News Burst 30 November 2019

• Black Friday is undergoing a transformative period where consumers are ditching brick-and-mortar stores for online shopping.
• China will further encourage meat imports, allowing the total to potentially exceed six million tonnes (!!!) this year, the Ministry of Commerce said.
• While media outlets screamed “Hottest Ever” for the world in June and July and climate crusaders rallied their “Climate Crisis”, in USA, for most of 2019, temperatures have been below norma; in the past two months multi decade record cold temperatures were smashed.
• Some 1,000 people were stranded without heat or power in a small Arizona town near the Grand Canyon on Friday during a major winter storm.
• Sitio Pariahan village, about 17 km (10.5 miles) north of Manila, is sinking about 4 cm (1.5 inches) every year, owing largely to land subsidence from the population’s overuse of groundwater, according to experts. Img

• Several people have been wounded in a stabbing on a shopping street in The Hague on Friday, media reported, citing Dutch police.
• Hong Kong police have threatened to use wooden bullets to disperse protesters, according to comments made by Police Commissioner Chris Tang at a Thursday tea gathering.
• A study published by the journal JAMA, found that life expectancy in America increased from 1959 to 2014 but that the number plateaued in 2011 and began decreasing in 2014. “The decline is mostly among MEN in “working-age”, ages 25 to 64, and risk of dying from drug abuse, suicide, hypertension and more than 30 other causes is increasing.”
• Elections approaching, the London Bridge ‘activated’ attacker, dead, was Usman Khan 28 yo; was convicted in 2012 for terrorism offences and released from prison in December 2018.
• Friday’s London attack came 25 days after authorities downgraded the country’ terrorism level from severe to substantial (meaning from ‘highly likely’ to only ‘likely’ to occur).

London Bridge Attack Summary:

• Met Police are treating the incident as terror-related.
• A person is believed to have attacked people with a knife.
• A man has been detained by police, he was shot
• There are up to five casualties, according to police, with 2 confirmed dead as of 1:30 pm ET.
• Officers have cordoned off the bridge.
• London Bridge Station is closed.
• An explosion was heard at the south end of the bridge, near Borough Market.
• Suspect shot dead at scene.
• Police declare incident an ‘act of terror’.

Active Weather

• Typhoon Kammuri 70 kts ↑ E of Philippines – Moving W

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.5 Greece
Strongest EQ in US M4.5 Oregon
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.6 Guatemala
Deepest EQ M4.5 515 km FijiNews Burst 30 November 2019

News Burst 28 November 2019

• More than half of China’s banks fail Central Bank stress test.
• All toilets are out of order on the ISS, station commander Luca Parmitano @astro_luca told ground specialists at the NASA’s mission control center, and astronauts will be using space diapers in the near future.
• Russia creates killer drones to fight enemy UAVs. They are capable of tracking, intercepting and disabling the enemy’s unmanned aerial vehicles with the help of nets.
• Onion prices have hit the roof in India, a kg costing one-third of an average Indian’s daily income and with its’ billion-plus citizens that can’t do without, it’s threatening a political fallout.
• DNC Tweeted of a 2013 explosion that killed 12 in Texas blaming Trump for the scrapping of Obama safety rules, 14 hours later a Chemical Plant in Texas eplodes.

• European Central Banks are slowly preparing for Plan B: Gold.
• Police in Dresden have finally released the first images of the jewels stolen in a brazen robbery of the Green Vault valued at more than $1 billion. Img 2 – Img 2.
• Head of the Texas Access to Justice Commission: “It’s really a crisis. People aren’t able to get into the courts and they’re not able to navigate them once they’re there.” Money is the holdup in most cases.
• Audi has made arrangements to slash 9,500 of its 61,000 workers in Germany over the next five years to streamline its business ahead of a period where the global economy is expected to grow below trend.
• A former Deutsche Bank executive and head of the bank’s US private wealth-management division (i.e., the group catering to ultra wealthy clients), killed himself by hanging in his Malibu residence last Tuesday, November 19th.

• Monsanto will have to pay a hefty fine of $10 million for spraying a dangerous pesticide on “research crops” in Hawaii. Over 160 lbs if the pesticide used was stockpiled and sprayed even after it was banned by the US government.
• Amnesty International has said that the “surveillance-based” business models of tech giants like Google and Facebook threaten human rights.
• Iraqi security officials reported Wednesday evening that protesters in the Iraqi city of Najaf had set fire to the Iranian consulate.
• Yale astronomers released new, close-up photos of the Comet 2I/Borisov Tuesday, offering humankind a refreshing glimpse of the first confirmed interstellar comet to enter our solar system. Img.
• Damage done by a stress test for Boeing’s top notch 777X prototype is worse than earlier assumed, a recent media report claims, alleging this will still not hamper regulatory approval. A September test – meant to bring Boeing’s new 777X airframe to its limits – left the plane’s skin torn open beneath a wing and a passenger door blown off its hinges just before the trial reached the supposed stress target, according to the Seattle Times.

Active Weather

• Tropical Storm Kammuri 65 kts ↑ E of Philippines

Strongest EQ in Europe M6.0 Greece
Strongest EQ in US M3.2 Alaska
Strongest EQ on the Planet M6.0 Greece
Deepest EQ M5.6 570 km FijiNews Burst 28 November 2019

News Burst 25 November 2019

• A hotel in Japan is making headlines for offering a $1 per night stay (std rate $27), but there’s a big catch, guests must agree to allow their every moment in the room to be live streamed to the world, as long as they don’t have sex.
• Egypt on Saturday unveiled a cache of 75 wooden and bronze statues and five lion cub mummies decorated with hieroglyphics at the Saqqara necropolis near the Giza pyramids in Cairo.
• ‘I’m running to defeat Donald Trump’: Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg officially enters 2020 presidential race.
• Secretary of Defense Mark Esper asked Navy Secretary Richard Spencer to resign on Sunday after the Pentagon chief lost confidence in how Spencer handled the case of a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.
• Elon Musk claims there’s already 187,000 “orders” for Tesla’s Cybertruck.

• Sixty people were arrested and four children were recovered in Georgia during an FBI-led operation that focused on child sex trafficking, the agency announced Wednesday morning.
• A string of weather fronts have brought thunder and lightning, heavy rain and even some mountain snow to Hawaii. A decent dusting of snow capped both Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.
• Boler Mountain, Ontario – Canada’s most southerly alpine ski area – opened its slopes to skiers and snowboarders on Saturday, Nov 23.
• Bolivia’s parliament approves bill on snap presidential election. Now the document will be sent to interim president Jeanine Anez for signature.
• Weekly Asteroid: NASA has officially registered a “near-Earth object” bound to make a “close approach” to our planet at a distance around 13 times farther from Earth than the Moon. It will return close to Earth again on Nov. 2026.

• The story of the ‘incident’ in the South China Sea was likely a hoax.
• No black T-shirts or masks in sight as protesters go out to vote in HKG.
• Pro-Beijing camp licks wounds after hammering in Hong Kong district council elections. Shock defeats for Junius Ho, Michael Tien and Holden Chow, while Starry Lee holds on against ‘Long Hair’.
• Korean singer Goo Hara, 28, has been found dead at her home in Seoul, police said on Sunday evening. They are still investigating the cause of her death.
• British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised on Sunday “to get Brexit done”.

Active Weather

• Tropical Cyclone Rita 56kt — NE of Vanuatu
• Tropical Storm Sebastien 56 kts ↑, 994hPa ↓ – Central Atlantic

Strongest EQ in Europe M3.7 Geece
Strongest EQ in US M6.3 Alaska
Strongest EQ on the Planet M6.1 Indonesia
Deepest EQ M3.5 193 km Nicaragua News Burst 25 November 2019