News Burst 19 April 2020
- Some people will use Gab Social.
Some will use the Dissenter browser.
Others will use Gab Trends.
More still will use ON.
Some will use them all.
Or a mixture of a few, but not others.
The point is people will have a choice outside of the Silicon Valley cartel of surveillance capitalism and the capitulation to enemies both foreign and domestic.
- Microsoft along with several pharmaceutical companies is developing a special chatbot to encourage people who have recovered from the novel coronavirus to donate their plasma to those who are currently being treated
- What’s The Difference Between Fake News & Hypernormalisation? Before the current Coronavirus pandemic, the Canadian government took delivery of the Broadband Telecom Legislative Review. The 235-page report offered 97 recommendations for revamping internet and broadcasting oversight, most of them bad ones. Among them were provisions for requiring all content creators to obtain a license for operating from the government and “discoverability provisions” to force major tech platforms to emphasize “credible sources of news” over others (what the government calls “Approved Media”). Shortly after that the government-funded CBC marshalled a gaggle of “Approved Media” in Canada (no doubt one of entities who will receive part of that $600,000,000 subsidy package announced in the run up to the last election) to call forth the government to legislate “trusted sources” of news.
- Watching Hong Kong closely to see if Beijing, having mostly reopened the mainland economy, relieving the pressure for the first time in months, would turn its attention back to its top priority pre-corona: Crushing an insurgent pro-democracy movement in the Special Administrative Region. Early on Saturday morning in Hong Kong, HK police arrested 15 pro-democracy movement activists, including a high-profile tycoon who was one of the few members of the HK business community to vehemently back the protest movement. The targets included Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, and 14 other supporters. The pretext for the arrest was their involvement in last year’s protests.
- The United States has launched a ‘full scale investigation’ into whether COVID-19 escaped from a biolab in Wuhan, China. According to the report, US intelligence operatives are gathering information regarding the laboratory and the initial outbreak of the virus. The investigation will help intelligence analysts piece together a timeline for what the CCP knew, as well as ‘create an accurate picture of what happened.’
- Twitter lost its six-year legal battle to let the public know exactly how many requests it received from the FBI to snoop on private user accounts. After years of litigation that spanned the tenures of four US attorneys general — Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Jeff Sessions and William Barr — US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted the government’s request to dismiss the lawsuit. She wrote in an 11-page ruling that the Justice Department had shown, in part through the use of confidential declarations, that releasing the precise number of national security letters from 2014, which is what Twitter wanted to do, posed a national security risk.
- Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe said Friday that the World Health Organization, which faces criticism over its response to the coronavirus pandemic, is in need of reform but stressed that Japan has no plan to stop funding the UN agency. “There are views that it is politically not neutral,” Abe told a press conference, in an apparent reference to criticism including from US President Donald Trump that the WHO has taken stances favorable to China, where the new coronavirus was first reported late last year.
- Thick smoke hung over Ukraine’s capital Kiev on Friday as forest fires smouldered on in the Chernobyl nuclear zone, but city officials said no radiation spike had been detected. The acrid haze hindered visibility all over the city of three million people and the smell of smoke permeated homes as Kiev jumped to the top of high air pollution rankings.
- Mount Semeru in Lumajang, East Java, has reportedly shown elevated volcanic activity that was marked with a 300-second tectonic earthquake and a 2,000-meter-high column of ash blowing south. The increasing activity was recorded on Friday morning at around 6 a.m., the Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center confirmed, citing that the mountain had persistently erupted and expelled lava from its crater since the beginning of April.
- Undocumented and overstaying Nepalis in Kuwait could be deprived of amnesty as Nepal is under lockdown. Kuwait government has offered a general amnesty to undocumented workers allowing them to leave the country without having to pay any fines and airfares and also the option to return Kuwait later.
- US President Donald Trump does not see an increase in military tension with Russia amid the pandemic and is convinced that the two countries have “a very good relationship.” He stated this at a briefing for journalists in the White House on Saturday. When asked if “US opponents,” such as the North Korea, Russia, China and Iran, are trying to take advantage of the coronavirus situation to the detriment of the United States, hampering Washington’s policies and creating military tension, Trump said: “No, I don’t see it. We have very good relationship with Russia. We worked together on the oil deal. That was a very important deal to them and to us and to Saudi Arabia.”
- Newly-discovered Comet SWAN (C/2020 F8) is shaping up to be a beauty. It looks great through small telescopes now, and could become visible to the naked eye next month.
Sun Activity
Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 12 days
2020 total: 84 days (76%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)
Strongest EQ in Europe M4.4 Italy
Strongest EQ in North America M4.3 Alaska
Strongest EQ on the Planet 6.6 South west of Japan
Deepest EQ M6.6 453 km South west of Japan News Burst 19 April 2020
Rose Rambles... 