Analysis: With calls for an intervention on his behalf, the House speaker has knocked an ‘extremely calm’ leader off balance It has been almost four years since Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign from the gilded escalator of Trump Tower. In that time he has come to be feared by Democrats and Republicans alike for his personal attacks that always seem to supremely rile his opponents. Now he has finally met his match. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, has spent the past 48 hours doing to Trump what he has done to so many others. She lifted up his skin, got under it, and began scratching furiously. Asked at her weekly news conference on Thursday whether she was concerned about the president’s well-being, she replied: “I am,” adding she was also concerned about “the well-being of the United States of America”. And then she delivered the coup de grace: “I wish that his family or his administration or staff would have an intervention for the good of the country. Maybe he wants to take a leave of absence.” Coming on top of the previous day’s goading, in which Trump angrily flounced out of a White House meeting with her after Pelosi had accused him of being “engaged in a coverup”, the House speaker’s call for an intervention appeared to hit its mark. Trump responded on Thursday by going on what can only be described as a Pelosi rant, at a White House event for farmers and ranchers. He began by showing the nation that he was in full possession of his faculties, contrary to the House speaker’s insinuation, by proclaiming: “I am an extremely stable genius.” Then he proceeded to counter Pelosi’s claim that he had “flipped out” and had a “tempter tantrum” at Wednesday’s aborted meeting by insisting he had been calm. “I was so calm. I was extremely calm.” Lest there was any remaining doubt that he was entirely calm in the face of Pelosi’s provocations, he paraded in front of the cameras a long line of White House staffers including his counselor Kellyanne Conway, strategic communications chief Mercedes Schlapp, press secretary Sarah Sanders and others and invited them to provide eye-witness accounts of his calmness. Conway: “Very calm … you were very calm.” Sanders: “Very calm.” Schlapp: “You were very calm.” “I couldn’t have been more calm,” Trump concluded. In the course of the function Trump had uttered the word “calm” in a preternaturally calm voice to America’s bemused farmers and ranchers no fewer than nine times. Until this point in their fractious relationship, the US president has remained, by his standards, relatively respectful of Pelosi, sparing her the “Lyin’ Ted”and “Crooked Hillary” jibes he has inflicted on hundreds of his perceived adversaries. But as a further indication of the effectiveness of the Pelosi taunt, he let rip on her on Thursday. “She’s a mess … she’s disintegrating,” he said. “I’ve been watching her for a long time. She’s not the same person. She’s lost it.” Then he called her “Crazy Nancy” before immediately regretting it. “I don’t want to say ‘Crazy Nancy’ because if I say that you’re going to say it’s a copy of ‘Crazy Bernie’ and that’s no good.” These past four years America and the world has got used to Trump forcibly having the last word. Not any more. By end of play Thursday, Pelosi had logged on to Twitter – the social media platform of which Trump was supposed to be “master” – and scratched her nails under his skin one more time. “When the ‘extremely stable genius’ starts acting more presidential, I’ll be happy to work with him on infrastructure, trade and other issues,” she wrote. Now what, Mr President?

A serial con artist was arrested Wednesday after allegedly scamming a Georgiawoman he met on Match

Climate change has long been a disaster in the making, but until recently the American public tended to treat it as an afterthought. The Green New Deal brought climate change front and center, and made Americans think about big bold solutions instead of technical tweaks and half measures. The think tank Data for Progress has a plan that actually predates Ocasio-Cortez’s, but which goes into much greater detail about how to combat climate change both at home and abroad.

Gillibrand vowed to champion abortion rights in her campaign for president, calling the recent bans "horrifying" and "discriminatory."

The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division staff has recommended the agency block T-Mobile US Inc's $26 billion acquisition of smaller rival Sprint Corp, according to two sources familiar with the matter. While Justice Department staff balked at the merger, the Federal Communications Commission indicated on Monday it had reached an agreement in principle with the companies to allow the deal after the companies agreed to sell Sprint's prepaid brand Boost Mobile. The final decision on whether to allow two of the four nationwide wireless carriers to merge now lies with political appointees at the department, headed by antitrust division chief Makan Delrahim.

For the purposes of Lockheed's marketing campaign, the F-21 is a new fighter, although it shares many of its major features with the F-16V the company has sold to Bahrain, Greece, Slovakia, South Korea and Taiwan. Lockheed can build new F-16Vs or upgrade older F-16s to the V-standard.Lockheed Martin is developing a new variant of its iconic F-16 single-engine fighter in order to compete in India’s 2019 tender for 110 new warplanes.(This first appeared earlier in the month.)But don’t count on the American firm’s “F-21” to win the contract.According to journalist Angad Singh, the likely winner is French company Dassault’s Rafale twin-engine fighter.Singh explains his rationale in the May 2019 issue of Combat Aircraft magazine. India previously ordered 36 Rafales as part of an earlier fighter tender. “With 36 aircraft already on order and the infrastructure in place for an additional 36, a case could certainly be made that training, basing and sustainment costs for additional aircraft would not be an impossible burden.”Other candidates for the Indian tender are the Saab Gripen from Sweden, the European Eurofighter Typhoon, the MiG-35 from Russia and the Boeing Super Hornet from the United States. Whichever fighter New Delhi selects, it needs the new jets now, according to Singh.

The head of the United Nations organisation for Palestinian refugees on Thursday rejected a US call to dismantle the agency, saying it cannot be blamed for stalled peace efforts. UNRWA's commissioner general Pierre Krahenbuhl rebuffed the criticism from US envoy Jason Greenblatt during a visit to the Gaza Strip. "I unreservedly reject the accompanying narrative that suggests that somehow UNRWA is to blame for the continuation of the refugee-hood of Palestine refugees, of their growing numbers and their growing needs," he said in response to a question about Greenblatt's comments.

Google unveiled a new look and feel today for the way it presents Google Search results on mobile, and the update has been regarded in a few corners now as somewhat News Feed-like.It's easy to see why that's the case, as the search giant's changes include putting emphasis on a website name and favicon above the search results. Whereas the source of results had previously not been so clearly emphasized, which makes the new design for showing results feel a little like scrolling through a feed of posts from publishers and the like."With this new design, a website's branding can be front and center, helping you better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what you're looking for," explains Google Senior Interaction Designer for Search Jamie Leach in a company blog post today. "The name of the website and its icon appear at the top of the results card to help anchor each result, so you can more easily scan the page of results and decide what to explore next."The post notes that the refreshed look for what's arguably Google's most important product will start showing up to users over the coming days. As part of the changes, Leach continues, when you search for a product or service and Google feels like it's got a relevant, "useful" ad that would be worth including in the results, you'll now see an ad label in bold at the top of a search results card. The web address will also be included, so you can quickly determine where the information you're seeing is coming from.The other important thing to note about the Google Search refresh on mobile is that this also lays the foundation for Google to add more action buttons and information previews to search results cards, with Google wanting you to be able to now do everything from buying movie tickets to playing podcasts right there from within the results. "Our goal with Search always has been to help people quickly and easily find the information that they're looking for," Leach says. "Over the years, the amount and format of information available on the web has changed drastically -- from the proliferation of images and video to the availability of 3D objects you can now view in AR." Which is why the company thought a "visual refresh" of Search on mobile would do a better job of helping people find the information they need and quickly determine where it came from.

The U.S. administration is considering Huawei-like sanctions on Chinese video surveillance firm Hikvision, media reports show, deepening worries that trade friction between the world's top two economies could be further inflamed. The restrictions would limit Hikvision's ability to buy U.S. technology and American companies may have to obtain government approval to supply components to the Chinese firm, the New York Times reported https://nyti.ms/2MfgBS3 on Tuesday. The United States stuck Huawei Technologies on a trade blacklist last week, effectively banning U.S. firms from doing business with the world's largest telecom network gear maker, in a major escalation in the trade war.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea has labeled Joe Biden a "fool of low IQ" and an "imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being" after the U.S. presidential hopeful called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a tyrant during a recent speech.