First off, Mueller is quite happy with Flynn’s cooperation — happy enough to recommend that he serve no prison time. (This is a notable contrast to the positively scathing memo Mueller’s team wrote about George Papadopoulos, in which they said he did not provide “substantial assistance” and complained that he talked to the press.) Second, Flynn is cooperating in not one but three different investigations — Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, a separate criminal probe, and a third investigation of some kind.

Former national security advisor Michael Flynn has given special counsel Robert Mueller “first-hand” details of contacts between President Donald Trump’s transition team and Russian government officials, a bombshell court document filed Tuesday says.

[The memo] doesn’t implicate the president in any wrongdoing. The memo isn’t a “smoking gun” showing President Trump colluded with Russians to win the 2016 presidential election or did anything else illegal. In fact, the memo isn’t even a squirt gun. In terms of President Trump’s conduct, it amounts to nothing of any significance.

Voters and readers have the right, perhaps the power, to promote more visibility and accountability from those for whom they vote and whose news they read or view. But police and prosecutors should not intrude on this complex, messy and nuanced relationship between politics and the media, except in cases of clear and unambiguous financial corruption well beyond what is alleged in the current cases. So, let Netanyahu continue his important work. If Israelis don’t like what he is doing, they can vote against him.

…democracy gets increasingly harder to sustain when one leader has been in power for well over a decade. Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mendelblit, needs to keep this in mind when he decides whether to follow the police recommendation and order the prime minister’s indictment. This is not the time for the official charged with legal enforcement to subordinate the rule of law to political considerations. The attorney general’s job should be straight forward in this instance: If the evidence is strong, Netanyahu should be indicted.

In the coming weeks, Netanyahu will have to make the most important decision in his life. Since he has never really fought for peace but limited himself to maintaining the status quo, his upcoming decision will be a dramatic one; it will determine the way in which the Netanyahu era will come to an end, if indeed it does end. Will he drag Israel into a state of internal chaos? Or will he relax his grip on power and instead try to extricate himself from the imbroglio with minimum damage to all the parties involved? Will Netanyahu try to continue to serve as prime minister during the trial, or will he direct his efforts at a plea bargain?

…yield curve inversions [are] an unusually reliable indicator of coming downturns. “Any inversion of any sort is a surefire sign of a recession,” Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told the Wall Street Journal in July. The good news, to an extent, is that inversions are also a very early warning system. Most leading indicators of recessions show up six months to a year before the downturn hits. Yield curve inversions give you at minimum one year’s notice, and often as much as two or more.

The Cleveland Fed’s recession indicator, which measures the chances of an economic decline over the next 12 months, is currently at just 20.3 percent. However, as the curve has flattened the indicator has ticked higher, rising from 16.6 percent in October… Even then, there’s no certainty of a recession. Fed officials and some Wall Street strategists see a legitimate “this time is different” case for the yield curve.

Investing is dynamic. People learn. The yield curve has built up such a track record, and now receives so much attention, that it may not hold the same forecasting power it once did. It would be surprising if a forecast everyone used, worked in the same way as when just a few people looked at it. Equally, maybe broader knowledge of the potential power of an inverted yield curve may make it even more self-fulfilling. This is all to say that so much attention on a single indicator may be misplaced as relationships change over time, just as peoples’ behavior changes.

The French President views stopping climate change as a grand legacy project, and he had hoped to use higher fuel taxes to discourage driving for the sake of slashing carbon emissions. It didn’t matter to him that French emissions already are very low on a per capita basis and further cuts to transport emissions would be extremely difficult to achieve. But this matters a great deal to lower-income rural voters whose use of cars for daily life and business was about to become much more expensive.

…the power of social media to quickly mobilize mass anger without any mechanism for dialogue or restraint is a danger to which a liberal democracy cannot succumb. Mr. Macron and the Parliament were democratically elected only 18 months ago, and the reforms they have been pursuing, both within France and in the European Union, and on the environmental front, were what they openly promised in those elections and what France needs.

A cornerstone of the French president’s efforts to fight climate change through far-sighted legislation, the levy had met the ire of citizens, especially in car-dependent exurbs and rural areas without public transportation. Diesel now costs about €1.5 a liter in France, or about $6.50 a gallon, and the proposed tax would raise that even higher. The protesters have said that whereas Macron is focused on the end of the world, they are simply focused on the end of the month.

Several Jewish legal authorities have weighed in on requiring children to have vaccines or allowing religious exemptions for school children to avoid vaccination. Recently, in response to the outbreak of measles in the United States and Israel, many have called for universal vaccination. However, there still appears to be some resistance to requiring universal vaccination. One Jewish legal opinion written three years ago justified refusing vaccines on the grounds that the risks of contracting measles were low. These medical “claims” were erroneous then and are erroneous now.

[People] in the medical community, need to understand that these are good people, compassionate and caring parents, and intelligent. Their approach also comes from the heart, and incomplete knowledge. Therefore, when you tout all vaccines for all people with no side effects, they know that can’t be true, so they don’t believe anything you tell them. These people are genuinely worried that vaccinations can harm their children, more than the diseases they prevent. You need to acknowledge their fears, and educate truthfully.

Guarding your own health doesn’t only make sense, it’s actually a mitzvah. That means that even if you don’t want to do it, for whatever reason, you are still obligated to do so. The Torah is teaching us that our body is a gift from G‑d, and we are therefore not the owners of it and we can’t cause it any damage. It is not enough to deal with health issues as they arise; we must take precautions to avoid danger. The final chapter of the Code of Jewish Law emphasizes that “just as there is a positive commandment to build a guardrail around the perimeter of a rooftop lest someone fall, so too are we obligated to guard ourselves from anything that would endanger our lives

With the two telecom giants Verizon and AT&T now beginning to deploy 5G technology across the country, the metabolism of business, entertainment, education and health care will dramatically accelerate in the Next America, beginning around … 2020. Getting the most from artificial intelligence and machine learning — like deploying self-driving vehicles — requires quickly transmitting massive amounts of data with very low latency. We will have that capacity in the Next America. With 5G, a Hollywood movie that now takes six or seven minutes to download onto your iPad will take six or seven seconds and microsensors in your shirt will gather intelligence and broadcast vital signs to your doctor.

…public health experts, professors, and watchdog groups are increasingly concerned about the untested aspects that this next-gen cell network requires — including more cell towers and a constant chorus of higher-energy photons streaming through human bodies and dwellings. It’s a bit of a David and Goliath battle, as Big Telecom’s PR and marketing teams have been busy hyping the possibilities of 5G, while watchdog groups struggle to get funding for even meager studies into potential health effects.

The overall speed gains mean that phones will be better equipped to handle complex computing tasks in a fraction of the time they currently take. This could make advanced photography skills, artificial intelligence actions and augmented reality apps possible, all of which would take far too long to process on today’s phones. 5G technology will also allow driverless cars and buses to talk to each other. They’ll also be able to communicate with smart street lights and other vehicles on the road.