattoo - 'I am Italian, I have all my documents.'"While she told the BBC that immigration was "a huge problem that must be solved in some way", she attacked Mr Salvini for acting "like all the problems we have in Italy are from immigration", saying his focus had led to a rise in racist abuse.The post quickly went viral, garnering tens of thousands of likes, comments and shares.Facebook however reportedly removed the initial post, claiming Ms Nobile was "inciting racial hatred" by using a slur in her letter when describing the abuse her son has suffered.Ms Nobile reposted the letter without the slur, but while Facebook allowed it to remain online, the company blocked her from her account.On Tuesday, Mr Salvini responded to Ms Nobile with his own Facebook post.Mr Salvini said it was wrong for the children to fear him, and even said he would push the government to make adoptions faster and cheaper."I will remove from Italy criminals, illegal immigrants and drug dealers, but certainly not children!"At the end of the post, the Northern League leader offered to go for coffee with Ms Nobile. "Since we both live in Milan, I would be happy to offer you a coffee at the park, while our children play together."Originally founded in 1991 to fight for greater regional autonomy in northern Italy, the Northern League has morphed under Matteo Salvini into a populist, Eurosceptic party opposed to immigration.Lega, as it is now known, has formed links with other far-right European parties including France's National Front and the Freedom Party of Austria.The League could end up in coalition with Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing Forza Italia party, which is vying against the populist Five Star Movement and the ruling centre-left Democratic Party. Five Star has vowed never to enter into a coalition.Voters go to the polls on Sunday, 4 March.

Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device Video Ricardo Vilanova: Face to face with 'IS captors' Spanish photojournalist Ricardo Vilanova was held captive by Islamic State militants in Syria for eight months before he was freed in 2014.He says that his tormentors were a group of four British jihadists, dubbed "The Beatles" by their captives.Now he has returned to the country and met two of the men accused of holding him hostage.

There’s perhaps no better time to celebrate India’s real contributions to science.Over the past few months, superstitious beliefs and myths about India’s past have become increasingly pervasive, particularly promoted by local leaders. At the same time, funding for genuine research is drying up, and despite protests from the scientific community, things seem to only be getting worse.But at the Science Museum in London, the emphasis is on what India has done right, going as far back as the Indus Valley Civilisation. As part of its Illuminating India exhibition to mark the country’s 70th year since Independence, the museum is highlighting Indian innovation with a collection of key objects from the past, including the Bakhshali manuscript, which was recently found to be the oldest record of the zero symbol, and Jagadish Chandra Bose’s oscillating plate phytograph, which was used for the scientist’s revolutionary research on the movement of plants.Besides telling the stories of inspiring scientists and thinkers from the region, the exhibition also features several of India’s more recent innovations, from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle to the affordable Micromax smartphone.Here are some of the objects that will be on display:These weights date back to the Indus Valley Civilisation, which is belived to have existed at around the same time as Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Archaeologists believe that the weights were used to measure everything from food to precious gems. Together with the linear measures and masonry tools found at excavation sites in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north west India, they suggest that the people of this ancient civilisation had the mathematical tools and knowledge to build complex cities.This ancient manuscript was found buried in a village called Bakhshali near Peshawar (now in Pakistan) in 1881. Consisting of 70 fragile leaves of birch bark, the Bakhshali manuscript contains hundreds of zeros denoted by dots, and has been housed at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries since 1902. In September 2017, it was revealed that the manuscript was much older than previously believed, indicating that ancient Indians had pioneered the revolutionary idea of using zero as a placeholder number as early as the 3rd or 4th century Common Era.Dating back to the 16th century, the Bhugola, or “Earth ball,” is a container made from brass that has a map of the world depicted on its outer surface. But this map combines two very different ideas of what the world is supposed to look like: one is the traditional Hindu idea that the universe is egg-shaped and divided across the middle by the flat disc of the Earth, while the other is the Ptolemaic idea of the Earth as a sphere, which came to India from Greece via the Islamic civilisation.Born in 1858 in what is now part of Bangladesh, Jagadish Chandra Bose went on to become one of India’s most iconic scientists, pioneering research into radio and microwave optics, besides investigating the movement of plants, and even dabbling in a bit of science fiction writing.Bose created the oscillating plate phytograph to study the effects of environmental factors on plants, and made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of tropism—the movement of a plant towards or away from stimuli such as light, warmth, or gravity. His research into the responsiveness of organic and inorganic matter helped develop the field of biophysics.The Jaipur foot prosthesis is a prosthetic limb developed in 1968 by the craftsman Ram Chander Sharma and orthopaedic surgeon Dr PK Sethi. Made with a combination of rubber, plastic, and wood, the prosthesis was designed to be both cost-effective and more flexible than traditional Western versions that were made with metal or carbon fibre.Since 1975, the charity Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti has been manufacturing and distributing the prosthesis to people in need around the world. Its design has been refined over the years, notably in 2009 with help from Stanford University.Developed by ISRO in the early 1990s, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is the most iconic Indian rocket, a mark of the country’s rapidly advancing but still frugal space programme. Though its very first mission in 1993 wasn’t a success, the PSLV has since gone on to successfully launch a number of satellites for countries such as the US, UK, and Canada, too. And earlier this year, the PSLV launched a record-breaking 104 satellites in a single effort.Gurugram-based Micromax started out in 2000 by selling extremely affordable phones with features such as dual SIM capabilities and longer-lasting batteries. By pricing its products for as little as Rs900, the company provided innovative technology that would have otherwise been out of reach for a large segment of India’s rapdily growing mobile phone subscriber base. Over the years, it has roped in Hollywood stars such as Hugh Jackman to endore its products, and evolved into one of the country’s largest smartphone makers.In 2014, Indians celebrated the success of Mangalyaan, the Mars Orbiter Mission, which reached the red planet on its first attempt. At a cost of just $74 million, the entire mission came in cheaper than the 2013 Hollywood science fiction thriller Gravity.One of the instruments used was the Mars Colour Camera, which took detailed colour images of the mountain ranges, fracture systems, and dust storms on the planet and its moons. These images were used to compile India’s first Mars Atlas.

A three-year-old Indian girl is in critical condition after she was allegedly raped by her neighbour in the capital Delhi.The accused, a 40-year-old security guard who worked in the building the child lived in, has been arrested. Police found the girl unconscious and rushed her to hospital where she is undergoing surgery.The incident occurred on Sunday, which was the sixth anniversary of the brutal gang rape of a student on a Delhi bus.Delhi Women's Commissioner Swati Maliwal said the incident "let down" the bus rape victim, whose attack saw country-wide protests and a tightening of rape laws.There is still no clarity on the condition of the girl or whether she will survive the attack, which local media have described as "brutal". Locals in the area found the accused and attacked him after the incident came to light, the Times of India newspaper said. It also quoted police as saying that the accused was treated for injuries before they arrested him. India outcry after eight-month-old baby raped Why an MP wants India to talk about child sex abuse India media storm over 10-year-old pregnant rape victim The girl's parents, who are daily wage labourers, were away when the incident occurred. The accused allegedly lured the girl with sweets and picked her up from outside her house.Police have registered a case for rape under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act, which could see the death penalty handed out to the accused. The incident, which has prompted a fresh wave of anger and outrage in India, comes after a series of high-profile cases against children this year. In April, the brutal gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old in Indian-administered Kashmir dominated headlines. In June, hundreds took to the streets in the central state of Madhya Pradesh over the rape of a seven-year-old girl. A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours The number of reported rapes of children increased from 8,541 in 2012 to 19,765 in 2016 More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015 240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18 53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse 50% of abusers are known to the child or are "persons in trust and care-givers" Sources: Indian government, Unicef

U.S. business groups Tuesday praised the Trump administration’s investigation into China’s trade practices—but cautioned that a heavy-handed probe could backfire, harming American firms.The investigation into allegations that China improperly pressures U.S. high-tech firms to turn over intellectual property was launched in August under a little-used Section 301 of U.S. trade law, which gives the president broad discretion to penalize a country found to have employed “unfair” or “discriminatory” trade practices. ...

The world’s most valuable company crammed a lot into the tablespoon-sized volume of an Apple Watch. There’s GPS, a heart-rate sensor, cellular connectivity, and computing resources that not long ago would have filled a desk-dwelling beige box. The wonder gadget doesn’t have a sphygmomanometer for measuring blood pressure or polysomnographic equipment found in a sleep lab—but thanks to machine learning, it might be able to help with their work.Research presented at the American Heart Association meeting in Anaheim Monday claims that, when paired with the right machine-learning algorithms, the Apple Watch’s heart-rate sensor and step counter can make a fair prediction of whether a person has high blood pressure or sleep apnea, in which breathing stops and starts repeatedly through the night. Both are common—and commonly undiagnosed—conditions associated with life-threatening problems, including stroke and heart attack.The new study adds to evidence that the right algorithms might transform the Apple Watch from personal trainer to personal physician. Apple said in September that it is working on a study with Stanford that will test whether the gadget can detect atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat, which can lead to stroke or heart failure. A study independent of Apple presented in May has already suggested the answer is yes. And health insurer Aetna said last week that it is partnering with Apple to give Apple Watches to members to try to reduce health costs.The Apple Watch’s potential to predict high blood pressure and sleep apnea was revealed by a collaboration between University of California San Francisco and a startup called Cardiogram. The company offers an app for organizing heart-rate data from an Apple Watch, and other devices with heart-rate sensors. UCSF provided data from more than 6,000 Apple Watch users enrolled in a study on mobile health. Cardiogram’s founders drew on their previous experience as Google employees, working on speech recognition for Android phones and the Google Assistant.Cardiogram’s engineers took the kind of artificial neural networks that Google and others use to turn our speech into text and adapted them to interpret heart-rate and step count data. (Like speech, they are signals that vary over time.) The system, dubbed DeepHeart, is given strings of heart-rate and step data from multiple people, and information about their health conditions. In May, the company and UCSF released results showing that DeepHeart could figure out how to predict atrial fibrillation from a person's Apple Watch data. The study presented Monday shows that with one week of data on a wearer, the algorithms can predict hypertension with roughly 80 percent accuracy, and sleep apnea with about 90 percent accuracy.Related StoriesChristina BonningtonHow the Apple Watch Will Help You Take Charge of Your HealthMegan MolteniControversial Brain Imaging Uses AI to Take Aim at Suicide PreventionDoctors don’t—and probably couldn’t—diagnose high blood pressure or sleep apnea just by eyeballing a week’s worth of data from your smartwatch. They diagnose hypertension by putting that familiar cuff on your arm. Sleep apnea requires a visit to a sleep clinic, or use of home monitoring equipment. So how do Cardiogram’s algorithms make good guesses without directly measuring a person's blood pressure or breathing? We only sort of know.Breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure are all connected to our autonomic nervous system, which regulates the unconscious bodily functions that keep us alive. Past research has shown how hypertension and sleep apnea alter the dynamics of heart rate. For example, heart rate variability is lower in people with sleep apnea. But Brandon Ballinger, a Cardiogram cofounder, admits that he doesn’t know all the patterns in a person's heart rate that his algorithms use to make predictions. “They’re kind of a foreign form of intelligence,” says Ballinger.Ballinger says that, with the right testing, that doesn't prevent his alien intelligence from having business potential. Cardiogram’s app for Apple Watch and other devices is free today. But the startup’s business plan is to one day add features that advise a user to be checked for atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, or sleep apnea. To stay on the right side of the FDA, the app would have to advise a person to get tested, and not suggest the person has a particular condition. Cardiogram would make money by offering to ship the necessary equipment for a home test, and billing a person's health insurer. The app could also provide advice after a diagnosis, or link people to medical practitioners or health coaches, Ballinger says. He predicts some of these features will appear within months.That plan is plausible, but needs to be proved out. Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist and executive director of the Center for Body Computing at the University of Southern California, says the idea of inferring conditions indirectly from heart rate and step counts needs more testing. “The study is seeing a correlation and that’s important to know, but the value is still unproven for medicine,” she says. Saxon also notes that the Apple Watch's heart data varies in accuracy depending on how a person wears the device. Cardiogram says it has more research underway, and expects accuracy to improve. There are now about 30,000 people enrolled in Cardiogram's study with UCSF.That’s big for a medical study—and perhaps a reflection of people’s readiness for wearables like the Apple Watch to act as medical advisers. Saxon says studies at USC have shown that patients eagerly engage with apps capable of medical-grade measurements. If people are properly educated about what they can do alone, their health care is better managed as a result, she says. Her center's projects include testing a mobile heart sensor that pairs with a phone or watch made by startup AliveCor. “Patients would much rather self-manage than deal with you, the physician,” says Saxon. “And they’re already on their phone 200 times a day.” If Cardiogram and Saxon are right, medical-grade notifications may soon nestle among those for our Snaps, likes, and texts.

Comments Related Extras Related Videos Video Transcript Transcript for Apple releases update to fix autocorrect bug In today's tech ICI glitch is no more iPhone and iPad users can finally type the letter I hit again. Apple has released an IOS update to fix the glitch that auto corrected and high two and a with a question mark. PayPal as making it easier for people to pay their share the company launched a new service called many polls users create a money pool and other people can contribute. There's no fees if the money is given through PayPal account credit and debit card contributions can be made for a feat. Amazon says it's going to debut pop up shops inside some whole foods stores. For the holiday shoppers will be able to check out Amazon devices like echo fire TV and Kindle. Whole foods says more than 100 of its stores now carry those Amazon devices to corporate synergy. As a ride yes you can buy organic granola. And it can. Think time. Boozer terabytes. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

India, known for its abysmal internet connectivity, is looking for a data upgrade.Last month, the Narendra Modi government created a Rs500 crore corpus to support the rollout of 5G network in the country by 2020.Among its other merits, 5G offers significantly lower latency—a data transfer delay of one millisecond (ms) versus 30ms for 4G—and lower battery consumption.But how feasible is the government’s plan in a country that still hasn’t completely switched to 4G?But these are all tiny pieces of a massive puzzle.Deploying MIMO alone, for instance, does not signal the arrival of 5G, Amresh Nandan, research director at advisory firm Gartner, told Quartz. ”In order to earn a graduate degree in math, you have to study all the chapters and pass in all. Just because you have passed in one doesn’t mean you’re a graduate,” said Nandan, who does not expect 5G to become a reality for India over the next two to three years.“Optimal quality, extreme flexibility, and cost efficiency of the 5G network…these will only develop gradually over time through the evolution of technology, architecture, and processes and information,” he said, estimating that “the real potential of 5G can only be realised post-2025.”Yet, the fact that the world’s second-largest smartphone market needs to move to a better internet network is a “no-brainer,” said Satish Meena of US-based Forrester Research.In India, 5G can dramatically improve user experience by supporting high-quality videos and speeding up file transfers. The biggest impact could be on new-age connected technologies, namely the Internet-of-Things (IoT).“In India, we use standards without actually looking at the fine print,” said GV Anand Bhushan, a partner at corporate law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. “Broadband (capacity) in India is…laughable, almost like dial-up. 3G—was it really 3G, with the frequency and speed fluctuations?”For instance, 4G vendors use terminology like “up to 60 Mbps (megabits per second)” but real-world testing reveals speeds closer to 4-6 Mbps, said Bhushan, who specialises in large-scale international technology contracts.In any case, a robust network alone won’t be enough to realise the full potential of 5G. While the technology will no doubt enable the increased use of smartphones, wearables, augmented reality devices, and smart speakers, the truth is that these devices remain mostly unaffordable. And until prices come down, 5G won’t make a difference.

He’s running for re-election in a state, my home state, where Mr. Trump is still enormously popular. Yet, Mr. Manchin is around eight points ahead of his Republican opponent, Patrick Morrisey, the state attorney general. Right now, Mr. Morrisey hasn’t yet quite found a theme on which to hammer Mr. Manchin.But if Mr. Manchin were to cast a (numerically meaningless!) vote against Mr. Kavanaugh — presto. The rest of the race would be about that, and nothing but that. Millions of dark money dollars would pour in for TV ads blasting Mr. Manchin for going against the wishes of their president.So what, you say? Good riddance to a conservative Democrat? You’d better go read up on Mr. Morrisey. He’s one of 18 attorneys general who have signed on to a lawsuit to gut the Affordable Care Act and eliminate coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Mr. Manchin, and all the red-state Democrats mentioned above, have defended Obamacare stoutly.But here’s the second and more important reason to give the red-state Democrats a pass here. This battle wasn’t lost last week, and it sure won’t be lost by these red-state Democrats if they vote to confirm. It was lost in 2016.It was lost by the Democratic Party, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and the courts-oriented grass roots and public-interest groups that didn’t do nearly enough to explain to the Democratic rank and file in 2016 that a Clinton victory would mean a liberal court majority for the first time in 30 years.I kept waiting and waiting that fall for Ms. Clinton to emphasize this point, or for other prominent figures to say, “Look. You’re not wild about Hillary Clinton? Fine. Are you wild about Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, protections for immigrant children, campaign finance contribution limits? Then you’d damn well better vote.”It never happened. So that’s on them. But honestly, regular voters should have been mature enough to have figured this out on their own. They’re to blame, too.

2014 年第三季度，苹果财报公布 iPod 销量为 290 万台，与 2013 年同期相比下滑 36%——这是苹果最后一次公布 iPod 的销量数据，此后，iPod 作为苹果的次要收入来源，被归到了「其他」品类当中。两个季度之后，Apple Watch 正式开卖，跟 iPod 一样，这个全新的品类也被归到了财报的「其他」项里。短短两三年间，在苹果财报那个不为人知的角落里，Apple Watch 正在取代 iPod 的位置。搜索微信公众号爱范儿（微信号：ifanr），后台回复关键词「W3」，获取 Apple Watch Series 3 的详细评测 ，看看带手机出门的一小时它能做什么。个人分析机构 Asymco 统计了近几年来 iPod、Apple Watch 和其他配件的销售情况。从这份图表上看，在 2009 年到 2012 年期间，iPod 仍然是苹果最主要的营收来源之一；而随着 iPhone 的崛起、苹果体系配件的日渐丰富（包括 Beats、AirPods 以及各种保护套等），iPod 能贡献的营收也越来越少。到了 2015 年第二季度，Apple Watch 正式发售，很快就取代了式微的 iPod，并逐渐成为苹果「其他」品类中最主要的收入来源之一。（iPod 和 Apple Watch 的销售情况对比，图片来源：Asymco）有意思的是，Apple Watch 与 iPod 的增长轨迹有不少相似之处，在最新的苹果财报发布后，苹果官方表示，在过去的三个季度里，Apple Watch 已经连续三个季度实现了 50% 的销量增长。个人分析机构 Asymco 认为，如果 Apple Watch 能够继续保持良好的增长势头，那么其累积销量很可能将达到 4000 万只，累计销售额高达 143 亿美元。这距离 iPod 的巅峰已经不远了，就在 9 月份的苹果秋季新品发布会上，苹果 CEO 蒂姆·库克曾表示，Apple Watch 已经超越劳力士，成为世界第一的手表品牌。（Apple Watch 销售额以及销量的变化情况，图片来源：Asymco）由于 Apple Watch 的平均售价要比 iPod 高不少，因此在总销售额方面，Apple Watch 很有可能在明年超越 iPod；至于年销量方面，2008 年是 iPod 系列卖得最好的一年，出货量多达 5500 万台。如果 Apple Watch 能够以 50% 的增速进行增长，那么到了 2020 年，Apple Watch 的年销量就将超越 iPod。考虑到 iPod 曾经一度是苹果公司的代名词，因此也可以说 Apple Watch 是一款相当成功的产品。但目前 Apple Watch 依旧是 iPhone 的附属品，这也就注定 Apple Watch 无法取代 iPhone 成为苹果最主要的营收来源。近两年，苹果不断地对各大产品线和营收结构进行调整梳理。苹果正在努力调节自身的盈利结构，解决 iPhone 营收占比过高的问题： 让 iPad 转型为生产力工具 推出强调性能的 iMac Pro 提供 iCloud、Apple Music 等附加服务 发布 Apple TV，推出各种自制节目 强化 Apple Watch 的性能，提供更丰富的功能 经过对市场定位、主打功能进行不断地调整，一开始不被看好的 Apple Watch，在经历可穿戴设备市场的低迷期之后，逐渐找准了自身的定位，正在取代 iPod 的位置，成为苹果产品线中不可或缺的一环。

First Virginia, and now Alabama. From the looks of things, the Republican party is going through a rough patch. Sure, the GOP controls the White House, both chambers of Congress, and even the supreme court – thank you, Mitch McConnell – but it doesn’t look or feel like fun.Instead, traditional Republican constituencies like high-end suburbanites and college grads appear to be abandoning the party of their parents, or at least taking a powder. With the 2018 midterm elections looming just over the horizon, a little soul searching and reflection may do all of us a bit of good.First, let’s be honest about things. The ascendance of the white working class within the Republican party, coupled with Donald Trump’s persistently sagging poll numbers, have brought the GOP’s simmering fault lines to the fore.Since Richard Nixon, the Republican party has tried to outgrow its reputation as a country club restricted to north-eastern Wasps and Cheeveresque suburbanites, and the reality is that it has succeeded beyond Pat Buchanan’s wildest dreams. Nowadays, the GOP is home to blue-collar Americans, southerners and regular churchgoers. It has also kept its doors open to America’s rich – think the Koch brothers and the Mercer family.Talk about coalition-building. Truly.On paper, all this should spell good news for the Republicans, but it hasn’t been. The president tweets way too much and has a way of sucking the air out of the room. Yes, Trump calls his shtick “modern presidential”, but we all know that it reminds us of a surly 10-year old who stays glued to his Xbox or PlayStation, and that’s not what we want in our president. Or, as Senator Bob Corker put it, the White House is now “an adult day care center”.But it’s not just about Trump. Rather, it’s what passes these days as standard Republican tropes.In the hopes of forging a permanent alliance with the white working class and fending off primary challenges from the right, the GOP offers up continuous fare of scare. Campaigning in Virginia, Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee for governor and a member of the party’s establishment if there ever was one, mouthed a steady stream of homages to Confederate monuments and warnings about the horrors of gang violence.Ultimately, Gillespie convincingly lost in what was expected to be a cliffhanger. While rural and older Trump voters responded to Gillespie’s call, suburbanites, wealthier voters, white voters with college degrees and non-evangelicals all flocked to Ralph Northam, Gillespie’s Democratic opponent.The story repeated itself earlier this week in Alabama. There, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House aide, backed Roy Moore as his vehicle for battering McConnell and the GOP’s powers that be. Bannon guided Moore to a primary victory and then to special election calamity.That Moore was soft on slavery, hostile to modernity, and repeatedly accused of being a pedophile appeared almost irrelevant to Trump, Bannon and Alabama’s Republican base, with tribalism nearly triumphing over reality – the operative words being “almost” and “nearly”.In the end, Moore lost nearly one out of 10 Republicans and a majority of independents to his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones. Meanwhile, moms walked away from Moore, and a Republican who can’t win the mom vote has a problem. As for Alabama’s suburbs, Moore won those by only four points, after Mitt Romney had scored a 33-point victory in those same precincts back in 2012. Talk about underperforming.So where does that leave what was once the party of Lincoln, but which now looks awfully like a white workers’ party? At the crossroads.To the extent that the GOP continues to double down on its unvarnished working- class message, expect defections to continue, and the party’s popularity to decline with upscale America. And we’ve seen this movie before.As a response to the 2008 stock market crash and the Iraq war, Americans earning more than $200,000 actually favored Barack Obama by a six-point margin over Senator John McCain in that year’s presidential election. Meanwhile, in 2016, Hillary Clinton narrowly bested Donald Trump among the $200,000-and-up set, even as she lost the election but won the popular vote. For the Republicans to hold on to what they have, the party will need to cool some of its more inflammatory rhetoric in the coming months. There are definitely arguments to be made for the GOP’s positions on an array of issues. For the moment, however, instead of ginning up the GOP’s base, the cacophony has energized the Democrats, and given marginal Republicans further reason to leave what was once their political home.If this continues, come January 2019, Nancy Pelosi may once again be seen wielding the speaker’s gavel, and Senator Chuck Schumer may be known as the majority leader. Is this a scenario that Republicans want to see? I doubt it.Lloyd Green, an attorney in New York, was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 Topics Republicans Opinion Alabama Roy Moore US politics comment

The Indian rupee hit a fresh 15-month low against the dollar on May 08.Despite the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reportedly stepping in to stem the slide, the Indian currency hit a low of 67.17 to the dollar in early trade today, weakening from 67.13 yesterday. These levels were last seen when the economy was dented by an unprecedented demonetisation, and the future seemed uncertain like rarely before.In the last five years though, the currency has tumbled down to these levels, or weaker, at least twice. Three years before the rupee was roiled by demonetisation, it had seen similar levels at the end of a historic rout in emerging-market currencies in 2013.There was a period of about a year when the rupee shuttled between 66 and 69 against the dollar in 2015-16, around the time Britain voted to exit the European Union i.e. the ”Brexit”. The vote had rattled global investor sentiment, hurting emerging economies like India the most.Does the rupee’s recent spiral signal a calamity, yet again, for Asia’s third-largest economy?The sell-off in the rupee in each of the earlier periods featured a few common characteristics that hold true today: an economic slowdown and fear of wider budget deficit in India, a sharp spike in US economic growth, and global money managers turning averse to the risk in emerging markets.Now, added to the list is a spike in crude oil prices that by itself can derail India’s finances.Benign crude oil prices had been a big bonus for the Indian government in recent years and the advantage is now slipping away.American crude oil prices topped $70 per barrel on May 07 for the first time since November 2014.The outlook for US economic growth is robust and that will only mean more demand for gasoline, possibly leading to even higher demand and prices for crude oil.The Indian crude basket, the weighted average price of all the country’s crude oil imports, has gone up from $52.49 in April last year to over $63 in March 2018, a rise of 22% in a year, according to government data.The weakening rupee will be a double whammy for India as the country imports nearly 80% of all the crude oil it needs. A weaker rupee would mean the country would have to pay more than it did earlier to get the same amount of imported substances, including oil.The spike in import bill would certainly strain the country’s finances, especially when the contribution of exports to the gross domestic product (GDP) is at a 14-year low.One of the big reasons why traders are bearish on the rupee is that the government is expected to reveal the highest current account deficit in six years for the financial year ended March 2018, according to an April report from Kotak Economic Research.The current account deficit is the shortfall in dollars earned compared to those spent by a country in the transactions with its trading partners. So, the wider the deficit, the more dollars a country has to buy in the market to pay its bills. That, in turn, dents the value of the local currency further.The rise in oil prices since March 2018 will only worsen the deficit going forward and that would mean that the rupee may be trapped in a vicious cycle of devaluation.While India is expected to grow anywhere between 7% and 7.5% in the financial year 2019, the fastest for any major global economy, there are significant doubts.“There can be only four drivers of growth (public expenditure, consumption, private investment, and exports),” the chairman of the prime minister’s economic advisory council, Bibek Debroy, told Quartz in an interview in February.While Debroy is more optimistic about India’s growth, the details are patchy. Private investments and exports are abysmally slow, while consumption growth is uncertain. India is scheduled to vote for its next government in 2019, but that might not make much of a difference either. “History doesn’t suggest any drastic jump in the overall volumes of the consumer companies in the year preceding the election year,” financial services firm Jefferies argued in a March report.Public expenditure, the only strong spoke in India’s economic wheel, can be limited in function by the rising deficit. The government, with its stretched finances, cannot endlessly borrow to fund growth.While a weaker currency is expected to help exporters, it may also increase their input costs. Many exporters in India import raw material, add value, and export it to other markets around the world. The advantage of a weaker currency is limited for those players.Moreover, other currencies from the emerging world, too, are weakening alongside the rupee. So, the competitive advantage for Indian exporters will be limited at best.The dollar deficit can be offset if other sections of the economy, like the capital markets, draw money from global investors.However, global investors are pulling out money from emerging markets like India. In April alone, India lost over $2 billion in foreign portfolio investments (FPI), the highest outflow in 16 months. FPI are the dollars invested in buying shares or debt of existing companies.Moreover, for the first time since 2015, India has slipped out of the top ten global destinations even for foreign direct investments (FDI), the money that foreign firms invest in buying or setting up assets, instead of just buying shares or debt of existing companies like in FPI.This aversion to emerging countries has been the most common factor, every time in the last five years, when the rupee has slipped down to its current levels or below.With the odds stacked heavily against it, the rupee is expected to weaken further. Most global brokerages expect the rupee to slide to 70 against the dollar and that will only exacerbate the pain in the economy.

NEW DELHI—The famously frugal and focused Walmart Inc. is betting $15 billion on a much different kind of company: a sprawling Indian e-commerce startup that has burned through mountains of cash to try to conquer the country’s online shopping market.The deal for a roughly 75% stake in Flipkart Group is set to be announced as early as this week.If...

India's top court has moved the trial in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl out of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The BBC's Yogita Limaye spoke to people in the community about the divisions that led to the court's decision. "I just want justice for my child," her mother says. "I want her attackers to go through the same pain that she went through. The way they have made us cry, I want them to cry."In India, a rape victim cannot be identified according to the law but everyone knows which religion the girl belonged to. Police allege that her religion is at the centre of the brutal crime. She was from the Muslim Bakarwal nomadic tribe who roam the hills and valleys of Jammu and Kashmir. In the summer they graze their sheep, goats and horses high up in the mountains. As winter sets in, they descend to warmer areas near the city of Jammu. This winter, in January, the girl was tortured, raped and killed. Police believe those accused held her captive for a week in a temple, where they repeatedly raped her before killing her. Police say Hindus from Rasana village, about 70km (43 miles) from Jammu, wanted to send a warning to her community to move off their land. In February, police arrested eight men, including a retired government official, four policemen and a juvenile in connection with the gang rape and murder of the girl. All of the accused are Hindus.The case made headlines in India after right-wing groups and lawyers protested over the arrest of the eight Hindu men.The religious identities of the victim and her alleged attackers have caused deep communal polarisation in the state, exposing the fault lines between Hindu-majority Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. The Kashmir valley has a tumultuous relationship with India - there has been an armed revolt in the region against Indian rule since 1989.The family of the victim, meanwhile, have continued their annual journey into the mountains. In lush green meadows, they live in tents and cook on open fires. "The Hindus didn't even let us bury her where we wanted to," her father says. Why India's rape crisis shows no signs of abating Why did India wake up so late to a child rape and murder? How life has changed for Delhi rape victim's family On the highway leading up to Rasana from Jammu, family members of the accused and people from the villages nearby are sitting in protest under a tree by the side of the road. They are demanding a federal inquiry into the crime. They call themselves a Hindu Ekta Manch, or Hindu Unity Forum, which was constituted soon after the incident. In the Muslim-majority state, they say they do not trust local investigators. "The Hindu community is definitely being targeted," says Kant Kumar, a member of the body. "We want an impartial investigation."Madhubala's father and brother have both been arrested for the crime. "I too want justice for the child but the real culprits should be caught," she says. She breaks down as she tells me, "Hindu unity is being attacked. Our voices are being suppressed. Am I not India's daughter too?"In Jammu and the areas nearby, people do not know what to believe. The 15-page list of charges filed by the police describes the crime in horrifying detail. "This is for the first time in Jammu that a girl is at the centre of communal violence," says Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of the Kashmir Times. "The most scary part is the use of the body of that little girl for scaring away an entire community," she adds. "That kind of narrative is very disturbing because it has long-term repercussions both for the safety of women and the safety of minorities."But on social media and messaging services rumours abound. All kinds of theories have been floated about how the accused have been framed.Placards and posters demanding justice for the girl are on display in many parts of the country - at traffic lights, on rear windows of cars and on social media. Far from the noise, her mother wants the focus to be on what this is really about - an eight-year-old girl.'She was so beautiful, smart and intelligent,' she says. 'I can't stop thinking about her.'

On Sept. 7, American troops shot live weapons in southeastern Syria that weren’t aimed at ISIS or another terrorist group—they were meant to deter Russians troops from invading a US base.About 100 US troops were flown in by assault helicopter for live fire drills, after the Russian military threatened the US base there twice in the past week. On Sept. 1, Russia said it planned to invade the 55 km “deconfliction zone” around the US base at al-Tanf, and on Sept. 6 said that they planned to fire missiles at it, the Pentagon says. The ostensible motivation for the threats: the US, according to Russian social media, was harboring terrorists.A Pentagon spokesman said there is “no reason for Russian or pro-regime forces to violate the confines of that deconfliction zone.” The US “does not seek to fight the Russians” or the government of Syria, US commander Sean Robertson said, but it “will not hesitate to use necessary and proportionate force to defend US, coalition, or partner forces.”There’s a term for what Russia’s doing at al-Tanf, foreign policy experts say—adventurism. It’s trying out a totally risky strategy, on the off chance it just might work. Russia’s long-term plan is to drive the US from the region and, with Iran, support Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, while the US and Israel want to remain to counter Iran’s influence there.Threatening to attack a US military base is an unlikely gambit for a country with a fraction of America’s military might, but oh, what a time for Russia to try it out.US foreign policy has been a contradictory mess practically since the beginning of the Trump administration. The president says, or tweets, one thing (“it’s time to come back home” from Syria, for example) and then US military commanders and diplomats do the opposite.But the power struggle at the top of the world’s greatest military power and largest economy has never been more visible than in recent days. Fear, Bob Woodward’s new book about the administration, shows Donald Trump ordering the US military to “fucking kill” Assad, and defense secretary James Mattis defying him, while former economic advisor Gary Cohn thwarts Trump from ending key trade alliances. The vision of a White House in chaos was amplified by the Sept. 5 anonymous opinion piece in the New York Times claiming Trump’s own cabinet appointees consider him unfit for office and are working against him.Trump may call the New York Times “failing,” and his press secretary directed his fans to target it for harassment after the op-ed came out. But what the Trump White House overlooks, foreign policy experts and diplomats say, is how many non-western leaders mistakenly see the Times as the unofficial voice of the US government. The paper did, after all, support the US-led invasion of Iraq and back the George W. Bush administration’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.“The op-ed doubled down on the Woodword book,” said Edward Goldberg, a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. “When a senior figure in the White House speaks to the ‘official’ paper of the United States, many governments around the world consider that the official voice of the US government.”After they read the anonymous piece, he asks, “Can any foreign leader trust anything that the US president says? It’s a really difficult situation.”It’s no surprise that Russia is pressuring the US military base at al-Tanf. The base “is a really crucial part of the US strategy to roll back Iran’s influence” in the area, directly conflicting with Russia’s Iran partnership, says Will Todman, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Despite Trump’s declaration in April that the US would soon be pulling its troops out of Syria, the US military will remain there through the end of the year, James Jeffrey, the State Department’s Syria engagement representative, said this week.“If that is true,” Todman said, “it would signal a much more coherent US policy than we’ve seen [in Syria] in a long time.”The operative word there is “if.” Uncertainty about the US policy in Syria is both a “risk and an opportunity for Russia,” which may be thinking it can “get away” with trying to force the US out if there are mass divisions within the Trump administration, Todman said.“Not having a clear strategy and not acting in a clear way makes it really hard for US allies to know how to help the US” in Syria, he added. And Syria is just one of many hotspots around the world where authoritarian governments or terrorists hope to gain power, territory, or influence.North Korea shows no signs of giving up its nuclear weapons, Iran faces skepticism over its commitment to a nuclear deal, eastern Ukraine remains vulnerable to Russian invasion, the Islamic State is resurfacing in Iraq, and a wave of nationalism is sweeping Europe and beyond. The US’s internal foreign-policy conflicts and Trump’s disregard for traditional alliances are creating space for adventurism, or worse, at a terrible time.“What is critical for this administration to recognize is that the world is changing in a very unpredictable way and democracy is under siege” from Poland to Italy to South America, said Tim Roemer, a former US congressman from Indiana and an ambassador to India during the Obama administration. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin and Beijing are more aggressive, he said, making this “a very different world than it was 20 years ago.”Successful foreign policy relies on setting clear goals, working with other countries to achieve them, and assembling a skilled team capable of executing them, he said. “You have to go places, you can’t just tweet and just talk to people on the phone” and successfully project American power.In areas where Trump and his appointees have acted in concert, his hard-nosed approach isn’t working. Trump said on Sept. 7 that he plans to tax nearly everything the US imports from China because Beijing hasn’t met his trade demands, but Beijing isn’t blinking. Instead, Chinese officials are awaiting the results of the mid-term elections in November to renew negotiations, as questions about Trump’s own future and his influence over foreign policy loom. ”Who knows for how long Mr. Trump will still be in the Oval Office?” Yu Yongding, a commissioner and senior researcher at the state-run China Academy of Social Sciences, told Reuters.Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi asked a similar question more than a year ago, according to Woodward’s book. “Donald, I’m worried about this investigation. Are you going to be around?” al-Sisi asked in an April 2017 conversation that Trump later told an aide was “like a kick in the nuts.”The chaos and conflict in the White House, and this week’s dark portrayals of Trump, may also carry some unexpected upside for US influence around the globe, some foreign policy experts say. The US military’s global footprint and annual budget dwarf that of every other nation, making some leaders particularly wary of provoking Trump right now.“What the [New York Times] op-ed suggests is that this is an extremely impulsively, extremely id-driven operation,” said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, and former advisor to the US military in Afghanistan. “If I was advising” Chinese president Xi Jinping, he said, the advice would be to “be very cautious with these people because they are crazy, and you don’t know what they will do.”Reports suggest Trump “is angry, he is furious, he behaves like a fifth grader,” Biddle said. “You can not rule out the possibility he will do something crazy aggressive out of pique,” or that “you could end up with mushroom clouds in your major cities by doing something innocuous.”The “crazy man” deterrence is usually good for the leader who is thought of as crazy, Biddle said. But occasionally there will be a “miscalculation, leading to a historic catastrophe,” as in the run-up to World War I. Then, “a war that no one wanted to occur happened because of a series of miscalculations, and escalated into a war that destroyed a generation of European males and wrecked a continent’s worth of economies.”Who in the Trump administration is going to ensure that a situation like that doesn’t happen again? Like the identity of the author of that New York Times piece, right now that’s a big mystery.