Recag/C4_2 · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Shaqiri, 22, made just 10 starts in the Bundesliga last season and wants more first-team football.
Brendan Rodgers is desperate to add quality to his squad and sees the flair of Shaqiri as key to his plans to challenge again for the Premier League title.
Bayern are reluctant to let Shaqiri go as they see him as a long-term successor to Franck Ribery.
However, Shaqiri's eagerness to play and the cash on the table could force them to sell.
Shaqiri won the man-of-the-match award in Switzerland's opening game of the World Cup against Ecuador.
Connecticut could become the first state to allow police and other law enforcement agencies to use weaponized drones, which some say would set a dangerous precedent in a state that lays claim to being the birthplace of manned flight.
For the second consecutive year, the Legislature is considering a proposed ban on the use of unmanned aircraft to release tear gas or explosives, as well as to fire weapons remotely.
But one of the state’s leading aviation legal experts says the state House version of a bill pending before the Public Safety and Security Committee includes language that could exempt police from the ban.
Not only would the measure give law enforcement unprecedented firepower, he warns, but House Bill 5274 (An Act Concerning the Use of Drones) could conflict with federal aviation laws.
“Do we want to be known as the state with best drone law as a model for other states, or do we want to be known as the state with the most idiotic drone law?” said Peter Sachs, author of the Drone Law Journal and a former helicopter pilot from Branford.
There is renewed urgency in Connecticut to regulate drones after a Central Connecticut State University student posted a video on YouTube last July of a homemade drone firing a handgun. Austin Haughwout was arrested and expelled from school, which he is contesting in a lawsuit filed this week in state Superior Court in New Britain.
Members of the law enforcement community say they aren’t pursuing weaponized drones, but acknowledged that they would hate to have that option taken away, with technology ever-changing.
“We are not enthusiastic about going down this road, but we just feel it may be inevitable,” said Paul Fitzgerald, legislative committee co-chair for the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association.
Fitzgerald is police chief in Berlin.
In contrast to last year’s bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate but died in the House during budget deliberations, the current version includes the wording “except otherwise provided by law” in the proposed ban.
“I do think it would be a dangerous precedent to allow for weaponized drones,” said state Rep. Caroline Simmons, D-Stamford, a Public Safety Committee member.
Simmons couched her comments to say it’s not a black-and-white issue, however.
“Whenever we’re talking about drones as legislators, we need to be cognizant about striking a balance of protecting people’s privacy and civil liberties, while at the same time making sure that law enforcement has the tools they need to counter crime in our communities,” Simmons said.
State Rep. J.P. Sredzinski, R-Monroe, who also serves on the committee and is the public safety dispatch supervisor for the town of Stratford, was receptive to giving law enforcement flexibility.
It’s unclear who added new language to the legislation, on which Sachs has previously consulted lawmakers and submitted testimony.
Last year, North Dakota passed a law allowing police to outfit drones with non-lethal weapons. Connecticut could go one step further, said Sachs, who operates drones as a hobby.
State Police declined to comment on the matter, saying it would be premature, since the bill is pending.
Connecticut is quick to boast that Gustave Whitehead, a Bridgeport resident, pioneered manned flight, ahead of the Wright brothers.
Fitzgerald said none of the police departments in the state currently have drones or plan to use them. Local police are responsible for investigating drone complaints, but enforcement powers rest with the Federal Aviation Administration.
Sit back and relax – if you have the money you can pay people to manage your festive duties.
Season of tinsel and stressed women.
According to a UK study, one third of all womankind are more stressed in December than any other month (which makes January my favourite winter month, due to its lack of cultural demands).
And yet to cancel Christmas would be deemed churlish. So can you outsource it instead?
The answer is yes of course you can - with enough money you can outsource anything, including childbirth.
But for the non-billionaires amongst us, does it pay to get others to tackle the slog of Chirstmas so that we’re not suffering from nervous exhaustion by December 26th? Or is hiring someone else to wrap your presents missing the festive point by a North Pole mile?
Doing Christmas ‘properly’ – that is, buckling under the marketing blitz that urges festive ‘perfection’ – involves card writing, present shopping, gift wrapping, food shopping, tree buying, house cleaning, house decorating, table dressing, wardrobe overhauling, food preparing, food serving, mess clearing, house undecorating, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Oh, and don’t forget to do it all while wearing your fluffy mules, novelty reindeer jumper, sparkly antlers and a great big joyful grin, or you’ll look like a Christmas curmudgeon.
Imagine then if there were a collective of elves who would gladly do the heavy lifting for you, so that you can waft around in feather-light cashmere, Aperol spritz in one hand, iPhone X in the other, with Santa on speed dial.
Do such elves exist? Of course they do.
Just show them the money.
It’s the emotional labour of present choosing which is the slog.
Each meticulously chosesn gift must reflect the age, preferences, and personality of the loved one, while being original, throughtful and having a unique wow factor.
Otherwise angle grinders would end up in the hands of toddlers, bottles of champagne unwrapped by recovering alcoholics, and your mum probably doesn’t want Call of Duty: Black Ops III Solution: Two options here.
A tedious afternoon on Amazon, or getting someone else to buy them for you.
Debenhams do a free personal shopper service.
You fill in an online form, and their elf will run around the shop for you, choosing gifts for 3 people in 45 minutes, based on your budget and the information you provide – eg, nan, uncle, niece age 6, plus a few details (nan likes football, uncle likes musicals, niece likes Lego).
You can book as many slots as you like, for multiples of three people.
And bingo! Go and have a lie down.
You still have to wrap the feckers, and it always takes until 3am on Christmas Eve.
You’ll have run out of sellotape and human kindness, and be left wondering how you ever thought gift wrapping a rocking horse was a good idea.
Solution: There are wrapping elves.
Small companies like Wrap It - www.wrapit.ie – provide personalised Christmas sacks and stockings as well as standard gift wrapping services.
It’s that time of year! We’ve just launched our CHRISTMAS TEES! 🎄🎄 So soft and comfy for the holidays! \|\|I love Santa: $85, S-M. Happy Holla Days: $65 S-L. Believe: $75 S-M\|\| To purchase, comment your size and “pick up”, “ship” or “delivery”. Want it wrapped? Use #wrapit!! Not on social shop? It’s easy! Use the link in our bio!
They do personalised elf hats as well, if you want to pretend it was you who did all the hard work.
Prices start at €12 plus p&p.
Sending ecards is quick, easy and green, but a bit lame if you’re a traditionalist.
Buying and writing loads of cards is a drag, but if you still want to receive loads, it’s quid pro quo.
Solution: Depending on their age, children can be bribed to do this task with either cash or chocolate coins – plus wonky kids handwriting is deemed cute.
If none are available, and you’ve left it a bit last minute, go to www.gifts.ie, where you can personalise your card with individual names and photos, and have it arrive overnight – so it’s easy and fast.
Not cheap at €3.99 per card plus 99c p&p, but hey ho (ho ho).
Ramming the tree into the back of the car, hauling it indoors without knocking anything over, engaging with broken fairy lights, knackered baubles, floppy holly, and please God, not that horrible tinsel from 1975.
You want a magical wonderland, not a Woolworth’s shop window.
Solution: This time the elf is a fairy.
Sophia Weir runs Christmas Fairy Decorators – christmasfairydecorators.com – and says she is “absolutely inundated”, even though the Christmas Fairy is “not budget” - prices start around €3,000.
“We work with set designers and interior designers,” she says.
The most an inidividual household has spent on the Christmas Fairy’s decorating? “About €18,000,” she says.
That’s a lot of fairy dust.
So for Christmas lunch you’ll be hosting carnivore traditionalists, gluten free vegans, and Cousin It who is allergic to shellfish.
You’re working until Chirstmas Eve yourself, and even if you weren’t, the idea of all that food shopping, prepping and cooking is giving you the dry heaves.
Yet this is the one day of the year where you really can’t phone out for pizza.
Solution: Order everything in ready made from Marks & Spencers.
This is absolutely foolproof, but what if you’d like to pretend that you’ve done it all yourself, like Nigella?
Claire Nash of Cork restaurant Nash 19 – www.nash19.com – will “recreate taste memories” for you, preparing everything at her restaurant for collection up until lunchtime on Christmas Eve – just get your orders in by December 1st.
What started out as friends asking her to make extra when she was preparing her own Christmas food has turned into Claire making homemade gravy, stuffing, plum pudding, brandy butter, cranberry, home made mince in the mince pies, even providing goosefat for the spuds.
“We do everything except the turkey,” she says.
The average spend is around €200 for a table of six. Excellent.
Because as well as sorting out all of the other stuff, you still have to look fabulous at all times.
Just brace yourself for another hellish shopping trip - can you really stomach the obligatory sequinned frock? Why does effortless chic always seem like such bloody hard work? And yet, if you are catching up with rellies you haven’t seen for ages, do you want their looks of pity as you turn up in a Santa fascinator and stripey elf tights? No.
Solution: Call in the professionals - hire a stylist.
Orla Sheridan – www.orlasheridan.com – will do what she terms a wardrobe analysis for €150, and will go shopping with you for €80 an hour (she recommends three hours, with a clothes budget of least €1,000 to make it worthwhile).
“A common situation is people having a wardrobe full of clothes and nothing to wear,” she says.
She recommends staples like a good coat and boots, a black dress, a cashmere sweater.
She is not keen on novelty fast fashion – so no reindeer jumpers.
“There’s pressure to buy whole new outfits,” she says.
Less is more, she advises.
All of the above will cost you a fortune.
You could just leave the country – or even pretend to - from mid December, and arrive back on New Year’s Eve.
No one would ever know.
The Trump White House talking about North Korea sounds eerily and increasingly like the George W. Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq War. Officials make similar arguments about the necessity of acting against a gathering storm; proudly claim understanding of the adversary’s motivations; express frustration at countries that should be likewise alarmed at the problem not supporting American policy; and believe the sand is running out in the hourglass before military attacks are required. They admit no alternative interpretation of the facts. They are blithely dismissing enormous damage their policy would incur for regional allies. They seem innocent of understanding the disastrous and isolating consequences for America’s role in the world to choose preventive war rather than the moral heights of restraint in the face of threats.
President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, repeatedly indulges the same apocalyptic rhetoric: North Korea’s nuclear program is “the most destabilizing development, I think, in the post-World War II period;” the threat is “increasing every day;” the leadership is “undeterrable.” Others on the National Security Council staff compare North Korea to World War II Japan: a mobilized and militarized society, inherently and belligerently expansionist, constrainable solely by the exercise of superior military force.
Retaliation after a first strike from the enemy is insufficient—either to deter or to punish.
And, as Mira Rapp-Hooper has emphasized, the Trump administration argues that the U.S. must act before North Korea attains even more dangerous capabilities. They are reprising the argument made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban missile crisis.
The government of Japan has publicly stated that it will only participate in military action in response to a North Korean attack. South Korea’s prime minister has reassured his public that the U.S. has committed not to take military action without his approval (something McMaster elides by saying there will be consultations). Australia, too, is likely to opt out of a preventive war. How would the U.S. fight North Korea without the participation of those three allies? What would the political landscape of Asia be like in the aftermath of a unilateral U.S. attack on North Korea opposed by America’s closest regional allies?
Policy analysts argue over whether senior figures in the administration—“the adults in the room”—actually believe what they are saying. Are they trying to shore up American credibility to strengthen deterrence? Employing the madman gambit to diminish North Korea’s negotiating advantage? Posturing to wring more cooperation out of the Chinese? Since administration policy treats North Korean leadership statements as actionable, that same rule ought to apply also to the American side. The administration’s statements strongly prejudice policy toward military action: They have not only drawn a red line, they’ve attached a countdown clock to it. President Trump will either fight a preventive war to disarm North Korea, or will be forced in humiliation fashion to dismantle a scaffold of his own construction, calling into question American security guarantees.
One area in which the Trump administration differs from Bush in 2003 is that President Bush invested his political capital in making the administration’s case to the American public and internationally. Neither President Trump nor his Cabinet have done anywhere near the kind of spadework necessary to bring Americans along for a war that will require calling up reserve military forces, kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, reshape how the world views America, and consume all the political energy of the Trump presidency.
President Trump was derisive about the Bush administration’s mistakes in the Iraq war; it would be doubly tragic for him to repeat them. If the Trump administration isn’t re-examining their assumptions, they desperately need to be. They’re lurching arrogantly toward disaster.
Most experts view the pollution problem in China as one of the world's biggest problems. But General Motors Corp. (GM) Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner views it as one of the world's biggest business opportunities.
With incomes soaring and a new wave of middle-class consumers emerging across China, car and truck sales are soaring. But with clouds of pollution roiling the atmosphere, the market could very quickly migrate to such new technologies as alternative fuels and hybrid-powered automobiles.
GM is taking a decisive step to capitalize on that shift.
The Number One U.S. carmaker on Monday announced plans for a $250-million research and development center in Shanghai, The Associated Press reported. The center will develop eco-friendly technology, including alternative fuels, hybrid cars, and more-efficient power trains, including those utilizing new technologies.
The R&D center will also serve as headquarters for GM's China and Asian-Pacific operations. The main goal of the venture will be to help alleviate China's surging pollution problems, while also capitalizing on the fastest-growing auto market in the world.
China has already become the world's second-largest auto market after the United States. In the first nine months of this year, there were 4.58 million vehicles sold there, a 23.84% increase from a year ago. GM, working in conjunction with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. and Liuzhou Wuling Motors Ltd., expects to sell more than 1 million vehicles in China for the first time this year. That would be a 20% jump from the 830,000 sold in 2006.
But there's a problem: A recent report from the State Environmental Protection Administration said vehicle emissions accounted for 79% of the contamination in China's most polluted cities.
China is home to 16 of the 20 most-polluted cities in the world. So the fact that it recently overtook the United States as the Number One emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet – a title the U.S. held for more than 100 years – is hardly a surprise.
With the new R&D facility, Wagoner, the GM CEO, is banking on the hope that the Chinese government, and China's consumers, will increasingly demand vehicles that are more fuel efficient, and less harmful to the environment.

Shaqiri, 22, made just 10 starts in the Bundesliga last season and wants more first-team football.

Brendan Rodgers is desperate to add quality to his squad and sees the flair of Shaqiri as key to his plans to challenge again for the Premier League title.

Bayern are reluctant to let Shaqiri go as they see him as a long-term successor to Franck Ribery.

However, Shaqiri's eagerness to play and the cash on the table could force them to sell.

Shaqiri won the man-of-the-match award in Switzerland's opening game of the World Cup against Ecuador.

Connecticut could become the first state to allow police and other law enforcement agencies to use weaponized drones, which some say would set a dangerous precedent in a state that lays claim to being the birthplace of manned flight.

For the second consecutive year, the Legislature is considering a proposed ban on the use of unmanned aircraft to release tear gas or explosives, as well as to fire weapons remotely.

But one of the state’s leading aviation legal experts says the state House version of a bill pending before the Public Safety and Security Committee includes language that could exempt police from the ban.

Not only would the measure give law enforcement unprecedented firepower, he warns, but House Bill 5274 (An Act Concerning the Use of Drones) could conflict with federal aviation laws.

“Do we want to be known as the state with best drone law as a model for other states, or do we want to be known as the state with the most idiotic drone law?” said Peter Sachs, author of the Drone Law Journal and a former helicopter pilot from Branford.

There is renewed urgency in Connecticut to regulate drones after a Central Connecticut State University student posted a video on YouTube last July of a homemade drone firing a handgun. Austin Haughwout was arrested and expelled from school, which he is contesting in a lawsuit filed this week in state Superior Court in New Britain.

Members of the law enforcement community say they aren’t pursuing weaponized drones, but acknowledged that they would hate to have that option taken away, with technology ever-changing.

“We are not enthusiastic about going down this road, but we just feel it may be inevitable,” said Paul Fitzgerald, legislative committee co-chair for the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association.

Fitzgerald is police chief in Berlin.

In contrast to last year’s bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate but died in the House during budget deliberations, the current version includes the wording “except otherwise provided by law” in the proposed ban.

“I do think it would be a dangerous precedent to allow for weaponized drones,” said state Rep. Caroline Simmons, D-Stamford, a Public Safety Committee member.

Simmons couched her comments to say it’s not a black-and-white issue, however.

“Whenever we’re talking about drones as legislators, we need to be cognizant about striking a balance of protecting people’s privacy and civil liberties, while at the same time making sure that law enforcement has the tools they need to counter crime in our communities,” Simmons said.

State Rep. J.P. Sredzinski, R-Monroe, who also serves on the committee and is the public safety dispatch supervisor for the town of Stratford, was receptive to giving law enforcement flexibility.

It’s unclear who added new language to the legislation, on which Sachs has previously consulted lawmakers and submitted testimony.

Last year, North Dakota passed a law allowing police to outfit drones with non-lethal weapons. Connecticut could go one step further, said Sachs, who operates drones as a hobby.

State Police declined to comment on the matter, saying it would be premature, since the bill is pending.

Connecticut is quick to boast that Gustave Whitehead, a Bridgeport resident, pioneered manned flight, ahead of the Wright brothers.

Fitzgerald said none of the police departments in the state currently have drones or plan to use them. Local police are responsible for investigating drone complaints, but enforcement powers rest with the Federal Aviation Administration.

Sit back and relax – if you have the money you can pay people to manage your festive duties.

Season of tinsel and stressed women.

According to a UK study, one third of all womankind are more stressed in December than any other month (which makes January my favourite winter month, due to its lack of cultural demands).

And yet to cancel Christmas would be deemed churlish. So can you outsource it instead?

The answer is yes of course you can - with enough money you can outsource anything, including childbirth.

But for the non-billionaires amongst us, does it pay to get others to tackle the slog of Chirstmas so that we’re not suffering from nervous exhaustion by December 26th? Or is hiring someone else to wrap your presents missing the festive point by a North Pole mile?

Doing Christmas ‘properly’ – that is, buckling under the marketing blitz that urges festive ‘perfection’ – involves card writing, present shopping, gift wrapping, food shopping, tree buying, house cleaning, house decorating, table dressing, wardrobe overhauling, food preparing, food serving, mess clearing, house undecorating, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Oh, and don’t forget to do it all while wearing your fluffy mules, novelty reindeer jumper, sparkly antlers and a great big joyful grin, or you’ll look like a Christmas curmudgeon.

Imagine then if there were a collective of elves who would gladly do the heavy lifting for you, so that you can waft around in feather-light cashmere, Aperol spritz in one hand, iPhone X in the other, with Santa on speed dial.

Do such elves exist? Of course they do.

Just show them the money.

It’s the emotional labour of present choosing which is the slog.

Each meticulously chosesn gift must reflect the age, preferences, and personality of the loved one, while being original, throughtful and having a unique wow factor.

Otherwise angle grinders would end up in the hands of toddlers, bottles of champagne unwrapped by recovering alcoholics, and your mum probably doesn’t want Call of Duty: Black Ops III Solution: Two options here.

A tedious afternoon on Amazon, or getting someone else to buy them for you.

Debenhams do a free personal shopper service.

You fill in an online form, and their elf will run around the shop for you, choosing gifts for 3 people in 45 minutes, based on your budget and the information you provide – eg, nan, uncle, niece age 6, plus a few details (nan likes football, uncle likes musicals, niece likes Lego).

You can book as many slots as you like, for multiples of three people.

And bingo! Go and have a lie down.

You still have to wrap the feckers, and it always takes until 3am on Christmas Eve.

You’ll have run out of sellotape and human kindness, and be left wondering how you ever thought gift wrapping a rocking horse was a good idea.

Solution: There are wrapping elves.

Small companies like Wrap It - www.wrapit.ie – provide personalised Christmas sacks and stockings as well as standard gift wrapping services.

It’s that time of year! We’ve just launched our CHRISTMAS TEES! 🎄🎄 So soft and comfy for the holidays! ||I love Santa: $85, S-M. Happy Holla Days: $65 S-L. Believe: $75 S-M|| To purchase, comment your size and “pick up”, “ship” or “delivery”. Want it wrapped? Use #wrapit!! Not on social shop? It’s easy! Use the link in our bio!

They do personalised elf hats as well, if you want to pretend it was you who did all the hard work.

Prices start at €12 plus p&p.

Sending ecards is quick, easy and green, but a bit lame if you’re a traditionalist.

Buying and writing loads of cards is a drag, but if you still want to receive loads, it’s quid pro quo.

Solution: Depending on their age, children can be bribed to do this task with either cash or chocolate coins – plus wonky kids handwriting is deemed cute.

If none are available, and you’ve left it a bit last minute, go to www.gifts.ie, where you can personalise your card with individual names and photos, and have it arrive overnight – so it’s easy and fast.

Not cheap at €3.99 per card plus 99c p&p, but hey ho (ho ho).

Ramming the tree into the back of the car, hauling it indoors without knocking anything over, engaging with broken fairy lights, knackered baubles, floppy holly, and please God, not that horrible tinsel from 1975.

You want a magical wonderland, not a Woolworth’s shop window.

Solution: This time the elf is a fairy.

Sophia Weir runs Christmas Fairy Decorators – christmasfairydecorators.com – and says she is “absolutely inundated”, even though the Christmas Fairy is “not budget” - prices start around €3,000.

“We work with set designers and interior designers,” she says.

The most an inidividual household has spent on the Christmas Fairy’s decorating? “About €18,000,” she says.

That’s a lot of fairy dust.

So for Christmas lunch you’ll be hosting carnivore traditionalists, gluten free vegans, and Cousin It who is allergic to shellfish.

You’re working until Chirstmas Eve yourself, and even if you weren’t, the idea of all that food shopping, prepping and cooking is giving you the dry heaves.

Yet this is the one day of the year where you really can’t phone out for pizza.

Solution: Order everything in ready made from Marks & Spencers.

This is absolutely foolproof, but what if you’d like to pretend that you’ve done it all yourself, like Nigella?

Claire Nash of Cork restaurant Nash 19 – www.nash19.com – will “recreate taste memories” for you, preparing everything at her restaurant for collection up until lunchtime on Christmas Eve – just get your orders in by December 1st.

What started out as friends asking her to make extra when she was preparing her own Christmas food has turned into Claire making homemade gravy, stuffing, plum pudding, brandy butter, cranberry, home made mince in the mince pies, even providing goosefat for the spuds.

“We do everything except the turkey,” she says.

The average spend is around €200 for a table of six. Excellent.

Because as well as sorting out all of the other stuff, you still have to look fabulous at all times.

Just brace yourself for another hellish shopping trip - can you really stomach the obligatory sequinned frock? Why does effortless chic always seem like such bloody hard work? And yet, if you are catching up with rellies you haven’t seen for ages, do you want their looks of pity as you turn up in a Santa fascinator and stripey elf tights? No.

Solution: Call in the professionals - hire a stylist.

Orla Sheridan – www.orlasheridan.com – will do what she terms a wardrobe analysis for €150, and will go shopping with you for €80 an hour (she recommends three hours, with a clothes budget of least €1,000 to make it worthwhile).

“A common situation is people having a wardrobe full of clothes and nothing to wear,” she says.

She recommends staples like a good coat and boots, a black dress, a cashmere sweater.

She is not keen on novelty fast fashion – so no reindeer jumpers.

“There’s pressure to buy whole new outfits,” she says.

Less is more, she advises.

All of the above will cost you a fortune.

You could just leave the country – or even pretend to - from mid December, and arrive back on New Year’s Eve.

No one would ever know.

The Trump White House talking about North Korea sounds eerily and increasingly like the George W. Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq War. Officials make similar arguments about the necessity of acting against a gathering storm; proudly claim understanding of the adversary’s motivations; express frustration at countries that should be likewise alarmed at the problem not supporting American policy; and believe the sand is running out in the hourglass before military attacks are required. They admit no alternative interpretation of the facts. They are blithely dismissing enormous damage their policy would incur for regional allies. They seem innocent of understanding the disastrous and isolating consequences for America’s role in the world to choose preventive war rather than the moral heights of restraint in the face of threats.

President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, repeatedly indulges the same apocalyptic rhetoric: North Korea’s nuclear program is “the most destabilizing development, I think, in the post-World War II period;” the threat is “increasing every day;” the leadership is “undeterrable.” Others on the National Security Council staff compare North Korea to World War II Japan: a mobilized and militarized society, inherently and belligerently expansionist, constrainable solely by the exercise of superior military force.

Retaliation after a first strike from the enemy is insufficient—either to deter or to punish.

And, as Mira Rapp-Hooper has emphasized, the Trump administration argues that the U.S. must act before North Korea attains even more dangerous capabilities. They are reprising the argument made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban missile crisis.

The government of Japan has publicly stated that it will only participate in military action in response to a North Korean attack. South Korea’s prime minister has reassured his public that the U.S. has committed not to take military action without his approval (something McMaster elides by saying there will be consultations). Australia, too, is likely to opt out of a preventive war. How would the U.S. fight North Korea without the participation of those three allies? What would the political landscape of Asia be like in the aftermath of a unilateral U.S. attack on North Korea opposed by America’s closest regional allies?

Policy analysts argue over whether senior figures in the administration—“the adults in the room”—actually believe what they are saying. Are they trying to shore up American credibility to strengthen deterrence? Employing the madman gambit to diminish North Korea’s negotiating advantage? Posturing to wring more cooperation out of the Chinese? Since administration policy treats North Korean leadership statements as actionable, that same rule ought to apply also to the American side. The administration’s statements strongly prejudice policy toward military action: They have not only drawn a red line, they’ve attached a countdown clock to it. President Trump will either fight a preventive war to disarm North Korea, or will be forced in humiliation fashion to dismantle a scaffold of his own construction, calling into question American security guarantees.

One area in which the Trump administration differs from Bush in 2003 is that President Bush invested his political capital in making the administration’s case to the American public and internationally. Neither President Trump nor his Cabinet have done anywhere near the kind of spadework necessary to bring Americans along for a war that will require calling up reserve military forces, kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, reshape how the world views America, and consume all the political energy of the Trump presidency.

President Trump was derisive about the Bush administration’s mistakes in the Iraq war; it would be doubly tragic for him to repeat them. If the Trump administration isn’t re-examining their assumptions, they desperately need to be. They’re lurching arrogantly toward disaster.

Most experts view the pollution problem in China as one of the world's biggest problems. But General Motors Corp. (GM) Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner views it as one of the world's biggest business opportunities.

With incomes soaring and a new wave of middle-class consumers emerging across China, car and truck sales are soaring. But with clouds of pollution roiling the atmosphere, the market could very quickly migrate to such new technologies as alternative fuels and hybrid-powered automobiles.

GM is taking a decisive step to capitalize on that shift.

The Number One U.S. carmaker on Monday announced plans for a $250-million research and development center in Shanghai, The Associated Press reported. The center will develop eco-friendly technology, including alternative fuels, hybrid cars, and more-efficient power trains, including those utilizing new technologies.

The R&D center will also serve as headquarters for GM's China and Asian-Pacific operations. The main goal of the venture will be to help alleviate China's surging pollution problems, while also capitalizing on the fastest-growing auto market in the world.

China has already become the world's second-largest auto market after the United States. In the first nine months of this year, there were 4.58 million vehicles sold there, a 23.84% increase from a year ago. GM, working in conjunction with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. and Liuzhou Wuling Motors Ltd., expects to sell more than 1 million vehicles in China for the first time this year. That would be a 20% jump from the 830,000 sold in 2006.

But there's a problem: A recent report from the State Environmental Protection Administration said vehicle emissions accounted for 79% of the contamination in China's most polluted cities.

China is home to 16 of the 20 most-polluted cities in the world. So the fact that it recently overtook the United States as the Number One emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet – a title the U.S. held for more than 100 years – is hardly a surprise.

With the new R&D facility, Wagoner, the GM CEO, is banking on the hope that the Chinese government, and China's consumers, will increasingly demand vehicles that are more fuel efficient, and less harmful to the environment.