News Burst 8-9 May 2020
- The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a major toll on the American food supply chain, with some companies reducing slaughter capacity. However, many of these companies are owned by foreign investors. According to a May 2019 NPR report, “nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland are held by foreign investors. That number has doubled in the past two decades.” Smithfield Foods, Inc., owns more than 500 farms on 146,000 acres of U.S. soil. Smithfield was purchased by the Chinese company WH Group (then known as Shuanghui Group/Shineway Group), China’s largest meat producer, for $4.72 billion in 2013. Meanwhile, German investors own 71,000 acres of farmland in Ohio, according to that same NPR report. Out of all foreign investors, Canadians own the most farmland in the U.S. American farmers and corporations also invest in foreign agriculture, owning billions of dollars of farmland across the globe.
- An advanced group of Chinese hackers has recently been spotted to be behind a sustained cyber espionage campaign targeting government entities in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Brunei—which went undetected for at least five years and is still an ongoing threat. The group, named ‘Naikon APT,’ once known as one of the most active APTs in Asia until 2015, carried out a string of cyberattacks in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in search of geopolitical intelligence. According to the latest investigation report Check Point researchers shared, the Naikon APT group had not gone silent for the last 5 years, as initially suspected; instead, it was using a new backdoor, called “Aria-body,” to operate stealthily.
- In a new report on Thursday, the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) announced that the inflation rate in the 12-month period ending March 20, 2020 in for foodstuff, drinking water, beverages and tobacco products passed the 42 percent mark. The new overall inflation rate is up from 34 to 37 percent in comparison with the previous year for various subcategories according to the report. The SCI report also set the rate of inflation in the non-food and services categories at 31.4 percent during the same period.
- Shortly after Brandon Van Grack, chief of the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act division, filed a notice of his withdrawal in federal court in Washington, The Justice Department has this morning filed a motion to drop the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning the critical leg of many leftists’ belief in the Russia collusion bullshit.
- Texas salon owner Shelley Luther has been ordered released from jail after the governor and attorney general protested her imprisonment over violating the state’s lockdown and modified the shutdown orders to exclude imprisonment. Luther, who became a symbol of the movement to end Texas’ lockdown when she was arrested for refusing to shutter her Dallas salon despite a district judge’s restraining order, was ordered released from jail on Thursday by the Texas Supreme Court after serving two days of a seven-day sentence.
- A gas leak at a chemical plant in India has killed several people and put hundreds in hospital with breathing difficulties. Chilling images have emerged showing victims lying motionless on the ground in the wake of the tragedy. The gas, believed to be Styrene, is highly toxic when inhaled in high enough concentrations.
- US President Donald Trump told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Thursday that the US was ready to provide assistance to any country amid the coronavirus pandemic, including Russia, White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said.
- Indian-origin identical twin brothers, who were stranded at the Dubai airport for nearly 50 days due to the Covid-19 lockdown, finally boarded their flight to Kozhikode in Kerala today.The twins – Jackson and Benson Andrews – were among the 177 Indian passengers who were stranded at the Dubai International Airport’s terminal 3 since March 19 while they were returning from Lisbon, Portugal. They were among the 19 Indian passengers who were stuck inside the airport for over a month.
- The sale of used clothing is a billion-dollar global industry. According to some estimates, almost 70% of garments that are donated globally end up on the African continent. Donated items that cannot be sold in thrift shops in high-income countries are resold in bulk to commercial textile recyclers. The garments are then sent to sorting centers, often located in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. These are then graded and sorted into bales. The bales are in turn resold to wholesalers on the African continent. East Africa alone imports over $150 million worth of used clothes and shoes, largely from the US and Europe. In 2017, USAID estimated that the industry employed 355,000 people and generated $230 million in government revenue. It also supported the livelihoods of an additional 1.4 million in the East Africa Community bloc. In Malawi, where used clothes are known as “kaunjika” (meaning “clothes sold in a heap”). It is a popular and resilient business. A recent report predicts that the global second-hand clothing market is set to double to $51 billion in the next five years, exceeding fast fashion within a decade.
- Uganda’s Finance Minister Matia Kasaija has said the EU grants, totalling U.S.$50 million, will support three projects and programs that are meant to improve the standards of local products. It will include the funding of the inclusive green economy uptake program, which involves developing innovative products and projects that reduce environmental risks – a key benchmark for gaining access to the EU market.
Sun Activity
Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 7 days
2020 total: 98 days (75%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)
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Deepest EQ M4.1 448 km Kermadec Islands News Burst 8-9 May 2020
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