News Burst 8 February 2020 ~ February 8, 2020

News Burst 8 February 2020

• A Sydney psychiatrist who posted “bizarre” alt-right conspiracy theories he claimed were the directives of US President Donald Trump to his practice’s official website has been struck off the medical register. Many of the 300-plus posts from 2018 onwards related to the debunked QAnon conspiracy that suggests Trump is leading a crusade against “deep state” forces who protect satanic paedophile rings.
• August 2019: Three women’s rights activists are held in custody for “disrespecting compulsory hijab,” or the so-called Islamic dress code, have been sentenced to a total of 55 years and six months. February 2020: A “Revolutionary Court” Appeal in Tehran on has upheld prison sentences of Monireh Arabshahi, Yasamin Ariany, and Mojgan Keshavarz who are behind bars in the notorious Qarchak prison but for 31 years combined instead of 55.
• An Airbus A320 with 172 passengers on board has made an emergency landing in the Russian-controlled Khmeimim air base after Syrian air defenses nearly hit it. The Syrian air defenses were trying to repulse an Israeli attack near Damascus as four Israeli F-16 fighter jets struck eight air-to-ground missiles in the suburbs of Damascus without entering Syrian airspace. During the attack the passenger plane with 172 passengers on board en route from Tehran to Damascus was preparing to land. No Coincidence! The Israeli Air Force’s tactic of hiding behind unarmed and civilian aircraft to try to prevent the Syrian military from staging an effective air defense has become all too common, Lieut. Gen. Valery Gorbenko, former commander of the Russian Air Force’s 4th Air and Air Defense Army, has said.
• The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says Iranian security forces have raided journalists’ homes in recent days in an attempt to intimidate critics ahead of next month’s parliament elections.
• Chinese citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin have effectively been “the world’s eyes and ears” inside Wuhan. Fang posted a dramatic video on Friday showing him being forcibly detained and dragged off to a ‘quarantine’. He was detained over a video showing corpses piled up in a Wuhan hospital. However, he has already been released. Chen, meanwhile, seems to have vanished without a trace, and is believed to still be in government detention.

• Precautionary measures have been stepped up in Singapore to help minimize the potential spread of the novel coronavirus at Victoria Junior College, after a teacher at the school was one of three newly infected patients in Singapore.
• Following several cases of novel coronavirus without any links to previous cases or travel history to mainland China, Singapore on Feb 7 raised its Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) level to Orange from Yellow. With immediate effect, schools will suspend inter-school and external activities until the end of the March holidays, said the Ministry of Health (MOH). These include the national school games, learning journeys and camps.
• Sometime last autumn, a security contractor based in Asia took a call that he found curious. The man on the other end of the line, a long-time acquaintance and, like him, an expert in protecting VIPs and valuable cargoes in challenging environments, was looking to hire for a job in Japan. He offered few specifics. The assignment would involve escorting someone out of the country, he said. It would pay well. And he was looking for operatives with military or police experience and, ideally, fair-skinned East Asian faces – the kind that wouldn’t stand out in Tokyo. The contractor wanted to know more. Who would the operatives be protecting? What was the specific threat? Would the client be carrying cash or gold or something else of value? The caller wouldn’t say. The contractor was non-committal but said he would get in touch if anyone else came to mind. They hung up, and the contractor did not think about the job again – until he and the rest of the world saw the news about Carlos Ghosn.
• “Nightmare at Sea”
  • 42 additional cases of coronavirus, including an infected passenger who got on the ship in Japan, had been discovered on the Diamond Princess cruise ship which is anchored in Yokohama, Japan. The ship is capable of carrying 3,000, but it’s unclear how many are on board.
  • A Royal Caribbean cruise ship that has a dozen passengers quarantined over fears of coronavirus has docked in Bayonne, New Jersey, this morning. The passengers of the ship are all Chinese nationals – many of whom started exhibiting symptoms while aboard the ship, which was coming back from the Bahamas.

• Millimeter wave imaging currently uses radio waves in the frequency range of 24-30 gigahertz (GHz). 5G will use spectrum in the existing LTE frequency range (600 MHz to 6 GHz) and also in millimeter wave bands (24–86 GHz). ***24 GHz*** What you don’t hear about is the potential to use 5G towers for 3D image surveillance. Consider body imaging scanners which use the same millimeter frequency. How do they work? They scan around the target and construct an image based on the waves being reflected. High radio frequencies 5G uses aren’t able to travel as far as current 4G wavelengths. This means 5G will require an enormous expansion of current cell tower infrastructure in order to function. Now consider the requirement for 5G towers to be in close proximity to one another. The same principals can be applied to construct a 3D image of an area between several towers. The technology itself is not inherently bad, but like surveillance cameras, there isn’t really an opt-out. Since we can only talk about this as a hypothetical application for now, we can’t examine whether this would lead to privacy invasion issues such as providing imagine within a private business or residence. The US is in fierce competition for control of the 5G spectrum. I’m trying to keep the scope of this topic narrow, but this is just scratching the surface of how life can radically shift through the use of 5G technologies. Anonymous Conservative comments on the linked article. “He is right. They will not flood that radiation out, and then your local observation posts just decide to not exploit it for Marquis of Queensbury rules. You will see no difference in 5G. Your phone videos will look the same, and everything will be indistinguishable to you. It has another purpose. None of the new tech that is released today is being done simply to make your life better, unless you are one of the very few at the top of the pyramid. Everything is about getting control over you, by watching you every moment of every day and trying to commit anything you want to be private to your permanent record so if you ever begin to really succeed it can be used against you.” [The ‘5G fry your brain’ looks like it’s the “straw man”]
• Johnson & Johnson was ordered by a New Jersey jury to pay an additional $750 million in punitive damages to a group of former Baby Powder users who had already been awarded $37.2 million as compensation for cancers they blamed on asbestos in the talc-based product. After the verdict Thursday in New Brunswick, state court Judge reduced the punitive award to $186.5 million. State law limits the amount to five times the compensatory damages awarded to the plaintiffs last year.
• Some of Obama’s Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients:
  • Bill Gates
  • Melinda Gates
  • Warren Buffet
  • Joe Biden
  • Angela Merkel
  • Tom Hanks
  • Ellen DeGeneres
  • Barbara Streisand
  • Meryl Streep
  • Robert De Niro
  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Bill Clinton already covered Edgar Bronfman Sr. & David Rockefeller. Just to clear up a joke/hoax going around – Obama did not give a medal of freedom to Weiner or Weinstein.
• The FBI team investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election cultivated and maintained numerous sources close to Donald Trump during the election and the transition period when Trump was entering the White House. One person who was in direct contact with Trump and who was utilized by one FBI agent to, “obtain insight into the incoming Trump administration.” Another source was described as voluntarily providing the FBI team probing Trump with large volumes of documents. Yet another FBI source held a position in the Trump campaign and another was described as a Trump “supporter.” Another source was documented as attending a private gathering with Trump. These disclosures and others were made inside the Justice Department’s previously released 476-page Inspector General report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane.

• A Tehran Police official on Friday said indecently dressed mannequins that weaken “the culture of modesty and hijab” and “promote immorality” will be removed by the police from shop windows.
• Anti-Trump impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother have been fired and escorted out of the White House by security, according to his Alexander Vindman’s attorney.
• White House asks scientists to investigate whether 2019-nCoV was bio-engineered.

Weekely Asteroid

• 2020 BW5 2020-Feb-09 5.2 Lunar Distance 9 km/s 18 m.
  Lunar Distance = 384,401 km

Sun Activity

A solar wind stream hit Earth’s magnetic field on Feb. 6th. The stream’s arrival was expected, but its power was not. Wind speeds are now near 600 km/s–the fastest of the year so far. First contact with the gaseous material produced outburst of auroras over Rovaniemi, Finland. spaceweather.com

Active Weather

• Category 3 – Severe Tropical Cyclone Damien – Pilbara coast, Western Australia – 75-105 kts↑ 963 hPa↓ – Moving S 7 kts

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.7 Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in US M3.2 Oklahoma
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.5 Drake Passage
Deepest EQ M4.6 627 km Vanuatu
Deep EQ M4.9 575 km Northern Mariana Islands
Deep EQ M4.5 551 km Ndoi Island, Fiji News Burst 8 February 2020