Tag: News Burst

News Burst 30 May 2020 – Live Feed ~ May 30, 2020


News Burst 30 May 2020

  • Trump Signs Executive Order Stripping Social Media Companies Of β€œLiability Shield”. β€œTwitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see. As President, I have made clear my commitment to free and open debate on the internet. Such debate is just as important online as it is in our universities, our town halls, and our homes. It is essential to sustaining our democracy. Online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse.Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors, online platforms β€œflagging” content as inappropriate, even though it does not violate any stated terms of service; making unannounced and unexplained changes to company policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints; and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse.Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias. As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet. As recently as last week, Representative Adam Schiff was continuing to mislead his followers by peddling the long-disproved Russian Collusion Hoax, and Twitter did not flag those tweets.Unsurprisingly, its officer in charge of so-called β€˜Site Integrity’ has flaunted his political bias in his own tweets.At the same time online platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise restrict Americans’ speech here at home, several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China. One United States company, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party that would have blacklisted searches for β€œhuman rights,” hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance. It also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military. Other companies have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese government that spread false information about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities, thereby enabling these abuses of human rights.”
  • A study published in the Lancet on Friday which prompted the World Health Organization to halt global trials of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 has fallen under scrutiny over a data discrepancy, The Guardian reports. According to the study – a data analysis of nearly 15,000 patients who received HCQ alone or with antibiotics (and conspicuously without zinc – the key ingredient), COVID-19 patients who received HCQ reportedly died at higher rates and experienced more cardiac complications than those without. As a result, the WHO halted all its trials involving the drug, which has been promoted by dozens of prominent doctors, and recently ordered by Indian health officials for use as a prophylactic against the disease.The study, led by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Advanced Heart Disease in Boston, examined patients in hospitals around the world, including in Australia. It said researchers gained access to data from five hospitals recording 600 Australian Covid-19 patients and 73 Australian deaths as of 21 April.But data from Johns Hopkins University shows only 67 deaths from Covid-19 had been recorded in Australia by 21 April. The number did not rise to 73 until 23 April. The data relied upon by researchers to draw their conclusions in the Lancet is not readily available in Australian clinical databases, leading many to ask where it came from. -The Guardian
  • As American and Russian military jets operate dangerously close to each other earlier this week, for the third time in months, Russia has just announced, it will launch the Poseidon submarine drone, dubbed the β€œDoomsday Drone” and or a β€œNuclear Torpedo,” with an impressive range that could autonomously traverse the Atlantic Ocean and cause quite a stir in Washington. Several Russian media outlets are reporting the developments. RIA Novosti said a military source has confirmed the unmanned underwater vehicle, which can carry a nuclear warhead, is scheduled to launch this fall. The source said the launch would be conducted from a K-329 Belgorod nuclear submarine. There was no indication of where the launch site would be. Powered by a small nuclear reactor, Poseidon has a top speed estimated at between 60 and 100 knots, with an impressive range of 6,200 miles, and when launched from the Barents Sea or somewhere in the Arctic, can autonomously traverse the North Atlantic, an area where Russia, China, and the US are each trying to stake a claim, due mostly to the trillions of dollars of natural resources beneath the ocean.
  • Early this week we took note of the increasingly tense border dispute between historic longtime enemies Greece and Turkey, specifically concentrated along the Evros River which separates the two. Athens charged that Turkish troops had conducted a land grab at a site where the river level went down, altering its course, or essentially orchestrating a quiet military β€˜invasion’ of sovereign Greek territory in progress. β€œAt the camp there is now a small Turkish flag flying from a tree. Troops have rejected Greek demands to withdraw. It comes weeks after thousands of Syrian refugees failed to break through into Greece,” The Daily Mail has described of the dispute. This also comes after months of Turkey’s Erdogan threatening to unleash Syrian refugee and migrant chaos on the EU β€” which he’s already made good on to a limited degree β€” resulting in clashes between Greek border patrols and an influx of Middle East migrants.
  • Carlos Bolsonaro, Brazilian president’s social media savvy son, attacked what he called an β€œunconstitutional, political and ideological” investigation. Brazil’s Federal Police named Carlos Bolsonaro, son of President Jair Bolsonaro, as an organizer of a criminal scheme that spread fake news. Carlos is being investigated on suspicion of being one of the leaders of the group that assembles attacks to intimidate and threaten public authorities on the Internet. Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes said in his decision that there are indications of a scheme for the the mass dissemination of messages on social networks to damage the image of the highest court, endangering the β€œindependence of judicial power.” He said the network appears to be financed by a group of business leaders close to the government. Sought in writing and by telephone, Carlos’ chief of staff did not respond to the report’s contacts.
  • A gang of monkeys in Delhi, India assaulted a laboratory assistant and escaped with coronavirus test samples from three patients. The incident happened near Meerut Medical College. According to the report, one of the monkeys was later spotted in a tree chewing one of the sample collection kits. In March we noted that rival monkey gangs in Thailand – driven by starvation due to a lack of visitors amid the pandemic – have been roving the streets looking for food. The ferocity of the animals shocked even locals, who are used to seeing the monkeys on a daily basis. One onlooker who captured video of the monkeys said: β€œThey looked more like wild dogs than monkeys. They went crazy for the single piece of food. I’ve never seen them this aggressive.”
  • The Ayatollah has an account on Twitter platform, where he routinely spouts dangerously anti-American rhetoric, without drawing even a whiff of scrutiny from Twitter (or the American left).
  • Some countries charge fees for extending visas to people stuck on their territories amid the coronavirus lockdowns, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday. β€œWe are very thankful to those countries which have shown empathy and extended visas free of charge. But there are a number of countries which opted otherwise, although visa extension costs a lot and people are short of money. Not only to extend their visas. They have no money at all,” she said during an online conference of the Moscow Diplomatic Club. Many people stuck in foreign countries, in her words, are facing lots of problems, such as the lack of job, contacts with the family, transport logistics, etc. β€œAnd on top of that, they are supposed to pay for the visa extension, although it is not their fault, it is a force majeure event. An objective reality. Notably, some countries charge hundreds of dollars to extend visas,” Zakharova said. β€œThis experience needs to be analyzed too and it will be taken into account in our diplomatic work,” she added.
  • India is battling the worst desert locust outbreak in decades eating their way across vast swath of crops in Rajasthan, now invading Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. β€œThough an individual locust is small in size, impact of large numbers on the windshield is known to have impacted the pilot forward vision. This is a grave concern during the landing, taxi and takeoff phase,” the DGCA circular said. Pitot and static sources can also get partially or fully blocked while flying through locust swarms, it stated. β€œBlocked pitot and static sources lead to erroneous instrument indications, especially unreliable air speed and altimeter indications,” it said. A pitot tube in airplanes is used to measure the flow speed of the wind.
  • The unarmed black man who died after being pinned to the ground by a white cop, sparking riots in Minneapolis, reportedly knew his alleged killer. Ex-cop Derek Chauvin and George Floyd both worked as security guards at the El Nuevo Rodeo club and restaurant in the city. Maya Santamaria, who owns the building, told KSTP, β€œChauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open. They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside.”
  • A leopard which had strayed into a chicken farm in Champadevi, Kirtipur, Nepal, has been rescued by forest officials. Locals had set up a trap after noticing that chickens were going missing for the past five days from the farm. On Friday, they found the big cat trapped. Forest officials were called who then darted the animal and rescued it. Over the years, sightings of common leopards have increased in various places of Kathmandu Valley, which wildlife experts believe is due to shrinking habitats and drying up of water resources inside forests.
  • The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are imposing a curfew starting 8 p.m. Friday, their mayors declared Friday. The curfews will last until 6 a.m. Saturday, and then go into effect again at 8 p.m. Saturday, expiring 6 a.m. Sunday. β€œDuring the curfew, all persons must not travel on any public street or in any public place,” according to Mayor Jacob Frey’s resolution. The curfews do not extend to people traveling to or from work, emergency services, law enforcement, people seeking emergency medical care, the homeless and the news media. Violations of the curfew are a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail or a $1,000 fine.
  • U.S. Senator Ted Cruz Calls for Criminal Investigation Into Twitter for β€˜Blatant and Willful Violation’ of U.S. Sanctions on Iran by Providing Social Media Accounts and Services.
  • The fired Minneapolis police officer who was seen pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck on video has been arrested and charged with murder, officials said Friday. Derek Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran with the city’s police department, has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension took Chauvin into custody at 11:44 a.m. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said the investigation is ongoing into the other three officers involved, all of whom have been fired. Freeman said his office wanted to focus on the β€œmost dangerous perpetrator,” and that β€œthis is by far the fastest we have ever charged a police officer.”
  • From June, foreign residents of South Korea have to provide a medical certificate showing they are negative for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, to reenter the country. The ministry said the new disease control policy applies to people leaving the country after June, including long-term residency permit holders. The certificate has to be issued within the last 48 hours from the time of departure in order to be deemed valid, the ministry said, which effectively revokes reentry permits. Self-isolating for 14 days is still required upon arrival.

Sun Activity

The Strongest Solar Flares Since 2017: For the first time in more than two years, the sun is really flaring. Today, May 29th, Earth-orbiting satellites detected an M1-class solar flare (07:24 UTC) followed by a C9-class flare (10:46 UTC). Both came from a likely sunspot hiding just behind the sun’s northeastern limb. These are the strongest solar flares since Oct. 20, 2017–the last time the sun produced an M-class eruption. In fact, they might be even stronger they they seem. The explosions were partially eclipsed by the edge of the sun, reducing their apparent intensity. So far the flares have not much affected Earth. The underlying sunspot is facing away from our planet. However, that could soon change. Solar rotation will bring the β€˜spot over the limb within the next 24 to 48 hours. Future flares could be geoeffective. Technically, we don’t know for sure that the active region *is* a sunspot. The underlying dark cores have not yet been sighted. Confirmation awaits better viewing geometry–probably tomorrow. Video Player

Media error: Format(s) not supported or source(s) not foundDownload File: https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1266464717373145091/pu/vid/632×464/Vi5GjhzeAiUal3sr.mp4?_=100:0000:00

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.3 S of Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M3.9 Nevada & California
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.3 Vanuatu
Deepest EQ M5.1 585 km Tonga

News Burst 29 May 2020 – Live Feed ~ May 29, 2020


News Burst 29 May 2020

  • Nepal does not have adequate stocks of chemical fertilizer, with imports stuck at Kolkata for the last two months due to the lockdown. As Nepal is completely dependent on imports for chemical fertilizers, any shortage could lead to food insecurity, affect the incomes of farmers, and dampen economic growth prospects for the next fiscal year.β€œThis year, Nepal has more mouths to feed than ever before, but it doesn’t have adequate fertiliser to grow more,” said Bhola Man Singh Basnet, a former agricultural scientist from the Nepal Agricultural Research Council.Thousands of people, including migrant workers, are returning home as they have lost jobs abroad and the country needs to produce additional food to feed them.
  • β€œInternet Platforms Aren’t Arbiters Of Truth” – Zuckerberg Blasts Twitter For Tagging Trump Tweets As β€œMisinformation”. As President Trump prepares to sign an executive order targeting β€œleft-leaning bias” on American social media platforms, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has embarked on a round of interviews with cable news – ostensibly to discuss Facebook’s new Work From Home policy – where he castigated Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for voluntarily transforming Twitter into an β€œarbiter of truth”. Asked to comment in Twitter’s decision to tag two Trump tweets as β€œmisinformation” by CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, Zuckerberg replied that β€œI don’t think that Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth…Political speech is one of the most sensitive parts in a democracy, and people should be able to see what politicians say.”
  • The flow of natural gas from Russia to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline crossing Poland completely stopped on Tuesday after a two-and-a-half-decade-old transit deal between Russia and Poland expired and after the COVID-19 pandemic battered gas demand in Europe. The Russia-Poland transit deal for natural gas from the Yamal peninsula to Germany, via Belarus and Poland, expired on May 17. With the end of the gas transit agreement with Russia, Poland is moving to a more liberalized natural gas market, but it expects that Russia will continue to send similar volumes of gas before the transit deal expired, a Polish official told Reuters last week.
  • The drugs have become household names in Australia: oxycodone, codeine, morphine and tramadol. But from next week they will become even harder for people to access, as pack sizes are halved and doctors are told to dispense only to patients whose other treatments have failed. The crackdown is in response to thousands of deaths linked to prescription opioids – almost 100 each month in Australia. While doctors and pain experts strongly back the changes, they also warned that patients needed to be given support to avoid the unintended consequences, such as overdoses, of people turning to illicit or black market alternatives. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ chairwoman of addiction medicine Hester Wilson said reduced pack sizes meant people would only receive a day or two’s worth of painkillers.
  • A treasure of millions and millions of euros kept in some bank in Dubai. Over the years, the drug traffickers Fabrizio Fabietti and Fabrizio Piscitelli have created enormous capital. The city of the United Arab Emirates is a safe for anyone who wants to transfer and store dirty money. There is no collaboration between Italian and Dubai law enforcement agencies. The police managed to intercept a 200 thousand euro transfer in favor of Alessandro Telich’s Imperial Eagle, the gang’s hacker, whose headquarters is in Dubai. Narcotic drugs sold them by the ton. Between February and March 2018 Fabietti had stored 3,000 kilograms of hashish in a shed. 700 kilograms of hashish and 641 kilograms of marijuana were seized. The supply could not miss cocaine, 19 kilos were seized by the police in Rome.
  • With swarms of immature locusts sweeping across 13 districts in four states in India, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare is considering the use of aircraft for spraying insecticides to control the spread of the crop-devouring insects. β€œA committee under the chairmanship of the Additional Secretary of the Department has been constituted to procure services and goods for spraying insecticides through drones and airplanes,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The statement said: β€œDrones will be used to spray pesticides on tall trees and inaccessible places for effective control of locusts, while plans are afoot to deploy helicopters for aerial spray.”
  • The US has stepped up diplomatic pressure against China’s move to impose a national security law on Hong Kong, forming a common position with the UK, Australia and Canada. In a four-nation statement, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his counterparts called on China to work with Hongkongers on forging a way forward to honour its commitments made under the Sino-British Joint Declaration. β€œChina’s decision to impose the new national security law on Hong Kong lies in direct conflict with its international obligations under the principles of the legally binding, UN-registered Sino-British Joint Declaration,” said the statement, which was also signed by UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and FranΓ§ois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s foreign minister. The four foreign ministers said Thursday the national security law would undermine the β€œone country, two systems framework”. If the Chinese Communist Party thinks that they’re going to continue to break their promises to the world, to openly defy the rule of law, the United States of America is going to stand up and tell them no.
  • Last week, application security company ImmuniWeb released a new free tool to monitor and measure an organization’s exposure on the Dark Web. To improve the decision-making process for cybersecurity professionals, the free tool crawls Dark Web marketplaces, hacking forums, and Surface Web resources such as Pastebin or GitHub to provide you with a classified schema of your data being offered for sale or leaked. All you need to launch a Dark Web search is to enter your domain name.
  • Looks like WHO’s days in Africa are over. Days after Tanzania kicked WHO out of the country, now Burundi becomes the second African country to expel entire WHO Coronavirus team from his nation for interference in internal matters. In a letter addressed to WHO’s Africa headquarters, the foreign ministry says the four officials must leave by Friday. Meanwhile, in a shocking development the President of Madagascar has claimed that the WHO offered $20m bribe to poison COVID-19 cure.
  • Meanwhile, in another African nation Bill Gates has been caught bribing forced Coronavirus program. Based on an intercepted human intelligence report, a controversy has erupted in Nigeria whereby it is revealed that Bill Gates offered $10 million bribe for a forced vaccination program for Coronavirus to the Nigerian House of Representatives. The opposition political parties rejected the β€œforeign-sponsored Bill” mandating the compulsory vaccination of all Nigerians even when the vaccines have not been discovered and demanded the Speaker be impeached if he forces the bill on members. The development comes a month after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former American President John F. Kennedy, in a lengthy piece exposed Bill Gates agenda in India and his β€œobsession with vaccines”.
  • Indonesia has started cloud seeding to induce rain as the archipelago moves to head off annual forest fires blamed for blanketing swathes of Southeast Asia in toxic haze. Last year’s fires were the worst since 2015 due to dry weather, with some 1.6 million hectares of land, mostly on Sumatra and Borneo islands, razed by the out-of-control blazes. Authorities deployed tens of thousands of personnel and water-bombing aircraft to tackle the fires, which are intentionally set to clear land for agriculture β€” including on palm oil and pulp plantations. Over the past two weeks, Indonesia has started cloud seeding β€” a technique that uses chemicals to induce rain β€” in hotspot Riau province on Sumatra, with plans to roll it out in other parts of the island and in Borneo. The operations were to last throughout the dry season, which is expected to end around September.

Sun Activity

Farside Solar Flare: An active region, possibly a sunspot, is hiding just behind the sun’s northeastern limb. Late yesterday it exploded, producing a long duration B1-class solar flare (May 27 @ 18:39 UTC). The blast site will rotate into view in ~2 days. If it is still flaring at that time, Earth could be affected.

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 26 days
2020 total: 117 days (79%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.2 Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M3.8 Nevada
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.9 Tonga
Deepest EQ M4.3 350 km Kermadec Islands News Burst 29 May 2020

News Burst 28 May 2020 – Live Feed ~ May 28, 2020


News Burst 28 May 2020

  • A waterfront mansion in Tulum, Yucatan – Mexico, allegedly built in national park, protected area. Owner claims to have the necessary permits, but no agency is authorized to grant them. A beautiful park that surrounds ancient Mayan ruins is classified as Natural Protected Area since 1981.
  • The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation has expanded its pre-trial investigation into an unusual case linked to a human rights ruling issued against Finland by the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR on 14 November ruled that Finland had violated human rights laws by expelling an unsuccessful asylum seeker who had reportedly been shot dead three weeks after his return to Baghdad, Iraq in December 2017. KRP launched an inquiry into the case after it began to suspect that some of documents presented for the deliberations were forged. It has since discovered evidence that the documents presented by the daughter of the unsuccessful asylum seeker were forged and that the man was alive.
  • A new temperature record was set for this spring for the second time in as many days as the mercury climbed to 21.9Β°C in Oulu, Finland, on Sunday. Juha Tuomala, a meteorologist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) told that the warm weather is expected to continue in most parts of the country in the coming days, with the temperature record again under threat in Southern and Central Finland. β€œIt’s possible we get the same readings if not higher,” he said.
  • A Canadian judge has ruled that the US extradition case against a senior Chinese Huawei executive can continue to the next stage. Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, at Vancouver’s airport in late 2018. The US wants her extradited to face fraud charges. Her arrest infuriated Beijing, which sees her case as a political move designed to prevent China’s rise. The US accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment to Iran in violation of US sanctions. It says Meng, 48, committed fraud by misleading the HSBC bank about the company’s business dealings in Iran.
  • On Wednesday, a paedophile was jailed in Queanbeyan District Court, Australia for a maximum of 17 years with a non-parole period of 10 years. He received a discount on his sentence for pleading guilty. Michael James Buckmaster, 48, who pretended to be a nudist to get young children to undress around him has been jailed for 17 years for the persistent sexual abuse of a girl starting when she was 10 years old. Judge Wells said that β€œIt would seem to me that he well knew the harm that he was inflicting, but was incapable of controlling himself.”
  • The travel industry group working on a β€œTrans-Tasman bubble” says it will present plans to open travel between Australia and New Zealand to both governments early next month, with flights set to resume as early as September. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday she spoke to her Australian counterpart Scott Morrison on Tuesday and both were keen to move forward with the idea β€œas quickly as we can”. In a new warning to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, the Morrison government said it would not allow state border bans to create an β€œobstacle” to allowing flights to and from New Zealand. New Zealand was the most popular outbound travel destination for Australians prior to COVID-19, with 1.5 million arrivals in 2019 accounting for 40 per cent of all visitors. After China, New Zealand was the second largest source of visitors to Australia in 2019, with 1.4 million visitors accounting for 15 per cent of the arrivals into the country.
  • The family of one of two bushwalkers, missing in Kahurangi National Park in New Zealand’s South Island for 19 days, say they are β€œabsolutely over the moon” the pair have been found alive. Jessica O’Connor and Dion Reynolds, both 23, had not been seen after entering the Anatori Valley on a bushwalking trip on May 9. There were β€œsmiles and relief” when they were found in β€œvery rugged bush”, police said. They were found about 12.49pm on Wednesday after a search helicopter spotted smoke and saw two people waving at them, Tasman Police Search and Rescue officer Sergeant Malcolm York said. The pair were picked up by an Air Force NH90 helicopter, and had β€œexcellent equipment” that kept them alive, he said.
  • The US president has threatened to heavily regulate, or even shut down, social media platforms that β€œsilence conservative voices” after Twitter marked his posts with a fact-check notice implying they contained misinformation. β€œRepublicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative voices,” Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday. β€œWe will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.”
  • The NASA and SpaceX launch, which was scheduled to take place from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, has been postponed due to bad weather.The launch was scrubbed around 20 minutes before liftoff. The next launch opportunity will be Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. ET (21:22 UTC), NASA announced Wednesday afternoon.
  • Boeing has been reeling from a drop in demand for aircraft, as travel plunges amid the pandemic and worsens the pressure on the company, which was already in crisis following two fatal crashes of its 737 Max and the global grounding of the plane last year. More than 12,000 Boeing workers in the US are set to lose their jobs in the coming weeks, as cuts at the American aerospace giant take effect, the firm has announced. Boeing announced plans to lay off almost 7,000 workers this week. The reductions had been expected since Boeing revealed plans last month to cut its global workforce by 10% – or roughly 16,000 jobs.
  • Kenya: GMO cassava to feed poor people. It is a very nutritious and resilient tuber and Kenya will have to rely on this resource to feed that large slice of its population that will suffer extreme hunger as the pandemic emergency progresses. Last year Kenya produced 973,000 tons of cassava, all sold and consumed in the country in the form of flour or even used as potatoes, boiled, roasted or fried. More resistant than maize and millet, cassava develops a greater tolerance to extreme environmental conditions and the roots, once ripe, can survive in the soil without receiving water for long periods of time, preserving their nutritional properties.If approved, GMO cassava will be included in the list of GMO crops currently awaiting legalization.
  • After the days of surprise, different reactions, indignation, hatred and compassion, accusations and few excuses, there are those who move the viewfinder from Silvia Romano guilty of unconscious genuineness in Africa to the Onlus Africa Milele which has accepted her requests, proposing her to stay in a village in the hinterland of Malindi without any kind of coverage: health, legal, work. The Onlus for its modus operandi naive (let’s say so) has earned in the last year and a half a bad reputation and yesterday was confirmed the news that the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome in the investigation on the kidnapping of their referent in Chakama had the ROS search the registered office and questioned the founder Lilian Sora. The hope is that this investigation can shed light on who really does things right, as well as doing good, as the President of Karibuni Onlus Gianfranco Ranieri preaches. Karibuni is the only Italian NGO operating in the hinterland of Malindi, a stone’s throw from Chakama, and has announced that it will no longer accept volunteers on its farms, even though it has long since activated above-average security measures. If after the dramas, the joy, the polemics, the behind-the-scenes and the mysteries of this story, a more managerial and less touristic management was achieved, without taking anything away from humanity and the transport of feelings, we could say that even from the manure of the last year and a half and from certain habits of β€œItalian-style” solidarity in Malindi and Kenya, a flower was born.

Sun Activity

Solar wind flowing from this southern coronal hole could brush Earth’s magnetic field on May 29th or 30th. Video Player00:0000:13

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 25 days
2020 total: 116 days (78%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M3.8 S of Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M4.2 Nevada
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.4 Mid-Indian Ridge
Deepest EQ M4.3 596 km Fiji News Burst 28 May 2020

News Burst 27 May 2020 – Live Feed ~ May 27, 2020


  • A Roman Catholic nun stands accused of helping five priests sexually abuse deaf children. Kosaka Kumiko, 42, allegedly helped the priests cover up anal and vaginal rapes, fondling and oral sex at the institution for deaf students in Argentina. The abuse allegedly took place in the bathrooms, dorms, garden and a basement at the school in Lujan de Cuyo, a city about 620 miles northwest of Buenos Aires. Authorities began investigating Kumiko when a former student claimed she made her wear a nappy to cover up bleeding after she was raped. At least 24 children have come forward to report abuse at the school. Children said priests Nicola Corradi and the Rev. Horacio Corbacho repeatedly raped them by an image of the Virgin Mary inside the small school chapel. Nobody else would have heard their cries because the other children at the school were deaf. Abuse by priests is alleged to have taken place where children went to confession as well as elsewhere in the grounds. β€˜They always said it was a game: β€˜Let’s go play, let’s go play’ and they would take us to the girls’ bathroom,’ said one of the women who claims that she was abused at the school in Argentina. Five priests were previously arrested in late November by police who raided the school and found porn magazines and about $34,000 in Corradi’s room. This week Kumiko, who is originally from Japan but has Argentine citizenship, was arrested and charged over the allegations she helped them. She also stands accused of physically abusing students in her care. Authorities in Argentina say she had been on the run for about a month before turning herself in. Local media showed the nun in handcuffs and wearing her habit and a bullet-proof vest as she was escorted by police to a court hearing. Kumiko denied any wrongdoing during the eight-hour hearing on Thursday. Authorities say that she lived at the Provolo Institute for children with hearing problems from 2004 until 2012. Corbacho, fellow priest Nicola Corradi and three other men were arrested last year after they were charged with sexually abusing at least two dozen students at the Provolo Institute. Advocates for clerical sex abuse have expressed anger that Corradi wasn’t sanctioned by the Vatican and allegedly went on to abuse children in Pope Francis’ native Argentina. A Vatican investigative commission recently visited Mendoza to learn more about the case against the priests. [The Pope said he was not there or he was sleeping when these things happened.]
  • The former President of the National Magistrates Association Luca Palamara is under investigation for corruption. His phone conversation were disclosed, he was in contacts with journalists to agree on how to publish the news, these were involved: Liana Milella and Claudio Tito, Repubblica; Giovanni Bianconi, Corriere della Sera. And also Giovanni Legnini (magistrate), Cesare Sirignano (magistrate). Even the clown Raoul Bova called Palamara asking him for newspapers coverage control of his case of fiscal fraud. He succeded, his case did not come up on the major Italian newspaper.
  • On May 11, Twitter announced in a press release that it was hiring Li Fei-Fei (ζŽι£›ι£›), an AI expert and former vice president of Google, to its board of directors as a β€œnew independent director” with immediate effect. Since than several account of dissenting Chinese were suddenly closed. On May 20, a petition was created on the White House website titled β€œCall for a thorough investigation on Twitter’s violation of freedom of speech.” The creator of the petition wrote that Twitter is suppressing criticism of the CCP and suspending dissident accounts while pro-Beijing accounts remain unscathed.
  • Eleven years before the joint construction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, French intelligence services warned Paris that China’s reputation for poor bio-security could lead to a β€˜catastrophic leak.’
  • A former worker on Jeffrey Epstein’s Caribbean island claims that he saw Bill Clinton there in an explosive new Netflix documentary. The claims run contrary to denials by Clinton that he ever visited the island, which was reportedly the site of multiple sexual assaults of underage women by the convicted pedophile Epstein and his elite guests.
  • Some BS going on with European Central Bank, Bundesbank and Germany, QE rubbish. Euro/Europe is dying.
  • Yesterday, Rep. Iihan Omar, D-Minn., became the latest member to declare that she believes that Biden did rape a Senate aide and is continuing to lie about the crime in public statements.
  • The European Space Agency – ESA – has deployed its constellation of satellites to investigate unusual weaknesses in Earth’s magnetic field. It appears that the strange anomaly believed to be responsible is now evolving and splitting in two. The unexplained force, referred to as the South Atlantic Anomaly, is an area of reduced magnetic intensity that extends from South America to southwest Africa. The Earth’s magnetic field is known to flip the poles altogether every few hundred thousand years, and we are now long overdue such a flip. This recent unexplained magnetic activity over the Atlantic may be a sign of an impending flip.
  • The Venezuelan Air Force has greeted the incoming second Iranian tanker, called Forest, by dispatching two Su-30 and two F-16 fighter jets to perform a flyover above the vessel.
  • A SpaceX rocket is scheduled to launch a rocket carrying a Dragon capsule on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. However, the launch may be delayed due to stormy weather in Florida. The Dragon capsule, a reusable cargo spacecraft developed by SpaceX, will carry NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station. This launch will be the first time that astronauts have launched from Florida in nine years. There is at least a 60% chance of scattered thunderstorms at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday afternoon. Strong gust winds could also impact the launch.
  • The Mongolian government has handed over to Russia a certificate for humanitarian assistance worth 1$ million to fight the coronavirus pandemic, they will send meat and meat products.
  • The prevailing severe heatwave, which is expected to last for two more days, made New Delhi the second hottest city in the country on Tuesday, with a maximum temperature of 47.6 degree Celsius; with 50 degrees, Churu in Rajasthan was the hottest city in India.
  • The US government on Monday brought forward to Tuesday midnight enforcement of restrictions on travel to the United States from Brazil as the South American country reported the highest death toll in the world for that day. Washington’s ban applies to foreigners traveling to the United States if they had been in Brazil in the last two weeks.
  • Police in Iran has arrested the father of a thirteen-year-old girl today for murdering his daughter as an act of β€œhonor killing”, after she fled her parents home with an older man. The father cut her head with a sickle while she was asleep. The victim had just returned home after eloping to marry her beloved man. The thirteen-year-old, Romina Sharqi had fallen in love with a man in her hometown and after her father vehemently opposed their marriage, fled with him.
  • A new discovery could revolutionize the way childhood vaccines are administered, as engineers at MIT have invented a way for multiple doses of a vaccine or drug to be given over an extended period of time with only one injection. The process involves the invention of a β€œnew 3-D fabrication method that can generate a novel type of drug-carrying particle that could allow multiple doses of a drug or vaccine to be delivered over an extended period of time,” according to MIT News. This novel fabrication technique, called SEAL (Stamped Assembly of Polymer Layers), creates three-dimensional microparticles that resemble tiny coffee cups that can be filled with vaccines or drugs, which are sealed with a lid. The β€œcups,” made of a FDA-approved biocompatible polymer, can be designed to degrade at specific times, spilling out the contents.
  • 4chan – On Saturday, an alleged whistleblower who works β€œin a job closely tied to the DNC but not directly for them” took to an anonymous forum and shared some information related to 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s electability: β€œBiden is not the real candidate. [The] DNC is doing all they can to try and get up to Trump’s level; they believe that if they hide the real nominee until the last possible minute, it will frustrate Trump’s efforts to beat them,” the alleged whistleblower stated. Biden realized it’s just a matter of timeuntil all the crooked sh*t he did catches up to him, so he struck a deal with the DNC: they drop the primaries and promote him as their guy until the convention. In return for being a decoy, they will make his criminal problems go away and pay him enough to retire. Right before the convention, Biden is going to drop out of the race citing β€˜health concerns.’ It’ll be heavily implied by the media and his campaign that he has Alzheimer’s or dementia, but no one will confirm anything. At the convention, they plan to unveil their real candidate, who is already working behind the scenes building a campaign base.” The DNC worker then went on to post more details about not only Biden, but other big Democratic players as well: β€œI’ll add some more tidbits: Hillary Clinton will never hold office again. They don’t want her to run and she doesn’t want to go through it all again. The reason she keeps popping up is thatshe’s shaking down the DNC for money to make her go away. Every time they tell her no more, she pops up on TV hinting she might run and they flip out and send her a check. Biden is also playing up the dementia angle in case Trump wins and decides to try prosecuting him. They’ll claim he’s too mentally gone to assist in his own defense, hoping that Trump will just drop it rather than be seen going after a poor confused old man. Internally, the DNC is still very much at war. There’s two main factions struggling for control. So far they’ve been careful not to let it spill out too much publicly because both sides know if it does, Trump will have a field day with it. Bernie Sanders ran this year with full DNC permission. They needed him to keep the Bernie Bros busy while they figured out a plan. He made the same deal as last election –he pulls out and backs their horse and they let him keep all that Reddit cash.” According to β€œall the chatter” the whistleblower has been hearing, Michelle Obama may be a prime contender: β€œShe seems perfect – educated, capable, hits a few diversity quotas, etc. They haven’t decided for sure yet … the other side knows if they go with a β€˜woke’ candidate, it’ll guarantee Trump’s win. It feels like the old guard still has enough pull to keep these SJW[s] in line, but barely…”

Sun Activity

A probable sunspot has appeared in the sun’s northern hemisphere–we just can’t see it yet. NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft is monitoring the active region on the farside of the sun. Based on its high latitude, it is a likely member of new Solar Cycle 25. The sun’s rotation will turn the spot toward Earth ~3 days from now.

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.5 S of Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M3.5 Nevada & California
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.5 Guam
Deepest EQ M4.6 557 km Fiji News Burst 27 May 2020

News Burst 25 May 2020 – Live Feed ~ May 25, 2020


News Burst 25 May 2020

  • After months of relative quiet amid the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Hong Kong, defying the city’s ban on gatherings to voice their opposition to a new β€œnational security” law proposed by Beijing which would threaten the city’s autonomy and the civil liberties of its residents. Police fired multiple rounds of tear gas in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay shopping district on Sunday as thousands took to the streets to protest against Beijing’s planned national security law for the city, even as top Chinese officials sought to ease fears about its impact on local freedoms but remained stern about seeing it implemented.
    Police said at least 180 people were arrested – mostly on suspicion of unauthorised assembly, unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct in a public place – in a crackdown as protesters spread out along streets of Causeway Bay and Wan Chai.
  • After months of quarantine, Americans are finally breaking free from their homes this Memorial Day weekend. Thousands of vacationers, few with masks and ignoring social distancing rules, flocked to Ocean City, Maryland for Memorial Day weekend.
  • The five death sentences handed down in Saudi Arabia for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 in Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul will be commuted into lesser penalties after a ”pardon” granted to the killers by the victim’s family through his son Salah.
  • An international team of scientists from Denmark and China has discovered that king penguins on the island of South Georgia, located just north of Antarctica, release an enormous amount of laughing gas via their poop. The research was not based on the bird’s faeces, but on retreating glaciers and the surge of greenhouse gas levels on South Georgia, which has the world’s biggest king penguin population.
  • Indian Police on Sunday arrested Sooraj, 27, a native of Adoor and Santosh, 47, a snake handler, on charges of killing Sooraj’s wife Uthra, 25, a native of Kollam, India. Uthra was recovering at her parents’ house after a viper bit her on the night of March 2 while she was at Sooraj’s house. On May 7, she was fatally bitten by a cobra while the couple were asleep with their one-and-a-half-year-old son. Kollam Rural Police said the couple had a strained relationship. Uthra’s father had given her 120 sovereigns of gold and he used to regularly help the in-laws. Sooraj planned to kill Uthra to pocket her gold and marry someone else, the officer said. Sooraj bought a viper on February 26. The first attempt was on the night of March 2, but failed…” said the officer. Sooraj then bought a cobra on April 24. On May 6, he went to Uthra’s house with the snake hidden in a bottle. While she was asleep at night, Sooraj then threw the snake at her. After biting Uthra, the snake crawled behind a cupboard. In the morning, Uthra’s mother noticed her daughter was unconscious. She was rushed to hospital, but couldn’t be saved, the police said.
  • The Chinese virology institute in the city of Wuhan where COVID-19 first emerged has three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site, but none match the new contagion wreaking chaos across the world, its director has said.
  • China is β€œopen” to international cooperation to identify the source of the novel coronavirus but any investigation must be β€œfree of political interference”, China’s foreign minister said on May 24.
  • All but two of the 99 people on board a Pakistan passenger plane were killed when it crashed into a residential neighbourhood of Karachi. The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane had made multiple approaches to land at Karachi airport on Friday when it came down among houses, sparking a rescue operation that lasted into the night. A local hospital earlier reported it had received the bodies of people killed on the ground.
  • The Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine has said Kyiv will insists on punishing those responsible in Iran for shooting down its passenger plane in January. For three days, the Islamic Republic authorities vehemently insisted that technical failure caused the crash. Ultimately, under domestic and international pressure, the country’s Joint Chief of Staff admitted that an Islamic Revolution Guards Corps missile had downed the plane. Meanwhile, Tehran has so far refused to hand over the doomed plane’s black boxes for decoding outside Iran.
  • Division Forest Office, Bara, Nepal has intensified activities to stop timber smuggling in the district amid the nationwide lockdown. The office has seized illegal Saal timber from dozens of places through its sub-division offices during the lockdown. A team deployed from the forest office yesterday seized 133 cubic feet timber. Similarly, the team had also seized 326 cubic feet timber a week ago. Division Office Chief said 40 cubic feet timber was seized from the sub-metropolis some days ago.
  • Suspicious money transfers totaling about 33 million yen ($306,600) were made to a senior official with a Turkish jet operator in connection with Carlos Ghosn’s escape from Japan, Turkish news outlets reported. The official, who works for MNG Jet, was indicted by Turkish prosecutors on charges of abetting the former Nissan Motor Co. chairman’s flight from justice in December. The official’s trial is scheduled to start in July. Prosecutors are believed to be investigating whether the remittance was made to reward him for his assistance in enabling Ghosn to flee from Japan. The former Nissan chief was indicted on charges of underreporting earnings, breach of trust and misappropriation of company funds.
  • An Indian hacker, Ghost057-5P3C706, has taken down the website of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN)and placed an Indian flag along with a message on the home page. The hacker’s message, posted on Sunday, read, β€œJust because we are silent and we don’t react doesn’t mean didn’t notice.” On Thursday, Indian hackers brought down Nepali government websites and posted their messages asking Nepal to back off following a dispute arising after the issuance of a new political map by Nepal. A government website operated by the Nepal National Library was hacked. However, claiming of CAAN website has thrown everybody into alert as aviation authority’s official page may contain some very relevant data that may have been compromised.
  • The amount of plastic waste generated during the coronavirus lockdown has surged by 15% in Thailand, local media reported, citing the Pollution Control Department. Thailand, among the world’s top five countries choking the oceans with plastic, has sought to clamp down on single-use plastic bags this year. Bangkok’s plastic waste has soared 62% in volume in April, as more people rely on home deliveries, according to data from Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.
  • LG Electronics’ Polish unit came under fire Sunday for running a video advertisement on social media that many claimed as inappropriate. In one of the videos posted on LG Poland’s official TikTok account, an old man uses LG Electronics’ V60 ThinQ dual screen smartphone to take photos of a young woman in front without her consent. Noticing the shutter sound, the woman turns around and grabs the phone only to find the old man’s selfies. She apologizes to the old man and return the device, but the old man swipes left to see several additional photos he took of the woman’s legs. A frame accessory allows a single-screen smartphone to have a connection for a second screen equipped with more cameras.
  • In South Korea, the women’s population overtook the men’s population 58 months ago. In addition, female seniors residing alone far outnumber male seniors. In April, the average age for Korean women topped 44 for the first time in history, according to data held by the Ministry of Interior and Safety. They are older by 7 or 8 months than a year earlier, when the figure posted 43.4.
  • Authorities say a third of Islamic State fighters who left Germany for Syria have since returned. Germany is taking a β€œholistic approach” in dealing with ex-jihadi fighters, including deradicalization and reintegration. β€œSecurity authorities obtained knowledge that they actively engaged in combat in Syria and Iraq or have completed apprenticeships to this end,” the ministry told the DPA news agency. β€œThese people remain under police and judicial investigation.”

Sun Activity

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 23 days
2020 total: 114 days (78%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.3 Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M3.9 Oklahoma
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.9 Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge
2nd Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.8 New zealand
Deepest EQ M4.6 208 km Bolivia News Burst 25 May 2020