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News Burst Live Feed – Jun 21, 2020 Last Updated 2020-06-21 00:00:11
| Beijing has slammed Taiwan for its new plan to harbor asylum seekers from Hong Kong, which has seen massive anti-government protests and rioting. This “plot” will backfire, China said. “Providing shelter for and taking onto the island the rioters and elements who bring chaos to Hong Kong will only continue bring harm to Taiwan’s people,” China’s State Council Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson, Zhu Fenglian, told reporters. Earlier this week, Taiwan unveiled a plan to set up a government-funded agency to help asylum seekers from Hong Kong, a self-governing region of China, settle on the island. The proposed scheme includes a basic living allowance and help with employment for Hongkongers seeking “shelter” from Beijing. Zhu slammed the plan as a “political plot to intervene in Hong Kong affairs and undermine Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.” She said that the idea undermines the ‘one country, two systems’ formula, which allows Hong Kong to retain a degree of autonomy in its domestic policy, while China handles its foreign affairs. |
| The Nepal Department of Immigration on Monday decided to ban five of the six foreigners, detained for participating in a youth-led anti-government protest on Saturday in Maitighar, from entering Nepal for two years. Ramesh Kumar KC, director-general at the department, told that the foreigners had violated the terms of their visa by taking part in the protest. “Foreigners can’t take part in any demonstrations over internal issues of the country, as per prevailing laws. The six appear to have violated this law,” said KC. The detainees are: Kalani Gacon, 24, from Australia; Stephanie Ann Thornton, 32, from the US; Marita Liverod, 31, from Norway; and Qin Li, 40; Li Xu, 26, and Yanan Jia, 30, from China. “The department has banned five foreigners from China, USA and Australia from entering Nepal for two years,” said KC. “But in the case of the Norwegian national, Marita Liverod, she was found to be on a marriage visa,” said KC. “The five will be deported after the lockdown ends and will not be allowed to enter Nepal for two years.” The department has released them on bail for now. |
| Ten people were missing after a boat carrying 16 fishermen capsized in Indonesian waters near the Anak Krakatau volcano, officials said Saturday. Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said the motorboat sank on Thursday after being hit by strong waves in the Sunda strait. “Six were rescued alive on Friday and we continue searching for the 10 people still missing today,” Indonesia’s search and rescue agency spokesman Muhammad Yusuf Latif told AFP on Saturday. The group had attempted to swim to nearby Rakata island, he added. “Six returned to the capsized boat and they were rescued. But the other 10 continued swimming and their whereabouts remain unknown,” Latif said. Rescue teams expanded their search for survivors on Saturday. Boat accidents are common in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, due to lax safety standards. |
| US identifies 12 Mexican products linked to forced or child labor. Import sanctions could be imposed on tomatoes, chiles and other exports. Child labor could trigger issues under the new trade agreement. The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) maintains a list of goods and their source countries which it has reason to believe are produced by child labor or forced labor in violation of international standards, as required under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2005. The List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor comprises 148 goods from 76 countries, as of September 20, 2018. The list of prohibited Mexican products also includes pornography. |
| Lockdown could be bad for you back. Thanks to measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, many of us are now working from home. This means you might not be moving around as much, and your home desk setup (and the posture you adopt while working) might not be as good as it should be. These are all things that can lead to back pain. Common poor desk posture is actually very similar to the posture astronauts adopt during spaceflight in zero-gravity. Usually this is a forward leaning posture with a forward head position and the loss of normal spinal curves. Being in space also has similar effects to staying in bed all day. At the Aerospace Medicine and Rehabilitation Laboratory at Northumbria University (UK), a team of researchers look into ways of keeping the spine healthy in astronauts during space missions. But this research can also be used to help those of us on Earth keep our spines healthy when working from home. |
| The People’s Republic is making certain progress in the development and testing of new digital systems of payment, seeking to escape dependence on the US dollar. China is reportedly mulling over the creation of an East Asia “stablecoin” – with the Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, Korean won, and Hong Kong dollar pegged to it – in a move which may bring global competition for supremacy in digital currencies to the next stage, as Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei noted last Sunday. The plan was purportedly outlined by Neil Shen, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and founding partner of Sequoia Capital China. If implemented, a regional stablecoin may bolster cross-border transactions and reduce the usage of the US dollar within the region. |
| Britain’s foreign ministry appeared to agree with several points Russian President Vladimir Putin made in his new article on the legacy of World War II. A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said in a statement that “our shared history should not be used as a political instrument or re-written” by governments in their own interests. The spokesperson noted that it was the courage and sacrifices of the USSR, the United States, the United Kingdom and all their allies that led to the “defeat of the Nazi regime”. Vladimir Putin has penned an article outlining his views on the origins of the Second World War and rejecting attempts to blame the outbreak of the conflict on the Soviet Union. An English translation appeared in the magazine The National Interest this week. The magazine’s editor, Jacob Heilbrunn, explained that the idea of the publication was to trigger “more debate about the past and the present” and steer American policy toward a more realist viewpoint. In September 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution blaming the outbreak of the war in part on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Putin at the time described the resolution, which was backed by Polish MEPs, as “complete nonsense”, and a diplomatic feud ensued between the Polish and Russian leadership over the origins of the war. |
| The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is practically completed, and the United States has no way of influencing the situation, reported Die Welt. Despite Washington’s efforts to hamper the process, Moscow managed to circumvent restrictive measures imposed against the ambitious project, that is scheduled to carry up to 1.942 trillion cubic feet of gas per year from Russia to Germany through the territorial waters or exclusive economic zones of Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia, and Sweden. The German publication notes that the Akademik Cherskiy pipe-laying vessel owned by Gazprom has now been registered with the Samara Thermal Energy Property Fund (STIF), operating in Russia, according to the international registry of ships. This allows the state-owned corporation to complete the gas pipeline, circumventing Washington’s restrictions. “Akademik Chersky” has been thrown in the spotlight after it was identified as the vessel potentially linked with the completion of the Nord Stream-2 venture. The pipe-laying vessels of the Swiss contractor Allseas had withdrawn from the project after their owners were threatened with US sanctions for their involvement. |
| Airlines have yet to approve most passengers’ requests for cash refunds of cancelled international flights following the massive number of cancellations amid the pandemic, the Indonesian Travel Agent Association (Astindo) has stated. From Rp 2.45 trillion (US$173.2 million) worth of cash refunds requested for cancelled international flights issued between January to February this year, only Rp 852 billion have been refunded so far, according to Astindo data collected from its members. “This is only for international flights, not to mention domestic flights,” Astindo secretary-general Pauline Soeharno told The Jakarta Post on Thursday, adding that customers still preferred cash refunds over travel vouchers. |
| Sometime in the late 1800s, a British-Indian Railway Company headquarters received a curious telegram: ‘Tiger jumping about platform, men will not work; please arrange’, it said. Then in 1892, an artist turned this little note into a sketch and published it in The Graphic, a popular British weekly illustrated newspaper. It was captioned, ‘An Awkward Visitor at an Upcountry Railway Station in India’. |
| Fuji TV, Sankei Shimbun used opinion polls with fake replies. Executives of a media conglomerate faced the embarrassment of having to admit that outsourced opinion polls carried out over the past year included made-up answers. The Sankei Shimbun concerned public opinion surveys conducted between May 2019 and May 2020 by Fuji News Network Inc., made up of 28 Fuji TV-affiliated stations, and Sankei. Officials of the two companies said 17 percent of total responses made over a series of 14 public opinion surveys were fictitious. Fuji TV and Sankei retracted all TV reports and articles based on the findings of the surveys. Officials traced the problem to the fact the two companies outsourced the actual handling of the survey. |
| Skywatchers along a narrow band from west Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, India and southern China will witness on Sunday the most dramatic “ring of fire” solar eclipse to shadow the Earth in years. |
| New Delhi: the celestial object has blown the mind of netizens as it appears to be very attractive and glittery. While some are calling it “fascinating” others have termed it an “alien mask” because of its shape. A celestial object, which geologists have classified as a “very rare and valuable” metallic meteorite, has fallen from the sky in the Indian state of Rajasthan’s Jalore district. The shiny and metallic object which weighs around 2.78 kilograms fell in the Sanchore area of the district at around 7:00 a.m. on Friday. Because of its weight, the object is believed to have sunk 4-5 feet into the ground. The object was retrieved by police and is set to be further examined by a team of scientists. Such events are not new to the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. Recently, residents in the village of Alwar woke up to a loud thud in the wee hours, when a meteor-like structure crashed on the ground, emanating a bright light. |
Bonus Video
News Burst Live Feed – Jun 21, 2020
| Crop Circle – Hunt’s Down Nr Wilton Wiltshire – 17/06/2020 |
| Istanbul 17 June 2020 |
Solar Activity
News Burst Live Feed – Jun 21, 2020
| Ring Of Fire’ Solar Eclipse: The sun is about to turn into a “ring of fire.” On June 21st, the Moon will pass directly in front of the sun, producing an annular solar eclipse over Earth’s eastern hemisphere. Annular eclipses are not total. Only about 99% of the solar disk will be covered. The remainder juts out around the Moon, creating a “ring of fire.” The narrow path of angularity stretches from east Africa to the Pacific Ocean, with greatest coverage occurring over the Himalaya of northern India at 06:41 UTC. A partial eclipse, in which a smaller fraction of the sun is covered, can be seen across a much wider area including parts of Europe, the Middle East, India, almost all of Asia, and northernmost Australia. Observers, be careful! A partially eclipsed sun is still dangerously bright and should not be looked at through magnifying optics. Try projection techniques instead. Because annular eclipses are not, technically, total, they are sometimes considered to be lesser events. Decide for yourself … after watching this video of an annular eclipse at sunrise over western Australia on May 10, 2013. |
Active Weather
News Burst Live Feed – Jun 21, 2020
| Waves of anomalous cold are coloring the majority of the 11.73 million mi² African continent “blue” and “purple” this week, as the Grand Solar Minimum continues its intensification. Latest GFS runs reveal temperature departures some 4C – 10C below the seasonal norm will stretch the length and breadth of Africa today, June 19, from Morocco in the north down to South Africa. |
Earthquakes
News Burst Live Feed – Jun 21, 2020
| 20/6/2020 | |
| Europe | M5.7 Iceland |
| North-America | M4.2 Nevada |
| Central-America | M4.7 Mexico |
| South-America | M4.4 Chile |
| Asia | M4.5 Philippines |
| Pacific | M5.4 Tonga |
| Deepest-EQ | M4.5 469 km Fiji |
| June 20 | Europe after the strong shocks in Western Asia, Middle East and the earthquakes in Crete was set in motion almost everywhere by shocks on the M3, Iceland instead, the final release point, saw the accumulation of all the seismic force with an impressive swarm with the strongest shock reported at M5.7. The image shows the initial push close to the M6 and the final release in Iceland of almost the same magnitude. |
| June 20 | Yesterday (below image) we talked about the deep earthquakes that would have moved the areas to the west and south, today’s image shows how this manifested with a series of movements on the M5 in the west and with movements on the M4 in New Zealand. |
| June 19 | The South West Pacific still shows a series of deep earthquakes with the most powerful shock of M5.6 at 534 km of depth occurred this morning at 10:07 UTC in Fiji. The second movement took place at 17:54 UTC south of Fiji, M4.3 at 502 km. These will certainly put in motion the areas to the west and south, the latter already suffered in recent days. For now, the shocks stop in the Kermadec Islands without reaching New Zealand. |
Earthquakes Last 24 Hours – M4 and Above
Rose Rambles... 