Much remains uncertain about the upcoming Trump-Kim summit. Though caution is necessary in dealing with North Korea, the US officials preparing for this unprecedented event must be open to all possible outcomes, including a real breakthrough paving the way for positive changes in North Korea and the end of the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula. 　First, it is important to not set expectations too high. This is only the first ever summit between North Korea and the US. One cannot expect to solve al

Spring is the season for students and young professionals to be making plans. The coming summer is a good time to jump on internships and work opportunities or to get extra credit through summer academic programs. High school and college seniors in particular will look beyond graduation dates, considering options for employment or continuing education.　Many in this situation may already be considering going abroad. I would like to take that idea a step further and make the case for going “off th

The evening before the 2016 presidential election, California Gov. Jerry Brown joked at a political dinner in Sacramento, “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country.”At the time, it seemed a safe-ish bit of humor because, of course, Hillary Clinton would win. When she didn’t, I came to imagine Brown’s remark as the opening volley establishing California as the state of resistance -- unique, independent, distinct from

The US President Donald Trump appears set on having a trade war with China. With initial tariffs exchanged, White House rhetoric has made clear the goal is to rebalance trade relations and establish better “reciprocity”. Everyone involved is going to get hurt but wherein lies conflict, there also awaits opportunity.Let’s put aside the fact that Trump has demonstrated a serious misunderstanding about how economies work. His statements on trade deficits being indicative of lost national wealth is

Despite a propaganda blitz meant to shift the blame for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK earlier this month, Russia looks set to face bruising consequences. The newfound unity among European Union leaders on the matter and the appointment of fierce Russia hawk John Bolton as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser are potential precursors of collective Western action against Russia.　The difficulty lies in figuring out how far that ac

The European Union’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has a reputation as something of an activist because of her willingness to take on US tech giants. And yet she has approved what is, from a leftist activist point of view, a particularly evil deal, Germany-based Bayer’s acquisition of US-based Monsanto.　The $66 billion deal creates an incredible concentration in the seed and pesticide markets. If it’s approved in the US, too, the three biggest companies in this market -- Bayer-Mo

You had to be there.　As Americans took to the streets Saturday, defying a political order that, in Washington and many state capitals, has allowed extremists to write gun laws, the bodies -- of both the dead and the living who marched in their honor -- mattered a lot. Hundreds of thousands in cities big and small showed up. It was an extraordinary coming-out party for a movement that is now, at long last, undeniably mass.　The marches against gun violence would not have been as big without the un

Predicting the course of technological progress is extremely difficult. Just because worries about human obsolescence ultimately turned out to be misplaced in the Industrial Revolution doesn’t mean that the same happy result must necessarily prevail this time around. So the persistent question about artificial intelligence -- or “robots” in common parlance -- is whether they will make human workers obsolete.Recent rapid progress in machine learning -- a very powerful and flexible statistical pre