News Burst 14 April 2020
News Burst 14 April 2020. By Disclosure News.
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News Burst 14 April 2020
- A massive garden stones, the largest of which weighs 9.8 tons, were excavated at the residence, in Kyoto Japan, of a shogunate family in the Muromachi Period (1336-1573), in what archaeologists believe was a demonstration of their immense power and influence. The largest stone is nearly 3 meters long and one of eight, seven of which are situated around the site of a pond in the former residence of the Ashikaga Shogunate. Experts said the unearthed stones, unusually huge compared with those found at other garden sites of ruling elites, were undoubtedly intended to show off the great power wielded by the shogun and his family.
- Russian authorities have arrested a group of several dozen individuals who allegedly sold more than 1 billion counterfeit rubles (roughly $13.6 million in nominal value) for crypto assets over the dark web. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has described the scale and scope of the operation as unprecedented. Small batches of between 10,000 ($136) and 150,000 ($2,400) fake roubles were sold for 30 cents on the dollar, while bulk orders of 500,000 ($6,800) or more were priced at between 10% and 15% of their nominal value. Buyers would make payments using an anonymous wallet and exclusively with cryptocurrencies, Kommersant reports. The bills would then be delivered to various hiding places for collection.
- A man involved in the death of a 1-year-old child in 2015 has pleaded guilty to injury to a child causing serious bodily injury and has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Charles D. Flournoy, who is now 26 years old, is a co-defendant in the case and was the mother’s boyfriend. In February 2020, 23-year-old Madison Rodriguez was found guilty of aggravated assault, domestic violence with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury. She was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Rodriguez was 18-years-old when she was initially charged with capital murder in 2015. She, along with then 21-year-old Charles Dillon Flournoy were both charged in connection with the death of 1-year-old Mason Rodriguez.
- Tech giants Apple and Google have joined forces to develop an interoperable contract-tracing tool that will help individuals determine if they have come in contact with someone infected with COVID-19. As part of this new initiative, the companies are expected to release an API that public agencies can integrate into their apps. The next iteration will be a built-in system-level platform that uses Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons to allow for contact tracing on an opt-in basis. The APIs are expected to be available mid-May for Android and iOS, with the broader contact tracing system set to roll out “in the coming months.” “Privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance in this effort, and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders,” the companies said. The rare collaboration comes as governments worldwide are increasingly turning to technology such as phone tracking and facial recognition to battle the virus and contain the coronavirus outbreak. [Root your phone!]
- Criminal activities have decreased drastically in Kathmandu Valley in the last 20 days due to the government-imposed nationwide lockdown from March 24. A comparative data of 10 days from March 14 to March 23 (before the beginning of the lockdown) and the last 20 days of lockdown shows that crime rate has decreased by 86 per cent during the lockdown. A study conducted by THT includes 12 types of crimes — rape, murder, attempt to murder, drug abuse and trafficking, cyber crimes, theft, social offence, banking offence, black marketing, swindling, vehicular accidents and kidnapping. Kathmandu valley had seen a total of 10 rapes in 10 days just before the lockdown, while there were only three reported cases of rape during the 20- day lockdown period. There was no record of murder during the lockdown while three murders were recorded in the 10-day time-frame prior to the lockdown.
- Antarctica is now a harsh land of ice and snow, but has not always been that way. Earth’s southernmost continent long ago was home to temperate, swampy rainforests teeming with life, scientists said on Wednesday based on pristinely preserved forest soil they retrieved by drilling under the seafloor off Antarctica’s coast. The sediment core obtained by scientists working aboard the research icebreaker RV Polarstern in the Amundsen Sea near the Pine Island Glacier dated to about 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs were the dominant land animals. The researchers estimated based on the soil content that this location, 560 miles (900 km) from the South Pole, experienced average annual temperatures of about 53-55 degrees Fahrenheit (12-13 Celsius) and average temperatures during the warmest summer months of about 68-77 Fahrenheit (20-25 Celsius). That is exceptionally warm for a location near the South Pole, where the average annual temperature now is around minus 40 Fahrenheit (minus 40 Celsius).
- Jordanian authorities arrested Roya TV channel’s owner, Fares Sayegh, and its news director and presenter, Mohammad al-Khalidi, on Thursday, over broadcasting a report of Jordanians suffering financial difficulties due to the coronavirus lockdown. Both Sayegh and Khalidi will remain in custody for 14 days, local media reported. Jordan is a cash-strapped kingdom with a national debt standing at $42.6bn in January 2020. A general lockdown was imposed on 20 March in towns and cities, and businesses were asked to shut amid fear of coronavirus’ spread. Numbers of infected people and Covid-19-related deaths remain relatively low in the kingdom, with 372 confirmed cases and seven dead. But as in many countries, Jordanians are said to be feeling the economic pinch without the ability to work or secure income. Roya’s report showed one man and two women saying that they were going to be forced “to beg” and break the curfew orders, as they had been left without any income.
- Kim Jong Un’s Sister’s Rise Continues. Kim Yo Jong was reappointed to North Korea’s politburo. She was appointed to North Korea’s politburo in 2017 but is believed to have been removed last year after a second Kim-Trump summit fell through. Now she’s been reinstated. Kim Yo Jong has long been a close aide to her brother, but is recently rising again within the country’s hierarchy, experts say. On Saturday, she was reappointed to the central committee’s political bureau as an alternate member; the Korea Herald describes it as the top policymaking body in the country and says Kim Yo Jong’s reappointment marks her “comeback.” Other top officials were also reshuffled that day, with Kim Jong Un presiding over the meeting during which Kim Yo Jong’s appointment was confirmed. She was also recently appointed first vice-department director of the central committee of the ruling Workers’ Party, and just last month started issuing statements under her own name. Also at Saturday’s meeting, the party adopted a resolution to take “more thorough state measures to protect life and safety of our people from the great worldwide epidemic disease” of COVID-19. North Korea officially claims zero coronavirus cases, but the Korea Times reports some observers think the country might be hushing up an outbreak.
- Child sex abuse in Pakistan’s religious schools is endemic. Muhimman is just 11 years old and was a good student who had dreams of being a doctor. Earlier this year, a cleric at the religious school he faithfully attended in the southern Punjab town of Pakpattan took him into a washroom and tried to rape him. Muhimman’s aunt, Shazia, said she believes the abuse of young children is endemic in Pakistan’s religious schools. She said she has known the cleric, Moeed Shah, since she was a little girl and describes him as an habitual abuser who used to ask little girls to pull up their shirts. Dozens of police reports, known in Pakistan as First Information Reports, alleging sexual harassment, rape and physical abuse by Islamic clerics teaching in madrassas or religious schools throughout Pakistan, where many of the country’s poorest study. There are more than 22,000 registered madrassas in Pakistan, teaching more than 2 million children.
- Seven illegal immigrants were arrested at Outjo on Sunday in a joint operation between the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration and the Namibian Police. According to the spokesperson of the Otjozunjupa police the operation, conducted by members of the police and immigration officials, resulted in seven illegal immigrants, five men and two women, from Zimbabwe being arrested without the necessary immigration permits or documentation.
- From meditation to memory games, former political prisoners in Myanmar are dishing out tips on surviving isolation in a pandemic as the country once severed from the world again closes its borders. The south-east Asian state spent nearly half a century under a paranoid, secretive junta that violently suppressed dissent, jailed its critics and locked the country off as it drove the economy into ruin. Pro-democracy activist Bo Kyi (56) was one of thousands jailed, spending eight years behind bars in the 1990s. His punishment included 12 months in solitary confinement in a cell of 2,5 m by 3,5 m which was furnished with just a bowl for a toilet and a mat to sleep on. Last week he posted advice on Facebook about how to cope with isolation to his compatriots holed up at home, gripped by fears over the coronavirus in a country with a threadbare public health system.
- A Brooklyn Center woman charged with duping several members of the Hmong community into investing in a nonexistent ginseng farm was arrested in Georgia after eluding authorities for more than two years. Mai Vu Vang, 51, was arrested and extradited to Minnesota over the weekend. Minnesota authorities allege that between 2012 and 2014, Vang persuaded nine Minnesota victims to give her more than $450,000 for a purported farm near Wausau, Wis. A couple who knew Vang from church gave her their life savings, the county attorney’s office said. Investigators discovered that in those two years, Vang spent an increasingly higher amount of money at Mystic Lake Casino buying chips or playing slot machines, eventually totaling more than a million dollars.
- When Lion Air Flight 610 took off in clear skies a year ago, the 737 jetliner carried with it an anti-stall system designed by Boeing that would propel the plane into a nose-dive minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 aboard. But the plane was saddled with another safety burden. Flight 610 was operated by Lion Air, a low-cost Indonesian carrier that has benefited from its political connections to become one of the world’s fastest growing airlines, despite a questionable safety record. While Boeing has faced intense scrutiny after two fatal crashes in less than five months, Lion Air has escaped similar attention.
Sun Activity
Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 8 days
2020 total: 78 days (75%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)
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Strongest EQ in North America M3.2 29 km depth California – Nevada Border
Strongest EQ on the Planet 5.2 Peru
Deepest EQ M4.2 180 km Argentina News Burst 14 April 2020
