Editor’s Note: More extremes of all sorts listed below. Please read, know of changes triggered by extremes, and BE…

InJoy!

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News Burst 16 January 2020

• On Wednesday, a day after India’s top court dismissed the mercy plea by two of the convicts in 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, Delhi prison authorities have told Delhi High Court that due to one of the four convicted in the case pending petition for mercy to the President of India, there would be no execution of the four convicts on 22 January.
• Two Iranian missiles struck down a Ukrainian passenger jet, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, posting verified security camera footage showing double projectiles gliding through the sky before hitting their target. The missiles were fired 30 seconds apart and help explain a mystery as to why the plane’s transponder was not working – it was disabled by the first strike, before being hit by a second, the Times said.
• Lawyers for Michael Flynn, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, on Tuesday said in a court filing that he would seek to withdraw his guilty plea in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Flynn pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office, but has since argued that prosecutors violated his rights and duped him into a plea agreement.
• Sweden admits sending fake officer to NATO. The Swedish man had for many years worked with some of the nation’s top secrets. Not only did he make a career in the military intelligence service and work for the defence group Saab, he also held high military positions abroad – despite lacking a military education as such.
• The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) network of sensors designed specifically to detect gravitational waves has already detected at least two collisions of ultra-dense neutron stars, but has never picked up a phenomenon known as burst gravitational waves, until now. The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors reported an unanticipated “burst” of gravitational waves on January 14, possibly for the first time ever.

• The Russian government has resigned, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced. The prime minister thinks it right that the current government should step down in the wake of the presidential proposals to amend the constitution, Medvedev told President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with the cabinet. “After those amendments are adopted — and it was said that this is likely to be done following discussion — there will be significant changes not only to a variety of constitution articles, but to the balance of power, namely to the executive, legislative and judicial branches of power,” the prime minister said.
• Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart have been hit with a barrage of criticism from India’s brick-and-mortar retailers who accuse the U.S. giants of violating Indian law with deep discounts and discriminating against small sellers by promoting select big ones.
• Amazon said it will setup digital centers in 100 Indian cities and villages to help businesses get online to sell their goods and will offer support in marketing and logistics. The investment of $1 billion will help bring more than 10 million Indian businesses online and enable exports of India-made goods worth $10 billion by 2025, it added.
• Amazon, which paid $0 in taxes, made more than $11 billion in profit in 2018—almost 16,000 times as much as the $690,000 donation for Australian bushfires recovery. Bezos himself could afford to contribute a great deal. By Business Insider’s calculations, Bezos’s income grew by $34 million per day in the past three months, meaning Bezos made approximately $690,000 every 30 minutes give or take.
• Attorney Michael Avenatti was arrested by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents Tuesday evening during a break in a disciplinary hearing in Los Angeles over allegations that the high-profile lawyer scammed a client out of $840,000.

• The National Security Agency has discovered a major security flaw in Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system that could allow hackers to intercept seemingly secure communications, but rather than exploit the flaw for its own intelligence needs, the NSA tipped off Microsoft so that it can fix the system for everyone. In other words, somebody else had discovered it as well.
• US Congressmen Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler are among the seven lawmakers to be named as House of Representatives impeachment managers in the Senate trial of US President Donald Trump, the Office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in a statement on Wednesday.
• Iranians called on social media on Wednesday (Jan 15) for fresh demonstrations a week after the shooting down of a passenger plane, seeking to turn the aftermath of the crash into a sustained campaign against Iran’s leadership. Protesters, with students at the forefront, have staged daily rallies in Tehran and other cities since Saturday.
• The Pakistani army has been called-in to assist with relief efforts as many regions, particularly in the north of the country, continue to be ravaged by brutal, anomalous cold and snow. At least 100 people have died, with many more reported injured, as severe cold and heavy snowfall continued to lash parts of Pakistan on Wednesday, January 15. Northern parts have seen 62+ people die this week alone after avalanches buried some fifteen villages in Azad Jammu & Kashmir, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). In addition, over 50 house were destroyed in the region. Furthermore, at least 25 people were killed and around 40 houses flattened in the province of Balochistan during the last 24 hours.

Active Weather

• Tropical Cyclone Claudia – 35-50 kts↓ 998 hPa↑- W of Australia Moving W 10 kts↓

Strongest EQ in Europe M3.8 Kosovo
Strongest EQ in US M3.2 Alaska
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.5 Kupang, Indonesia
Deepest EQ M5.3 511 km South of Fiji Islands News Burst 16 January 2020