1575: Numbers Station

Hey, Adam! The kids like to walk around the house and pretend to do intros to the show. It only gets awkward when they talk about de-douching someone in front of other homeschool kids whose parents may still be douchebags. Every Thursday and Sunday my wife or I will say to them, “hey guys! Guess what day it is.” Only for them to give us an intro to the show. Here in Indiana the “Canadian wildfires” have been a hot topic because our skies are constantly hazy and they have been for months. Anyway, thought you’d enjoy listening to a 9 and 11 year old pay homage to the best podcast in the universe.

Take care,

Anonymous controller

Move Over 'Cocaine Bear'; Florida's Cocaine Sharks Are the New Scary Trend, Experts Warn * 100PercentFedUp.com * by Daniel

Aircraft to Uganda

From US Gov -> private dealer - > Uganda buyer

UN is the buyer

"It's not the heat, it's the humidity". That's a partly valid phrase you may have heard in the summer, but it's actually both. The heat index, also known as the apparent temperature, is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature. This has important considerations for the human body's comfort. When the body gets too hot, it begins to perspire or sweat to cool itself off. If the perspiration is not able to evaporate, the body cannot regulate its temperature. Evaporation is a cooling process. When perspiration is evaporated off the body, it effectively reduces the body's temperature. When the atmospheric moisture content (i.e. relative humidity) is high, the rate of evaporation from the body decreases. In other words, the human body feels warmer in humid conditions. The opposite is true when the relative humidity decreases because the rate of perspiration increases. The body actually feels cooler in arid conditions. There is direct relationship between the air temperature and relative humidity and the heat index, meaning as the air temperature and relative humidity increase (decrease), the heat index increases (decreases).

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In the morning Adam,

The clip John brought about the graindeal between Russia and Ukraine. The clip contained the obvious. Played at aproixamtly 57 minutes into the show. Just before the clip you guys had a discusion about arms being send to Africa as a personal black budget for the catholics in action. The cancelation of the grain deal is not just for grain and the U.N. not holding up their end of the deal. It is torpedo the budget of the agency. How much easier is it to transport tons of arms by sea the by air? The bulk of the grain transports are arms. They will now have to find a different route for these odd kind of grains.

That is what I believe is on of the underleying reasons for Russia to cancel the grain deal.

Keep up the good work.

With kind regards,

Olov

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in April allowing for “temporary” state control over the assets of companies or individuals from “unfriendly” states — which include the US and its allies.

Sunday’s move is the second time the Kremlin has used the decree to seize assets. Previously, Russia took control of utilities owned by Finland’s Fortum Oyj and Germany’s Uniper SE.

Russia and Ukraine accounted for about 13% of Carlsberg’s total sales and about 9% of operating profit in 2021. The company employs about 8,400 people in Russia and had previously separated the operations there from the rest of the group.

Carlsberg is assessing the legal and operational consequences. Fortum last week started a process of arbitration over the April seizure. But with Russia no longer concerned about appearing fair to western investors, it’s difficult to see how much recourse these or any other multinationals will have.

Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Philip Morris International have also remained. Coca-Cola HBC has the largest revenue exposure to Russia among European consumer-staple companies, Morgan Stanley said, saying the regional Coke bottler gets 12% of sales from that market.

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Putin devoted a lot of his opening remarks at Security Council meeting today to giving Poland a tongue lashing.

From official transcript:

“ I cannot refrain from commenting on what has just been said and on media reports that have come out about plans to establish some sort of the so-called Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian unit. This is not about a group of mercenaries – there are plenty of them there and they are being destroyed – but about a well-organised, equipped regular military unit to be used for operations in Ukraine, including to allegedly ensure the security of today’s Western Ukraine – actually, to call things by their true name, for the subsequent occupation of these territories. The outlook is clear: in the event Polish forces enter, say, Lvov or other Ukrainian territories, they will stay there, and they will stay there for good.

And we will actually see nothing new. Just to remind you, following WWI, after the defeat of Germany and its allies, Polish units occupied Lvov and adjacent territories that had been part of Austria-Hungary.

With its actions incited by the West, Poland took advantage of the tragedy of the Civil War in Russia and annexed certain historical Russian provinces. In dire straits, our country had to sign the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and recognise the annexation of its territories.

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According to Igor Kirillov, documents that were found in Ukraine indicate that the Pentagon planned to test unregistered medical drugs on the local population and then submit them for approval by supervisory authorities "in the interests of the so-called big pharma"

According to Kirillov, documents that were found in Ukraine indicate that the Pentagon planned to use the US army to test unregistered medical drugs on the local population and then submit them for approval by supervisory authorities "in the interests of the so-called big pharma." For these ends, it was planned to use its biolaboratories and facilitating agencies, such as Metabiota.

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“Right now you could say that any big project in African cities that is higher than three floors or roads that are longer than three kilometers are most likely being built and engineered by the Chinese. It is ubiquitous,” spoke Daan Roggeveen, the founder of MORE Architecture and author of many works on urbanization in China and Africa.

China is now Africa’s biggest trade partner, with Sino-African trade topping $200 billion per year. According to McKinsey, over 10,000 Chinese-owned firms are currently operating throughout the African continent, and the value of Chinese business there since 2005 amounts to more than $2 trillion, with $300 billion in investment currently on the table. Africa has also eclipsed Asia as the largest market for China’s overseas construction contracts. To keep this momentum building, Beijing recently announced a $1 billion Belt and Road Africa infrastructure development fund and, in 2018, a whopping $60 billion African aid package, so expect Africa to continuing swaying to the east as economic ties with China become more numerous and robust.

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According to Igor Kirillov, documents that were found in Ukraine indicate that the Pentagon planned to test unregistered medical drugs on the local population and then submit them for approval by supervisory authorities "in the interests of the so-called big pharma"

According to Kirillov, documents that were found in Ukraine indicate that the Pentagon planned to use the US army to test unregistered medical drugs on the local population and then submit them for approval by supervisory authorities "in the interests of the so-called big pharma." For these ends, it was planned to use its biolaboratories and facilitating agencies, such as Metabiota.

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“This will be a permanent office in the Executive Office of the President charged with leading, coordinating, and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens,” the White House said in a press release.

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ITM

I type/write this humbly due to being hit in the heart (my mouth is all good and my wallet is an associate exec producer) but the latest show's trans-Maoist psychosis exposé is stirring up intense guilt. I come from the medical angle and understand the cold, heartless, unintentional harm.

Forgive us for we know not what we do.

I've never had millions of $$$ dangled in my face so I can absolutely imagine the horrors I might have committed; for example, I might have funneled cocaine to my teenage friends (at my own expense at least) just to see how they would react to it! But what kind of 16 year old person would do that?!? Well at least 1 I can identify....

Torture/brutality can be perpetrated thru naive curiosity and you don't realize it until 15 years later with good Karma/Fortune/and Grace after listening to No Agenda. But then the guilt! As JCD has mentioned, those un-able to accept what they've done are innocent despite becoming monsters. Forgive them but they have become Satanic so 2nd Amendment on deck IMO.

Realizing "I" am the potential monster/Mengele/etc, is fucked up.I did what "they" said was good, I followed the Bio-Ethical guide lines to the letter, but I sent so many vials of genomic info to NIH before the needle-like piercing of reality broke me. $20 bucks for a blood draw is totally worth it! It's for Science! I know you've just had a heart attack or you're dying from an aneurism but Science! The unconscious/insane are rather willing to 'consent'. It was a numbers game for grant money. ROUGH! The exact program is still in play https://allofus.nih.gov/

I don't believe a human is capable of handling the guilt load of being complicit in a murderous genocide without something Greater to relieve the pain. I intuit there are many thousands of people who have fallen into this trap and Forgiveness, not denial, is the way out for us.

Forgive us, but stop us, for we know not what we do. And for those who do know, 2A baby!

TYFYC

In hopes this adds value here how the shpeel goes for those who want to keep their numbers up i.e. your job/the grant money. The neurological ward is the best, an “uuuhhhhhhhhh” moan sounds like a “yes” to most, then you quite literally hold their hand so they tap the Informed Consent BS on an iPad, it was their finger! Then take their blood, the physician on duty is usually stuck filling out nonsense HIPPA forms on a computer and frequently hasn’t even seen the brain-damaged slave yet. So you tap their vein for the genetic blood juice, and if you have a shred a decency you stuff the $20 under the pillow, or in your pocket, these students have debts!!!

Sorry for such a depressing report, but to leave on an up beat, I am looking forward to the Meetup tomorrow!

TYFYC you rock

All of Us Research Program | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

According to Igor Kirillov, documents that were found in Ukraine indicate that the Pentagon planned to test unregistered medical drugs on the local population and then submit them for approval by supervisory authorities "in the interests of the so-called big pharma"

According to Kirillov, documents that were found in Ukraine indicate that the Pentagon planned to use the US army to test unregistered medical drugs on the local population and then submit them for approval by supervisory authorities "in the interests of the so-called big pharma." For these ends, it was planned to use its biolaboratories and facilitating agencies, such as Metabiota.

Link

Anonymous please

So here's a fun little switcheroo for ya, he said he noticed a pattern with his circle of MtF friends on how they all got started going down this rabbit hole was when they started taking various SSRIs. Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts all from a generation feeling abandoned. It gets perverse when a side effect of these common drugs is That it was increasingly difficult to achieve an orgasm through normal means. so they kept getting more perverse like a perverted journey leading them to this whole hypnosis Schtick. On these pills they said they were still able to achieve "prostate orgasms pspot" orgasms so they just did it cause it was the only way they could get off.

They're drugging everyone and turning the future men (frogs) gay!! Lol ... SSRIs have to be made illegal or something... Is RFK the only answer at this point? Can someone help him make a "Stephen hawking" type apparatus to help his speech?

Crazy stuff

As depicted above, WormGPT was allegedly trained on a diverse array of data sources, particularly concentrating on malware-related data. However, the specific datasets utilised during the training process remain confidential, as decided by the tool’s author.

As depicted above, WormGPT was allegedly trained on a diverse array of data sources, particularly concentrating on malware-related data. However, the specific datasets utilised during the training process remain confidential, as decided by the tool’s author.

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ITM John and Adam!

(read on the show if you'd like)

Boots on the Ground Report:

Here are some new terms to look out for: "Transitory Economic Surcharge" "Inflation Surcharge" and "Inflation Fee"

I run a small biotech company in Baltimore, MD. I have recently received several invoices for raw materials that included the term "Transitory Economic Surcharge" or "Inflation Surcharge" along with the usual line items of tax, shipping, and handling (Example attached). They are basically fees that suppliers are sneaking onto bills so they don't have to officially raise prices.

I don't know how much it's going to be a thing, just something for people to keep an eye on.

Thank you for all you do,

Ben

p.s. I design and manufacture cell culture media for a living. DO NOT EAT LAB GROWN MEAT!! IT'S A TUMOR!!!

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in April allowing for “temporary” state control over the assets of companies or individuals from “unfriendly” states — which include the US and its allies.

Sunday’s move is the second time the Kremlin has used the decree to seize assets. Previously, Russia took control of utilities owned by Finland’s Fortum Oyj and Germany’s Uniper SE.

Russia and Ukraine accounted for about 13% of Carlsberg’s total sales and about 9% of operating profit in 2021. The company employs about 8,400 people in Russia and had previously separated the operations there from the rest of the group.

Carlsberg is assessing the legal and operational consequences. Fortum last week started a process of arbitration over the April seizure. But with Russia no longer concerned about appearing fair to western investors, it’s difficult to see how much recourse these or any other multinationals will have.

Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Philip Morris International have also remained. Coca-Cola HBC has the largest revenue exposure to Russia among European consumer-staple companies, Morgan Stanley said, saying the regional Coke bottler gets 12% of sales from that market.

Link

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has invoked his family throughout his presidential campaign. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Reid J. Epstein

Reporting from Washington

July 21, 2023

The grandson of President John F. Kennedy on Friday called Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign “an embarrassment,” becoming the latest member of the storied Kennedy family to condemn the Democratic primary challenger to President Biden.

Jack Schlossberg, the former president’s grandson and the son of Caroline Kennedy, Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Australia, made the remarks in a 1-minute 50-second social media video.

Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Schlossberg said, is “trading in on Camelot, celebrity conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame.”

He continued: “I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment. Let’s not be distracted, again, by somebody’s vanity project. I am excited to vote for Joe Biden in my state’s primary, and again in the general election.”

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Link to Article

Archived Version

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 16:25

Africa has become the fastest urbanizing region of the world, with rural migrants moving into cities a clip that has even surpassed that of China and India, as the continent becomes one of the final frontiers of the forth industrial revolution. This rapid transition presents big challenges but also offers big rewards for countries willing to risk billions in an infrastructure building revolution unlike anything the world has seen before '' and no country has answered Africa's call quite like China.

By 2050, Africa's 1.1 billion person population is slated to double, with 80% of this growth happening in cities, bringing the continent's urban headcount up to more than 1.3 billion. The population of Lagos alone is growing by 77 people per hour. According to McKinsey, by 2025 more than 100 cities in Africa will contain over a million people.

With this breakneck pace of urbanization comes many unprecedented economic opportunities. The IMF recently declared Africa the world's second-fastest growing region, and many are predicting that it is well on its way to becoming a $5 trillion economy, as household consumption is expected to increase at a 3.8% yearly clip to $2.1 trillion by 2025. The attention of the world is now drifting towards Africa, with comparisons to 1990s-era China are no longer coming off as radical projections.

China has likewise become a central player in Africa's urbanization push, as a huge percentage of the continent's infrastructure initiatives are being driven by Chinese companies and/or backed by Chinese funding.

''Right now you could say that any big project in African cities that is higher than three floors or roads that are longer than three kilometers are most likely being built and engineered by the Chinese. It is ubiquitous,'' spoke Daan Roggeveen, the founder of MORE Architecture and author of many works on urbanization in China and Africa.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - MARCH 07: Construction site for new building with chinese cooperation, addis ... [+] abeba region, addis ababa, Ethiopia on March 7, 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Photo by Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images)

Corbis via Getty ImagesEven before the Belt and Road was formally announced in 2013, China was making major strides into Africa's urban development sphere. When the Communist Party of China first came to power in 1949, it was virtually completely unrecognized by pretty much every other country in the world '-- most of whom favored the Republic of China, the former government that the Red Army chased away to Taiwan. But China began lobbying Africa extensively, getting the People's Republic recognized one country at a time. Before long, these political commitments were being repaid in concrete and steel, as China started building railroads, hospitals, universities, and stadiums throughout the continent. However, there were other reasons for China's early partnerships with Africa: even though the colonial powers were largely gone or on the way out, the continent was still the same stockpile of natural resources it's always been, and China wasted no time stepping into the power vacuum, laying the political and economic inroads that have given Beijing the advanced position it has there today.

China is now Africa's biggest trade partner, with Sino-African trade topping $200 billion per year. According to McKinsey, over 10,000 Chinese-owned firms are currently operating throughout the African continent, and the value of Chinese business there since 2005 amounts to more than $2 trillion, with $300 billion in investment currently on the table. Africa has also eclipsed Asia as the largest market for China's overseas construction contracts. To keep this momentum building, Beijing recently announced a $1 billion Belt and Road Africa infrastructure development fund and, in 2018, a whopping $60 billion African aid package, so expect Africa to continuing swaying to the east as economic ties with China become more numerous and robust.

Nothing without infrastructureA caterpillar erects revetment for the Great Wall of Lagos, to give a sustainable and permanent ... [+] solution to coastal erosion and to protect Eko Atlantic real estate, a multibillion dollars city under construction in Lagos, on October 2015. A delegation of French business confederation MEDEF comprises of fifty companies, both small, medium and large establishments is in Nigeria to explore business opportunities and to source other channels of building strong and sustainable business relationship with their Nigerian counterpart. AFP PHOTO/PIUS UTOMI EKPEI (Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesAs Chinese President Xi Jinping once pointed out, ''Inadequate infrastructure is believed to be the biggest bottleneck to Africa's development.'' Collectively, the countries of Africa would need to spend $130-170 billion per year to meet their infrastructure needs, but, according to the African Development Bank, they are coming up $68-$108 billion short. Closing Africa's infrastructure gap has been the obsession of multiple waves of colonists, and China is the next in line to reach into the heart of the continent with railroads, highways, and airports.

''Europeans built infrastructure in Africa at the turn of the century, purportedly also for local economic development, but in essence the projects were used for natural resource extraction. The predecessor of both the Nairobi-Mombasa and Addis Ababa-Djibouti railways can be categorized as such. Both connect inland regions with mineral deposits with major ports on the Indian Ocean,'' wrote Xiaochen Su on The Diplomat.

Infrastructure is what Africa needs most and infrastructure is what China is most equipped to provide. It is not lost on many African leaders that hardly 30 years ago China was in a similar place that they are now '-- a backwater country whose economy made up hardly two percent of global GDP. But over the past few decades China shocked the world in the way that it used infrastructure to propel economic growth, creating a high-speed rail network that now tops 29,000 kilometers, paving over 100,000 kilometers of new expressways, constructing over 100 new airports, and building no less than 3,500 new urban areas '-- which include 500 economic development zones and 1,000 city-level developments. Over this period of time, China's GDP has grown more than 10-fold, ranking #2 in the world today.

Chinese and Ivorians technicians work on the construction site of a new container terminal at the ... [+] port of Abidjan on March 27, 2019. - The modernization of Abidjan Port which started in 2012 are led by Chinese engineers and workers whose country finances up to 1,100 billion FCFA (1.67 billion euros). (Photo by ISSOUF SANOGO / AFP) (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesIt is precisely this kind of infrastructure-induced economic growth that Africa is looking for right now, and many African leaders are looking to China to bring their experience to their countries. The central players in many of Africa's biggest ticket infrastructure projects '-- including the $12 billion Coastal Railway in Nigeria, the $4.5 billion Addis Ababa''Djibouti Railway, and the $11 billion megaport and economic zone at Bagamoyo '-- are being developed via Chinese partnerships.

Since 2011, China has been the biggest player in Africa's infrastructure boom, claiming a 40% share that continues to rise. Meanwhile, the shares of other players are falling precipitously: Europe declined from 44% to 34%, while the presence of US contractors fell from 24% to just 6.7%.

''The Chinese SOEs they are really taking over the market of infrastructure projects in Africa. It's true to say that everywhere you go in East Africa you see Chinese construction teams,'' said Zhengli Huang, a research associate at the University of Sheffield who has carried out extensive case studies on urbanization in Nairobi.

The reasons for this ubiquitous presence are rather straight forward, as Roggeveen points out: many African contractors simply don't have the capacity for major development projects, ''so if you want to do large-scale construction you either turn to a western firm or to a Chinese firm, but the Chinese firm is always able to undercut you on price.''

Debt trap?Workers from China and Burkina Faso employed by Sinohydro, a Chinese state-owned hydropower ... [+] engineering and construction company, return to their dormitories after a working day on January 31, 2012 in Bata. AFP PHOTO / ABDELHAK SENNA (Photo credit should read ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesWhen we look at Africa, we see many countries chasing dreams of a better economic future while burying themselves in massive amounts of infrastructure-induced debt that they may not be able to actually afford. There have already been warning signs: the $4 Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway ended up costing Ethiopia nearly a quarter of it's total 2016 budget, Nigeria had to renegotiate a deal with their Chinese contractor due to their failure to pay, and Kenya's 80% Chinese-financed railway from Mombasa to Nairobi has already gone four times over budget, costing the country upwards of 6% of it's GDP. In 2012, the IMF found that China owned 15% of Africa's external debt, and hardly three years later roughly two-thirds of all new loans were coming from China. This has some analysts issuing warnings about debt traps '' with some even going as far as calling what China is doing a new form colonialism.

What does China get out of this?Chinese and Ivorians technicians work on the construction site of a new container terminal at the ... [+] port of Abidjan on March 27, 2019. - The modernization of Abidjan Port which started in 2012 are led by Chinese engineers and workers whose country finances up to 1,100 billion FCFA (1.67 billion euros). (Photo by ISSOUF SANOGO / AFP) (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesChina needs what Africa has for long-term economic and political stability. Over a third of China's oil comes from Africa, as does 20% of the country's cotton. Africa has roughly half of the world's stock of manganese, an essential ingredient for steel production, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on its own possesses half of the planet's cobalt. Africa also has significant amounts of coltan, which is needed for electronics, as well as half of the world's known supply of carbonatites, a rock formation that's the primary source of rare earths.

However, there is a common misconception that all Chinese projects in Africa have the backing of Beijing. More often than not, Chinese SOEs are operating in Africa on purely for-profit ventures that don't have the ambitions of their government in mind. However, it can be difficult to separate China's commercial intentions in Africa from the strategic, as, in many cases, the two inevitably overlap. The internationalization of Chinese construction firms and IT companies as well as the building of infrastructure to better extract and export African resources, are key concerns for Beijing. So while the infrastructure being built on the ground may not necessarily be orchestrated by Beijing it does ultimately play into China's broader geo-economic interests.

Link to Article

Archived Version

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 16:11

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

Russia seized the local assets of Carlsberg beer and yogurt maker Danone. It now threatens Austria's Raiffeisen bank.

Russia Seizes Western Yogurt and Beer

As backdrop to the Raiffeisen bank story, consider the Bloomberg report, Russia Seizes Western Yogurt and Beer.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in April allowing for ''temporary'' state control over the assets of companies or individuals from ''unfriendly'' states '-- which include the US and its allies.

Sunday's move is the second time the Kremlin has used the decree to seize assets. Previously, Russia took control of utilities owned by Finland's Fortum Oyj and Germany's Uniper SE.

Russia and Ukraine accounted for about 13% of Carlsberg's total sales and about 9% of operating profit in 2021. The company employs about 8,400 people in Russia and had previously separated the operations there from the rest of the group.

Carlsberg is assessing the legal and operational consequences. Fortum last week started a process of arbitration over the April seizure. But with Russia no longer concerned about appearing fair to western investors, it's difficult to see how much recourse these or any other multinationals will have.

Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Philip Morris International have also remained. Coca-Cola HBC has the largest revenue exposure to Russia among European consumer-staple companies, Morgan Stanley said, saying the regional Coke bottler gets 12% of sales from that market.

Troubles at Raiffeisen Bank

Eurointelligence comments on Raiffeisen Bank Troubles.

After Russia took over Danone and Carlsberg, what fate is awaiting Austria's Raiffeisen bank? The US and EU's banking authorities pressure the bank for some time now to exit Russia, but progress is slow and risks are getting higher. After some failed attempts to swap assets with Russian banks in Europe, Raiffeisen is stuck between the rock and a hard place. They still serve western clients present in Russia and face the dilemma of either being hit by sanctions from the US and the EU if they stay or a hostile takeover from the Kremlin if they were to seek an exit.

Amongst western banks, Raiffeisen is the most important bank still operating in Russia, ahead of Italy's Unicredit, the Dutch ING and the Hungarian OTP.

Half of the western companies still present in Russia have turned towards Raiffeisen since the outbreak of the war, according to Les Echos. Not yet subject to sanctions and still connected to the Swift interbank messaging system, Raiffeisen has been a valuable interconnection between the two worlds.

The result was an increase in its assets by 36% since then. Despite losing 500,000 customers, it still has a total of 3.2m, and deposits have risen by 28% to '‚¬20.8bn for their Russian subsidiary. The number of employees rose to 9,890. Its profits for the first three months of this year were up 214% on the first quarter of last year.

Could the Kremlin do to Raiffeisen what it has done to Danone? Taking over a systemically relevant bank has more repercussions than taking over a dairy producer. The moment Russia seizes Raiffeisen's assets, their link to Swift would be cut off. It also would cause a domino effect to all those other western companies that still rely on Raiffeisen to protect their assets. Either it is done overnight or not at all. It depends on how valuable the link to the Swift system and the presence of those remaining western companies still is to the Kremlin. The move on Danone certainly was a shock and a reminder of how precarious the situation of companies still operating in Russia is.

Weaponization of the Dollar

Neither Bloomberg nor Eurointelligence mentioned retaliation for weaponization of the dollar as the prelude to these recent beer and yogurt events.

The only possible surprise in this story is why it took so long.

At the onset of the war, the Fed, under direction of the Biden Administration, illegally seized Russia's foreign reserves. Illegal is the correct word.

Federal Reserve Act

The Federal Reserve Act mandates that the Federal Reserve conduct monetary policy ''so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.''

Nowhere does the act give the Fed the right or power to confiscate the reserves of sovereign nations. But that is exactly what the Fed did when it seized Russia's US dollar reserves.

If the Fed can confiscate Russia's reserves, who's next?

By weaponizing the banking system against enemies outside and within, advanced economies are losing their 'risk free' status. This may not change the global currency order for now, but could lead to a wild scramble for gold and other tangible assets.https://t.co/QFkdkBMnf4

'-- Joseph Wang (@FedGuy12) March 7, 2022Weaponization of Swift

Please consider the Richmond Fed article What Is SWIFT, and Could Sanctions Impact the U.S. Dollar's Dominance?

The recent removal of Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system has highlighted the importance of payments in supporting economies. But the weaponization of SWIFT has also left some commentators worrying about the loss of the U.S. dollar's dominance, as it might drive banks and firms to other substitutes. This Economic Brief discusses the economics of SWIFT and explains why emigrating from the U.S. dollar may be more difficult than we thought.

The Richmond's Fed's assessment is self-serving. Yet, it appears accurate. Importantly the Fed even admits weaponization, the emphasis was mine.

Dollar Weaponization Expands '' FDIC Message to Foreign Depositors Is Don't Trust the US

On May 13, I commented Dollar Weaponization Expands '' FDIC Message to Foreign Depositors Is Don't Trust the US

Systemic Risk Assessment

The FDIC made a ''systemic risk exception'' for Silicon Valley Bank to protect depositor funds beyond its limit of $250,000 per bank account.

FDIC's stated ''insurance'' is for US depositors only. But the exception to make all US depositors whole means foreign depositors bear 100% of responsibility for the collapse of SVB.

Since bond holders rate higher than unsecured depositors, and the FDIC had significant losses rated to SVB, foreign depositors may get zero cents on the dollar.

If you are a foreign depositor at any small or midsized bank, the FDIC is affirming that you better get your money out now.

What Does China Do With a Dollar That's No Longer Risk Free?

In light of Fed actions against Russia, I pinged Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets some questions on China's reserves on March 18, 2022.

Please consider my Pettis Q&A post What Does China Do With a Dollar That's No Longer Risk Free? Buy Gold?

Q&A With Michael Pettis

Mish: Will China now hold more commodities and fewer dollars despite the pro-cyclical nature of it? More Euros or Yen over dollars? More gold?

Michael Pettis (emphasis mine):

1: ''Given that so much of China's ''reserves'' are now indirect and held by state-owned banks (all the increase since 2017) it's hard to say what the currency composition of China's reserves are.

2: ''Officially the US dollar is still by far the biggest component, but it is slowly declining.

3: ''I expect that this will continue as far as the official reserves go but, as you know, the hard part of reducing the US dollar component of your reserves is figuring out what the alternative should be, and with such high and growing reserves (once you include the indirect reserves at the state-owned banks) that is a very difficult question to resolve.''

Gold-Backed BRIC Silliness

Pettis' comment on the hard part is precisely why all the discussion on BRICs and a new currency backed by gold or some sort of weighted or commingled currency is 95 percent hot air.

Launching a BRIC currency is, for now, somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible, in any meaningful sense.

I explain in detail in More Gold Backed BRIC Currency Silliness on Dethroning the Dollar

Thorsten Polleit, chief economist at Degussa, told Kitco, ''For making the new currency as good as gold, a truly sound currency, it must be convertible into gold on demand. I am not sure whether this is what Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have in mind.''

Marc Chandler, managing director of Bannockburn Global Forex, told Kitco: ''Talk of BRICS gold backed currency seems like an echo chamber. They do not have the gold to back a currency meaningfully. Have we not learned anything from the EMU experience of monetary union without fiscal union. Color me profoundly skeptical.''

Importantly, there are no details to the BRIC announcement. The current discussion involves a ''trading currency''.

A ''trading currency'' is a laughable construct because nations don't trade, individuals and corporations do. It is the sum of individual and corporate actions that give rise to the concept of national trade deficits.

In essence, the proposed trading currency is a return to Bretton Woods, minus the gold, which surely will not be convertible on demand for the actual traders, individuals and corporations.

Details await. If you are honest about things, and understand trade at all, expect to be underwhelmed.

Not Now Does Not Mean Never

The demise of the current US-dollar financial system with SWIFT at the heart of it is underway. I just cannot tell you when the system crumbles, nor can anyone else.

Although the dollar avoidance the BRICs seek is much easier said than done, not now doesn't mean never. The recognition phase has started.

Most do not realize the EU is involved even though it wants no part of the BRIC structure. Importantly, the EU's annoyance at SWIFT is far more significant than any yapping by Brazil.

So, don't be surprised if something truly significant starts with the EU, not the BRICs. That's an idea I have not seen anyone else suggest.

The EU is hopping mad over US sanctions on Iran. Germany was hopping mad at Trump for threatening to sanction Gazprom. The latter point is now moot, yet still a sore point.

Regardless of where de-dollarization picks up steam, it will mark the end of global sanction madness by Trump and dramatically escalated by Biden. Bring it on.

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Sun, 23 Jul 2023 14:34

The US government has launched a new agency to prepare for pandemics and other ''biological threats,'' with President Joe Biden tapping a retired Air Force general to spearhead the project.

The White House announced the creation of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR) on Friday. The agency will be tasked with devising a response to public health crises, coordinating scientific research and medical efforts against pandemics, and providing regular reports to Congress.

''This will be a permanent office in the Executive Office of the President charged with leading, coordinating, and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens,'' the White House said in a press release.

The new office will be headed up by Retired Air Force Major General Paul Friedrichs, who currently serves as a special assistant to President Joe Biden and the Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the White House National Security Council. Friedrichs previously worked as a joint staff surgeon at the Pentagon, where he also advised the military's Covid-19 task force.

The OPPR will formally come into existence on August 7, after which Friedrichs will begin assembling a team. His responsibilities will include ensuring the Strategic National Stockpile is well-equipped with medical supplies, and working with Congress to procure funding for US preparedness efforts, according to the New York Times.

In addition to crafting a government response to future pandemics, the agency will confer with industry, the scientific community and the Department of Health and Human Services to develop the ''next generation of medical countermeasures,'' including vaccines. Its work will focus on Covid-19, monkeypox, polio, avian and human influenza, and RSV, among other pathogens.

Taking over the role of the White House's Covid-19 response team, which was shuttered in May, the office was created under a sweeping government spending package enacted in late 2022. It will be required to submit a ''preparedness review'' to lawmakers every two years, and a separate ''outlook report'' every five years.

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Russia bombards Black Sea port cities

Russia accused of weaponizing food shipments as it bombards Ukrainian port cities 01:59 Kyiv '-- Parts of Ukraine 's Black Sea port cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv were engulfed in flames again in the early hours of Thursday after another night of Russian bombardment . Ukrainian military officials said the country's air defenses shot down five cruise missiles and 13 attack drones, but from the damage in the vital port cities, it was clear they hadn't stopped all of Russia's rockets.

More than 20 civilians were wounded in the latest wave of attacks, including five children, according to Ukrainian emergency services. It was the third straight night that Russia had taken aim at the ports, right on the heels of Moscow pulling out of a deal that had allowed Ukraine's cargo ships safe passage through Russia's Black Sea blockade.

A firefighter works at the site of an administrative building heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Odesa, Ukraine, July 20, 2023, in a photo provided by Ukraine's national emergency service. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout/REUTERS Moscow has now issued a stark new warning: That it will consider any ship sailing through those waters a potential military target.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it "strongly condemns any threats to use force against civilian ships, regardless of their flag."

The Russian warning was also raising alarm in Washington and European capitals.

"I think it ought to be quite clear to everyone in the world right now that Russia is using food as a weapon of war, not just against the Ukrainian people, but against all the people in the world, especially the most underdeveloped countries who depend on grain from the region, " State Department spokesman Matt Miller said Wednesday.

European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell condemned Russia's recent strikes on grain storage facilities in Odesa and Mykolaiv, which he said had burned "more than 60,000 tons of grain."

Inside a Ukrainian village under constant attack from both sides 03:31 "The fact that the Russian president has canceled the grain agreement and is now bombing the port of Odesa is not only another attack on Ukraine, but an attack on the people, on the poorest people in the world," said German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock. "Hundreds of thousands of people, not to say millions, urgently need grain from Ukraine."

Another threat appeared to have reemerged on the horizon in northern Ukraine, meanwhile. Videos posted on social media appeared to show Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin addressing his fighters in neighboring Belarus '-- berating Russia's front-line commanders in Ukraine as a "disgrace" to their nation.

It's the first time Prigozhin has been seen since he launched an apparent mutiny and sent his forces marching toward Moscow last month, vowing to topple Russia's military commanders in what was seen as a major challenge to President Vladmir Putin's authority.

Examining the state of Wagner Group as Ukraine receives cluster bombs 04:28 In the latest videos, Prigozhin hinted that his forces would be "preparing" for a possible return to fighting in Ukraine, or in his words: "Waiting for the moment when we can prove ourselves in full."

In Poland, which shares portions of its eastern border with Ukraine and Belarus, the defense ministry issued a statement saying it was monitoring the situation and was prepared for any eventuality after Belarus confirmed that Wagner mercenaries would take part in military exercises and help train its troops near the border.

"Poland's borders are secure, we are monitoring the situation on our eastern border on an ongoing basis and we are prepared for various scenarios as the situation develops," the Reuters news agency quoted the ministry's statement as saying.

More In: Wagner Group Belarus War yevgeny prigozhin Food & Drink Ukraine Russia Vladimir Putin Thanks for reading CBS NEWS.

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Sun, 23 Jul 2023 13:57

Labeling something as a social construct, in a way, is weird. It can sound as though we're trying to invalidate, or even erase the existence of, the thing we claim is a social construct. That's not the case though. Gender, for example, is a social construct, but it's still real in the sense that many people consider their gender identity and gender expression important parts of how they present themselves to the world and how they see themselves.

Money is also a social construct, but identifying it as such is not to claim it doesn't exist or is a lie. It does exist. It's a social contract we all agree to in order to facilitate the exchange of goods and services.

Social constructs are ideas that shape our understanding of the world. They also influence our thinking and behavior.

Virginity As A Social ConstructVirginity is a social construct. It is not something you can hold in your hand or see, but it's something we as a culture have decided exists. It's a tool we use to mark ''before'' and ''after.'' More ominously, it's a tool we use to rate the chastity of girls and the experience of boys. A pre-intercourse girl is pure. A pre-intercourse boy is inexperienced. A post-intercourse girl is defiled, impure, loose, immoral. A post-intercourse boy is experienced.

Some cultures and communities place so much importance in the idea of virginity that they conduct ''virginity testing.'' This practice is condemned by the World Health Organization as a violation of a person's human rights. It is sometimes done using the ''two finger'' method of testing a woman's vaginal opening to determine if her hymen is still ''intact.'' It is also common to check for blood on the sheets after intercourse '-- blood means she was a virgin before intercourse. No blood means she was not a virgin. In some places, it may be seen as evidence she has defrauded her husband and may be subjected to punishment or even death.

It's obviously wrong to assess a person's value as a human being based on whether or not they've had previous sexual partners. But there also isn't actually any scientifically reliable way to test a person's virginity. Despite the persistence of the myth of the hymen being a sexual snitch, it just '... isn't. And science has known this for decades.

Popping Some Hymen MythsMany people still think of the hymen as a membrane that stretches completely across the vaginal opening, covering it like a drum. But the hymens is simply remnant tissue left over from prenatal development, and it is far more likely to be crescent- or ring-shaped than to cover the entire vaginal opening. Some vaginas have almost no hymen at all. (Don't people who believe the ''drum'' concept wonder how period blood exits the body prior to intercourse?) The hymen may tear during first intercourse; it may not. If properly lubricated, odds are higher the hymen will not tear.

The myth about the hymen being an indicator of virginity is bad enough; the myth that it must be broken or ''popped'' in order to ''take'' virginity only adds to the problem. It implies violence. The truth is, the hymen can lubricate and stretch. It does not have to tear the first time, or any time. Also true is that all sorts of non-sexual activities can contribute to the tearing of the hymen, from exercise to the inserting of a tampon to using one's own fingers during masturbation.

Misunderstanding about what the hymen actually is has prompted some people to adapt their language about it. For example, the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) has been using the term ''vaginal corona'' in place of ''hymen.''

The Concept Of Virginity As A Tool Of The PatriarchyVirginity is a tool used to dominate and control female behavior. It's a tool used to shame, and to promote the idea that women are responsible for the behavior of men. If a woman is not a virgin at marriage, surely it's because she ''tempted'' a man. Her ''impurity'' is a result of her immorality. And we frame virginity differently for boys and for girls. The virginity of men often isn't even addressed unless it's in terms of his experience, which is viewed as either a neutral or a positive.

In a world where men are generally given a free pass and women are locked down and oppressed, the onus of respectability somehow continues to fall on women. The cultural idea of virginity has the paradoxical effect of turning women into priceless jewels to be cherished while also threatening them with the idea that one wrong move can turn them into worthless trash. The ''priceless jewel'' bit is conditional. Cherishability is conditional.

Like the rose that gets passed around the room of teenagers in conservative Christian ''True Love Waits'' abstinence campaigns, girls are viewed as wilted and damaged once they've had ''too many'' hands on them.

The Concept Of Virginity Is Heteronormative And Harms Survivors Of Sexual AbuseGenerally, we frame virginity in a heteronormative, penis-penetrates vagina kind of way. This leaves queer folks out of the construct altogether. (Actually, as a queer person, I'm not sure I mind being left out of heteronormative social constructs. Ew.)

But the truth is, sex is many different acts, some penetrative and some not. Framing ''virginity'' around the act of penetration '-- specifically vaginal penetration '-- doesn't work. It simply isn't accurate.

For those who have been sexually abused, the concept of virginity literally adds insult to injury. Sexual abuse often involves penetrative sex. I was sexually abused at age seven but did not have consensual sexual intercourse until quite a few years later. At which point was my virginity ''lost''? Was I robbed of it at seven?

Having Sex For The First Time Is Not A ''Loss''Virginity is a social construct, but that doesn't make it less real. It's real because we believe it's real, in the same way we make money real by buying into the notion that it has value. But with virginity, we have the power collectively and as individuals to define it for ourselves.

One thing consensual sex is not is a loss. The language around first-time sex is inherently negative and shame-inducing. But people with vaginas do not ''give'' someone their virginity. We do not ''lose'' our virginity, and it cannot be ''taken.'' We do not lose any part of us by consensually engaging in one of the most natural human experiences, and no one can take any piece of us by force or coercion.

A person's consensual first time sexual experience can be momentous and special, or it can be blah and forgettable. It can be gross, or it can be awkward and embarrassing. Society does not get to dictate how a person should feel about their first time. Society does not get to imbue that experience with a predetermined meaning. Our virginity is ours and ours alone to define, to interpret, or even to reject altogether.

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In a turn of events that seems more akin to a B-movie plotline than real life, scientists are now investigating whether sharks off the Florida coast are feasting on bales of hallucinogenic drugs discarded by drug traffickers.

If you're shaking your head in disbelief, trust me, you're not alone.

The Discovery network's upcoming Shark Week will feature a program titled ''Cocaine Sharks'' '' a name as bewildering as the reality it represents.

But this isn't just a bid for shock-value entertainment.

As Dr. Tracy Fanara, a Florida-based environmental engineer and lead researcher, explains, the show aims to shed light on a significant and often overlooked problem: the pollution of our natural water bodies with all manner of substances, from the mundane to the illicit.

Drugs like cocaine, methamphetamines, and ketamine are ending up in our waterways, affecting marine life in ways we're only beginning to understand.

More details below:

Marine biologist Tom "The Blowfish" Hird is investigating cocaine sharks for the Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week. He says fleeing smugglers being chased by the DEA are dumping significant levels of cocaine into the ocean which end up in the stomachs of sharks. pic.twitter.com/nXIz1eav5I

'-- Inside Edition (@InsideEdition) July 21, 2023

''Cocaine sharks'' might be feasting on drugs dumped off Florida coast according to scientists. pic.twitter.com/Q3jsLK3Iuw

'-- Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) July 21, 2023

Cocaine sharks. Up next, methed out mantees. pic.twitter.com/2khPXZXYAg

'-- Freely Ashley (@FreelyAshley92) July 23, 2023

This shocking revelation isn't just about drug-fueled sharks. It's a stark reminder of how our actions '' and the policies that govern them '' affect the environment.

This story of ''Cocaine Sharks'' raises serious questions about the escalation of the drug problem under the Biden administration.

It's time to dive deeper into this unusual tale that highlights how reality can indeed be stranger than fiction.

Here's what The Guardian had to say:

Move over, Cocaine Bear. Here come cocaine sharks.

In what could be the plotline for the next cheesy marine-themed disaster movie, scientists think crazed and hungry sharks could be feasting on bales of hallucinatory drugs dumped off the Florida coast.

Yet while Cocaine Sharks '' a highlight of Discovery's upcoming Shark Week '' does indeed examine if the ocean predators are chomping on floating pharmaceuticals cast overboard by passing traffickers, marine scientists who made the TV program say its purpose is beyond gratuitous entertainment.

''It's a catchy headline to shed light on a real problem, that everything we use, everything we manufacture, everything we put into our bodies, ends up in our wastewater streams and natural water bodies, and these aquatic life we depend on to survive are then exposed to that,'' said Dr Tracy Fanara, a Florida-based environmental engineer and lead member of the research team.

''We've seen studies with pharmaceuticals, cocaine, methamphetamines, ketamine, all of these, where fish are being [affected] by drugs.

''If these cocaine bales are a point source of pollution, it's very plausible [sharks] can be affected by this chemical. Cocaine is so soluble that any of those packages open just a little, the structural integrity is destroyed and the drug is in the water.''

Cocaine Sharks is expected to be among the biggest draws of Shark Week, the Discovery network's popular annual showcase of the species from great whites, hammerheads and tiger sharks down to the smallest varieties.

It seems the unthinkable has happened '' sharks off Florida's coast are believed to have ingested cocaine left in the water by drug smugglers, in a grim testament to the scale of the drug crisis in the US.

This revelation is no cheap gimmick for a Discovery Channel documentary, but an alarming indication of how illicit substances are polluting our waterways and potentially wreaking havoc on our delicate marine ecosystems.

But the question is: Why do drug smugglers feel safe coming here?

Why isn't the Biden administration doing more about the drug crisis?

Drug smuggling operations, largely originating from South and Central America, have seen colossal bricks of cocaine washed ashore on Florida's beaches for years.

In their hurry to evade authorities, smugglers have frequently dumped these bales at sea, leaving them for others to collect or, in this case, for marine wildlife to stumble upon.

Make no mistake '' this could be deadly for the residents and tourists of Florida.

Sharks are EATING COCAINE dropped by SMUGGLERS off the coast of the Atlantic.

This shark was TWEAKING in the shallow waters of Miami, Florida, causing swimmers to RUN from the shark looking for his next bump.#CocaineShark #Miami #SharkWeek pic.twitter.com/f62HGkpkdX

'-- Joseph Morris (@JosephMorrisYT) July 21, 2023

Thousands of sharks off Florida's coast may have ingested bales of cocaine left in the water by drug smugglers attempting to get their product into the United States. https://t.co/QAgGIdRZPK

'-- FOX 13 Tampa Bay (@FOX13News) July 21, 2023

'Cocaine sharks' might be feasting on drugs dumped off Florida coast, according to scientists pic.twitter.com/YXAHB6Ho2D

'-- 6ixBuzzTV (@6ixbuzztv) July 21, 2023

The real question, however, is not just about the audacity of drug smugglers but the worrying state of affairs under the current administration.

With a problem of such magnitude staring us in the face, why isn't more being done by President Biden to tackle the escalating drug crisis in the country?

After all, it's not just the human population that's suffering the consequences '' our marine life is now literally swimming in it.

Fox News confirms:

Thousands of sharks off Florida's coast may have ingested bales of cocaine left in the water by drug smugglers attempting to get their product into the U.S.

Marine biologist Tom Hird wanted to examine whether the sharks have come into contact with the drug, which is the subject of a documentary that will premiere on Discovery Channel's Shark Week called ''Cocaine Sharks.''

''The deeper story here is the way that chemicals, pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are entering our waterways '-- entering our oceans '-- and what effect that they then could go on to have on these delicate ocean ecosystems,'' Hird, known as ''The Blowfish,'' told Live Science.

Large bricks of cocaine from South and Central America have washed ashore on Florida beaches for decades. The huge bales are often dumped at sea and picked up by drug smugglers on boats.

If something isn't done about this now, then it will just keep happening.

Smugglers will keep coming '' and they will keep throwing cocaine into the ocean, if they're afraid of getting caught.

This is not only terrible for the environment and local ecosystem, but this poses a threat to innocent beach-goers in Florida.

Please be safe!

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 20:01

Story at a glanceHealth experts worry about the physical toll remote work might have on some people.Their main concern is that remote work promotes a more sedentary lifestyle, which can contribute to blood clots, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.Remote work can also lead to increased eyestrain and make it easier for workers to engage in bad habits like continuous snacking, smoking or drinking.The explosion of remote work in recent years may come with a physical toll.

Three years after the arrival of COVID-19 triggered a mass exodus from offices, about 22 million Americans were still working fully remotely as of March 2023, according to Pew Research Center data.

The shift to remote work has been life-changing for many working adults, like those who have disabilities or are caregivers to family members, and surveys show Americans as a whole love working from home.

But doing so has its downsides. Remote work has been linked to poorer sleep, trouble with relaxing and mental health concerns. And it poses a risk to physical health, as well.

A more sedentary lifestyle can lead to blood clots, long-term health issues. When it comes to the physical toll of remote work, health experts are most concerned about teleworkers' lack of movement during the day.

The world has been struggling with a physical inactivity crisis for years. In 2008, about 31 percent of people 15 years or older and older were ''insufficiently physically active,'' according to World Health Organization data.

And that crisis appears to have been exacerbated by COVID-related lockdowns and potentially worsened by remote work, according to Ross Arena, a professor of physical therapy at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

''One of the big questions is are we going to bounce back? Or are we going to become the new even worse normal where the world is moving even less,'' said Arena.

The average remote worker just takes 16 steps from their bed to their workstation, according to a 2022 survey from Upright, an app that promotes good back health. And multiple studies show such workers are physically less active than their office-going counterparts.

That same survey also found that 54 percent of remote and hybrid workers believe that their movement during the workday has shrunk by 50 percent or more over the past year.

One 2021 analysis from Stanford University found that between 2007 and 2016 the average time American adult spent sitting increased from 5.5 to 6.4 hours a day. By April 2020, 40 percent of U.S. adults sat more than eight hours a day.

One worry associated with a mainly sedentary lifestyle is blood clots. Sitting for too long can increase a person's chance of developing a blood clot like deep vein thrombosis, or a clot that forms in veins deep in the body, which can then travel up to the lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism, or a blockage of blood flow. A pulmonary embolism can in turn stop oxygen from entering the bloodstream, damaging organs, and can quickly become life-threatening.

Anyone at any age is at risk of developing a blood clot, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but there are risk factors that increase someone's odds of developing one.

Older adults and those with people with clotting disorders are the most at risk of developing a blood clot due to inactivity, according to the CDC. A recent surgery, hospitalization or pregnancy, cancer and some types of cancer treatments can also be risk factors.

To avoid blood clots, health experts encourage remote workers to stay hydrated and to get up from their desks and move around every two to three hours.

''It's the same rationale as encouraging individuals at risk for clotting to get up and walk on long flights and drinking water,'' said Carnethon.

Not only can little movement lead to more immediate risks like blood clots, but it can contribute to long-term health issues as well.

Unless remote workers make a conscious effort to exercise, being sedentary throughout the day puts workers at risk of putting on weight, and increasing insulin resistance, raising their odds of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes, according to Arena.

Physical activity has also been linked to improving bone and musculoskeletal health and reducing the risk of developing dementia, according to the CDC.

About 3.2 million deaths a year are the result of physical inactivity, according to the World Health Organization.

Excess screen time can worsen eyesight, cause migraines More than half of remote workers reported experiencing an increase in eyestrain during the first year of the pandemic, according to a survey of 2,000 at-home and hybrid workers.

This could be linked to the extra number of hours remote workers spend staring at screens compared to their office-going counterparts.

One survey from All About Vision found that a person working from home spends an average of 13 hours a day looking at a screen a day, be it their laptop, phone or television '-- over two hours more than what the average on-site worker spends staring at a screen.

The same survey found that 68 percent of remote workers reported new eye or vision problems since they started working from home.

Those complaints of worsening eyesight make sense, according to Mercedes Carnethon, vice president of preventative medicine at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine.

''If I'm working remotely and I'm spending five hours a day in meetings, that's five hours of blue light exposure,'' she said. ''If I had been working in an office and meeting with people in person, I would have a need to adjust my vision to see things further away and closer which helps to, I think, keep the eyes healthy.''

Carnethon added that people who look at screens for long periods of time are less likely to blink as frequently compared to people not starting at a screen. This habit can contribute to dry eyes, which, if left untreated, can turn into a chronic problem.

''It's a significant quality of life issue,'' said Carnethon. ''And if you end up with eyestrain or vision changes that are sped up due to staring at screens'...headaches and other uncomfortable downsides are very real.''

Other painful side effects associated with staring at screens too long are double vision, blurred vision and neck pain.

Working from home can make it easier to pick up '-- or indulge '-- bad habits Working from home can make it easier for some people to continuously snack throughout the day, which can lead to unwanted weight gain, according to Carnethon.

It can also make it easier for some people to indulge in habits like smoking and drinking too much.

For people working in an office, opportunities to smoke are limited, and commutes often prevent people from having after-work drinks the moment the workday ends.

''When you are working from home without that sense of accountability, you could potentially see someone just sitting at their desk smoking while they work,'' she said. ''Or pour that drink at 5 o'clock because they don't have to drive home.''

One out of five U.S. workers admitted to having used alcohol, marijuana or another recreational drug while working remotely in 2021, according to a national survey that year from Sierra Tuscon, a mental health treatment center in Arizona.

Out of those who used, 73 percent said that if their employer forced them to return to the office they would ''miss the opportunity to use marijuana, alcohol, and other recreational drugs during their workday.''

In addition, 22 percent of those who used said they have participated in a virtual work call while under the influence of alcohol, cannabis or another recreational drug.

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 18:05

Academy Award winning actor, singer and comedian Jamie Foxx said in an Instagram video that he is recovering from an undisclosed medical condition.

''I went to hell and back, and my road to recovery has some potholes as well, but I'm coming back,'' Foxx, appearing thin and wearing a dark pullover shirt, said in the three minute, 15 second video. ''I'm able to work.''

Foxx, 55, was hospitalized in April with what his daughter, Corinne Fox, described at the time as a ''medical complication'' and Foxx did not disclose the nature of his condition in his first public comments since being hospitalized.

''I just didn't want you to see me like that ... I didn't want you to see me with tubes running out of me and trying to figure out if I was going to make it through,'' Foxx said, thanking his daughter, sister, God and medical professionals for saving his life.

''I went through something that I thought I would never, ever go through,'' Foxx said.

''Every once in a while I just burst into tears ... because it's been tough, man, I was sick ... but now I've got my legs under me so you're going to see me,'' Foxx said.

Castmates of Foxx's recent movie ''They Cloned Tyrone'' '-- David Alan Grier, Teyonah Parris and Tamberla Perry '-- told The Associated Press at the Los Angeles premiere of the movie on June 28 that they miss the star.

''Just praying that he gets better and takes whatever time he needs to heal,'' Perry said.

Foxx, born Eric Marlon Bishop in 1967 in Terrell, Texas, was a stand-up comedian before breaking into television with various roles on Fox TV's musical-comedy ''In Living Color'' in 1990.

Foxx won the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the 2004 biographical film ''Ray'' and a Grammy in 2010 for the song ''Blame It.''

His other credit's include ''The Jamie Foxx Show,'' ''Collateral,'' and ''Django Unchained.''

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 18:03

/ The cost of Premium will go up in the US by $1 per month, The Wall Street Journal reports.

By Jay Peters , a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He's submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

Jul 21, 2023, 8:44 PM UTC |

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Spotify is going to raise the price of its Premium subscription plan in the US, according to The Wall Street Journal. The price is ''likely'' to go up by $1, meaning it would cost $10.99 per month, and the change is ''expected'' to be revealed next week, the publication says. The price of Premium has remained $9.99 per month since it launched in the US 12 years ago.

While perhaps not the most welcome news, it's not entirely a surprise. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has been signaling that prices would go up in 2023 and reiterated in April that a price hike would be happening this year. Spotify didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other music services have also increased prices to that $10.99 amount over the past several months. Apple bumped up the price of Apple Music by $1 last year, Amazon followed suit earlier this year for its Music Unlimited service, Tidal announced a price hike earlier this month, and YouTube raised the price of YouTube Music just this week.

Spotify hiked prices for many plans in 2021.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 17:38

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For online documentation and support please refer tonginx.org.Commercial support is available atnginx.com.

Thank you for using nginx.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 17:37

The World Health Organisation has warned about a new deadly virus after two separate outbreaks were recorded this year. The virus leaves causes bleeding from the nose and gums.

Marburg virus disease cases surged in Equatorial New Guinea and the United Republic of Tanzania earlier this year between February and June. Twelve people confirmed to have the virus in Equatorial New Guinea have died while Tanzania has reported four deaths.

The virus' symptoms can be gruesome, with sufferers turning "into ghosts". It's a highly infectious illness that causes haemorrhagic fever. It is in the same family as the virus that causes ebola but it is more deadly.

READ MORE: Teacher wants to exchange £75 M&S hamper from pupils to pay for food

Humans can be infected with Marburg virus from prolonged exposure to mines or caves inhabited by Rousettus bat colonies. It spreads through human-to-human transmission via direct contact, broken skin or mucous membranes, with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.

Symptoms of Marburg virus diseaseIllness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with the following symptoms:

High fever Severe headache Severe malaise Muscle aches and pains Diarrhoea Abdominal pain and cramping Nausea and vomiting The World Health Organisation say that a key symptom is patients looking "ghost-like" with deep-set eyes, expressionless faces and extreme lethargy. A non-itchy rash has been noted between two and seven days after the onset of symptoms.

Many patients also develop severe haemorrhagic side effects within seven days, and fatal cases usually have bleeding, often from multiple areas such as bleeding from the nose, gums and vagina.

In fatal cases, death usually occurs between eight and nine days after onset, usually preceded by severe blood loss and shock. It can be difficult to diagnose Marburg virus disease (MVD) to its similarity to other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, meningitis and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.

There is currently no cure for MVD, but a range of potential treatments include blood products, immune and drug therapies. Rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids are key for care.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 17:11

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N icole Kidman tilts her head back, glances towards the camera and lowers a still-wriggling pale blue hornworm into her wide open mouth. Next she chows down on a teeming mound of mealworms, munches on crickets, and finishes off with a hearty plate of fried grasshoppers. This is not a long-lost outtake from I'm a Celebrity'... if it were directed by Stanley Kubrick, but a YouTube video published by Vanity Fair in 2018. It's one of a series of clips featuring stars showing off their ''secret talents''. You've got Oprah cleaning up dog mess; Michael B Jordan doing his ironing. As for Kidman, daintily snacking on what she calls ''micro-livestock'' with chopsticks, her talent is a bit more arresting. ''Two billion people in the world eat bugs,'' she beams. ''And I'm one of them!''

Where the casual observer may merely see a foodie actor keen to show off her adventurous palate, various conspiracy-minded corners of the internet have come to the conclusion that something more nefarious is afoot. To them, the two-minute video is nothing less than proof of a global campaign by shadowy elites to convince us that we should be happy subsisting on creepy-crawlies. The rich and powerful, meanwhile, will hoard haute cuisine for themselves. Earlier this year, one YouTube commenter wrote of Kidman: ''Her dark witch laugh sent cold chills over me... that's what the elite want us to eat: bugs [while] they dine on steak and every exquisite meal out there.'' Another suggested there were powers greater than merely the editors of Vanity Fair behind the clip. ''Well done Nicole!!!'' they wrote. ''You have secured your position as Bug Ambassador to the WEF!''

The WEF is the World Economic Forum, a popular bogeyman for far-right groups like QAnon, which posits that a ''deep state'' of wealthy, powerful people dine on babies while pulling the levers that control the world. ''Any global institution is easy to paint as part of a conspiracy,'' says journalist Nicky Woolf, who spent a year reporting on Q and its followers for the podcast Finding Q. ''The World Economic Forum and the World Bank, because of their branding as much as anything, are often portrayed as part of a 'one world government'.''

It's not just QAnon types and YouTube commenters convinced that there's a secret cabal pushing insects onto our plates. In July, Eric Bolling '' a TV host on the far-right US news channel Newsmax '' used a segment of his show The Balance to speculate that Bill Gates, George Soros and the ''liberal world order'' are eager to encourage bug-eating while stockpiling more traditional foods for themselves. ''I really can't see George Soros eating a roach burger or Bill Gates eating scorpion tacos or Nancy Pelosi eating grasshopper pie made with real grasshoppers,'' pontificated Bolling. ''No '' that's just for you and me.''

One man who really is trying to encourage the world to eat more insects is Brooklyn Bugs founder and chef Joseph Yoon. Five years ago, Yoon was inspired to become an edible-insect ambassador after reading the UN publication Edible Insects: Future prospects for food and feed security. Since launching Brooklyn Bugs '' an organisation that advocates the appreciation and awareness of edible insects '' Yoon often runs up against resistance from those who believe he too must be in on the conspiracy. ''There are events that I go to where people will curse at me and get in my face,'' he says. ''That just raises the question of why these people [are] so triggered; why are they so threatened by new ideas?''

Yoon points out that, in truth, wealthy elites tend to have little interest in radical ideas like incorporating insect protein into our diets. ''People who know virtually nothing about eating insects will make the lowest denominator presumptions,'' he says. '''Oh, the rich are going to make us eat bugs, and they're going to eat all the meat' '' who are the rich they're talking about? They're the business-as-usual fossil-fuel people who are part of this broken system. They're not the ones trying to get you to eat bugs.''

The reality is that there are a multitude of good reasons to eat insect protein, not least the environmental impact. Breeding insects such as crickets and grasshoppers requires less feed, land and water than farming traditional livestock like pigs and cows, and results in the production of much less greenhouse gas. That's the message Yoon hopes to spread through his work with Brooklyn Bugs, which this weekend will take him to Egypt to share his expertise at Cop27, the UN's climate summit. ''The idea of eating insects immediately sparks one's curiosity,'' he says. ''That enables us to talk about things that are incredibly meaningful to us in the areas of food security, food justice, sustainability and environmentalism.''

Nicole Kidman eats mealworms and hornworms on Vanity Fair

Today, there are two huge farms producing crickets in North America, and their products have already been sold to British supermarkets. In 2018, Sainsbury's began stocking Eat Grub's Smokey BBQ Crunchy Roasted Crickets for £1.50 per bag, while last month the founders of London-based insect-recipe business Yum Bug were among the contestants on the Channel 4 reality show Aldi's Next Big Thing. Last month also saw cricket-filled truffles make an appearance on The Great British Bake Off. ''Eighty per cent of the world's nations already eat insects,'' Yoon points out. ''We should be learning about this as an ancient food that we've been eating since the beginning of time, not relegating it to something only eaten by poor people after the apocalypse.''

While conspiracy theorists may shout that they won't give up their T-bone steaks until they're pried out of their cold, dead hands, Yoon makes a convincing argument. What insect-eating advocates are really trying to do is give diners more options, not fewer. ''We're not trying to take anything away,'' he says. ''Really, we're trying to add to your diet a nutrient-dense, sustainable protein that tastes delicious. You can add cricket powder to your smoothie for breakfast, or you could mix it in with tempura. The only limit with edible insects is your imagination.''

Rest assured, then. Nicole Kidman isn't coming for your beef burger. She just knows good grub.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 17:09

The Indian government has banned the export of non-basmati white rice - trigging fears of shortages and price rises across the world.

India is the world's largest supplier of the food - making up 40% of global exports - which more than three billion people rely on as a staple.

Last year it exported around 22 million tonnes, of which almost half constituted the now-banned non-premium rice.

The ban comes after the cost of rice soared by 11.5% in a year in the country, and the government has introduced the ban in the hope it will lower prices and improve availability domestically.

At the Singla Rice Mills in Kurukshetra, Haryana, they export non-basmati rice to many countries in Africa.

They have plenty of stock, but now cannot sell it to some of the world's most vulnerable people.

Harsh Singla is a third-generation rice mill owner in his family business which his grandfather began in 1960. The ban has left him facing uncertainty and revenue loss - as well as a large amount of stock.

Image: Harsh Singla, Rice Mill owner (left) and an exporter look over the rice in Haryana Image: Harsh Singla He told Sky News: "Price rises in rice are due to other expenses like labour and other factors... If they think putting a ban will control the price, it will not happen.

"There is a huge demand in the domestic market also, so it will not let the price go down. Banning it will affect the prices in importing countries.

"They will not be able to get a good amount from the rest of the world, because India is a major supplier of this rice."

He is also concerned for his African customers - and the shortages and price hikes they are likely to face.

"Many of my clients will be cut off due to this. We will not be able to supply to them. Now we will have to find new buyers in the domestic market. The ban has disrupted our lines,"' he said.

Image: Stocks of rice in Haryana - which now cannot be exported to Africa Image: Haryana rice field The weather has also had an impact and was a factor in the ban. Torrential rains and floods in northern India have devastated large regions where rice is grown.

Rob Hatchett, a senior economist at S&P Global Commodity Insights, said: "It's important to understand the implications that an El Nino pattern can have on Asian rice production.

"Certainly, within India, we have seen erratic precipitation levels from the Indian monsoon, which I think has brought up some supply concerns in and of itself."

Farmer Paramjit, 57, sat beside his flooded fields as he told Sky News: "I've lost almost 40% of my entire crops due to rain. I have had to sow paddy three times now and it's still threatening to rain and cause floods here."

Of the ban on exports, he said: "We used to get a good rate for the rice as we sell it to exporters, but that will end now. It's a big loss to us, farmers and the government."

Image: Haryana rice field Global food supplies have already been hit due to the war in Ukraine. Russia has bombed warehouses and pulled out of the UN-brokered deal to let Ukraine export grain through the Black Sea, fuelling fresh fears of a looming crisis for those in urgent need.

The UN has warned there are already 362 million people around the world who are in need of food and other humanitarian aid.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Martin Griffiths said: "For many of those 362 million people, it's not a matter of sadness or disappointment. It's a matter of threat to their future and the future of their children and their families.

"They're not sad. They're angry. They're worried. They're concerned. Some will go hungry. Some will starve. Many may die."

The government's decision to introduce the ban comes as it faces mounting criticism over inflationary pressure on household incomes, including spiralling food prices.

With general elections less than a year away, it is unwilling to take any more chances.

But the global price insecurity and availability of food supplies may come at a cost to the most vulnerable in some of the poorest countries in the world.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 17:09

This story was originally published in Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

What's more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis?

That is in many ways a terrible question, for reasons I'll discuss shortly.

But it's been on my mind as a ferocious heat wave roasts California and other states '-- and as I've watched Glendale respond to a Sierra Club lawsuit over the fate of the city's gas-fired power plant, just across the L.A. River from Griffith Park.

I sat in a dimly lit courtroom in downtown Los Angeles last week as the lawyers squared off. An attorney representing the Sierra Club argued that Glendale officials had exaggerated the need for the gas plant as they urged the City Council to spend an estimated $170 million to keep burning fossil fuels. An attorney for the city countered that the investment '-- which the council approved in a 4-1 vote '-- is desperately needed to provide reliable electricity to Glendale's roughly 190,000 residents, and avoid blackouts.

It's a highly technical dispute. But it's part of a larger conversation about how much blackout risk we consider acceptable in modern society '-- and whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate catastrophe.

A closer look at Glendale's Grayson gas plant, with the Los Angeles River and Griffith Park behind it.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

That conversation kicked into high gear in August 2020, when California found itself short on electricity during a heat wave. Just under half a million homes and businesses lost power for as little as 15 minutes and as long as 2½ hours on a Friday evening, when high temperatures kept Californians blasting their air conditioners even as the sun went down and solar farms stopped producing power. The following evening, another 321,000 utility customers went dark for anywhere from eight to 90 minutes.

The rolling outages were short and contained, relatively speaking. But the political reaction was swift and dramatic.

Gov. Gavin Newsom '-- facing a recall effort and wanting to avoid the fate of his predecessor Gray Davis, who was voted out of office after an energy crisis '-- suspended air-quality rules to make it easier to run polluting backup generators. The next summer, Newsom issued a similar order preemptively allowing gas plants to exceed air-pollution limits during electric-grid emergencies.

The governor took his biggest swing at reliable electricity in June 2022, persuading state lawmakers to pass a controversial bill directing billions of dollars toward emergency energy supplies '-- including lots of money for planet-warming fossil fuels.

The Golden State has avoided additional power shortages '-- but not without some close calls.

Two years ago this month, California narrowly avoided rolling outages after wildfire smoke knocked out electric lines that carry large amounts of power from the Pacific Northwest. The state again toed the precipice during a hot spell last September, fending off blackouts only after officials sent out an emergency alert to millions of mobile phones begging people to use less power.

Again and again, I've found myself asking: Would it be easier and less expensive to limit climate change '-- and its deadly combination of worsening heat, fire and drought and flood '-- if we were willing to live with the occasional blackout?

I'm not talking about a long-term future of sketchy power supplies. Plenty of studies have found that keeping the lights on with 100% climate-friendly electricity is entirely possible, especially if energy storage technologies continue to improve.

But our short- and medium-term futures are more tricky.

Solar panels and wind turbines produce some of the cheapest electricity on the market, and lithium-ion batteries that can store solar power for a few hours after sundown have fallen in cost. But building out those clean-power facilities can take a long time, especially given recent supply-chain delays '-- even with financial support from President Biden's climate law.

Construction proceeds on the Gemini solar farm on public lands in southern Nevada in January.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Gas plants, meanwhile, supplied 42% of California's electricity last year, according to a federal tally. And in a great irony of the climate era, increasingly extreme weather driven by fossil fuels has made those gas plants more valuable than ever.

But absent major breakthroughs in carbon-capture technology, we'll eventually need to shutter most if not all of those gas plants to avoid disastrous temperature jumps. Scientists say we need to cut carbon pollution nearly in half by 2030.

Could we get started ditching gas sooner '-- and save some money '-- by accepting a few more blackouts for the next few years?

It's a heretical question in power-grid circles. When I posed it to John Moura '-- director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. '-- he only half-jokingly described it as ''a dagger to the heart.''

I got a similar reaction on Twitter.

Of the hundreds of people who responded to my question, most rejected the idea that more power outages are even remotely acceptable '-- for reasons beyond mere convenience. A former member of the L.A. Department of Water and Power's board of commissioners wrote that ''someone dies every time we have a power outage.'' An environment reporter in Phoenix '-- where temperatures have exceeded 110 degrees for a record 20 straight days '-- said simply, ''Yikes.''

Moura expanded on his skepticism by noting that modern life is more reliant on electricity than ever before.

Those of us lucky enough to have air conditioning depend on it to stay safe during heat waves '-- which can already kill thousands of people and are only getting more dangerous as fossil fuels warm the planet. Elderly people and individuals with certain health conditions are more vulnerable to heat illness and sometimes need electricity to power their medical equipment, such as ventilators, dialysis machines and motorized wheelchairs. Our refrigerators, cellphones and internet service all depend on reliable electricity.

''It's not really about keeping the lights on. It's about keeping people alive,'' Moura said.

Allan Wanner, 61, waits for a breeze to blow through the open door of his trailer near Desert Hot Springs on a 100-degree day in 2021. High temperatures can be especially dangerous for people such as Wanner, who suffers from congestive heart failure, diabetes and other ailments.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

There's another compelling argument for taking aggressive steps to avoid even a slight uptick in outages: Americans really hate blackouts. And faced with more of them, even people concerned about climate change might turn against clean energy.

The idea that solar farms and wind turbines will never supply reliable electricity has become a popular right-wing talking point. Even when fossil-fuel infrastructure fails during extreme weather, Republican politicians typically blame solar and wind.

Those fossil fuel-funded lies shouldn't inform our decision-making. But they contain a kernel of truth, which is that the U.S. power grid isn't yet capable of running entirely on climate-friendly electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Does that mean we should be willing to accept even a few more hours of blackouts, if it means burning less gas?

When I posed my dagger-to-the-heart question to Mark Rothleder '-- chief operating officer at the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's main electric grid '-- he responded that spurring power outages by shutting down gas plants too soon ''will potentially undermine the [clean energy] transformation, because the public will no longer be on board.''

''They didn't sign up for a clean, affordable, less reliable grid,'' he said. ''They signed up for a clean, reliable and affordable grid.''

On balance, I think Rothleder and Moura are right. We should do everything we can as a society to add solar panels, wind turbines and all kinds of energy storage to the grid as fast as possible. To the extent those additions allow the closure of fossil-fueled power plants, awesome '-- the sooner the better. But closing them too soon could bring its own kind of disaster.

After reporting on clean energy for most of the last decade, I've increasingly come to the conclusion that solving climate change will require sacrifices '-- even if only small ones '-- for the sake of the greater good. Those might include lifestyle changes such as driving less or eating less meat. They might also include accepting that large-scale solar farms will destroy some wildlife habitat, and that rooftop solar panels '-- despite their higher costs '-- have an important role to play in cleaning up the grid.

Maybe learning to live with more power outages shouldn't be one of those sacrifices.

But at the same time, we might not have a choice.

Felisa Benitez, 86, wipes the sweat from her brow while taking a break from cleaning the electric fan on the porch of her home in Pacoima in August 2021.

The power grid is already prone to blackouts caused by events as small and difficult to avoid as a squirrel chewing on an electric line, said Emily Grubert, a civil engineer and environmental sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. And as we enter ''a pretty long period of climate dynamism,'' she told me, guaranteeing reliable electricity supplies will only get harder.

Already, the grid has been battered by more powerful storms, more intense wildfires and more extreme heat.

The idea of accepting a less dependable electric grid ''is uncomfortable for a lot of people, because they correctly point out you may end up in situations where the wealthier you are, the more you're able to buy your way out of that reliability problem,'' Grubert said. Think rooftop solar panels paired with a battery in the garage, or a backup diesel generator.

That's why it's crucial, Grubert said, for government to be ready to protect society's most vulnerable when it's hot and the power goes out. That could include investing in a wider network of cooling centers, with transportation to help people get there.

''There are conversations to be had about how you fail gracefully,'' Grubert said.

The less we fail, the better. But Grubert thinks there could be additional benefits from planning for failure. The better we are at keeping people safe during blackouts, for instance, the easier it would be to figure out if there are cheaper, faster paths to 100% climate-friendly energy '-- even if those paths involve a slightly higher tolerance for blackout risk than we have today.

Is it realistic to think that shifting our expectations for ''reliability'' could help us tackle the climate crisis?

''It's worth checking,'' Grubert said. ''We haven't really gone through that exercise yet.''

Glendale Water & Power's Grayson gas plant, seen on Wednesday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

All of which brings us back to Glendale, with its gas plant along the banks of the L.A. River.

Even before last week's court hearing, the judge in the Sierra Club's lawsuit had issued a tentative ruling '-- yet to be finalized '-- in the city's favor. The Sierra Club, the judge tentatively concluded, had failed to prove its case that Glendale officials issued an incomplete environmental analysis before City Council voted to spend hundreds of millions of dollars ''repowering'' the Grayson gas plant with a combination of new, less-polluting gas engines and lithium-ion batteries.

After spending a few minutes at last week's hearing questioning the attorneys about the need for the gas plant, the judge spent a lot more time considering the merits of a separate lawsuit filed by a group of locals who say Glendale officials failed to consult with the city's Historic Preservation Commission before approving the destruction of the Grayson plant's boiler building '-- which a lawyer for the group described as ''magnificent'' and ''historic.''

A view of the boiler building at Glendale's Grayson gas plant.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Setting aside the question of whether we should preserve old energy infrastructure because some people appreciate the architecture, I'm sympathetic to both sides of the debate. That includes Byron Chan, an attorney with the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice, who responded to Glendale's case for less-polluting gas engines by telling the judge that ''just because it makes the air cleaner, it doesn't mean the air is clean'' for communities surrounding the Grayson plant.

It also includes Mark Young, general manager of Glendale Water & Power, who told me in an interview that avoiding outages is wildly complicated '-- and that the city has committed to running the new gas engines at just 14% of their annual capacity.

''It's not that Mark Young wants to screw over the environment,'' Young said. ''There's rational thought behind it.''

Another view of Glendale's Grayson gas plant.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

There's also room for common ground as we navigate these thorny debates.

Nearly everyone I interviewed for this story, for instance, highlighted the value of ''flexible demand'' programs that shift electricity use away from the highest demand times. Families comfortable with 81-degree indoor temperatures, for instance, could get paid to turn up the thermostat a few degrees on the hottest evenings. People with electric cars could be incentivized to charge at a lower cost overnight. Big factories could be required to cut back during stressful moments on the grid.

Eric Hittinger, a public policy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, said those types of programs could allow gas plants to fire up a lot less '-- even if we keep some of them around a few more decades to help during the hottest heat spells.

''I would love to be in a place where our main concern was that 5% or 10% of our electricity comes from natural gas, and how would we phase that out?'' he said. ''If we get to that point, we're really close to winning the whole energy transition.''

Indeed, solving climate change isn't as simple as replacing gas and coal plants with solar and wind farms. We need to get tens of millions of electric vehicles on the road, and tens of millions of electric heat pumps in people's homes. We also need to build a lot more long-distance power lines to move renewable electricity from where it's generated to where it's needed.

The more we electrify society, the fiercer the debates will become over whether to shut down our remaining gas plants. And the debates are already pretty fierce '-- not just in Glendale, but also in Huntington Beach, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Fortunately, California doesn't appear to be at much risk of power shortages during this week's heat wave. It helps that the state now has 5,600 megawatts of battery storage on its main power grid, up from 500 megawatts three years ago.

But the story of climate change is just getting started '-- as is, hopefully, the story of clean energy.

ONE MORE THING Laine Anderson, director of wind operations at utility company PacifiCorp, marvels at the company's Ekola Flats wind farm in Wyoming in 2022.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

One way California and other Western states could do a better job keeping the lights on '-- while continuing to cut down on fossil fuel combustion, and potentially saving billions of dollars '-- would be to share more electricity across state lines.

At least, there are many clean energy advocates who think so. And their push for a coordinated Western electric grid '-- in which California could more easily tap into low-cost wind power from Wyoming, for instance '-- got a boost late last week, when state officials from Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington announced a new effort to create an independent agency to govern electricity markets across the region. The nine signatories included two appointees of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

''We are committed to the vision of maximizing the benefits of organized wholesale electricity markets,'' they wrote.

The regional market concept has its skeptics, including some consumer advocates, environmentalists and labor unions, as I've written previously. Critics within California have said the state shouldn't cede control of its energy system to a regional body that might be more likely to favor fossil fuels '-- or pursue policies that would result in solar and wind construction jobs going out of state. There's also lingering distrust of electricity markets following the Enron-led market-manipulation fiasco of the early 2000s.

But the idea hasn't gone away, and neither have its supporters. I'll keep following this one.

We'll be back in your inbox Tuesday. To view this newsletter in your Web browser, click here. And for more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on Twitter.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 17:01

In this blog post, we delve into the emerging use of generative AI, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, and the cybercrime tool WormGPT, in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks. Highlighting real cases from cybercrime forums, the post dives into the mechanics of these attacks, the inherent risks posed by AI-driven phishing emails, and the unique advantages of generative AI in facilitating such attacks.

How Generative AI is Revolutionising BEC AttacksThe progression of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, has introduced a new vector for business email compromise (BEC) attacks. ChatGPT, a sophisticated AI model, generates human-like text based on the input it receives. Cybercriminals can use such technology to automate the creation of highly convincing fake emails, personalised to the recipient, thus increasing the chances of success for the attack.

Consider the first image above, where a recent discussion thread unfolded on a cybercrime forum. In this exchange, a cybercriminal showcased the potential of harnessing generative AI to refine an email that could be used in a phishing or BEC attack. They recommended composing the email in one's native language, translating it, and then feeding it into an interface like ChatGPT to enhance its sophistication and formality. This method introduces a stark implication: attackers, even those lacking fluency in a particular language, are now more capable than ever of fabricating persuasive emails for phishing or BEC attacks.

Moving on to the second image above, we're now seeing an unsettling trend among cybercriminals on forums, evident in discussion threads offering ''jailbreaks'' for interfaces like ChatGPT. These ''jailbreaks'' are specialised prompts that are becoming increasingly common. They refer to carefully crafted inputs designed to manipulate interfaces like ChatGPT into generating output that might involve disclosing sensitive information, producing inappropriate content, or even executing harmful code. The proliferation of such practices underscores the rising challenges in maintaining AI security in the face of determined cybercriminals.

Finally, in the third image above, we see that malicious actors are now creating their own custom modules similar to ChatGPT, but easier to use for nefarious purposes. Not only are they creating these custom modules, but they are also advertising them to fellow bad actors. This shows how cybersecurity is becoming more challenging due to the increasing complexity and adaptability of these activities in a world shaped by AI.

Uncovering WormGPT: A Cybercriminal's ArsenalOur team recently gained access to a tool known as ''WormGPT'' through a prominent online forum that's often associated with cybercrime. This tool presents itself as a blackhat alternative to GPT models, designed specifically for malicious activities.

WormGPT is an AI module based on the GPTJ language model, which was developed in 2021. It boasts a range of features, including unlimited character support, chat memory retention, and code formatting capabilities.

As depicted above, WormGPT was allegedly trained on a diverse array of data sources, particularly concentrating on malware-related data. However, the specific datasets utilised during the training process remain confidential, as decided by the tool's author.

As you can see in the screenshot above, we conducted tests focusing on BEC attacks to comprehensively assess the potential dangers associated with WormGPT. In one experiment, we instructed WormGPT to generate an email intended to pressure an unsuspecting account manager into paying a fraudulent invoice.

The results were unsettling. WormGPT produced an email that was not only remarkably persuasive but also strategically cunning, showcasing its potential for sophisticated phishing and BEC attacks.

In summary, it's similar to ChatGPT but has no ethical boundaries or limitations. This experiment underscores the significant threat posed by generative AI technologies like WormGPT, even in the hands of novice cybercriminals.

Benefits of Using Generative AI for BEC AttacksSo, what specific advantages does using generative AI confer for BEC attacks?

Exceptional Grammar: Generative AI can create emails with impeccable grammar, making them seem legitimate and reducing the likelihood of being flagged as suspicious.

Lowered Entry Threshold: The use of generative AI democratises the execution of sophisticated BEC attacks. Even attackers with limited skills can use this technology, making it an accessible tool for a broader spectrum of cybercriminals.

Ways of Safeguarding Against AI-Driven BEC AttacksIn conclusion, the growth of AI, while beneficial, brings progressive, new attack vectors. Implementing strong preventative measures is crucial. Here are some strategies you can employ:

BEC-Specific Training: Companies should develop extensive, regularly updated training programs aimed at countering BEC attacks, especially those enhanced by AI. Such programs should educate employees on the nature of BEC threats, how AI is used to augment them, and the tactics employed by attackers. This training should also be incorporated as a continuous aspect of employee professional development.

Enhanced Email Verification Measures: To fortify against AI-driven BEC attacks, organisations should enforce stringent email verification processes. These include implementing systems that automatically alert when emails originating outside the organisation impersonate internal executives or vendors, and using email systems that flag messages containing specific keywords linked to BEC attacks like ''urgent'', ''sensitive'', or ''wire transfer''. Such measures ensure that potentially malicious emails are subjected to thorough examination before any action is taken.

Test Your Security Efficacy in Observability ModeTo see a personalised demo and learn how our product stops BEC, click here or easily test the efficacy of your current email security with no impact to your existing email infrastructure using our 5-min setup Observability Mode.

About the Author

Daniel Kelley is a reformed black hat computer hacker who collaborated with our team at SlashNext to research the latest threats and tactics employed by cybercriminals, particularly those involving BEC, phishing, smishing, social engineering, ransomware, and other attacks that exploit the human element.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 16:30

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. The Pentagon planned to use its biolaboratories in Africa to test unregistered medicines on the local population, Chief of Russia's Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said on Tuesday.

According to Kirillov, documents that were found in Ukraine indicate that the Pentagon planned to use the US army to test unregistered medical drugs on the local population and then submit them for approval by supervisory authorities "in the interests of the so-called big pharma." For these ends, it was planned to use its biolaboratories and facilitating agencies, such as Metabiota.

"Take note of Metabiota's commercial offer marked 'confidential,' which was found among documents at one of the biolaboratories in Ukraine. The offer is addressed to the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and concerns training of specialists in infectious diseases in Kenya and Uganda. The document demonstrates that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's (DTRA) and the Department of Homeland Security were involved in the study of pathogens in African countries, while the US Agency for International Development and a number of European Union structures were engaged to make these activities look like 'humanitarian cooperation,'" he said at a briefing on the analysis of documents concerning the United States' military biological activities.

Apart from that, in his words, evidence was found showing that Metabiota had been involved in the study of the H7N9 bird flu virus and that it had played a leading role in the implementation of the Predict project for the study of new coronavirus types, under which their carriers - bats - had been caught. "We have repeatedly pointed to the company's ties with the son of the US incumbent president, Hunter Biden, and government organizations. Notably, Metabiota's representatives admit that as a matter of fact they are establishing ties to ensure the Pentagon and other American agencies' work abroad," Kirillov added.

He also said that Ukraine's Science and Technology Center and other Pentagon contractors were taking an active part in these activities.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 16:17

MOSCOW, July 21. /TASS/. Poland could take control of western parts of Ukraine by deploying its troops there, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin said at a meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin held with the permanent members of the Security Council.

Naryshkin said the Foreign Intelligence Service had obtained information suggesting the West is starting to realize "Ukraine's defeat is only a matter of time."

"Given that, the Polish leadership is getting more determined to impose its control in the western territories of Ukraine, in its western regions, by deploying its troops there," the official said. "One option that is planned is to formalize this step as the fulfillment of allied obligations as part of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian security initiative - the so-called Lublin Triangle."

According to the official, Russia sees "that there are plans, in connection with this, to significantly increase the personnel of the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian all-arms brigade, which operates under the auspices of this so-called Lublin Triangle."

"It seems to us that these rather dangerous plans of the Polish leadership should be closely watched," Naryshkin said.

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 16:05

Taking part in the meeting were PrimeMinister Mikhail Mishustin Mishustin Mikhail Prime Minister of the Russian Federation , Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko Matviyenko Valentina Chairwoman of the Council of Federation ,State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin Volodin Vyacheslav State Duma Speaker , Deputy Chairman of the Security CouncilDmitry Medvedev Medvedev Dmitry Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation , Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office AntonVaino Vaino Anton Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office , Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev Patrushev Nikolai Secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council , Interior MinisterVladimir Kolokoltsev Kolokoltsev Vladimir Interior Minister , Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Lavrov Sergei Foreign Minister of Russia , Defence Minister SergeiShoigu Shoigu Sergei Defence Minister , Director of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov Bortnikov Alexander Director of the Federal Security Service , and Directorof the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin Naryshkin Sergei Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service .

***

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

We have several issues on today'sagenda; one of them is the development of relations with our friends on the African continent. Russia will host the Russia-Africa Summit soon. Anotherissue relates to a very important area, the use of information technology to ensure the country's security.

But first of all, I would like to ask if anyone has anything relevant to discuss. Yes, please, Mr Naryshkin.

Director of the Foreign IntelligenceService Sergei Naryshkin: Mr President, colleagues.

According to information provided to the service by several sources, officials in Warsaw are gradually coming to an understandingthat no kind of Western assistance to Kiev can support Ukraine in reaching the goals of this assistance. Moreover, they are beginning to understand thatUkraine will be defeated in only the matter of time.

In this regard, the Polishauthorities are getting more intent on taking the western parts of Ukraineunder control by deploying their troops there. There are plans to present thismeasure as the fulfillment of allied obligations within the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian security initiative, the so-called Lublin Triangle.

We see that plans also call for significantly increasing the number of personnel of the combinedLithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian brigade, which operates under the auspices of thisso-called Lublin Triangle.

We believe that it is necessary to keep a close eye on these dangerous plans of the Polish authorities.

Vladimir Putin: Yes. We should elaborate on what MrNaryshkin has just said. This information has already appeared in the Europeanmedia, in particular, the French.

I believe it would be suitable in this context to also remind everyone about several history lessons from the 20thcentury.

It is clear today that the Westerncurators of the Kiev regime are certainly disappointed with the results of the counteroffensive that the current Ukrainian authorities announced in previousmonths. There are no results, at least for now. The colossal resources thatwere pumped into the Kiev regime, the supply of Western weapons, such as tanks,artillery, armoured vehicles and missiles, and the deployment of thousands of foreign mercenaries and advisers, who were most actively used in attempts to break through the front of our army, are not helping.

Meanwhile, the commanders of the special military operation are acting professionally. Our soldiers, officersand units are fulfilling their duty to the Motherland courageously, steadfastlyand heroically. At the same time, the whole world sees that the vauntedWestern, supposedly invulnerable, military equipment is on fire, and is ofteneven inferior to some of the Soviet-made weapons in terms of its tactical and technical characteristics.

Yes, of course, more Western weaponscan be supplied and thrown into battle. This, of course, causes us some damageand prolongs the conflict. But, firstly, NATO arsenals and stockpiles of oldSoviet weapons in some countries are already largely depleted. And secondly,the West does not have the production capacities to quickly replenish the consumption of reserves of equipment and ammunition. Additional, largeresources and time are needed.

The main thing is that formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered huge losses as a result of self-destructiveattacks: tens of thousands of people.

And, despite the constant raids and the incessant waves of total mobilisation in Ukrainian cities and villages, itis increasingly difficult for the current regime to send new soldiers to the front. The country's mobilisation resource is being depleted.

People in Ukraine are asking a legitimate question more often: for what, for the sake of whose selfishinterests, are their relatives and friends dying. Gradually, slowly, but claritycomes.

We can see the public opinionchanging in Europe, too. Both the Europeans and European elites see thatsupport for Ukraine is, in fact, a dead end, an empty, endless waste of moneyand effort, and in fact, serving someone else's interests, which are far fromEuropean: the interests of the overseas global hegemon, which benefits from the weakening of Europe. The endless prolongation of the Ukrainian conflict is alsobeneficial to it.

Judging by the actual state of affairs, this isexactly what today's US ruling elites are doing. Anyways, this is the logicthey follow. It is largely questionable whether such a policy is in line with the American people's true, vital interests; this is a rhetorical question, and itis up to them to decide.

However, massive efforts are being taken to stokethe fire of war '' including by exploiting the ambitions of certain EastEuropean leaders, who have long turned their hatred for Russia and Russophobia intotheir key export commodity and a tool of their domestic policy. And now they wantto capitalise on the Ukrainian tragedy.

In this regard, I cannot refrain from commentingon what has just been said and on media reports that have come out about plansto establish some sort of the so-called Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian unit. Thisis not about a group of mercenaries '' there are plenty of them there and theyare being destroyed '' but about a well-organised, equipped regular militaryunit to be used for operations in Ukraine, including to allegedly ensure the security of today's Western Ukraine '' actually, to call things by their true name,for the subsequent occupation of these territories. The outlook is clear: in the event Polish forces enter, say, Lvov or other Ukrainian territories, they will staythere, and they will stay there for good.

And we will actually see nothing new. Just to remindyou, following WWI, after the defeat of Germany and its allies, Polish units occupied Lvov and adjacent territoriesthat had been part of Austria-Hungary.

With its actions incited by the West, Poland took advantage of the tragedy of the Civil War in Russiaand annexed certain historical Russian provinces. In dire straits, our country hadto sign the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and recognise the annexation of its territories.

Even earlier, back in 1920, Poland capturedpart of Lithuania '' the Vilnius region, a territory surrounding the present-dayVilnius. So they claimed that they fought together with the Lithuanians againstso-called Russian imperialism, but then immediately snatched a piece of landfrom their neighbour as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

As is well known, Poland also took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938, by fully occupying Cieszyn Silesia.

In the 1920-1930s, Poland's Eastern Borderlands(Kresy) '' a territory that comprises present-day Western Ukraine, WesternBelarus and part of Lithuania '' witnessed a tough policy of Polonisation and assimilation of local residents, with efforts to suppress local culture and Orthodoxy.

I would also like to remind you what Poland's aggressive policy led to.It led to the national tragedy of 1939, when Poland's Western allies threw itto the German wolf, the German miliary machine. Poland actually lost itsindependence and statehood, which were only restored thanks in a large measureto the Soviet Union. It was also thanks to the Soviet Union and thanks to Stalin'sposition that Poland acquired substantial territory in the west, Germanterritory. It is a fact that Poland's western lands are a gift from Stalin.

Have our Warsaw friends forgotten this? We will remind them.

Today we see that the regime in Kiev is ready to go to any length to save its treacherous hide and to prolong its existence. They do not care for the people of Ukraine or Ukrainian sovereignty or national interests.

They are ready to sell anything, including people and land, just liketheir ideological forefathers led by Petlyura, who signed the so-called secretconventions with Poland in 1920 under which they ceded Galicia and WesternVolhynia to Poland in return for military support. Traitors like them are readynow to open the gate to their foreign handlers and to sell Ukraine again.

As for the Polish leaders, they probably hope to form a coalition under the NATO umbrella in order to directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine and to biteoff as much as possible, to ''regain,'' as they see it, their historicalterritories, that is, modern-day Western Ukraine. It is also common knowledgethat they dream about Belarusian land.

Regarding the policy of the Ukrainian regime, it is none of ourbusiness. If they want to relinquish or sell off something in order to paytheir bosses, as traitors usually do, that's their business. We will notinterfere.

But Belarus is part of the Union State, and launching an aggressionagainst Belarus would mean launching an aggression against the RussianFederation. We will respond to that with all the resources available to us.

The Polish authorities, who are nurturing their revanchist ambitions,hide the truth from their people. The truth is that the Ukrainian cannon fodderis no longer enough for the West. That is why it is planning to use otherexpendables '' Poles, Lithuanians and everyone else they do not care about.

I can tell you that this is an extremely dangerous game, and the authorsof such plans should think about the consequences.

Mr Naryshkin, I hope that your service, just as the other specialservices, will closely monitor the developments.

Let's get down to the main issues on our agenda.

<'...>

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Sat, 22 Jul 2023 14:48

"It's not the heat, it's the humidity". That's a partly valid phrase you may have heard in the summer, but it's actually both. The heat index, also known as the apparent temperature, is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature. This has important considerations for the human body's comfort. When the body gets too hot, it begins to perspire or sweat to cool itself off. If the perspiration is not able to evaporate, the body cannot regulate its temperature. Evaporation is a cooling process. When perspiration is evaporated off the body, it effectively reduces the body's temperature. When the atmospheric moisture content (i.e. relative humidity) is high, the rate of evaporation from the body decreases. In other words, the human body feels warmer in humid conditions. The opposite is true when the relative humidity decreases because the rate of perspiration increases. The body actually feels cooler in arid conditions. There is direct relationship between the air temperature and relative humidity and the heat index, meaning as the air temperature and relative humidity increase (decrease), the heat index increases (decreases). Figure 1. Heat index chart. In order to determine the heat index using the chart above, you need to know the air temperature and the relative humidity. For example, if the air temperature is 100 ° F and the relative humidity is 55%, the heat index will be 124 ° F. When the relative humidity is low, the apparent temperature can actually be lower than the air temperature. For example, if the air temperature is 100 ° F and the relative humidity is 15%, the heat index is 96 ° F (use this calculator). In the Panhandles, we commonly see hot temperatures during the summer, but the low relative humidity values make it somewhat unusual to see dangerous heat index values (i.e. 103 ° F or greater). A full heat index chart for a larger range of temperatures and relative humidity values can be found at this link. It surprises many people to learn that the heat index values in the chart above are for shady locations. If you are exposed to direct sunlight, the heat index value can be increased by up to 15°F. As shown in the table below, heat indices meeting or exceeding 103 ° F can lead to dangerous heat disorders with prolonged exposure and/or physical activity in the heat.

Classification Heat Index Effect on the body Caution80°F - 90°FFatigue possible with prolonged exposure and/or physical activityExtreme Caution90°F - 103°FHeat stroke, heat cramps, or heat exhaustion possible with prolonged exposure and/or physical activityDanger103°F - 124°FHeat cramps or heat exhaustion likely, and heat stroke possible with prolonged exposure and/or physical activityExtreme Danger125°F or higherHeat stroke highly likelyUse this weather calculator if you prefer to enter numbers manually instead of reading a chart. If you're really mathematically inclined, there is an equation that gives a very close approximation to the heat index. However, this equation was obtained using a multiple regression analysis, and therefore, it has an error of ±1.3 ° F.Heat Index = -42.379 + 2.04901523T + 10.14333127R - 0.22475541TR - 6.83783 x 10-3T2 - 5.481717 x 10-2R2 + 1.22874 x 10-3T2R + 8.5282 x 10-4TR2 - 1.99 x 10-6T2R2T - air temperature (F)R - relative humidity (percentage)

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 17:05

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:11

Late Wednesday night the House of Representatives

voted not to reinstate airline

pilots who lost their jobs for refusing to comply with the Biden administration's vaccine mandate.

The move comes as the United States' aviation industry continues to suffer due in large part to a

shortage of captains in cockpits.

Members of the House convened on Wednesday to debate and vote on the

Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act, HR 3935. While the night ended with the legislation being left as "unfinished business," a number of proposed amendments had their fates decided.

Among them was

Amendment 36, requested by Illinois Rep. Mary Miller on behalf of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which would "require airlines to reinstate pilots who were fired or forced to resign because of vaccine mandates."

The proposition failed by a vote of 294 to 141. On the Democrats' side, all but one voted against the proposed amendment, while Republicans were more split, with 140 saying "yea" and 83 saying "nay."

HR 3935 was introduced in June to help ease some of the

pain the American aviation industry has felt since the pandemic. It seeks to direct the Federal Aviation Administration to increase air traffic controller hiring targets, raise the pilot retirement age from 65 to 67. The proposed legislation would also bar the FAA from "requiring mask wearing or Covid-19 vaccines for passengers, air carrier employees, or FAA employees."

During the pandemic, airlines across the country instituted vaccine mandates, and for the post part there was a high rate of compliance. That being said, a consequential number of employees were let go for refusing to comply. As

Forbes reports, United Airlines alone terminated 232 members of its staff for that reason, many among them pilots.

As

NPR reports, those who opposed getting the jab voiced their concerns about potential longterm side effects, but were largely dismissed and told the safety of the vaccines had been clearly established.

United Airlines did

allow unvaccinated employees who received an exemption to return to work in 2022, but not those who refused for unapproved reasons.

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:09

In an interview, Doug Casey comments: I’ve said for years that China is in the process of taking over Africa. In fact, that was a subtheme in my first novel Speculator, about the gold mining industry and bush war in Africa. Some years ago, a Chinese high government official said that their plan was to move 300 million people from China to Africa. That’s an incredible number of people; the Chinese think big. But it wasn’t really picked up anywhere in the press. Over the years, every time I go back to Africa I see more Chinese, and when they’re working on an industrial or a mining project, they’re all dressed in the same color jumpsuits. Almost like the Chinese in Goldfinger, if you remember.From a long-term point of view, China is taking over Africa. It’s a very intelligent plan, and an unspoken part of their “One Belt, One Road” program. They loan money to some backward African government to build a port, railroad, and airport, or what have you. The Africans can almost never pay those loans back, so the Chinese – as part of the deal – take over the facility and staff it with their own people. This is actually going on today. If the African leaders don’t like it – unlikely since they’ve pocketed millions under the table for facilitating the deal – they will likely find their lives are in danger. If that doesn’t work, the country may have a visit from the Red Army.I suspect that this facial recognition thing in Zimbabwe is just part of a much bigger plan that relates to the social credit system that is instituted in China now.Interesting.This may indeed be the plan but a lot can go wrong when attempting to take over an entire continent--and I hope something goes terribly wrong for the plan.-RW (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:09

Africa has become the fastest urbanizing region of the world, with rural migrants moving into cities a clip that has even surpassed that of China and India, as the continent becomes one of the final frontiers of the forth industrial revolution. This rapid transition presents big challenges but also offers big rewards for countries willing to risk billions in an infrastructure building revolution unlike anything the world has seen before '' and no country has answered Africa's call quite like China.

By 2050, Africa's 1.1 billion person population is slated to double, with 80% of this growth happening in cities, bringing the continent's urban headcount up to more than 1.3 billion. The population of Lagos alone is growing by 77 people per hour. According to McKinsey, by 2025 more than 100 cities in Africa will contain over a million people.

With this breakneck pace of urbanization comes many unprecedented economic opportunities. The IMF recently declared Africa the world's second-fastest growing region, and many are predicting that it is well on its way to becoming a $5 trillion economy, as household consumption is expected to increase at a 3.8% yearly clip to $2.1 trillion by 2025. The attention of the world is now drifting towards Africa, with comparisons to 1990s-era China are no longer coming off as radical projections.

China has likewise become a central player in Africa's urbanization push, as a huge percentage of the continent's infrastructure initiatives are being driven by Chinese companies and/or backed by Chinese funding.

''Right now you could say that any big project in African cities that is higher than three floors or roads that are longer than three kilometers are most likely being built and engineered by the Chinese. It is ubiquitous,'' spoke Daan Roggeveen, the founder of MORE Architecture and author of many works on urbanization in China and Africa.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - MARCH 07: Construction site for new building with chinese cooperation, addis ... [+] abeba region, addis ababa, Ethiopia on March 7, 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Photo by Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images)

Corbis via Getty ImagesEven before the Belt and Road was formally announced in 2013, China was making major strides into Africa's urban development sphere. When the Communist Party of China first came to power in 1949, it was virtually completely unrecognized by pretty much every other country in the world '-- most of whom favored the Republic of China, the former government that the Red Army chased away to Taiwan. But China began lobbying Africa extensively, getting the People's Republic recognized one country at a time. Before long, these political commitments were being repaid in concrete and steel, as China started building railroads, hospitals, universities, and stadiums throughout the continent. However, there were other reasons for China's early partnerships with Africa: even though the colonial powers were largely gone or on the way out, the continent was still the same stockpile of natural resources it's always been, and China wasted no time stepping into the power vacuum, laying the political and economic inroads that have given Beijing the advanced position it has there today.

China is now Africa's biggest trade partner, with Sino-African trade topping $200 billion per year. According to McKinsey, over 10,000 Chinese-owned firms are currently operating throughout the African continent, and the value of Chinese business there since 2005 amounts to more than $2 trillion, with $300 billion in investment currently on the table. Africa has also eclipsed Asia as the largest market for China's overseas construction contracts. To keep this momentum building, Beijing recently announced a $1 billion Belt and Road Africa infrastructure development fund and, in 2018, a whopping $60 billion African aid package, so expect Africa to continuing swaying to the east as economic ties with China become more numerous and robust.

Nothing without infrastructureA caterpillar erects revetment for the Great Wall of Lagos, to give a sustainable and permanent ... [+] solution to coastal erosion and to protect Eko Atlantic real estate, a multibillion dollars city under construction in Lagos, on October 2015. A delegation of French business confederation MEDEF comprises of fifty companies, both small, medium and large establishments is in Nigeria to explore business opportunities and to source other channels of building strong and sustainable business relationship with their Nigerian counterpart. AFP PHOTO/PIUS UTOMI EKPEI (Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesAs Chinese President Xi Jinping once pointed out, ''Inadequate infrastructure is believed to be the biggest bottleneck to Africa's development.'' Collectively, the countries of Africa would need to spend $130-170 billion per year to meet their infrastructure needs, but, according to the African Development Bank, they are coming up $68-$108 billion short. Closing Africa's infrastructure gap has been the obsession of multiple waves of colonists, and China is the next in line to reach into the heart of the continent with railroads, highways, and airports.

''Europeans built infrastructure in Africa at the turn of the century, purportedly also for local economic development, but in essence the projects were used for natural resource extraction. The predecessor of both the Nairobi-Mombasa and Addis Ababa-Djibouti railways can be categorized as such. Both connect inland regions with mineral deposits with major ports on the Indian Ocean,'' wrote Xiaochen Su on The Diplomat.

Infrastructure is what Africa needs most and infrastructure is what China is most equipped to provide. It is not lost on many African leaders that hardly 30 years ago China was in a similar place that they are now '-- a backwater country whose economy made up hardly two percent of global GDP. But over the past few decades China shocked the world in the way that it used infrastructure to propel economic growth, creating a high-speed rail network that now tops 29,000 kilometers, paving over 100,000 kilometers of new expressways, constructing over 100 new airports, and building no less than 3,500 new urban areas '-- which include 500 economic development zones and 1,000 city-level developments. Over this period of time, China's GDP has grown more than 10-fold, ranking #2 in the world today.

Chinese and Ivorians technicians work on the construction site of a new container terminal at the ... [+] port of Abidjan on March 27, 2019. - The modernization of Abidjan Port which started in 2012 are led by Chinese engineers and workers whose country finances up to 1,100 billion FCFA (1.67 billion euros). (Photo by ISSOUF SANOGO / AFP) (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesIt is precisely this kind of infrastructure-induced economic growth that Africa is looking for right now, and many African leaders are looking to China to bring their experience to their countries. The central players in many of Africa's biggest ticket infrastructure projects '-- including the $12 billion Coastal Railway in Nigeria, the $4.5 billion Addis Ababa''Djibouti Railway, and the $11 billion megaport and economic zone at Bagamoyo '-- are being developed via Chinese partnerships.

Since 2011, China has been the biggest player in Africa's infrastructure boom, claiming a 40% share that continues to rise. Meanwhile, the shares of other players are falling precipitously: Europe declined from 44% to 34%, while the presence of US contractors fell from 24% to just 6.7%.

''The Chinese SOEs they are really taking over the market of infrastructure projects in Africa. It's true to say that everywhere you go in East Africa you see Chinese construction teams,'' said Zhengli Huang, a research associate at the University of Sheffield who has carried out extensive case studies on urbanization in Nairobi.

The reasons for this ubiquitous presence are rather straight forward, as Roggeveen points out: many African contractors simply don't have the capacity for major development projects, ''so if you want to do large-scale construction you either turn to a western firm or to a Chinese firm, but the Chinese firm is always able to undercut you on price.''

Debt trap?Workers from China and Burkina Faso employed by Sinohydro, a Chinese state-owned hydropower ... [+] engineering and construction company, return to their dormitories after a working day on January 31, 2012 in Bata. AFP PHOTO / ABDELHAK SENNA (Photo credit should read ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesWhen we look at Africa, we see many countries chasing dreams of a better economic future while burying themselves in massive amounts of infrastructure-induced debt that they may not be able to actually afford. There have already been warning signs: the $4 Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway ended up costing Ethiopia nearly a quarter of it's total 2016 budget, Nigeria had to renegotiate a deal with their Chinese contractor due to their failure to pay, and Kenya's 80% Chinese-financed railway from Mombasa to Nairobi has already gone four times over budget, costing the country upwards of 6% of it's GDP. In 2012, the IMF found that China owned 15% of Africa's external debt, and hardly three years later roughly two-thirds of all new loans were coming from China. This has some analysts issuing warnings about debt traps '' with some even going as far as calling what China is doing a new form colonialism.

What does China get out of this?Chinese and Ivorians technicians work on the construction site of a new container terminal at the ... [+] port of Abidjan on March 27, 2019. - The modernization of Abidjan Port which started in 2012 are led by Chinese engineers and workers whose country finances up to 1,100 billion FCFA (1.67 billion euros). (Photo by ISSOUF SANOGO / AFP) (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty ImagesChina needs what Africa has for long-term economic and political stability. Over a third of China's oil comes from Africa, as does 20% of the country's cotton. Africa has roughly half of the world's stock of manganese, an essential ingredient for steel production, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on its own possesses half of the planet's cobalt. Africa also has significant amounts of coltan, which is needed for electronics, as well as half of the world's known supply of carbonatites, a rock formation that's the primary source of rare earths.

However, there is a common misconception that all Chinese projects in Africa have the backing of Beijing. More often than not, Chinese SOEs are operating in Africa on purely for-profit ventures that don't have the ambitions of their government in mind. However, it can be difficult to separate China's commercial intentions in Africa from the strategic, as, in many cases, the two inevitably overlap. The internationalization of Chinese construction firms and IT companies as well as the building of infrastructure to better extract and export African resources, are key concerns for Beijing. So while the infrastructure being built on the ground may not necessarily be orchestrated by Beijing it does ultimately play into China's broader geo-economic interests.

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:08

By Andrew Malone for the Daily Mail Updated: 11:16 EDT, 18 July 2008

On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today's standards utterly offensive) new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent.

'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton.

'I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.'

Enlarge Close relations: Chinese President Hu Jintao accompanies Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

Despite an outcry in Parliament and heated debate in the august salons of the Royal Geographic Society, Galton insisted that 'the history of the world tells the tale of the continual displacement of populations, each by a worthier successor, and humanity gains thereby'.

A controversial figure, Galton was also the pioneer of eugenics, the theory that was used by Hitler to try to fulfil his mad dreams of a German Master Race.

Eventually, Galton's grand resettlement plans fizzled out because there were much more exciting things going on in Africa.

But that was more than 100 years ago, and with legendary explorers such as Livingstone, Speke and Burton still battling to find the source of the Nile - and new discoveries of exotic species of birds and animals featuring regularly on newspaper front pages - vast swathes of the continent had not even been 'discovered'.

Yet Sir Francis Galton, it now appears, was ahead of his time. His vision is coming true - if not in the way he imagined. An astonishing invasion of Africa is now under way.

In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.

Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.

With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.

The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.

The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.

The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.

New horizons? Mugabe has said: 'We must turn from the West and face the East'

The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.

Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals.

Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa.

All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'.

From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival.

'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'

Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years.

China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world's population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies.

Enlarge President Robert Mugabe leaving the eleventh ordinary session of the assembly of the African Union heads of State and government in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt

Fuelling its own boom at home, China is also desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with non-existent health and safety rules to protect against shoddy and dangerous goods, is the perfect destination.

The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today.

However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy.

Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe's regime.

After an international outcry, the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, was forced to return to China, despite Beijing's insistence that the arms consignment was a 'normal commercial deal'.

Indeed, the 77-ton arms shipment would have been small beer - a fraction of China's help to Mugabe. He already has high-tech, Chinese-built helicopter gunships and fighter jets to use against his people.

Ever since the U.S. and Britain imposed sanctions in 2003, Mugabe has courted the Chinese, offering mining concessions for arms and currency.

While flying regularly to Beijing as a high-ranking guest, the 84-year-old dictator rants at 'small dots' such as Britain and America.

He can afford to. Mugabe is orchestrating his campaign of terror from a 25-bedroom, pagoda-style mansion built by the Chinese. Much of his estimated £1billion fortune is believed to have been siphoned off from Chinese 'loans'.

The imposing grey building of ZANU-PF, his ruling party, was paid for and built by the Chinese. Mugabe received £200 million last year alone from China, enabling him to buy loyalty from the army.

In another disturbing illustration of the warm relations between China and the ageing dictator, a platoon of the China People's Liberation Army has been out on the streets of Mutare, a city near the border with Mozambique, which voted against the president in the recent, disputed election.

Almost 30 years ago, Britain pulled out of Zimbabwe - as it had done already out of the rest of Africa, in the wake of Harold Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech. Today, Mugabe says: 'We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.'

Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned.

According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.'

Nowhere is that more true than Sudan. Branded 'Africa's Killing Fields', the massive oil-rich East African state is in the throes of the genocide and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of black, non-Arab peasants in southern Sudan.

In effect, through its supplies of arms and support, China has been accused of underwriting a humanitarian scandal. The atrocities in Sudan have been described by the U.S. as 'the worst human rights crisis in the world today'.

Mugabe has received hundreds of millions of pounds from Chinese sources

The government in Khartoum has helped the feared Janjaweed militia to rape, murder and burn to death more than 350,000 people.

The Chinese - who now buy half of all Sudan's oil - have happily provided armoured vehicles, aircraft and millions of bullets and grenades in return for lucrative deals. Indeed, an estimated £1billion of Chinese cash has been spent on weapons.

According to Human Rights First, a leading human rights advocacy organisation, Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns are continuing to flow into Darfur, which is dotted with giant refugee camps, each containing hundreds of thousands of people.

Between 2003 and 2006, China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms, flouting a United Nations weapons embargo.

With new warnings that the cycle of killing is intensifying, an estimated two thirds of the non-Arab population has lost at least one member of their families in Darfur.

Although two million people have been uprooted from their homes in the conflict, China has repeatedly thwarted United Nations denunciations of the Sudanese regime.

While the Sudanese slaughter has attracted worldwide condemnation, prompting Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg to quit as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, few parts of Africa are now untouched by China.

In Congo, more than £2billion has been 'loaned' to the government. In Angola, £3 billion has been paid in exchange for oil. In Nigeria, more than £5billion has been handed over.

In Equatorial Guinea, where the president publicly hung his predecessor from a cage suspended in a theatre before having him shot, Chinese firms are helping the dictator build an entirely new capital, full of gleaming skyscrapers and, of course, Chinese restaurants.

After battling for years against the white colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, post-independence African leaders are happy to do business with China for a straightforward reason: cash.

With western loans linked to an insistence on democratic reforms and the need for 'transparency' in using the money (diplomatic language for rules to ensure dictators do not pocket millions), the Chinese have proved much more relaxed about what their billions are used for.

Certainly, little of it reaches the continent's impoverished 800 million people. Much of it goes straight into the pockets of dictators. In Africa, corruption is a multi-billion pound industry and many experts believe that China is fuelling the cancer.

The Chinese are contemptuous of such criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. 'Business is business,' says Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong, adding that Beijing should not interfere in 'internal' affairs. 'We try to separate politics from business.'

While the bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators, the people of Africa are less impressed. At a market in Zimbabwe recently, where Chinese goods were on sale at nearly every stall, one woman told me she would not waste her money on 'Zing-Zong' products.

'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break,' she said. 'They are a waste of money. But there's nothing else. China is the only country that will do business with us.'

There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled.

In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans.

As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply.

In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs.

Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent.

A century after Sir Francis Galton outlined his vision for Africa, the Chinese are here to stay. More will come.

The people of this bewitching, beautiful continent, where humankind first emerged from the Great Rift Valley, desperately need progress. The Chinese are not here for that.

They are here for plunder. After centuries of pain and war, Africa deserves better.

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:07

Great strides are being made in the field of lab-grown meat, but its price remains a barrier to wide commercial use. British startup Moolec has created what it claims is a less costly alternative, in the form of soya plants that produce pig-protein-rich beans.

Although the details of Moolec's molecular farming technology are a trade secret, the company states that it has added pig genes to the genome of regular soya plants. As a result, a quarter of the proteins in those plants' "Piggy Sooy" beans are pig proteins '' 26.6%, to be precise. The flesh of the soybeans even has a pink, pork-like color.

"Each protein is selected to add value in terms of targeted functionality like taste, texture, and nutritional values," the company states on its website.

Farmers will raise the plants via conventional agricultural practices. Once the beans have been harvested and processed '' again, via conventional techniques '' their proteins will go into meat substitutes and other products. Pea plants which produce beef proteins are reportedly also in the works.

Moolec presently runs molecular farming operations in the US, Europe and South AmericaMoolec

As is the case with lab-grown pork, it is hoped that commercial adoption of Piggy Sooy could ultimately eliminate the raising and slaughtering of pigs, along with the associated ethical and environmental concerns.

"Moolec has developed a unique, successful, and patentable platform for the expression of highly valuable proteins in the seeds of economically important crops such as soybeans," says the company's chief science officer, Amit Dhingra. "This achievement opens up a precedent for the entire scientific community that is looking to achieve high levels of protein expression in seeds via molecular farming."

There's currently no word on when foods containing the proteins may be available to consumers.

Source: Moolec via New Scientist

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:05

Image source, Getty Images Image caption, Kevin Mitnick was once the ''most wanted'' hacker before becoming a security consultant, writer and public speaker

Kevin Mitnick, a reformed hacker who was once one of the FBI's "most wanted" cybercriminals, has died at the age of 59.

Mitnick spent five years in prison for computer and wire fraud following a two-year federal manhunt in the 1990s.

But after his release in 2000 he reinvented himself, becoming a renowned "white hat" hacker, cybersecurity consultant and author.

He died on Sunday following a 14-month long battle with pancreatic cancer.

"Kevin was an original; much of his life reads like a fiction story," his obituary reads.

"He grew up brilliant and restless in the San Fernando Valley in California, an only child with a penchant for mischief, a defiant attitude toward authority, and a love for magic."

In the 1990s, Mitnick gained notoriety breaking into government websites and corporate networks, including Pacific Bell, and stole corporate data and credit card information.

He was involved in the theft of thousands of credit card numbers and data files across the country in addition to working his way into the country's cell networks, vandalizing corporate, government and university computer systems.

He was dubbed as the "most wanted" computer hacker in the world by investigators.

A two-year-long nationwide FBI manhunt led to his 1995 arrest and he eventually pleaded guilty to computer and wire fraud.

Authorities believed he had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars.

In his 2011 memoir, Ghost in the Wires, Mitnick denied using his skills to steal or exploit information for financial gain.

"Anyone who loves to play chess knows that it's enough to defeat your opponent. You don't have to loot his kingdom or seize his assets to make it worthwhile," he wrote.

His arrest sparked a 'Free Kevin' movement in the hacking community, which lobbied on his behalf, including with rallies outside the prison where he was held.

Following his release from prison, he became a "white hat" hacker, writer and public speaker.

A "white hat" hacker aims to use their skills and identify vulnerabilities or security issues of organisations to test security configurations.

In 2003, he founded Mitnick Security Consulting, which advised Fortune 500 companies and government agencies on cybersecurity.

In 2011, he became "chief hacking officer" and part owner of KnowBe4, which offers phishing security awareness training.

"Kevin will always remain 'the world's most famous hacker' and was renowned for his intelligence, humor and extraordinary skill with technology, surpassed only by his talent as the original 'social engineer,'" the company said in a statement on Thursday.

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:02

Open this photo in gallery: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surrounded by his security detail in Belleville, Ont. on July 20. Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press

An event for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was cut short in Belleville, Ont., today after nearly 100 protesters surrounded him and his motorcade.

Trudeau was in the city to mark the seventh anniversary of the Liberal government's Child Care Benefit, to meet with the mayor and to visit a farmers' market.

Protesters showed up at the market outside city hall as Trudeau met with a crowd of community members and took selfies.

Trudeau was set to meet with about 10 vendors, but he couldn't make his way to the other side of the public square after being swarmed by the dozens of protesters.

Some of them were holding Trump flags, while others were screaming expletives about the government and the media.

At one point, the prime minister's security detail pushed away two women who approached his motorcade as he stood on an SUV's side step waving and smiling at the crowd.

Reacting to the protesters, one city hall worker said the chaos was a shame.

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:01

''It used to take me two to three days to pull the data across attendance, behavior, and grades with spreadsheets. It now takes minutes using the Panorama system.''

Nichole Goodliffe

Assistant Principal, Ogden School District (UT)

''Panorama helps us measure students' SEL skills aligned to our Loved, Challenged, and Prepared Index. It provides powerful analytics to tell us how loved, challenged, and prepared students are feeling, and it equips our schools with tailored strategies to meet students' social and emotional needs''

Dr. William Blake

Director of Social-Emotional Learning, District of Columbia Public Schools

''Panorama's tools for MTSS are powerful and easy to use in our daily work supporting students.''

Erin D'Antonio

Literacy Coach, Groton Central School District (NY)

''FINALLY -- a tool to measure the social emotional wellness of our students.''

Shawn Bush

Director of Student Services, Lawrence Township MSD (IN)

''In my 27 years of education I have never worked with a company that has the professionalism, follow through, and responsiveness that the colleagues at Panorama demonstrate on a regular basis. I continue to be impressed with their expertise and knowledge regarding school climate and using data to make informed decisions.''

Chandra Wilson-Cooper

Senior Director of MTSS, Portland Public Schools (OR)

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:52

July 20, 2023

Federal Reserve announces that its new system for instant payments, the FedNow® Service, is now liveFor release at 10:00 a.m. EDT

The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced that its new system for instant payments, the FedNow® Service, is now live. Banks and credit unions of all sizes can sign up and use this tool to instantly transfer money for their customers, any time of the day, on any day of the year.

"The Federal Reserve built the FedNow Service to help make everyday payments over the coming years faster and more convenient," said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. "Over time, as more banks choose to use this new tool, the benefits to individuals and businesses will include enabling a person to immediately receive a paycheck, or a company to instantly access funds when an invoice is paid."

To start, 35 early-adopting banks and credit unions, as well as the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service, are ready with instant payments capabilities via the FedNow Service. In addition, 16 service providers are ready to support payment processing for banks and credit unions.

When fully available, instant payments will provide substantial benefits for consumers and businesses, such as when rapid access to funds is useful, or when just-in-time payments help manage cash flows in bank accounts. For example, individuals can instantly receive their paychecks and use them the same day, and small businesses can more efficiently manage cash flows without processing delays. Over the coming years, customers of banks and credit unions that sign up for the service should be able to use their financial institution's mobile app, website, and other interfaces to send instant payments quickly and securely.

As an interbank payment system, the FedNow Service operates alongside other longstanding Federal Reserve payment services such as Fedwire® and FedACH®. The Federal Reserve is committed to working with the more than 9,000 banks and credit unions across the country to support the widespread availability of this service for their customers over time.

A list of early adopters with instant payment capabilities is attached. Additional information is available on the Federal Reserve Financial Services website.

For media inquiries, please email [email protected] or call 202-452-2955.

Last Update: July 20, 2023

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:22

Tehran AppleTehran, the Israeli spy thriller that airs globally on Apple TV+, has become one of the most high-profile TV series to land a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement.

The series has been added to the list, which allows production to continue filming, despite the ongoing actors strike. See the updated full list below.

Other high-profile movies such as Dakton Fanning-fronted The Watchers and Sam Raimi-produced Don't Move have also been granted waivers, as has hit faith series The Chosen.

It's not entirely clear how Tehran has found itself on this list, given that AMPTP member Apple is involved but we hear it might have something to do with the series' origins.

The series was created by Moshe Zonder, Dana Eden and Maor Kohn and is produced by Donna and Shula Productions, which was formed by Eden and Shula Spiegel. It initially aired on Israeli network Kan 11. Cineflix subsequently acquired the global distribution rights to the series and Apple TV+ then came on board to air it globally.

In February, Apple renewed it for a third season and we understand there is about a week left to film. The series shoots in Athens, which takes the place of Tehran, and last week it was reported that filming had been stopped.

Apple's involvement is another interesting wrinkle in SAG-AFTRA's interim agreements initiative, designed to allow indie productions that abide by SAG-AFTRA contract terms to continue during the strike.

It comes after it emerged that The Watchers was also on the list, given that it was linked to Warner Bros. Discovery's New Line. New Line is on board to distribute the movie but the film was a negative pickup and what helped the producers was the fact that the distribution deal had not been signed yet, therefore making it an indie shoot with independent financing.

Tehran, which became the first ever Israeli series to win the award for best drama series at the International Emmys, stars Niv Sultan as a hacker agent who infiltrates Iran's capital Tehran under a false identity. The second season starred Glenn Close and the third season also stars Hugh Laurie.

Exec producers are Eden and Shula Spiegel for Donna and Shula Productions, Alon Aranya for Paper Plane Productions, Julien Leroux for Paper Entertainment, Peter Emerson for Cineflix Studios, Tony Saint, Syrkin, Zonder, Dari Shai Slutzky and Tal Fraifeld for Kan.

Apple didn't respond to emails and phone calls for comment.

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:16

National Medical Association (NMA) Annual Convention Workshop: Advancing Health Equity: All of Us Research Symposium Introduces Researcher Workbench to Underrepresented Researchers and Graduate Students

All of Us Chief Engagement Officer Karriem Watson, D.H.Sc., M.S., M.P.H.; Cathy Shyr, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Samantha Stewart, M.S., Research Projects Coordinator at the All of Us Data and Research C

Learn MoreType: Event

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Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:56

For years, employees have scrambled to think of excuses to explain why they've turned up late for work.

But now there might be a legitimate reason you can use to get your boss off your back if you've slept in '-- 'time blindness'.

In a now viral TikTok video, a young user emotionally claimed she was yelled at for asking a potential employer whether they make 'accommodations for people who struggle with time blindness'.

Chaotic Philosopher, who claims to be neurodivergent, moaned about the 'culture where workers are cut off because they struggle being on time' in her teary TikTok post, watched almost 5million times.

Social media immediately accused her of faking it, with commenters urging her to 'just use an alarm'. Others questioned if time blindness would become 'a new Gen Z trend'.

Yet, despite accusations that it's made-up, psychologists insist it is real. They claim it's especially common among people with ADHD.

Smriti Joshi, lead psychologist at AI mental health chatbot Wysa, told MailOnline: 'Many of the factors associated with ADHD, such as difficulties in working memory and attention regulation, can contribute to a distorted sense of time.'

The user, Chaotic Philosopher, posted the video on TikTok and said she thought businesses that 'cut off' employees who 'struggle with being on time' need to be dismantled

But other experts say people don't have to have ADHD to experience time blindness.

The NHS doesn't recognise the term itself, but acknowledges that sufferers of ADHD can 'have problems with organisation and time management'.

Sue Smith, psychotherapist and spokesperson for the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), claims early childhood trauma can also result in time blindness and feelings of dissociation as a child or later in life.

Time blindness is used to refer to the inability to recognise when time has passed or estimate how long a task may take, according to Robert Common, a psychologist and mental health expert based in Cambodia.

As a result, sufferers may frequently find themselves running for the bus, failing to meet deadlines or wrongly thinking a task will take ten minutes to complete, he said.

The phenomenon is not defined as a medical condition, but some doctors use it as a way of talking about the concept of losing track of time.

According to Mr Common, the common symptoms of time blindness include:

Regularly losing track of timeAn inability to meet appointments or keep to schedulesRepeatedly missing deadlinesDaydreamingFeeling engrossed in a task or like nothing else mattersBeing unable to attend to do anything other than the task you are doingOverpromising on what you can reasonably deliverFeeling stuck in the presentPutting things offMs Smith added: 'Symptoms can range from a total absorption in an activity, to the polar opposite, of utter distraction, for example starting five jobs at once and becoming overwhelmed with the chaos.'

Mr Common warned that time blindness could be mistaken for laziness or stupidity.

He said: 'Employers may believe that you are not invested in the job or not taking it seriously.'

Relationships might also suffer if you struggle to keep task with the priorities of friends and family because this can be mistaken for being selfish or self-absorbed, he warned.

Mr Common added that children who suffer from time blindness could be confused with having intellectual or learning difficulties.

However, there is advice for anyone who finds themselves with similar symptoms.

Ms Joshi suggested mapping out your daily life and using visual aids, such as timers and alarms, to remind yourself of upcoming tasks.

Friends of family who are aware of your condition can help you keep track of time and even prompt you before an important meeting, such as a hospital appointment or a job interview, the psychologists said.

And, if someone you care about is suffering from the condition, Dr Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist and co-founder of the Chelsea Psychology Clinic in London, suggested being compassionate to their struggle.

She said: 'While it can be frustrating, remind yourself that time blindness can be a real challenge and avoid being overly critical.'

However, she added if they are struggling then you should guide them towards expert help and perhaps suggest they seek out support from a therapist who specialises in ADHD.

If you are unaware that you have time blindness, these symptoms could pose difficulties to your daily life, for example your employers may not think you are taking your job seriously

Mr Common also said that the best way to support someone with time blindness is to be compassionate and promote self-compassion.

He added: 'For children with ADHD, consider co-creating a schedule.

'Being there to help them get ready and stick to a schedule, promoting their interests but not allowing them to overtake everything else, and using visible and clear reminders can also be helpful.'

However, social media users have poured scorn on those who claim to have the condition after a TikToker claimed she suffers from time blindness and slammed businesses for criticizing tardy employees who struggle to be punctual.

The user, Chaotic Philosopher, posted the video on TikTok and said she thought businesses that 'cut off' employees who 'struggle with being on time' need to be dismantled.

In the clip, she spoke about asking a potential employer if they made accommodations for her 'time blindness'.

She said: 'I just wanted to know if there are accommodations for people who struggle with time blindness and being on time, you know.

'They all started yelling at me and saying that accommodations for time blindness did not exist and if you struggle with being on time you will never be able to get a job.'

Following her claims over 'time blindness', she said she was told: 'Your stupid generation wants to destroy the workplace.'

Looking distressed, she added: 'I think that a culture where workers are just cut off because they struggle being on time when there are other solutions we can look to, yeah, that culture needs to be dismantled.'

Chaotic Philosopher did not find too much sympathy after uploading the video to TikTok, before it was reposted to Twitter, with commenters urging her to 'just use an alarm'.

One user commented on the video and said: I'll accept time blindness if you agree to accept payroll blindness. It only seems fair.'

Another added: 'Someone clearly stepped foot in the real world for the first time that day and realized she wasn't cut out for it.'

One woman, who said she has worked as a manager and employer, said she understood being late happened from time to time.

But she added: 'Life happens man '-- but when it's a consistent issue, it doesn't just effect you '-- if effects the entire team. Have some consideration for your coworkers.'

Others were even less sympathetic, with one user noting that she could resolve her issue by 'setting alarms'.

'This kind of thing I must make my OWN accommodations for. I lay out my fits every night, alarms for everything, meal prep,' another explained.

In another video, another user, Morgan Foley, claimed time blindness is 'very real' and said it leaves her struggling to keep track of time and complete basic tasks.

Another account, called ADHD Love, posted a video that says time blindness comes in 'two modes'.

'Either I'm going to be late, no matter what I do. I can plan my morning, I can say five minutes for shower, eight minute walk to the station. It will just magically expand and end up taking way more time. Therefore, I'm late.

'Second mode is when the anxiety takes over, that's actually going to help me be on time. I'm going to sit there staring at my watch, until it's time to leave early but I won't be able to do anything before.'

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by BakersfieldNow Staff, Mary Paronyan

Tue, July 18th 2023, 5:22 PM UTC6

VIEW ALL PHOTOS

A GET hydrogen bus, valued at $1.1 million, was destroyed and part of the fueling station was damaged during an early morning fire on Golden State Highway. PHOTO: Brandon A. Barraza

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Jamie Foxx is opening up for the first time about his medical scare.

On July 22, Foxx, 55, shared an Instagram video of him talking about his recent hospitalization in April. In the clip, Foxx started off by thanking everyone who sent him well wishes and prayers.

"I cannot even begin to tell you how far it took me and how it brought me back," he said. "I went through something that I thought I would never ever go through. I know a lot of people were waiting or wanting to hear updates, but to be honest with you, I just didn't want you to see me like that."

"I want you to see me laughing, having a good time, partying, cracking a joke, doing a movie (or) television show. I didn't want you to see me with tubes running out of me and trying to figure out if I was going to make it through," he continued.

Foxx noted that it was his sister Deidra Dixon and his daughter Corinne Foxx who "saved" his life. And thanks to "God" and the "great medical people" around him, he said he was able to get better.

''I cannot tell you how great it feels to have your family kick in, in such a way, and y'all know they kept it airtight, they didn't let nothing out," Fox added. "They protected me. And that's what I hope everyone could have in the moments like these.''

After the comedian thanked his family for keeping his health issues private, he then addressed some of the rumors that were being said about him online.

Jamie Foxx. @iamjamiefoxx / Instagram"People saying what I got, some people said I was blind, but as you can see, the eyes are working just fine," Foxx said making a funny face. "They said I was paralyzed. I'm not paralyzed. But I did go through '-- I went to hell and back and my road to recovery had some potholes as well. But I'm coming back and I'm able to work."

"And I just wanted to say that I love everybody and I love all the love that I got," he added.

Fox then became emotional while addressing his fans, saying he wasn't afraid to show his emotions because "it is what is."

"If you see me out from now on and every once in a while, I just burst into tears, it's because it's been tough, man," he said. "I've been sick, man. But now, I've got my legs under me, so you're going to see me out.''

Towards the end of the video, Foxx took a moment to share how he'd like his fans to see him, regardless of his recent health struggles.

''I just want you to remember me for the jokes that I crack, the movies that I make; some of them good, some of them ain't. I think I've got a good one out," he said referring to his new Netflix film, "They Cloned Tyrone." "And songs that I sing."

"I'm here on Earth because of some great people. I'm here on Earth because of God, man," he added. "So I love all y'all. I just wanted to jump on here and let you know that I'm on my way back."

Foxx then captioned the post, "Thank u a billion to everybody'... been a long road but all the prayers great people and God got me through'.... ðŸðŸ¾ðŸðŸ¾''¤¸."

Foxx's video comes after he ''experienced a medical complication'' in April and had to be hospitalized.

A month after the news broke, Foxx daughter Corinne shared in a May 12 Instagram post that her dad was out of the hospital and had been for ''weeks."

Then on July 20, Foxx shared a brief health update when he posted a picture of himself outside of a Las Vegas hotel.

"We got BIG things coming soon ðŸ...Š," he captioned the Instagram post.

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The Phaser | September 26, 2022 RAIDS, FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS, MEDIA ATTACKS MAGA, TRUTH SOCIAL WINNING!Loading... from And We Know: RAIDS, FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS, MEDIA ATTACKS ON ALL MAGA, DUTCH EXPOSED, TRUTH SOCIAL WINNING!...

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00:00 / 00:00

Speed

original sound - mickeydjuric

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Stay ahead of the censors - Join us warroom.org/join

Aired On: 7/20/2023

Watch:On the Web: https://www.warroom.orgOn Gettr: @WarRoomOn Podcast: Apple, iHeart Radio, Google On TV: PlutoTV Channel 240, Dish Channel 219, Roku, Apple TV, FireTV or on https://AmericasVoice.news. #news #politics #realnews

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During Trump's 2016 campaign, there had been discussions of RFK Jr being brought into the Trump administration to chair a new commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity.

In the years leading up to 2016, Trump had tweeted several times about the apparent link between the aggressive increase in mandated childhood vaccines and the precipitous increase in the rates of autism among children.

It had long been rumored that Trump's youngest child, Barron was vaccine-injured and that the topic of vaccine safety was very important to him.

RFK Jr was a natural choice to head up such a commission, due to his years of work at Children's Health Defense. However, he has claimed during some interviews that after Trump received a $1 million donation from Pfizer to help finance his inauguration, all talk about the safety and scientific integrity commission ceased and it never came to be.

During RFK Jr's testimony Thursday before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government about the extreme censorship around COVID-19 and the experimental vaxx exerted by the ''Censorship Industrial Complex'', he describes how he was ''dragged, kicking and screaming'' into his vaccine safety advocacy by the mothers of vaccine-injured children, which he half-jokingly says was ''the worst career decision I have ever made.''

Presumably, he meant it was a bad decision due to the endless disparagement that he's since endured at the hands of the complex of Federal agencies, NGOs and social media companies who have been profiting off of silencing him and violating the First Amendment rights of hundreds of millions of Americans.

RFK Jr says that he'd looked for evidence of double-blind placebo studies for the 72 childhood vaccines that are now effectively mandated for American children and he had found none. This was because vaccine manufacturers were made exempt from doing such safety trials, which are required of all other medications prior to licensing.

He explains that in the 1980s, Wyeth (now Pfizer) had lost $20 for every $1 of profit on their DTP vaccine due to damage claims and they were set to exit the vaccine business unless the Reagan White House could find a way to grant them liability protections. The end result was National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

RFK has long suggested that the goal of the manufacturers' rush to get the COVID vaccines into the childhood vaccine schedule was to bring the shots under the umbrella of liability immunity conferred by the 1986 Act.