I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, one hundred percent. Thank you.

Reuters photog captured White House aide holding “POTUS remarks” document that differs from what Trump said alongside Abe

Top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini has asked the US not to "interfere" in European politics.

Ms Mogherini made the remarks on the second day of a two-day visit to Washington, her first since Donald Trump became President.

"We do not interfere in US politics {...} And Europeans expect that America does not interfere in European politics," AFP quoted Ms Mogherini saying.

Her remarks follow the US President's repeated praise of Brexit, calling it a "great thing" and saying the UK was "smart" for voting to leave the EU.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-foriegn-affairs-chief-federica-mogherini-us-not-interfere-europe-politics-donald-trump-a7573866.html

Intelligence Commotion
A chart purportedly showing that Donald Trump has an IQ of 156 is based on incomplete and outright inaccurate information.

Origin: A chart purportedly ranking the intelligence quotients of former presidents of the United States made the rounds on social media in December 2016, along with the claim that the President-elect would rank among the smartest, boasting an IQ of 156:



...

This chart is based on a real study; however, the claim that Donald Trump has an IQ of 156 is not.

...

This article is chock-full of logical missteps and factual inaccuracies. Trump's official school transcripts are not available, so it is impossible to know his actual scholastic aptitude scores. While the article's author used Wharton's general admission requirements to estimate Trump's IQ, the math still doesn't quite add up.

According to PrepScholar.com, Wharton's SAT requirements are currently set at 1500. This roughly translates to an IQ score between 145 and 149, not 156. Regardless, Wharton's admission requirements are irrelevant, since Trump did not enter Wharton as a freshman. He transferred there his junior year, and Wharton does not list SAT scores among its requirements for transfer students.

Gwenda Blair claimed in her 2001 biography about Donald Trump and his family that the President-elect was admitted to Wharton thanks to a friendly admissions officer ...

http://www.snopes.com/donald-trumps-intelligence-quotient/

Fake news sites have struggled to take hold in the UK political sphere, seemingly because traditional British news outlets are already incredibly adept at filling the market with highly partisan news stories that stretch the truth to its limits.

BuzzFeed News analysed the hundred most shared news stories on social media for a variety of topics relating to British politics over the last 12 months, taking in major events such as the EU referendum, the appointment of Theresa May as prime minister, and Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election as Labour leader.

In countries such as the US and Italy, completely fake stories with no basis in fact have come to dominate political debate on social networks such as Facebook. Such material – with headlines such as the infamous “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President” – is usually produced for political or financial purposes by websites that have little pre-existing online footprint.

...

But equivalent analysis of UK social media habits reveals the most popular dubious stories on British politics were almost always the work of long-established news outlets and relied at most on exaggeration rather than fakery. The evidence suggests that rather than reading complete lies, British audiences appear to prefer stories that contain at least a kernel of truth, even if the facts are polluted or distorted.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/fake-news-sites-cant-compete-with-britains-partisan-newspape

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

--Humbert Wolf

Lord Alf Dubs - the man behind the so-called Dubs Amendment - has called the decision for the UK to stop accepting lone child refugees "shameful".

Last year, following intense pressure, the Government made changes to the UK's Immigration Act allowing the relocation of unaccompanied refugee children from other countries in Europe.

Although the exact number of migrants to be taken was never specified, campaigners originally called for 3,000 under-18s to be accepted into the country.

However, a written statement from Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill has now shown that the scheme will be closed once a mere 350 children have been brought to the UK.

http://news.sky.com/story/lord-dubs-describes-closure-of-child-migrant-scheme-as-shameful-10760647

In January 2014 I left the Department for Education and spent the next 18 months away from politics. A few days after the 2015 election I wrote a blog about Michael Gove’s new job touching on the referendum. When I wrote it I assumed I would carry on studying and would not be involved in it. About ten days later I was asked by an assortment of MPs, rich businessmen, and campaigners including Matthew Elliott to help put together an organisation that could fight the referendum. I was very reluctant and prevaricated but ended up agreeing. I left my happy life away from SW1 and spent eight weeks biking around London persuading people to take what was likely to be a car crash career decision – to quit their jobs and join a low probability proposition: hacking the political system to win a referendum against almost every force with power and money in politics. In September we had an office, in October ‘Vote Leave’ went public, in April we were designated the official campaign, 10 weeks later we won.

Why and how? The first draft of history was written in the days and weeks after the 23 June and the second draft has appeared over the past few weeks in the form of a handful of books. There is no competition between them. Shipman’s is by far the best and he is the only one to have spoken to key people. I will review it soon. One of his few errors is to give me the credit for things that were done by others, often people in their twenties like Oliver Lewis, Jonny Suart, and Cleo Watson who, unknown outside the office, made extreme efforts and ran rings around supposed ‘experts’. His book has encouraged people to exaggerate greatly my importance.

I have been urged by some of those who worked on the campaign to write about it. I have avoided it, and interviews, for a few reasons (though I had to write one blog to explain that with the formal closing of VL we had made the first online canvassing software that really works in the UK freely available HERE). For months I couldn’t face it. The idea of writing about the referendum made me feel sick. It still does but a bit less.

For about a year I worked on this project every day often for 18 hours and sometimes awake almost constantly. Most of the ‘debate’ was moronic as political debate always is. Many hours of life I’m never getting back were spent dealing with abysmal infighting among dysfunctional egomaniacs while trying to build a ~£10 million startup in 10 months when very few powerful people thought the probability of victory was worth the risk of helping us. (Two rare heroes who put up a lot of their own money and supported the team were Peter Cruddas and Stuart Wheeler.) Many of those involved regarded their TV appearances as by far the most important aspect of the campaign. Many regarded Vote Leave as ‘the real enemy’.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit-referendum-won/

More fake news in 'The Mail on Sunday'

An attack by the 'The Mail on Sunday' on the accuracy and integrity of a recent paper on global warming is based on inaccurate and misleading claims, including a fake graph.

The article by David Rose appears in the 5 February issue of the newspaper under the headline 'Exposed: How world leaders were duped over global warming'. The article was first published on the newspaper's website on 4 February.

The article makes a number of extraordinary claims about a paper by Dr Thomas Karl, a climate scientist formerly employed by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and colleagues, which was published in June 2015.

...

However, the article by David Rose in 'The Mail on Sunday' contains many demonstrably false statements and misrepresentations about the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors.

...

http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/more-fake-news-in-the-mail-on-sunday/

Probably the smartest thing anyone said about Donald Trump before his election was the explanation by Salena Zito in The Atlantic of why he could get away with making wildly exaggerated or flatly false statements: "When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."

And yet Zito's insight has turned out to be insufficient. In the mad days that have followed his inauguration, it has become clear that Trump takes himself both literally and seriously.

He mistakes his own impulses for facts. He does not know the difference between self-aggrandising symbolic gestures and lived human realities, and this tiny-minded literalism has very serious consequences for millions of people.

The most important thing to understand about the executive order keeping immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim countries out of the US is that it has no relationship whatsoever to its stated purpose. That purpose is, supposedly, to keep America safe from terrorism. The order is actually called "Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States".

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/fintan-o-toole-welcome-to-trumperica-1.2960823