Donald Trump’s chief economic advisor Gary Cohn is leaving the White House, and the markets aren’t happy.

S&P 500 futures immediately dropped by 1.1% on the news, which may not sound like a lot, but implies a loss of some $230 billion in the market value of the US stock market. They then continued downward, falling by 1.3% at 7:30 pm EST.

The resignation of Gary Cohn is a significant blow to Donald Trump’s Presidency, and recovering from it will be a significant challenge…

A successful President needs allies, and Mr. Trump has had them so far. By contrast, the tariff decision is a leadership fiasco that has cost Mr. Trump a key ally in Gary Cohn. It is a loss, and this Presidency cannot afford more like it.

There could be more turnover on the NEC staff following Cohn’s departure, depending on who ascends to the top job. The only name currently in wide circulation is Larry Kudlow, the economic commentator and former Reagan administration official. Kudlow, who urged Cohn to stick around, was caught by surprise by the announcement. Like Cohn, Kudlow has been highly critical of Trump’s decision on tariffs, something that could make it harder for him to get the job.

The problem for the Israeli leader is that there is a world beyond AIPAC. Later this week, he will go home, where the situation is far less agreeable… While his allies believe he may withstand the legal trouble, his critics are certainly hoping this was the last time he addresses AIPAC as the head of Israel’s government.

A national leader at the very top of his game, the prime minister did everything to show himself not merely inspiring and commanding, but irreplaceable. But it’s not AIPAC that will determine his fate. As things stand, it’s not Israeli voters either. It’s Israel’s law enforcement authorities.

Did he succeed in carrying this message? I’d argue that he was upstaged by well-timed events at home: a political crisis that could end his term, and the signing of yet another state witness against him. Since his meeting with Trump, and his AIPAC speech did not result in a dramatic headline – his trip was not a huge domestic success.

In short, an outbreak of diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula has begun, and the U.S. could find itself behind the curve, unable to adequately protect its interests or steer the process. There is also a risk that the arrival of diplomacy will prompt South Korea to cancel planned military exercises with the U.S., a step the U.S. fears will send a dangerous signal of weakness.

The Kim family has a long track record of promising changes, then snatching them away.
But it’s hard to see that Trump has much choice…

Kim appears to understand that the United States can hardly expose South Korea to a potentially apocalyptic war without support from Moon. To do so would court disaster diplomatically, economically and militarily.

Just a few months ago, following North Korea’s most powerful nuclear test and longest-range missile test ever, the Trump administration was insisting that the times weren’t ripe for talks with North Korea and that time was running out to avoid war over the country’s nuclear-weapons program. Now, after the United States set aside the stopwatch during the Olympics, Kim Jong Un is “controlling the clock,” says Jung Pak, who spent years studying Kim as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. government.

The State Department has been allocated tens of millions of dollars by Congress to deal with the coming threat to US elections by Russia and other foreign countries. It has spent a total of $0 of that money…

It’s one thing for Trump to say that the United States will “counteract” whatever Russia tries to do to interfere in the 2018 election. It’s another to actually counteract it. And there’s little evidence Trump’s administration is taking concrete steps to do that.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that he’s spoken about cyber threats with Trump. Coats said that without referring to Russia specifically, Trump said, “I assume you’re doing your job — all of you who head up these agencies relative to cyber — but if you need for me to say, direct you to do it, do it.”

Western leaders could mount an information-warfare campaign to reveal, to the Russian people and the rest of the world, just how much money Putin has…Of course, this would be awkward for the United States to reveal at the moment, as Putin’s spies could retaliate with spreadsheets exposing the Trump Organization’s far-flung holdings. We still don’t know just why President Trump declines to investigate, much less respond to, Russia’s cyberattacks on our democracy—why he refrains from uttering a single critical word about Putin or Russia…

The military operation in Afrin has broad public support in Turkey, and not only among supporters of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. Presumably, his strong stance against the U.S. administration and the European Union member states — Erdogan has used the threat of terror attacks in Europe by members of Islamic State in the event Turkey were to loosen its borders — have contributed to his popularity…

While no one quite believes the two governments will come to blows, U.S. policymakers are deluded or lying when they assert America’s and Turkey’s unity of purpose… the threat of open conflict between the two governments is real, and demonstrates the extent to which they have diverged. The differences continue to grow with every new day and military operation. Rather than sacrificing American values and interests, Washington should drop its fantasy expectations and establish a more realistic relationship with Erdoğan.

While wishful thinkers still hold out hope that U.S.-Turkish relations are strained by short-term concerns and eventually will rebound, a growing chorus of voices led by Daniel Pipes believes that “Erdoğan’s hostile dictatorship” has passed the point of no return and cannot be reconciled with American interests and values. Erdoğan’s increasingly brutal methods of governance, particularly since a July 2016 failed coup attempt against his regime, is wholly unbecoming of a NATO ally…

For Washington, it is time to both up the ante in seeking a course correction by Erdoğan and to prepare for the worst.

The Marshall Islands’ plans to accept a digital currency called SOV as its official currency is shaking up the digital currency markets, and it’s happening thanks to an Israeli startup called Neema.

On leaving the Pacific island nation this week, Israeli entrepreneur Barak Ben-Ezer, who is one of the owners of Neema, wrote: “Thank you, Marshall Islands, for enabling us to help you become the first country adopting a cryptocurrency as legal tender.

Today, most diagnoses of diseases including cancer are performed by pathologists, who examine tissue taken during biopsy and determine whether it is normal, benign or malignant. This painstaking process, using slides and a microscope, has remained stagnant over the past century, requiring years of training. Even a small cluster of unnoticed cancer cells can lead to a possibly fatal misdiagnosis.

Now Nucleai, a Tel Aviv-based startup, is developing an AI pathology system to help pathologists in the job.

In what the company has described as a first, Deep Instinct has applied deep learning to cyber security to develop a solution with predictive capabilities As cyber attacks continue to escalate there is a growing need for solutions that can protect against brand new – zero-day – threats in real-time. Deep Instinct can provide that real-time detection and prevention for a range of mobile devices, endpoints, platforms, and operating systems.