Hasta La Gadget!

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is dying due to changes in ocean temperature, and conventional attempts to save it (such as improving water quality or limiting fishing) haven’t panned out. However, scientists might have an unusual approach that works…

China’s space program just hit a milestone: according to Reuters, its first cargo probe has successfully proven that it can ferry supplies to orbit. Tianzhou-1 took off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in the mainland on April 20th. In the e…

PARIS, April 23 (Reuters) – France goes to the polls on Sunday for the first round of a bitterly fought presidential election, crucial to the future of Europe and a closely-watched test of voters’ anger with the political establishment.

Nearly 47 million voters will decide, under tight security, whether to back a pro-EU centrist newcomer, a scandal-ridden veteran conservative who wants to slash public spending, a far-left eurosceptic admirer of Fidel Castro or appoint France’s first woman president, to shut borders and ditch the euro.

The outcome will be anxiously monitored around the world as a sign of whether the populist tide that saw Britain vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s election in the United States is still rising, or starting to ebb.

Emmanuel Macron, 39, a centrist ex-banker who set up his party just a year ago, is the opinion polls’ favorite to win the first round and beat far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen in the two-person run-off on May 7.

For them to win the top two qualifying positions on Sunday would represent a seismic shift in the political landscape, as the second round would feature neither of the mainstream parties that have governed France for decades.

“It wouldn’t be the classic left vs right divide but two views of the world clashing,” said Ifop pollsters’ Jerome Fourquet. “Macron bills himself as the progressist versus conservatives, Le Pen as the patriot versus the globalists.”

But conservative Francois Fillon is making a bit of a comeback after being plagued for months by a fake jobs scandal, and leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon’s ratings have surged in recent weeks. Any two of the four is seen as having a chance to qualify for the run-off.

The seven other candidates, including the ruling Socialist party’s Benoit Hamon, two Trotskyists, three fringe nationalists and a former shepherd-turned-centrist lawmaker are lagging very far behind in opinion polls.

Months of campaigning has been dominated by scandals which have left many voters agonizing over their choice. Some 20-30 percent might not vote and about 30 percent of those who plan to show up at the polling stations are unsure whom to vote for.

Adding uncertainty to France’s most unpredictable election in decades, pollsters say they might not be able to give precise estimates of the outcome at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) as usual, because small and medium-sized polling stations will be open one hour longer than in past elections.

“CHEERING MADLY”?

Bankers and brokers in Paris and far beyond are expected to be glued to their screens all evening. The possibility of a Le Pen-Melenchon run-off is not the most likely scenario but is one which alarms them.

While Macron wants to further beef up the euro zone, Le Pen has told supporters “the EU will die.” She wants to return to the Franc, re-denominate the country’s debt stock, tax imports and reject international treaties.

Melenchon also wants to radically overhaul the European Union and hold a referendum on whether to leave the bloc.

Le Pen or Melenchon would struggle, in parliamentary elections in June, to win a majority to carry out such radical moves, but their growing popularity worries both investors and France’s EU partners.

“It is no secret that we will not be cheering madly should Sunday’s result produce a second round between Le Pen and Melenchon,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said, adding that the election posed a risk to the global economy.

Both U.S. President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama have shown interest in the vote.

Obama spoke with Macron over the phone on Thursday, and Trump said the following day he expected the killing of a policeman by a suspected Islamist in Paris to boost Le Pen’s chances.

Previous militant attacks, such as the November 2015 killings in Paris ahead of regional polls, did not appear to boost the votes of those espousing tougher national security.

If either Macron or Fillon were victorious, each would face challenges.

For Macron, a big question would be whether he could win a majority in parliament in June. Fillon, though likely to struggle less to get a majority, would likely be dogged by an embezzlement scandal, in which he denies wrongdoing.

Some 67,000 polling stations will open at 8 a.m., monitored by more than 50,000 police officers.

(Writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Andrew Roche)

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Samsung already gave a heads-up that Bixby wouldn’t be complete when the Galaxy S8 launched, but Verizon customers will have to make do with less than most… for a while, anyway. The American carrier has confirmed to CNET that its version of the S8…

It was not a particularly beautiful day today in New Haven, Connecticut. But everyone who gathered ― some 2,000 strong ― for the March for Science knew in advance that beautiful weather was unlikely. We knew it courtesy of meteorology, a science. An imperfect science, to be sure-but one we all count on just the same. Any time anyone checks a weather forecast, it’s a vote for science.

Despite the weather, I might have been dry and comfortable today courtesy of feathers, fur, or wool- had I been a duck, otter, or sheep- respectively. Those are adaptations, all, products of evolutionary biology and natural selection- which we understand courtesy of science.

Instead, I was comfortable and dry courtesy of Gore-Tex- a product of science.

It was not a particularly beautiful day today in New Haven, Connecticut. But everyone who gathered- some 2,000 strong- for the March for Science knew in advance that beautiful weather was unlikely. We knew it courtesy of meteorology, a science. An imperfect science, to be sure-but one we all count on just the same. Any time anyone checks a weather forecast, it’s a vote for science.

Despite the weather, I might have been dry and comfortable today courtesy of feathers, fur, or wool- had I been a duck, otter, or sheep- respectively. Those are adaptations, all, products of evolutionary biology and natural selection- which we understand courtesy of science.

Instead, I was comfortable and dry courtesy of Gore-Tex- a product of science.

Those who gathered under those brooding skies were overwhelmingly, and inevitably, those already convinced that immunization saves countless lives and is not significantly associated with autism; that climate change is real and we are complicit in it; and that this planet’s greatest treasure, its native biodiversity- is a product of evolution by natural selection over billions of years.

Our mission at today’s rally and march, I suggested, was to build bridges to those not marching with us- our neighbors, and coworkers, and cousins. Our mission was and is to build bridges that expand our reach and route of march, not burn bridges, and thus constrain them.

I proposed reminding those not marching with us, every chance we get, that the ACT of every tweet- sending organized electrons through cyberspace- trumps the content of any tweet repudiating the basic merits of science. But for science, no one would find their way to cyberspace in the first place.  

Every tweet is a vote for the products, power and practicability of the scientific method- and I asked those assembled to tweet, and retweet that. I ask those of you amenable to do the same. 

Some may be concerned that science is arrogant, and too sure of itself. But nothing could be further from the truth. Science is incredibly humble. It is riddled with doubt, and constantly prone to self-deprecation. It is all the stronger for it.  As Bertrand Russell said: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”  Good scientists are wise enough to know how much we don’t know. The reason the best scientists sometimes lose out to hucksters in the court of public opinion is that the hucksters feign certainty, while the true scientists forever hedge.

Science can be wrong, and acknowledges it can be wrong. But when it is wrong, what shows us the error, and the correction- is more science, not denial or alternative facts. Science is falsifiable, and verifiable- but always by more science, not by those who find the findings of science inconvenient.

It is despite the humility of science and the assault of doubt that truths are established beyond the shadows: gravity is real, climate change and our complicity in it are real, immunization saves countless lives, the earth is billions of years old, our solar system is heliocentric, evolution is real- and on a daily basis, science is repudiated by those using the endowment of its methods. It is not a given, incremental advance of science for which we marched- it is for the methods that fuel the advance, allowing all the while for the route to truth to be both hard and tortuous.

So I asked those gathered today – and I ask you ― to remind those not marching for this cause that the power, practicality, and proof of the scientific method are literally at everyone’s texting fingertips ― presidential and otherwise.

-fin

David L. Katz

Director, Yale University Prevention Research Center; Griffin Hospital

Immediate Past-President, American College of Lifestyle Medicine

Senior Medical Advisor, Verywell.com

Founder, The True Health Initiative

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.