News Burst 23 May 2020

• Digital Currencies Could Threaten US Geopolitical Power, Warns JPMorgan. So goes the stark warning from analysts at the U.S.’ largest bank, JPMorgan Chase in a new report. While the analysts do not anticipate the dollar losing its status as global reserve currency anytime soon, they pointed to some of the weaker links in the currency’s dominance — including in trade settlement and the SWIFT messaging system. SWIFT was notably a key lever in imposing sanctions on the Iranian regime, falling into line with the U.S. administration and suspending access for Iranian banks back in 2018. This caused tension with the European bloc, where finance ministers had attempted — and ultimately failed — to exempt the cross-border payments network from the restrictions. Some contend the SWIFT suspension violated European Union laws. Were countries able to circumvent SWIFT, JPMorgan notes, the United States would find itself less able to achieve its geopolitical strategic goals, which in part relies upon the greenback’s global dominance.

• Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, American leftists have been repeatedly caught parroting the rhetoric of the CCP as they decried President Trump’s use of the term “Chinese Virus” as racist. Democrats have taken a distinctly “soft on China” tack, in opposition to President Trump’s increasing hawkishness, even going so far as to side with the CCP (which, remember, just put 1 million+ Muslims into concentration camps) over the White House, as the National Review pointed out in a recent article. One of the most galling examples of this phenomenon to date occurred Thursday, when former Obama-era ambassador and noted Sinophile Max Baucus, also a former Democratic Senator from Montana, compared President Trump to Hitler during an appearance in the Chinese press.

• Washington State Loses “Hundreds Of Millions” To Nigerian Fraud Scheme Washington state officials admitted losing “hundreds of millions of dollars” to an international fraud scheme, originating out of Nigeria, that robbed the state’s unemployment insurance system and could mean even longer delays for thousands of jobless workers still waiting for legitimate benefits. Suzi LeVine, commissioner of the state Employment Security Department (ESD), disclosed the staggering losses during a news conference Thursday afternoon. She conceded that the amount was “orders of magnitude above” the $1.6 million that ESD reported losing to fraudsters in April. Thursday’s disclosure helped explain the unusual surge in the number of new jobless claims filed last week in Washington, which as we showed this morning was the state with the highest weekly increase in claims. The ESD disclosed that it had seen a surge in bogus claims reportedly filed by identity thieves who appeared to be targeting the extra-generous benefits available under federal pandemic relief legislation. That same day, the Secret Service issued an alert describing Washington as the top target so far of a Nigerian fraud ring “exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to commit large-scale fraud against state unemployment insurance programs.” It remains unclear how the fraudulent benefit payments made their way all the way to Nigeria.

• New York City has recorded 58 days without a pedestrian traffic death, the longest stretch since the city started tracking the numbers in 1983.

• After dragging his feet on marijuana legalization for years (one of the biggest complaints of Cuomo’s progressive critics is that after becoming one of the first states to approve medical marijuana, NY has basically given up on reform in that area), it looks like legalization is back on the agenda. $$$

• A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight en route from Lahore has crashed near Karachi airport. The aircraft, with almost 100 people on board, hit a residential district. The plane crashed in the populated Model Colony area located on the outskirts of the city, approximately two kilometers from Jinnah International Airport.It is not yet clear how many fatalities there were among those affected on the ground, but rescue workers said around 15-20 have been helped out from under rubble.

• The German government has announced that people arriving in Germany from Finland are no longer required to observe a mandatory two-week quarantine. The decision comes as a number of EU countries prepare to relax travel restrictions in anticipation of the summer tourist season.

• Researchers at the university of Helsinki have begun trials exploring the use of trained sniffer dogs to detect instances of coronavirus infection in the general population. It is hoped that the method will prove more effective than current testing tools. The University’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine has joined forces with the Faculty of Medicine to measure how effectively trained dogs are able to distinguish urine samples from infected people from those who do not have the virus. Similar trials have already begun in the UK, USA, and Hong Kong, among others. Early results have suggested that dogs are able to quickly and effectively detect the presence of COVID-19. Given mounting evidence that existing tests are far from 100% effective, health authorities around the world are looking to alternative testing methods.

• Since US domestic passenger carriers began operating some aircraft in cargo-only mode two months ago, they have been largely restricted to loading freight in the lower hold where baggage and shipments normally ride. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an exemption allowing airlines to carry cargo on seats. Airlines had requested a two year break from existing regulations, but the FAA said the exemption is only valid through the end of 2020.

• As China took the first step to impose a new national security law on Hong Kong, international opposition grew Friday, with the foreign ministers of Britain, Australia and Canada issuing a joint statement of alarm about the move and the European Union calling for the need to preserve the city’s high degree of autonomy.

• Greater Jakarta, with more than 30 million people, sends more than 14,000 tons of waste to eight landfills every day. To put it into perspective, the waste that Greater Jakarta has produced in the past three years could fill up Jakarta’s tallest skyscraper, the 310-meter-tall Gama Tower. The gigantic flow of trash, coupled with poor waste management, has brought the metropolitan area into a crisis. Some of the landfills are already overloaded or face the risk of becoming overloaded. Soon, Greater Jakarta residents will run out of places to dump waste.

Sun Activity

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 20 days
2020 total: 111 days (78%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

2018 total: 221 days (61%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
2008 total: 268 days (73%)
2007 total: 152 days (42%)
2006 total: 70 days (19%)

Active Weather

The weather forecaster missed completely the forecast, now they can luckily blame the AI models for their incompetence. The Tropical Cyclone Mangga never become so, probably it did not even rain…

Strongest EQ in Europe M5.1 Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M5.3 Nevada
2nd Strongest EQ on the Planet M6.1 Mexico
Deepest EQ M4.3 207 km Afghanistan News Burst 23 May 2020

News Burst 22 May 2020

• The arrest of Felicien Kabuga, one of the last key fugitives wanted over the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in a suburb of Paris has raised some difficult questions for France. Those committed to getting justice for the genocide victims want to know how fugitives such as Kabuga find refuge in France – and why it took so long to track him down. Kabuga, now 84, faces trial at an international tribunal after his arrest on Saturday. He is accused of being one of the organisers and financiers of the genocide carried out by ethnic Hutu extremists against Tutsis and moderate Hutus between April and July 1994, in which at least 800 000 people were slaughtered. According to the United Nations court indictment filed against him, Kabuga – once one of Rwanda’s richest men – used his fortune and business empire to facilitate the killings. France’s role before, during and after the genocide remains a matter of substantial controversy. France’s role before, during and after the genocide remains a matter of substantial controversy.

• US C-17 military transport aircraft with first shipment of 50 American ventilators has landed in Moscow’s Vnukovo-3 airport. Overall, the US is aiming to donate 200 ventilators. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier pointed out that the US is delivering the equipment free of charge, just like Russia previously did with ventilators for Americans. Moreover, Russia in April sent a shipment of medical materials to help Washington to fight the coronavirus spread.

• Hospital waste, human tissue, other medical waste dumped in woods, 3.5 tonnes of hazardous and infectious waste found in forest dumped outside Mexico City.

• Volkswagen has apologised for running a racist Instagram advert as part of a campaign to promote its new Golf model in Germany. The short clip showed an outsized white hand pushing around a dark-skinned man, apparently preventing him from getting into the car, before flicking him into the doorway of a Buenos Aires restaurant. And the cafe’s name is Petit Colon, which in French literally means the “Little Colonist.” The now-deleted clip, made by a creative agency, was part of a series of promotional videos shown on the stories section of VW brand’s German language Instagram account, which told the tale of an interracial couple falling in love.

• Police have released footage showing a man allegedly breaking into the Australian Museum in Sydney’s CBD. The man broke into the heritage-listed Australian Museum and was captured on CCTV cameras wandering around the exhibits for around 40 minutes, according to New South Wales police. The man was seen taking photograph with different exhibits, including a T-Rex dinosaur skull. He also allegedly took a hat believed to be owned by a member of staff before leaving the building.

• Boeing Australia presented the country’s Air Force on Tuesday with a prototype of a jet-powered drone that they hope will one day fly alongside manned warplanes while bringing artificial intelligence to the battlefield. The Loyal Wingman, at 38-foot-long (11.5 meters) and with a range of 2,000 miles (3,218.6 kilometers), will “use artificial intelligence to fly independently, or in support of manned aircraft, while maintaining safe distance between other aircraft,” according to Boeing’s website on the project. The drones will be able to engage in electronic warfare as well as intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions and swap quickly between those roles, according to Boeing. The aircraft delivered in Sydney on Tuesday is the first of three prototypes Boeing is producing. It’s also the first aircraft “to be designed, engineered and manufactured in Australia in more than 50 years,” Boeing said in a statement.

• The Australian government has published dozens of previously redacted pages of text relating to Cardinal George Pell. Three unredacted reports published Thursday reveal for the first time the commission’s findings into what Pell knew about allegations of child sex abuse committed by priests decades ago in the Australian state of Victoria. The commission found that, as early as 1973, the former Vatican Treasurer “was not only conscious of child sex abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it.” The redacted pages appeared in the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Assault, which was published in December 2017. Black lines obscured multiple pages of Case Studies 16, 28 and 35, which examined allegations of abuse in the Diocese of Ballarat, the Archdiocese of Melbourne, and the church’s mechanism to address assault claims. In 2017, the commission found former Bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew about Ridsdale’s offending from 1975 and failed to stop it. Instead, he moved him between parishes, which gave the priest access to more victims, the commission found.

• While 38-year-olds Leslie and Andrew Godfrey enjoyed a five-day, 750-mile sailing passage from Sri Lanka to the Maldives, the whole world changed. Without internet access, the couple had yet to learn that Covid-19 had continued to spread, becoming a pandemic. From March 7 to 12, as they sailed across the Laccadive Sea toward the iridescent blue water of the northern Maldives, ports had begun slamming shut at a rate that no small sailboat could keep up with. The Las Vegas-based Godfreys started planning for their five-year sailing journey around the world back in college. Sonrisa, their 39-year-old Valiant 40 sailboat, is tiny by house standards. In a given year, an estimated 10,000 small boats, sailed by families and individuals, are out exploring the world’s oceans.

• The death toll due to devastation caused by Cyclone Amphan rose to 72 across West Bengal of which 15 were reported from Kolkata. With thousands of people left homeless, bridges washed away and low-lying areas in waist deep water, state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced a compensation of Rs 2.5 lakhs for those affected. ”I have never seen such a disaster before. I will ask PM to visit the state and see the situation,” she said. The extent of the structural damage caused by Cyclone Amphan is evident from visuals of airport hangars in Kolkata collapsing and water inundating runaways.

• Three women were trampled to death during a stampede for an US$8 cash handout in Colombo on Thursday (May 21), amid growing desperation among Sri Lankans struggling to make ends meet during a coronavirus lockdown that has smashed the economy. Some 1,000 people queued outside a businessman’s warehouse for his annual handout during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. There was a rush for the 1,500-rupee gift – about the same amount as a labourer’s daily wage – when the gates opened. some people tried to break the queue and enter, that is when the women at the top of the queue fell and were trampled to death. Nine others were seriously hurt in the stampede and taken to hospital.

• The head of Ukraine’s investigation team has said that evidence from the passengers on board flight PS752 suggests that something had happened to the plane even before it was hit by the missiles fired at it by the Revolutionary Guard. Alexander Ruvin, Director of the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensics, says evidence shows that passengers were out of their seats before the two missiles hit it shortly after taking off from Tehran’s International Imam Khomeini Airport on January 8. In an interview Ruvin said at the time of the crash the plane had not reached the altitude of 8,000 meters when seat belts are allowed to be unfastened. However, he added, finding the bodies of the passengers on the crash site with no seats means there was already a state of panic on the plane and the passengers had left their seats. It is not clear why Ruvin says people left their seats before the first missile hit. They might have done so between the two impacts since the second missile hit 30 seconds later. There is reason to believe that [something] was burning inside and black smoke was getting out through holes,” Ruvin said and added that the team did not find the lower part of the plane and all but four of the seats.

• “Beloved” female giant panda Tan Tan is preparing to return home to China after 20 years of putting smiles on the faces of visitors at Kobe Oji Zoo here. The zoo announced on May 19 that the star attraction, its only panda, will be sent back to her homeland as her lease is ending. The city borrowed the panda with the aim of cheering up residents who had experienced the devastating 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. “Tan Tan came to Kobe to cheer up people and has been particularly loved by children,” said Hiroyuki Ueyama, the head of the zoo, on May 19. “We really appreciate what she has done.” Tan Tan, 24, joined the zoo in 2000 when she was a young panda under a Japan-China joint breeding research program, with a limited term of 10 years. The loan period was extended to July 2020. Her return date has yet to be decided as a flight to China has been unable to be booked due to the new coronavirus outbreak. According to the Panda Protection Institute of Japan, the total number of giant pandas in Japan will be nine after Tan Tan returns home: three in Tokyo’s Ueno Zoological Gardens and six in Adventure World in Wakayama Prefecture. [Depressing]

• The Philippines has become the world’s largest known source of online child sexual exploitation, with endemic poverty helping drive a surge in abuse, a report said Thursday. Parents and relatives were responsible for facilitating the abuse in nearly all cases, according to the International Justice Mission aid group’s seven-year study. The combination of English fluency and high internet connectivity in the former US colony had helped make the country a “global hotspot” for child pornography, the report said. The proportion of Philippine internet addresses used to host child pornography had tripled in the three years to 2017, said the study, which based its findings on data collected by law enforcement data.

• Millions of Indians were rattled by a loud boom that shook their city Wednesday — one that baffled even local cops and emergency officials. The boom was heard across the nation’s tech-capital city of Bengaluru — which has a population of more than 8 million — at about 1:25 p.m. Wednesday

Sun Activity

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 19 days
2020 total: 110 days (77%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Active Weather

Tropical Cyclone Mangga – Cat 1 – w/v 35-50 kts 996 hPa Moving SE 6 kts Intensifying – West of Cocos Islands, Indian Ocean – The system is expected to track to the southeast and pass to the west of Cocos (Keeling) Islands during Friday. The system will then accelerate to the southeast and bring severe weather to western WA on Sunday and Monday.

Strongest EQ in Europe M5.7 Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M4.4 Idaho
2nd Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.1 Papua New Guinea
Deepest EQ M5.1 500 km Fiji News Burst 22 May 2020

News Burst 17 May 2020

• Nothing paints a better picture of how bad things have gotten for the airline industry – and for its working class – than the fact that United Airlines is barely using over 10% of its flight attendant staff. The airline said this week it only has work for 3,000 of its 25,000 flight attendants in June and said that job losses could be next if demand doesn’t recover by the time the government ends its payroll aid, according to Reuters. United still intends to pay its flight attendants until September 30 thanks to $5 billion in aid the airline got from the government. The CARES Act prohibits layoffs or pay cuts before October.

• President Trump fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. In a Friday night letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi required by law, Trump said that he “no longer” has the “fullest confidence” in Linick, whose termination will take effect in 30 days.

• Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa named Puhahonu in the Pacific Ocean the largest and hottest shield volcano on Earth. Their study appears in the new volume of Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Puhahonu, which literally means “turtle rising for breath” in Hawaiian, is twice as big as Mauna Loa, the former record holder, which is located on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mauna Loa was long believed to be the largest on Earth. However, after studying the ocean floor along the Hawaiian volcano chain and conducting a chemical analysis of rocks, the scientists withdrew the title and gave it to nearby Puhahonu.

• The ship that crashed in Magé/Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was a ship from the negative extraterrestrial faction that was trying to escape from Planet Earth and was shot down. There are non-positive races that are hidden in various caves and in Inner Earth environments, alongside negative factions. It is an Orion Star System spacecraft with three crew members. The Earth Protection Grid that is activated by the Forces of Light prevents any escape now. No one of the negative forces leaves the planet, fleeing, no matter how hard they try. It is a measure for all negative forces to be captured. The ship was shot down by the protective magnetic field after several warnings from the Ashtar Command not to attempt an escape. It was not hit by the Brazilian army/aeronautics or any country abroad such as the USA. It was manned by reptilians of the negative faction. The ship suffered a breakdown and was trying to return to the starting point when it crashed. The breakdown rendered the ship inoperative and without the ability to camouflage, becoming denser in this reality. ~ Gabriel RL.

• The Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos has invited the top officials of NASA to visit Russia to discuss a wide range of projects and is looking forward to a positive response, Russia’s space agency said citing its Deputy Director General for International Cooperation Sergey Savelyev. “We formally invited the top officials of NASA to come to our country, but we have received no reply so far. I hope that we will receive it and that it will be positive,” Savelyev said. He recalled that the space agency’s delegation had been invited to visit the United States. However, the invitation from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was eventually withdrawn due to senators’ pressure.

• Authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus pandemic was first detected, have ordered fresh Covid-19 tests for all of its residents after a cluster of new community cases. The Wuhan Covid-19 Epidemic Prevention Headquarters ordered all districts in the city to come up with plans for a 10-day barrage of nucleic tests and submit the plans by noon on Tuesday. The city had a population of about 14 million before it went into an unprecedented lockdown in January. The tests should cover both permanent residents and mobile populations, and target residential estates and densely populated areas, the headquarters said in the orders. The unprecedented move came after reports on the weekend of six new coronavirus cases from the same residential compound, known as Sanmin.

• The Research Center of the Iranian parliament (Majles) has estimated that about 190 trillion rials have been spent on setting up the National Information Network (NIN) by last year. The amount quoted is hard to estimate in U.S. dollars since the rial has steadily declined over the years. But if the current official exchange rate is applied the expenditure comes to at least 4.5 billion dollars. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has repeatedly criticized the lack of progress in launching NIN or intranet, asserting, “Unfortunately, there has been a lack of endeavor in launching the National information Network in the country, and what should have been done, has not been done, so far”. Thousands, if not millions of websites are blocked in Iran. While most are deemed morally corruptive, a smaller number are news and political websites, which are the real threat to the political system of the Islamic Republic that partly depends on controlling information and dissent.

• President Trump enacted into law the most powerful Executive Order ever seen in modern American history called the “EO on the Establishment of the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force Under Section 741 of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Implementation Act”—that upon being executed by President Trump, put into immediate full legal force 19 U.S. Code § 1307.Convict-Made Goods; Importation Prohibited that makes it illegal to bring into the United States: “All goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labor under penal sanctions shall not be entitled to entry at any of the ports of the United States, “Forced labor”, as herein used, shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty for its nonperformance and for which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily. For purposes of this section, the term “forced labor or/and indentured labor” includes forced or indentured child labor”.

• No-fishing areas established around Tonga are showing they are helping coral reef ecosystems to recover, according to the Special Management Area Report 2020, compiled by the Ministry of Fisheries in partnership with Australia’s James Cook University over four years. It showed around half of the Fish Habitat Reserves were recovering with an abundance of fish and diversity, while there was not much improvement was found within the SMAs, where the communities managing them are allowed to fish. The two best performing FHRs were at ‘Atata and Nomuka where adult food fish and reef fish diversity had recovered. The poorest performing FHRs were at ‘Eueiki, Ha’afeva, and O’ua showing little evidence of any recovery.According to the report, coral reefs and reef fish fishery in Vava’u is in noticeably worse condition than elsewhere in the country, with extensive evidence of damage to reefs from coral bleaching in Vava’u and northern Ha’apai. There is also extensive evidence of cyclone damage in southern Vava’u and northern Ha’apai. The report also highlighted that poor water quality appeared to have damaged many of the reefs around the lagoonal areas in Tongatapu and Vava’u.

• Not being able to use his position for kickbacks any longer is putting a crimp on the lifestyle of the sex assaulting royal who also turned a blind eye when a family member was paid for involving yet another family member. Our royal won’t ever go bankrupt, but he will need to get money from mom. ~ Prince Andrew/Sarah Ferguson (one of her daughters)/Queen Elizabeth.

• Thailand has extended its ban on passenger flights for another month to June 30, citing the need to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease. The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand issued the announcement on its website on Saturday to extend the ban from May 31.

• Ramathibodi Hospital on Friday paraded a company of new robots, designed and built with the assistance of Toyota Motor Thailand, that it hopes will reduce contact between Covid-19 patients and medical staff. A prototype was developed in March, “but it too bulky and slow so we turned to Toyota Motor Thailand for help. Within 10 days of working together, we overcame the problems”, Dr Sorayouth Chumnanvej, a neurosurgeon at the hospital and head of the team that came up with the idea, told the media on Friday. Dr Sorayouth said each robot weighs only 40 kilogrammes and can carry up to 10kg. They cost 100,000 baht to make and are operated via remote control over the hospital’s wi-fi network. Two of the robots have already been put to work on a ward for male Covid-19 patients where they are used for simple tasks such as delivering meals and medicine or providing a video conference link between patients and doctors.

Sun Activity

A magnetic active region is about to rotate into view over the sun’s northeastern limb. Based on its high latitude, it is probably a sunspot from new Solar Cycle 25.

Active Weather

The deep depression over southeast Bay of Bengal and neighbourhood has rapidly intensified into a cyclonic storm ‘Amphan’. The cyclone is very likely to intensify further into a severe cyclonic storm during next 12 hours and into a very severe cyclonic storm by 18th morning. It is very likely to move north-northwestwards initially till 17th May and then re-curve north-northeastwards across northwest Bay of Bengal towards West Bengal and adjoining North Odisha coasts during May 18 to 20.

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.4 Ionian Islands, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M4.6 Nevada
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.9 Vanuatu
Deepest EQ M4.6 165 km Colombia News Burst 17 May 2020