News Burst 26 January 2022 – Get The News!

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Massive blackouts have been reported in southern Kazakhstan, including parts of Almaty, the country’s former capital. The state-run energy firm KEGOC said a “critical imbalance” in the energy supply network was behind the outage, which also hit neighboring Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The Central Asian countries have been reliant on a single energy system since the Soviet era. Power was restored in Almaty and the surrounding region later on Tuesday, the company added.

Cryptocurrencies should be regulated in Russia, but not banned, according to Ivan Chebeskov, the Director of the Financial Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance. “Technologies of this kind should get a chance to develop,” the official said during a conference organized by Russian business-focused media RBC. According to the official, Russian authorities should protect the interests of those purchasing cryptocurrencies or using them in any technological solutions.

[Always “rules for thee but not for me”] Boris Johnson has been under increasing pressure to resign following reports of a lockdown birthday party attended by 30 staff. The Metropolitan Police have confirmed that an investigation has been launched into “a number of events” held at Downing Street over potential breaches of Covid rules. Speaking to the London Assembly on Tuesday, Police Commissioner Cressida Dick stated that the investigation was launched after Scotland Yard was provided with information “by the Cabinet Office inquiry team” and following her “officers’ own assessment.”

In a virtual talk scheduled for February 1, students at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, will hear how “professionalism,” understood here as codes of dress, behavior and etiquette in the workplace, is actually racist. Behind the social justice-speak, the argument is similar to one put forward by the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2020. Back then, the taxpayer-funded museum drew outrage when it suggested that a number of American virtues – including hard work, timekeeping, the nuclear family and planning for the future – are traits of “whiteness,” which must be dismantled.

A palace insider claimed members of the elite Royal police squad, who were supposed to be guarding the Duke of York, were ordered to act as ball boys for Andrew while he practised his stroke in the Buckingham Palace garden. Former Royal protection officer Paul Page, who was Andrew’s protection officer between 1998 and 2004, told the Mirror in 2019 the prince was “abusive and rude towards us as police officers”. He also claimed he saw the prince sweating while playing golf one time in the Buckingham Palace garden, despite his assertions in a 2019 Newsnight interview that he couldn’t sweat after receiving an overdose of adrenaline during the Falklands War.

On Monday, Julian Assange was granted permission to appeal the British High Court’s decision last month to allow his extradition to the US, where he is wanted on charges of espionage and revealing state secrets. The WikiLeaks co-founder faces up to 175 years in jail if found guilty on all counts. Rock legend Roger Waters called the decision a “small victory” in Assange’s years-long legal battle, arguing that he “should not have spent a single day” behind bars. “How many times do we have to explain this to the rest of the world? Not only has he committed no crime, but he’s one of the most important human beings on Earth. Why is that? Because he’s one of the few proper journalists on Earth,” Waters said.

“I will eat a happy meal on tv if @McDonalds accepts Dogecoin,” Elon Musk tweeted, eliciting mixed reactions. Some framed his enthusiasm as “so cringe”, knocking the coin or even accusing him of setting a bad nutritional example.

[Always “rules for thee but not for me”] Speaking on Tuesday, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam defended herself amid criticism of her decision to stop wearing masks during Legislative Council meetings and press conferences. Many citizens had complained about her conduct on social media, noting the hypocrisy of the situation as Lam reimposed fresh restrictions on the population. Questioned by a reporter on the matter during a press conference, she insisted that her decision to forgo the mask was “well thought out,” claiming her goal was to ensure residents could “feel her emotions.”

Tesla submitted a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday, accusing JPMorgan of “bad faith and avarice” for demanding $162.2 million after the bank had unilaterally changed the terms of warrants it received when the electric carmaker sold convertible bonds back in 2014. “JPMorgan pressed its exorbitant demand as an act of retaliation against Tesla both for it having passed over JPMorgan in major business deals and out of senior JPMorgan executives’ animus toward Mr. Musk,” Tesla said, adding that by changing the terms the banking multinational “dealt itself a pure windfall” after receiving a “multibillion-dollar payout” from Tesla’s soaring share price.

The Saudi Arabian government’s controversial Public Investment Fund has reportedly spent over a billion dollars to purchase one of the oldest and biggest gaming companies, ESL, which is responsible for organizing some of the largest esports competitions in the world, and an additional half a billion to buy out the FACEIT esports tournament platform. The fund is overseen by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and its purpose is to transition Saudi Arabia’s economy away from the traditional oil market and into the future with sizeable investments in various developing industries. As such, the fund has already bought considerable stakes in many major companies, spending some $3 billion on some of the biggest publishers in gaming, such as EA, Activision Blizzard, and Take Two.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says his nation stands with China in the face of attempts to ‘politicize’ sport through actions such as diplomatic boycotts by some Western countries at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. China is gearing up to host the Winter Games next month but the build-up has partly been characterized by a group of countries, spearheaded by the US, announcing they would shun the event at diplomatic level, supposedly in protest at Beijing’s human rights record. Officials in Russia have decried those actions as a political sideshow aimed at undermining the sporting showpiece, and contrary to Olympic principles of unity.

On Monday, Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, the spokesman for Mali’s Ministry of Administration and Decentralization, called on Denmark to “immediately withdraw” its 90 troops from the country after allegedly violating the protocols allowing European nations to intervene in the region. Speaking in Brussels on Tuesday, Kofod claimed, however, that Denmark had deployed forces to a French-led counterterrorism force after a “clear invitation” like “the other parties in the operation.” The Danish government claims the troops arrived in Mali after receiving an “invitation” to join a French-run counterterrorism unit.

The United States is mulling a CIA-researched package of additional sanctions against Russia in the event of an escalation over Ukraine, Bild reports. The sanctions package was reportedly presented in Berlin by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited the German capital last Thursday for meetings with his German counterpart, and developed by William Burns, the CIA chief who served as US ambassador to Russia between 2005 and 2008. According to the German newspaper, the new sanctions would target Russian commodities and weapons exports, with the total economic damage from the restrictions expected to reach the equivalent of up to $50 billion. Diplomatic contacts would also be reduced as part of the restrictions.

SpaceX to crash Falcon 9 Rocket into moon after it runs out of fuel. SpaceX launched its first deep-space mission in February 2015. The uncrewed Falcon 9 transported the refrigerator-sized Deep Space Climate Observatory into the void. However, because it doesn’t have enough fuel to return to Earth and land on a floating platform as planned, the rocket will instead be ploughed into the Moon. The Falcon 9’s second stage is about four metric tonnes and it should impact the Moon at an expected velocity of about 2.58 km/s. Bill Gray, the creator of the Guide astrometry software, said that after its February perigee – the point in the orbit of the Moon or a satellite at which it is nearest to the Earth – Falcon 9 will travel “to a point almost twice as far away as the Moon” before pausing and returning to crash into the far side of the rock. “With all the data, we’ve got a certain impact at 2022 4 March 12:25:39 latitude +4.93, east longitude 233.20, plus or minus a few seconds and a few kilometres,” Gray said. Professional and amateur astronomers use Gray’s Guide astrometry software to track near-Earth objects, asteroids, minor planets, and comets.

A team of researchers have come up with a new method that involves tracking stars’ evolution and determining how often they turn into black holes, according to space.com. Using this method, the team estimated that there are about 40 quintillion stellar-mass black holes – that is, black holes whose mass is roughly five to ten times that of the Sun – out there, comprising about one percent of all “normal matter”, as the media outlet puts it.

Fed chair Jerome Powell warned this month that inflation poses a “severe threat” to the labor market recovery and sustained economic expansion in the US. During the final moments of Joe Biden’s Monday afternoon news briefing, Fox News’ Peter Doocy was permitted to ask Biden a question in regard to the event, billed as a discussion on how to lower consumer prices for working American families. “That’s a great asset—more inflation,” Biden said facetiously, as Fox News’ Peter Doocy and others reporters being ushered out of the White House East Room.”What a stupid son of a b**ch,” Biden muttered into the mic.

Ghislaine Maxwell a ‘scapegoat’ and she won’t ‘flip’ to help prosecutors, says brother. “I accept that these accusers were victims of Jeffrey Epstein. What I do not accept is that they were victims of Ghislaine Maxwell.” He declined to apologise to the women who his sister was found to have trafficked, telling Sky News: “It’s not for me to apologise to those ladies.

News Burst 26 January 2022