News Burst 24-25 April

• China has decided to donate additional $30 million in cash to WHO to support its global fight against #COVID19, in particular strengthening developing countries’ health systems. China already donated $20 million in cash to WHO on March 11.

• A study published in the journal The Lancet on Tuesday suggests that the numbers of COVID-19 cases in China provided by the CCP is total BS.

• The commander of the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Trenchant is under investigation by the UK Royal Navy for violating coronavirus lockdown restrictions, they held a BBQ and DJ party for his crew after arriving to the UK following two months at sea. Following the party, which took place dockside at the Devonport naval base, all 150 crew members of the MS Trenchant have been forced into self-isolation for two weeks due to coronavirus concerns. They had previously undergone the procedure before the submarine docked at the base.

• Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s blood will be used by medical researchers who are developing a vaccine for coronavirus after they won their battle with the illness.

• [Apr 20] CNNanon here. Been lurking for a while. Before you all accuse me of trolling, please know there are some of us here who have families to support and we have no other job prospects right now, so we put up with fucktards like Cuomo and Stelter. Just wanted to let you know that major news is coming soon about network management. Big. BIG. Changes in personnel. BOMBSHELL type information will go public soon. Some of our “leaders” have been enjoying themselves on the weekend doing things that “Krafty” types got busted for. Watch the news. Spoiler: The story will not be covered by CNN. Footnote: I have a dick so unless you want to see it, keep the Tits or GTFO comments to yourselves faggots. [AT&T CEO resigned – AT&T owns CNN]

• Cambodian Ministry of Environment officials have warned it will take legal action against Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) and several other organisations if they continue to collect deforestation data in the area. The ministry’s warning comes after PLCN suggested a new programme that would use satellite imagery to monitor and collect information on forest clearance in Prey Lang after the ministry banned the group from patrolling it. But the ministry’s secretary of state and spokesman Neth Pheaktra said that the activities of the PLCN are now against the law.

• Chinese officials demolished a building under construction which was built for housing 16 monks in Langdi monastery in Markham, Tibet. On Apr. 2, Chinese police arrived with a bulldozer to strike off the building which was being built by the local people in the traditional style by using collective labour. The officials arrived at the monastery a day before and told monks that the building was not allowed. As the abbot of the monastery appealed against the demolition, he was beaten and was threatened with imprisonment along with two other monks. The report details the images prior to the demolition sent from Tibet depicting local people singing as they work on the building in a tiny monastery. The image also showed the monastery displaying two red Chinese flags, compulsory for monasteries in Tibet, while Tibetan prayer flags fluttered in the breeze beside them.

• China has included parts of Arunachal Pradesh within its boundaries, in an updated map issued by Sky Map, an authority on digital maps which is a unit operated under Beijing’s National Surveying and Mapping Geographic Information Bureau. Users discovered that the new map has updated China’s borders that included India’s Arunachal Pradesh, a region it claims as part of Southern Tibet.

• The CEO of Ryanair, one of the world’s largest airlines, said his planes wouldn’t fly if the airline had to keep the middle seat empty to comply with what he described as an “idiotic” social-distancing proposal during the coronavirus pandemic. Michael O’Leary told that such action would be “entirely ineffective” — even as experts proposed it and some airlines have agreed to it at least temporarily as a way to keep social distancing in place as countries start to reopen and more flights resume. O’Leary said the Irish airline’s plans to start flying more would be ruined by “some entirely ineffective social-distancing measures like having middle seats empty — because if middle seats are empty, we’re not returning to flying at all.” He said the airline had told the Irish government that if it tried to impose such a rule, then “either the government pays for the middle seat or we won’t fly.”

• For weeks, the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank have stated the only solution for emerging market economies severely damaged by the coronavirus outbreak is a “debt jubilee.” The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a note on Thursday morning that said about $1 trillion in debt owed by developing countries should be canceled to avoid an emerging market debt crisis. “This is a world where defaults by developing nations on their debt is inevitable,” warned Richard Kozul-Wright, director of UNCTAD’s Division on Globalization and Development Strategies.

• Another grim milestone was reached this week. Human rights monitors have recorded that Saudi Arabia has carried out its 800th execution since King Salman bin Abdulaziz (and by extension MbS) began his rule five years ago — most being in the form of the kingdom’s ‘favored’ beheadings.

• Iran ended the social distancing, officials are considering the re-opening of cinemas and religious centers.

• In a recent highly targeted BEC attack, hackers managed to trick three British private equity firms into wire-transferring a total of $1.3 million to the bank accounts fraudsters have access to — while the victimized executives thought they closed an investment deal with some startups.

• The government of Jair Bolsonaro just lost its biggest star, Sergio Moro, the Brazilian Justice Minister who rose to fame as the lead judge in the infamous Petrobras ‘Car Wash’ investigations; investigations that ultimately led to the arrest of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and, arguably, the election of Bolsonaro. Moro is leaving the government over a disagreement that stems from the head of the Federal Police, Brazil’s version of the FBI, stepping down. Bolsonaro wants more control over that division, and Moro doesn’t like the idea. He wants the Federal Police to be independent of politics and signaled that Bolsonaro was interfering with investigations by messing with leadership.

• Fifty-eight 105mm artillery shells were removed from a cornfield by the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) in Battambang province on Wednesday. The owner of the field, Chhun Hoeub, said he was in a state of shock and panic when his plough tractor unearthed three shells, although it didn’t cause an explosion. According to the technical specifications, cluster bombs can weigh up to 340kg and have a length of 3.22m and a width of 401mm. They are dropped from jets and inside the body is a cluster of 444 bombs, each weighing 500g, which are smaller sub-munitions that are ejected and scattered. This type of cluster bomb is an American product.

Sun Activity

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 19 days
2020 total: 89 days (77%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.9 Rodhos, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M3.3 Idaho
Strongest EQ on the Planet 5.5 Off the Coast of Mexico/Guatemala
Deepest EQ M5.0 531 km South of Fiji Islands News Burst 24-25 April

News Burst 23 April 2020

• A group of over 100 MPs and Peers have called on the UK government to prepare some form of recovery Universal Basic Income (UBI) to protect citizens from the impending financial crisis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The group, which includes signatories from Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green Party, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru (the party of Wales), and Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party, claims that “84% of the public now support the introduction of a UBI” in addition to “support from seven parties across all four nations.”

• Having gone through three months of tense testing for exceptional precision, ESA (European Space Agency) planet hunter CHEOPS, which stands for Characterising ExOPlanet Satellite, is ready to comb outer space for heavenly bodies outside – and far away from – our solar system. In March, the cutting-edge space telescope began looking at well-known star systems: for instance, the last two weeks were spent observing two stars that are known to host exoplanets.

• Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, who is currently first vice-department director of the ruling Workers’ Party is believed to have been slowly but surely ascending through the party ranks for the past few years, and has recently been seen by her brother’s side at key political gatherings. Rumors say that North Korea has been drawing up a contingency plan overseeing the transfer of power to Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, in the event of an emergency. The report said that the North Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee had decided at an internal plenary meeting late last year that should Kim Jong-un die or be rendered unable to govern the country, Kim Yo-jong should take over.

• Spanish security services have arrested a top-tier Islamic State militant, who’d sneaked into the country after waging jihad in Syria and Iraq. The fugitive and his accomplices tried to blend in by wearing compulsory face masks. Police and intelligence agents forced entry into an apartment rented by the terrorism suspect and two of his accomplices in the province of Andalusia on Wednesday, Spain’s interior ministry revealed. The militant, said to be of Egyptian nationality, had somehow managed to illegally cross into Spain by sea, it emerged. Without disclosing his name, the ministry said he was “one of the most wanted terrorists in Europe, both because of his criminal record in Daesh [Arabic acronym for Islamic State/ISIL] and for the high danger he posed.”

• The CIA had a shot at taking down former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden back in the 1990s, but was prohibited from doing so by order of then US President Bill Clinton, former agency station chief Bob Grenier revealed in the Showtime documentary “The Longest War”. According to him, “lethal activity” against bin Laden was sanctioned only on the condition that it wouldn’t result in his death, the former CIA agent clarified. “Our tribal contacts came to us and said, ‘Look, he’s in this location now. When he leaves, he’s going to have to go through this particular crossroads’. [… T]hey proposed to bury a huge cache of explosives underneath those crossroads so that when his convoy came through they could simply blow it up. And we said absolutely not. We were risking jail if we didn’t tell them that”, Grenier said.

• Having analysed the public appearances of US President hopeful Joe Biden, Norwegian psychiatrist Fred Heggen has noted an obvious congitive failure in his mental health, which may be a sign of worsening dementia. What began as minor episodes when Biden started his election campaign to become the Democratic presidential candidate – “forgetfulness, mischief, confusions, gaffes, and aggression” – has worsened “at galloping speed”, Heggen noted in an opinion piece published by Nettavisen. In the piece called “Why Democrats are rallying behind a possibly demented candidate?” Heggen pointed out that Biden is now largely screened from contact with the media and the public. When he appears, the speech lasts a maximum of 10 minutes. Biden is either instructed via an earpiece or reads the text on a teleprompter. No questions from the press are allowed. The few times Biden took part in an actual debate, he struggled with impaired concentration, memory loss, and sudden blocks of thought, he said. [Think HRC]

• The default mailing app pre-installed on millions of iPhones and iPads has been found vulnerable to two critical flaws that attackers are exploiting in the wild, at least, from the last two years to spy on high-profile victims. The flaws could eventually let remote hackers secretly take complete control over Apple devices just by sending an email to any targeted individual with his email account logged-in to the vulnerable app. According to the researchers, both flaws existed in various models of iPhone and iPad for the last 8 years since the release of iOS 6 and, unfortunately, also affect the current iOS 13.4.1 with no patch yet update available for the regular versions.

• Afghanistan says it has released another 71 Taliban prisoners in a further step toward bringing the two sides together to negotiate a peace settlement.

• Afghan officials say 19 pro-government forces have been killed in Taliban attacks in the northern province of Takhar. The Taliban militants attacked local forces operating under the command of the Afghan National Army in Khwaja Ghar district from several directions overnight. The Defense Ministry said the attacks had been repulsed and that the Taliban had suffered casualties. The Taliban did not immediately comment on the assaults.

• The prices of actual barrels of multiple crude streams in Europe, Asia and Africa have plunged to as little as $5 a barrel, dragging down the entire physical oil market and increasingly distressing major producers. The slide is a sign of how far refinery demand has fallen. Plants from Portugal to Italy and the U.S. have shut down since the crisis began as their storage tanks are full. Consumption of some oil products in France as fallen by as much as 95% since the coronavirus pandemic began. Total SA said recently that it might not be able to keep its refineries open for another month.

• The Mekong River Commission has said that a new study blaming the drought which struck Mekong countries last year on Chinese dams is ‘premature,’ and that more evidence is necessary. “Our preliminary analysis, using rainfall data from 2008 to 2019 and observed water flows, showed that the 2019 drought was due largely to very low rainfall during the wet season with a delayed arrival and earlier departure of monsoon rains, and an El Nino event that created an abnormally higher temperature and higher evapotranspiration,” the commentary note reads. “In 2019, the monsoon rains began almost two weeks late and stopped about three weeks earlier than usual,” it added. “The basin lost about five weeks of rain and only received about 75% of rainfall as compared to previous years.”

• Attorney General William Barr said there is nothing stopping the Justice Department from announcing indictments from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation during the election season, as none of the presidential candidates are under review. Barr made the comments during a radio interview where he was asked about potential guidelines affecting Durham’s investigation that required the U.S. attorney to announce indictments or close his investigation prior to the 2020 presidential election. “As far as I’m aware, none of the key people that, whose actions are being reviewed at this point by Durham, are running for president,” Barr said.

• President Donald Trump responded to reports on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s health. On Tuesday, reports citing anonymous sources claimed Kim was gravely ill following surgery. “We don’t know” his status, Trump told reporters during a daily briefing on the CCP virus pandemic. “I wish him well, because if he’s in the kind of condition the reports say, that’s a very serious condition,” Trump said, without confirming recent reports about his health.

Sun Activity

Solar wind remains fast but the density of the stream has dropped out. Geomagnetic conditions remain calm amidst the weaker solar wind condition.

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 17 days
2020 total: 87 days (77%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M3.3 Rodhos, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M3.7 California
Strongest EQ on the Planet 5.0 Gulf of Aden
Deepest EQ M4.4 416 km Izu Islands, Japan News Burst 23 April 2020

News Burst 20 April 2020

• NASA has set May 27 for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to launch astronauts from Florida, the first such launch from U.S. soil since the space shuttle program ended in 2011. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are scheduled for the “Demo 2” flight to the International Space Station. It will be the maiden crewed flight for the Crew Dragon capsule. Elon Musk’s SpaceX flew a successful demonstration flight to the space station in March 2019. The space station has been accessible to astronauts only through purchasing seats on Russian capsules launched from Kazakhstan for the last nine years. The Dragon capsule is to lift off atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

• Air Malta could leave 108 of its 134 pilots out of work after it failed to find common ground on salary compensations with the pilots’ union. The major Maltese airline had to ground its fleet in March and it’s truggling to keep up with the fallout of the crisis which could result in over €130 million (US$ 141 million) in damages for the company by the start of the summer season, Air Malta offered this month to grant pilots a minimum income of €1,200 ($1,300) monthly even if they are forced to stay at home in a move to keep all the staff on the books. However, the compensation can hardly be compared to an average salary, prompting local unions representing pilots to turn the offer down.

• Forty-four Boko Haram terrorist suspects were found dead of apparent suicide in their prison cells in Chad, a public prosecutor said, as observers wonder whether they were murdered or had committed collective suicide. Autopsies carried out on four of the prisoners found that they had ingested poison, Youssof Tom, a high court prosecutor, said Saturday. The imprisoned suspects died on Thursday and Friday. It is unclear how the prisoners acquired the poison from inside the prison. Officials said the 44 were among a group of 58 suspects captured during a major army operation around Lake Chad launched by President Idriss Deby Itno early this month. Dubbed Operation “Anger of Boma,” 1,000 Boko Haram fighters were killed and dozens were taken prisoner during a 10-day counterterrorism operation, according to the Chadian army. “For the 14 other prisoners who escaped this atrocious death, the legal proceedings will continue,” Tom said.

• As citizens enter their second weekend of lockdown, Turkey’s maritime denizens continue to enjoy a significant decrease in sea traffic in the country’s biggest city. Dolphins were seen by the Galata Bridge, just off the shores of Istanbul’s historic peninsula, where usually dozens of fishermen would be enjoying the beckoning spring weather.

• On Monday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell, and other senior officials called on a federal judge to prevent the disclosure of files related to the role of the government of Saudi Arabia in the September 11 attacks. The officials told the judge in the civil case that the release of the files would endanger national security. The files are being sought by families of the 9/11 victims who have spent the last two decades attempting to uncover the truth about the attacks. The families filed a lawsuit in federal district court in New York in 2017 as part of their effort to uncover the role of the Saudi government. What is publicly known is that the alleged 9/11 hijackers had a relationship with Saudi government officials. As Pro Public reported, at the 2019 White House September 11 memorial, U.S. President Donald Trump promised the families he would help them uncover the truth about 9/11. The Trump Administration stated that the national security threat was so great that even sharing the reasoning behind the request for secrecy could cause harm.

• On April 15 Russia conducted another test of its missile system designed to destroy a satellite in orbit around Earth, according to US Space Command. It is believed to be the 10th test of this anti-satellite, or ASAT, technology, but it’s unclear if the missile actually destroyed anything in space. April 16 A “Very big flaming object” was spotted spiraling through the sky in Cambridgeshire, UK this week – leaving onlookers dumbfounded.

• President Trump said New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman should give back her Pulitzer Prize for her reports on Russia. “She won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Russia. But she was wrong on Russia. So was everyone else. They should all give back their Pulitzer Prizes.”

• Nine people were killed by a landslide at an illegal gold mine in Sumatra, an Indonesian official said Sunday. The accident happened Saturday in South Solok in West Sumatra province when a group of 12 people were digging for gold at an abandoned mine. The area has several abandoned mines from the colonial era. The victims were local farmers digging the gold without proper equipment or protective gear.

Sun Activity

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 12 days
2020 total: 84 days (76%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.2 Crete, Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M3.7 W of Petrolia, California
Strongest EQ on the Planet 6.5 Japan
Deepest EQ M3.2 256 km Italy

It did not take long for the deep Earthquakes of April 17 to cause the highly probable shallow EQ in Japan, a strong M6.5 at 41 depth km struck the coast between Morioka and Sendai on April 19 at 20:39 UTC

News Burst 20 April 2020

News Burst 19 April 2020

• Some people will use Gab Social.
  Some will use the Dissenter browser.
  Others will use Gab Trends.
  More still will use ON.
  Some will use them all.
  Or a mixture of a few, but not others.
  The point is people will have a choice outside of the Silicon Valley cartel of surveillance capitalism and the capitulation to enemies both foreign and domestic.

• Microsoft along with several pharmaceutical companies is developing a special chatbot to encourage people who have recovered from the novel coronavirus to donate their plasma to those who are currently being treated

• What’s The Difference Between Fake News & Hypernormalisation? Before the current Coronavirus pandemic, the Canadian government took delivery of the Broadband Telecom Legislative Review. The 235-page report offered 97 recommendations for revamping internet and broadcasting oversight, most of them bad ones. Among them were provisions for requiring all content creators to obtain a license for operating from the government and “discoverability provisions” to force major tech platforms to emphasize “credible sources of news” over others (what the government calls “Approved Media”). Shortly after that the government-funded CBC marshalled a gaggle of “Approved Media” in Canada (no doubt one of entities who will receive part of that $600,000,000 subsidy package announced in the run up to the last election) to call forth the government to legislate “trusted sources” of news.

• Watching Hong Kong closely to see if Beijing, having mostly reopened the mainland economy, relieving the pressure for the first time in months, would turn its attention back to its top priority pre-corona: Crushing an insurgent pro-democracy movement in the Special Administrative Region. Early on Saturday morning in Hong Kong, HK police arrested 15 pro-democracy movement activists, including a high-profile tycoon who was one of the few members of the HK business community to vehemently back the protest movement. The targets included Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, and 14 other supporters. The pretext for the arrest was their involvement in last year’s protests.

• The United States has launched a ‘full scale investigation’ into whether COVID-19 escaped from a biolab in Wuhan, China. According to the report, US intelligence operatives are gathering information regarding the laboratory and the initial outbreak of the virus. The investigation will help intelligence analysts piece together a timeline for what the CCP knew, as well as ‘create an accurate picture of what happened.’

• Twitter lost its six-year legal battle to let the public know exactly how many requests it received from the FBI to snoop on private user accounts. After years of litigation that spanned the tenures of four US attorneys general — Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Jeff Sessions and William Barr — US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted the government’s request to dismiss the lawsuit. She wrote in an 11-page ruling that the Justice Department had shown, in part through the use of confidential declarations, that releasing the precise number of national security letters from 2014, which is what Twitter wanted to do, posed a national security risk.

• Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe said Friday that the World Health Organization, which faces criticism over its response to the coronavirus pandemic, is in need of reform but stressed that Japan has no plan to stop funding the UN agency. “There are views that it is politically not neutral,” Abe told a press conference, in an apparent reference to criticism including from US President Donald Trump that the WHO has taken stances favorable to China, where the new coronavirus was first reported late last year.

• Thick smoke hung over Ukraine’s capital Kiev on Friday as forest fires smouldered on in the Chernobyl nuclear zone, but city officials said no radiation spike had been detected. The acrid haze hindered visibility all over the city of three million people and the smell of smoke permeated homes as Kiev jumped to the top of high air pollution rankings.

• Mount Semeru in Lumajang, East Java, has reportedly shown elevated volcanic activity that was marked with a 300-second tectonic earthquake and a 2,000-meter-high column of ash blowing south. The increasing activity was recorded on Friday morning at around 6 a.m., the Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center confirmed, citing that the mountain had persistently erupted and expelled lava from its crater since the beginning of April.

• Undocumented and overstaying Nepalis in Kuwait could be deprived of amnesty as Nepal is under lockdown. Kuwait government has offered a general amnesty to undocumented workers allowing them to leave the country without having to pay any fines and airfares and also the option to return Kuwait later.

• US President Donald Trump does not see an increase in military tension with Russia amid the pandemic and is convinced that the two countries have “a very good relationship.” He stated this at a briefing for journalists in the White House on Saturday. When asked if “US opponents,” such as the North Korea, Russia, China and Iran, are trying to take advantage of the coronavirus situation to the detriment of the United States, hampering Washington’s policies and creating military tension, Trump said: “No, I don’t see it. We have very good relationship with Russia. We worked together on the oil deal. That was a very important deal to them and to us and to Saudi Arabia.”

• Newly-discovered Comet SWAN (C/2020 F8) is shaping up to be a beauty. It looks great through small telescopes now, and could become visible to the naked eye next month.

Sun Activity

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 12 days
2020 total: 84 days (76%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M4.4 Italy
Strongest EQ in North America M4.3 Alaska
Strongest EQ on the Planet 6.6 South west of Japan
Deepest EQ M6.6 453 km South west of Japan News Burst 19 April 2020