EUNCERTAINTY: Italy’s buoyant 5-Star keeps options open on euro referendum.

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, Italy’s most popular political party, said on Thursday a referendum on the euro was not its top priority and that it hoped Europe would reform before a ballot could be arranged.

Benefiting from a schism in the ruling Democratic Party, opinion polls suggest 5-Star is likely to win 2018 elections and its policies are coming under increasing scrutiny, especially a plan for a euro referendum which scares financial markets.

Lower house deputy Luigi Di Maio, 30, who is widely expected to be 5-Star’s candidate for prime minister, told foreign reporters the euro referendum would take time to organize, and tackling poverty in Italy was more urgent.

“In the meantime we hope that European institutions come to their senses,” he said at a news conference to present 5-Star’s policies on the European Union.

“It’s not true that 5-Star wants to take Italy out of the euro,” he said. “We want Italians to decide.”

It’s EU tradition to allow members states as many referenda as necessary to get the EU-desired result, so there’s no telling what 5-Star really means.

MORE, PLEASE: Japanese company develops a solar cell with record-breaking 26%+ efficiency.

The silicon-based cells that make up a solar panel have a theoretical efficiency limit of 29 percent, but so far that number has proven elusive. Practical efficiency rates in the low-20-percent range have been considered very good for commercial solar panels. But researchers with Japanese chemical manufacturer Kaneka Corporation have built a solar cell with a photo conversion rate of 26.3 percent, breaking the previous record of 25.6 percent. Although it’s just a 2.7 percent increase in efficiency, improvements in commercially viable solar cell technology are increasingly hard-won.

Not only that, but the researchers noted in their paper that after they submitted their article to Nature Energy, they were able to further optimize their solar cell to achieve 26.6 percent efficiency. That result has been recognized by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

The thought that the sun beams so much power to us for free, and that we’re able to collect so little of it, is a frustrating one.

THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND… Five Days and Two ‘Known Wolf’ Terror Attacks, Yet No Apparent Concern from Western Governments.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Trump Is 100% Vindicated On Wiretapping, and 7 Other Things You Should Know.

LAUGH THROUGH THE TEARS:

Don’t miss the fine print.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: The FBI is still struggling to employ hackers because they’re all smoking weed.

In its latest published report on the nation’s cyber security strategy (2015), the US department of justice found that 40 per cent of FBI cyber security positions were unfilled.

The report found that:

The FBI did not hire 52 of the 134 computer scientists for which it was authorised; and five of the 56 field offices did not have a computer scientist assigned to that office’s Cyber Task Force.

The gap between candidates and job postings is only likely to grow, given the predicted boom in cyber security jobs that consultants Frost and Sullivan claim will outstrip the number of qualified experts by 2020.

A draft of a new executive orders on cyber security was published in the Washington Post, ordering a review of ‘Workforce Development’ which focused on changes to the education curriculum and the department of Education.

Two things are clear: 1) Hackers don’t work in the field or need to carry weapons, and; 2) Marijuana doesn’t seem to be much of an impediment to hacking, given the huge Venn overlap between Successful Hackers and Pot Smokers.

But as a legal matter, this is something Congress will have to address.

IT’S ON! Democrats Choose Stupidity: They Will Filibuster Neil Gorsuch Nomination.

Now we’ll see if Mitch McConnell has what it takes to go Full Harry Reid.

CHAOS ON CAPITOL HILL: House Intel Chairman Gives Trump New Collection Revelations, Sparking Committee Feud.. “Nunes says reports show possibly legit but bothersome surveillance; Schiff calls Nunes’ move ‘a profound irregularity.'”

GEORGE NEUMAYR: The curious silences after London’s terror attack.

One scoured most of the British press in vain for any reporting on the identity or motivation of the attacker. The euphemisms for his motivation were a little better in other foreign outlets. The French press agency, among others, attributed the attack to assumed “Islamist-related terrorism,” citing British counterterrorism official Mark Rowley.

But almost nobody was playing that up. The average reader would have to work pretty hard to find even that comment. By almost the end of Wednesday, the New York Times hadn’t included it in its “what we know and don’t know” story. That story quotes Rowley but only to say that the “working assumption” is that the attacker was motivated by “international terrorism.” Is that really what he said? The French press agency had quoted him saying, “Islamist-related is our assumption.” Why didn’t that appear in the New York Times story?

When a normally garrulous and gossipy media turns taciturn, the explanation is usually political correctness. In this case, an extreme sensitivity to Islam has a chastening effect on reporters who would typically exert themselves for a scoop. Even many hours after the mayhem, few of their stories contained any descriptions of the attacker from witnesses.

Political correctness kills.

HMM: Reports of Deep Cuts to Russia’s Defense Budget Have Been Grossly Exaggerated.

If you read a recent report by IHS Jane’s that Russia is cutting its defense budget by over 25 percent—supposedly the “largest cut to military expenditure in the country since the early 1990s”—then you might be given the impression that Moscow’s military is finally succumbing to economic woes. But reports of the death of Russia’s defense budget have been grossly exaggerated. Simply put, it’s not true.

Not only did Jane’s get the story largely wrong about Russia’s defense budget, claiming that Russia’s defense budget would fall from 3.8 trillion rubles, or $65.4 billion, to 2.8 trillion, but deep reductions in spending are also unlikely for Russia’s next State Armament Program, known as GPV. At least for the foreseeable future, Russian armed forces will continue to expand in size, create new unit formations, and deploy new or modernized equipment.

NATO had best keep its powder dry — and keep lots of powder, as the wise man once said.

CLAIM: Customer Service Chatbots Are About to Become Frighteningly Realistic.

Soul Machines has already created an assistant avatar called Nadia for the Australian government. It’s voiced by actor Cate Blanchett and powered by IBM’s Watson software. It helps people get information about government services for the disabled. IBM has prototyped another avatar, Rachel, that helps with banking.

The movements of Soul Machines’s digital faces are produced by simulating the anatomy and mechanics of muscles and other tissues of the human face. The avatars can read the facial expressions of a person talking to them, using a device’s front-facing camera. Sagar says people talking to something that looks human are more likely to be open about their thoughts and be expressive with their own face, allowing a company to pick up information about what vexes or confuses customers.

The company’s avatars can also be programmed to react to a person’s facial expressions with their own simulated facial movements, in an attempt to create the illusion of empathy.

If they’re realistic enough, you won’t know to be frightened.

RIGHT VS RIGHT: Where Conservative Groups Stand on TrumpCare.

I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Are the F-15 Eagle’s days numbered? Top generals say maybe.

Between the F-15 2040C “Advanced Eagle” and the F-15SE “Silent Eagle” the USAF already has two excellent prototypes for keeping the F-15 around as the new low-end of a 21st Century “high-low mix.”

DEPLORABLE: Death Rates Rise for Wide Swath of White Adults, Study Finds.

Mortality has been rising since the turn of this century for an even broader swath of white adults, starting at age 25, the researchers found, driven by troubles in a hard-hit working class. Death rates for white non-Hispanics with a high-school education or less now exceed those of blacks overall, the pair said—and they’re 30% higher for whites age 50 to 54 than for blacks overall of that age.

Blacks have long had a much higher death rate than whites, but that rate has dropped steeply since the beginning of this century, while the rate for whites has crept up.

Driving the uptick are increases in “deaths of despair”—from drugs, alcohol-related liver diseases and suicide, as well as a slowdown in progress against death in middle age from heart disease and cancer, the nation’s biggest killers, wrote Anne Case and Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton, her husband. The pair examined more than 15 data sets, including government health statistics, death certificates and various economic indicators.

The analysis paints a portrait of a gradual “collapse of the white, high-school-educated working class after its heyday in the early 1970s,” whose health, mental well-being, and attachment to the labor force have become successively worse for people born after 1945, they said.

What changed for high school graduates starting in the mid-’60s?

REPORT: Koch Network Is Spending Millions to Stop GOP Health Care Bill.

I’m so old I can remember when the Koch brothers were heading up a shady network of rich women-hating racists to deny Hillary Clinton the White House.

I’D FORGOTTEN THERE WAS ONE: Boycott of N.C. Over Bathroom Bill Dies With a Whimper.

FINGERS CROSSED! Turkey’s Referendum Could Backfire on Erdogan.

Only one campaign is in sight less than a month before the April 16 referendum that would give Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vast new powers.

Building-size billboards feature a giant likeness of Mr. Erdogan urging the nation to vote “Yes.” On TV networks, government officials brand those opposing this executive presidency plan as traitors or supporters of terrorism. Finding any evidence of the “No” campaign can be mission impossible.

And yet, despite such a charged environment, a referendum victory for Mr. Erdogan looks surprisingly uncertain. Opinion polls keep showing a nation starkly divided along the middle—with a significant part of Mr. Erdogan’s own Justice and Development Party, or AKP, electorate balking at the idea of scrapping Turkey’s tradition of parliamentary democracy.

“This is a huge problem for them: they were thinking they will easily get 60%,” says Etyen Mahcupyan, a political consultant who served as adviser to former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a leading figure in AKP. “And if we have a surprise on election day, it will be to the benefit of the ‘No’ vote. The government has created a ‘Yes’ atmosphere and many people are afraid of admitting that they will vote ‘No,’ and are not telling the truth to the pollsters.”

The referendum is the last chance for Turkish voters to turn back from the abyss, but fortunately this has been a time of electoral surprises.

FASTER, PLEASE: Trump Lays Plans to Reverse Obama’s Climate Change Legacy.

The moves are intended to send an unmistakable signal to the nation and the world that Mr. Trump intends to follow through on his campaign vows to rip apart every element of what the president has called Mr. Obama’s “stupid” policies to address climate change. The timing and exact form of the announcement remain unsettled, however.

The executive actions will follow the White House’s release last week of a proposed budget that would eliminate climate change research and prevention programs across the federal government and slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent, more than any other agency. Mr. Trump also announced last week that he had ordered Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, to revise the agency’s stringent standards on planet-warming tailpipe pollution from vehicles, another of Mr. Obama’s key climate change policies.

While the White House is not expected to explicitly say the United States is withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, and people familiar with the White House deliberations say Mr. Trump has not decided whether to do so, the policy reversals would make it virtually impossible to meet the emissions reduction goals set by the Obama administration under the international agreement.

That’s from the NYT writeup, so of course they say that like it’s a bad thing, but even James Hansen — “the father of climate change awareness” — says Paris is a fraud.

DAVID HARSANYI: Democrats Shouldn’t Dismiss Nunes’ Spying Claims So Quickly.

But if we’re to believe Nunes, the names of Trump and/or associates were “unmasked,” and details “with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in an intelligence community report.” CNN is reporting that some of the communications picked up were Trump transition officials talking about the president’s family. What possible need was there for those details to be passed around in an intelligence report? Who ordered the unmasking of the people involved? Was the information properly minimized? If the investigation wasn’t aimed at collusion with the Russians, what investigation ensnared the president-elect and his transition team?

While the answers might not vindicate Trump, they are legitimate questions.

If it turns out intel wasn’t properly minimized, this is the kind of abuse that civil libertarians have long warned could undermine Americans’ privacy, a Fourth Amendment right. Many Democrats (and a few Republicans) have been warning about exploitation of 702 for years. Only last year, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken admitted that “information that we get through 702 can be misused.” The American Civil Liberties Union also opposes it (“We Must Rein in President Trump’s Spying Powers,” says a headline. Right.)

Well, it’s different when Democrats do it.

And Nunes says: FBI IS NOT COOPERATING WITH OUR INVESTIGATION INTO TRUMP CAMP SURVEILLANCE.

“We don’t actually know yet officially what happened to General Flynn,” Nunes said of how communications from Gen. Flynn’s calls were leaked to the press. “We just know that his name leaked out but we don’t know how it was picked up yet. That was one of the things that we asked for in the March 15th letter, was for the NSA, CIA, and FBI to get us all the unmasking that was done.”

“And I’ll tell you, NSA is being cooperative,” Nunes continued, “but so far the FBI has not told us whether or not they’re going to respond to our March 15th letter, which is now a couple of weeks old.”

Casts doubts on those claims that “There Is No ‘Deep State.'”

TOLERANCE: Man Wearing MAGA Hat Denied Service at New York Bar, Sues. “If only he’d ordered a cake for a gay wedding.”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Anne Frank Center Targeted Tim Allen.

IF YOU PUT GOVERNMENT IN CHARGE OF THE SAHARA DESERT, IN FIVE YEARS THERE’D BE A SHORTAGE OF SAND: PepsiCo is pulling its products from Philly stores because of the city’s ‘soda tax’

Or maybe this was the endgame all along.

HEALTH: 100-Year-Old Ohio Man Credits Vodka and Dancing for Longevity.

Pretty sure this is settled science.

ANDREW MALCOLM: Say, why don’t we turn the Supreme Court into a reality TV show?

I thought that’s what the hearings were.

ANALYSIS… UNNECESSARY: Cosmopolitan Doesn’t Understand How The Constitution Works.