Baltic Dry Index. 1388 -85 Brent Crude 43.47
Spot Gold 1893
Coronavirus Cases 24/7/20
World 15,665,591
Deaths 636,045
“If
you're not gonna pull the trigger, don't point the gun.”
James
Baker. United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan,
and U.S. Secretary of State and White House Chief of Staff under President
George H. W. Bush.
When
elephants fight, all others nearby rapidly get out of the way. The world’s
fading superpower, and largest debtor, has decided to fight the world’s rising
superpower, and large creditor. It’s time to rapidly get out of the way and
into some fully paid up gold and silver, stored out of the reach of Washington
and London.
Below,
China fires back, but in a measured way, for now. But where does this dangerous path lead? War?
An added downside, America's diplomats are getting kicked out of China's UNESCO city of gastronomy. What a cruel world.
An added downside, America's diplomats are getting kicked out of China's UNESCO city of gastronomy. What a cruel world.
China orders U.S. to shut consulate in city of Chengdu
July 24, 2020 /
5:20 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s foreign ministry said it told the U.S.
embassy on Friday morning to close its consulate in the southwestern city of
Chengdu, days after Washington abruptly ordered the closure of the Chinese
consulate in Houston.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China informed the U.S. Embassy in
China of its decision to withdraw its consent for the establishment and
operation of the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu,” it said in a statement.
“The Ministry also made specific requirements on the ceasing of all
operations and events by the Consulate General,” it said.
Asia shares stymied by Sino-U.S. spat, euro stays buoyant
July 24, 2020 /
12:45 AM
SYDNEY
(Reuters) - Asian shares slipped from six-month peaks on Friday as Sino-U.S.
tensions soured what had been an upbeat week, while the euro held a 21-month
top against an embattled dollar and gold neared a record high.
For once, currencies have dominated trading as a deal on a European
Union recovery plan shot the euro to its highest since late 2018. The single
currency was last standing tall at $1.1611 having climbed 1.6% for the week so
far.
That was taken as a signal to sell the dollar, which was down 1.4% on
the week against a basket of currencies at 94.645 and heading for its fifth
straight weekly loss.
That took it under the March trough of 94.650 to reach depths not visited
since late 2018.
“The USD bear case continues to sharpen with a break of the 94.65 March
lows likely ushering in the next leg down,” said Westpac analyst Richard
Franulovich.
---- In equity markets, sentiment caught a chill as Beijing vowed to retaliate against a U.S. order to close its consulate in Houston, raising speculation that the two country’s trade deal could be in danger.
China’s Foreign Ministry announced tit-for-tat action, however, telling
the United States to close its consulate in Chengdu, the state-run Xinhua news
agency reported.
Chinese blue chips retreated 2.9% as a result, though were still up 0.5%
for the week.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost 1.3%,
trimming its weekly gain to 0.6%. Tokyo was closed for a holiday, but Nikkei
futures were trading 250 points below the cash close.
E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 edged down 0.15%, while EUROSTOXX 50
futures eased 1.0% and FTSE futures 0.9%.
The market’s dogged optimism on economic recovery had been challenged on
Thursday by data showing the number of Americans filing for unemployment
benefits unexpectedly rose last week for the first time in nearly four months.
Analysts said there were some technical reasons for the surprise but
noted claims were still more than double their worst weekly levels seen during
the global financial crisis.
More
China threatens to stop recognising BNO passports of Hong Kong residents
July 23, 2020 /
1:10 AM
SHANGHAI/BEIJING
(Reuters) - China threatened on Thursday to withdraw its recognition of British
National Overseas passports held by residents of Hong Kong, in retaliation for
the former colonial ruler’s policy of easing their path to citizenship.
Starting
from January 2021, those in Hong Kong with such status would be able to apply
for special visas to live in Britain that could eventually confer citizenship,
interior minister Priti Patel said this week.
However, China opposes such a policy as interfering in domestic affairs,
a spokesman for its foreign ministry said,calling the move a flagrant violation of Britain’s promises,
international law and principles of international relations.
“As the English side is the first to violate the promise, China will
consider not recognising BNO passports as a valid travel document, and reserves
the right to take further measures,” the spokesman, Wang Wenbin, told a news
briefing.
Even before Britain’s offer, China did not recognise such passports as a
valid document for mainland entry by residents of Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese
rule in 1997. Instead, it required them to use travel permits issued by China.
More
Pompeo urges more assertive approach to 'Frankenstein' China
July 23, 2020 /
10:20 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at China on Thursday and said Washington and
its allies must use “more creative and assertive ways” to press the Chinese
Communist Party to change its ways, calling it the “mission of our time.”
Speaking at the Nixon Library in President Richard Nixon’s birthplace in
Yorba Linda, California, Pompeo said the former U.S. leader’s worry about what
he had done by opening the world to China’s Communist Party in the 1970s had
been prophetic.
“President Nixon once said he feared he had created a ‘Frankenstein’ by
opening the world to the CCP,” Pompeo said. “And here we are.”
---- In a major speech delivered after Washington’s surprise order this week for China to close its Houston consulate, Pompeo called for an end to “blind engagement” with China and repeated frequently leveled U.S. charges about its unfair trade practices, human rights abuses and efforts to infiltrate American society.
He said China’s military had became “stronger and more menacing” and the
approach to Beijing should be “distrust and verify,” adapting President Ronald
Reagan’s “trust but verify” mantra about the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
“The truth is that our policies – and those of other free nations –
resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international
hands that were feeding it,” Pompeo said.
“The freedom-loving nations of the world must induce China to change ...
in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our
people and our prosperity.”
Recalling remarks he made after meeting British leaders in London this
week, Pompeo said “maybe it’s time for a new grouping of like-minded nations, a
new alliance of democracies,” while adding: “If the free world doesn’t change,
Communist China will surely change us.”
More
In other news, WeWork’s fallen out of
favour even in Japan. It’s business model, that barely made sense in the boom
months of 2019, makes no sense in the work from home new reality of Covid-19.
Rakuten will not renew its contract with WeWork, says report
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has decided not to renew its contract with WeWork when it expires next month, according to a report in The Japan Times. Rakuten had leased about 700 desks in Tokyo, but is now planning to move employees from its fintech division into its own new offices.Both WeWork and Rakuten declined to comment to TechCrunch.
Tokyo is also the headquarters of WeWork’s biggest investor, SoftBank, which took ownership of the co-working startup last October as part of a bailout deal after concerns about WeWork’s financial stability and the behavior of co-founder and former chief executive officer Adam Neumann led to the postponement of its IPO.
Due
in part to its close relationship with SoftBank, WeWork has a high number of
clients in Japan, but The Japan Times reports that the COVID-19 pandemic caused
occupancy to drop by about 60%.
More
Finally, who on earth thought it was a
good idea to make a home use tear gas discharger look like a handgun? What is
the poor policeman going to think?
Tear Gas Device for Home Use Is Selling Fast
Charlie McGee July 22, 2020, 4:00 AM EDT
· Byrna Technologies’s shares are up more than 500% this year
A supplier of tear gas to the police and the military is experiencing a surge in demand for a launcher it makes for home use as consumers anxious about civil unrest arm themselves for self defense.
Byrna Technologies Inc.’s Byrna HD resembles a pistol and comes in seven colors -- including hot pink and desert tan. It can fire a solid ball about the size of a quarter or ones filled with a blend of tear gas and pepper spray.
The chemical balls burst on impact and, the company says, can “incapacitate” a target “for up to 30 minutes by causing temporary blindness and respiratory distress.”
Sales have been fueled by anxieties over the coronavirus pandemic and the waves of protests across the country that followed the May 25 death in police custody of George Floyd, an unarmed African-American Minneapolis man.
That incident touched off mostly peaceful demonstrations, though some were accompanied by violence and looting.
Fox News host Sean Hannity last month told viewers of his program that he owned several Byrna HD weapons and “It could hopefully be an alternative in a very volatile, dangerous situation.”
“They even come equipped with lasers so you really can’t miss for accuracy,” Hannity said.
----A headline in an orange band running along the top of the website’s homepage says: “Due to unprecedented demand, shipping for Byrna HD Launchers is 8+ weeks.”
----“The general level of apprehension among the population as a whole has led many people to seek means of protecting themselves and their families in the event that there is a breakdown or a fraying of the fabric of civil society,” the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Sales of conventional firearms have also risen this year. Background checks compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a proxy for gun purchases, jumped to a record in June.
----The launcher retails for about $325. Extra 68-caliber chemical ammunition goes for $300 for a box of 95. Target posters, laser sights and tactical shoulder holsters are extra.
The company, which had 14 employees at the end of last year, says that
buyers don’t need to undergo background checks or procure permits.
More
Nowadays
people don’t know the price of anything and the value of nothing.
With
apologies to Oscar Wilde.
Covid-19 Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
U.S. coronavirus deaths top 1,100 for a third day in a row
July 23, 2020 / 5:00
PM
(Reuters)
- The United States on Thursday recorded more than 1,100 deaths from COVID-19,
marking the third straight day the nation passed that grim milestone as the pandemic
escalates in southern and western U.S. states.
Fatalities nationwide were recorded at 1,118 on Thursday. Deaths were
1,135 on Wednesday and 1,141 on Tuesday.
Even though deaths are rising in the United States for a second week in
a row, they remain well below levels seen in April, when 2,000 people a day on
average died from the virus.
The United States on Thursday also passed a total of more than 4 million
coronavirus infections since the first U.S. case was documented in January,
according to a Reuters tally, reflecting a nationwide escalation of the
pandemic.
The United States took 98 days to reach one million confirmed cases of
COVID-19 but just 16 days to increase from 3 million to 4 million, the tally
showed. The total suggests at least one in 82 Americans have been infected at
some point in the pandemic.
The average number of new cases is now rising by more than 2,600 per
hour nationwide, the highest rate in the world.
More
Tokyo reports single-day record of 366 new coronavirus infections
23 July, 2020 06:03 pm JST
TOKYO
The Tokyo metropolitan government said Thursday it confirmed a
single-day record of 366 new cases of the novel coronavirus, as the capital
strives to keep up guard against a recent surge in infections.
The figure surpasses the previous high of 293 cases confirmed last
Friday and marks the first time it has topped 300. Tokyo has seen triple-digit
single-day new infections on all but two days in July, with infections totaling
10,054 on Wednesday.
Nationwide, the total of reported infections was 920. Osaka Prefecture
had 104 cases, Aichi Prefecture 96 and Saitama Prefecture had 64 cases.
One death was reported.
Tokyo and some other urban areas in Japan have seen sharp rises in
confirmed cases since a nationwide state of emergency was fully lifted in late
May.
"I'd like Tokyo residents to be cautious about virus infections and
act carefully as a four-day holiday in the nation has already started" on
Thursday, Tokyo Gov Yuriko Koike told reporters. She said 60% of the new cases
were in their 20s and 30s.
The daily figures announced by the metropolitan government reflect the
most recent totals reported by health authorities and medical institutions in
the capital.
Koike has urged residents to avoid nonessential outings during the long
weekend after raising the pandemic alert to the highest of four available
levels, indicating "infections are spreading."
However, concerns over further spread of the virus are growing as the
central government launched a travel subsidy campaign on Wednesday, with Tokyo
excluded due to the recent spike in cases in the capital, while virus
infections have been climbing nationwide.
There has been a surge in the number of infections in the capital,
particularly from nightlife establishments such as hostess and host bars, the
metropolitan government said.
Hong Kong reports new daily record of coronavirus cases
July 23, 2020 /
9:51 AM
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong reported 118 new coronavirus cases on
Thursday, a daily record, including 111 that were locally transmitted, adding
to a deluge of new cases that have hit the global financial hub over the past
two weeks.
Hong Kong extended strict social distancing measures on Wednesday as
authorities reported 105 locally transmitted infections.
Since late January more than 2,000 people have been infected in Hong
Kong, 14 of whom have died. Authorities have warned the city faces a critical period
in containing the virus.
Unsung Immune Cells Take Over When Coronavirus Antibodies Wane
By Marthe Fourcade and Jason Gale
July 23, 2020, 12:40 AM GMT+1
·
Studies show T cells’ crucial role in
coronavirus protection
·
Vaccine makers hail their presence in trials of
inoculations
Antibodies have become a familiar word in the pandemic era, perhaps suggesting they’re the best hope for keeping the deadly coronavirus at bay. But when crucial vaccine data was released this week, the spotlight panned to an unsung immune player: T cells.
AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE, as well as China’s CanSino Biologics Inc. all hailed the presence of these white blood cells in vaccine recipients as a sign their experimental shots show promise.
Thrust into focus by recent studies, T cells are a reminder that the body’s defenses rely on more than one weapon, and that much of the immune response to Covid-19 is still a mystery -- especially after researchers revealed that the more lauded antibodies lack staying power.
“Antibodies are only a very small part of the picture,” said Paul Griffin, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, who is leading clinical studies in Australia of two potential Covid-19 vaccines. But “we’re really not there yet in terms of fully understanding” people’s immunity to the new coronavirus.
As the pandemic took the world by storm,
scientists first focused on antibodies -- proteins that stick to and disable
foreign invaders -- because eliciting them is the basis for most successful
vaccines. The immune proteins are also easier to measure than T cells and can
be used to gauge prior infection.
The study showing they wane quickly in patients with mild disease dealt a blow to hopes that antibodies will provide some lasting form of immunity.
Unsung Warriors
T cells, by contrast, are able to kill virus-infected cells, remember past diseases for decades, and rouse fresh antibody soldiers long after the first have left the battlefield. People infected with another coronavirus that was responsible for the SARS epidemic in 2003, for example, still have a T-cell response to the disease 17 years later.That suggests T cells may still, at least hypothetically, be ready to protect SARS survivors against the infection almost two decades later, and might bolster their defense against Covid-19, Griffin said.
“They might have a slightly milder or shorter duration in terms of the course of their illness, but I certainly wouldn’t think that that would be protective, unfortunately,” he said.
One study found that some patients with no symptoms of Covid-19 had T-cells that recognized the virus -- even when they had no detectable antibodies. Another pointed to a level of immunity in people who never encountered the pathogen, possibly because of exposure to one or more of the coronaviruses that cause the common cold.
More
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
Pandemic pollution drop found to boost solar panel output
Michael Irving July 22, 2020
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has
changed the world in many ways, some obvious and some less so. Now, scientists
have quantified an effect that lies a few links down the chain, finding that
solar panels in certain cities have seen a boost in output, due to a reduction
in air pollution.
Much of the world has essentially ground
to a halt this year, as many countries issue stay-at-home orders to try to curb
the spread of the virus. With fewer cars on the road and planes in the sky, and
many factories and industry on pause, we’ve seen air pollution drop
sharply over COVID-19 epicenters like China and Italy.
But the line of dominoes doesn’t end there. Recent reports have
suggested that this could affect the performance of solar panels in some areas.
And now a research team led by MIT has set out to quantify those effects.
The researchers focused on Delhi, India, which is one of the smoggiest
cities in the world. They found that after the country implemented mandatory
lockdown on March 24, pollution levels dropped by half. As a result of the
clearer skies, the total output of solar panels in the country increased by 8.3
percent in late March, and by 5.9 percent in April.
The team says that these deviations are three to four times higher than
would be expected from regular fluctuations in such a short time period. And
while the numbers themselves may not sound like very much, the researchers
point out that it could translate to a fivefold increase of the profit margin
of these systems.
“This is the first real quantitative evaluation where you almost have a
switch that you can turn on and off for air pollution, and you can see the
effect,” says Ian Marius Peters, an author of the study. “You have an
opportunity to baseline these models with and without air pollution.”
According to the team, the finding could suggest that solar energy could
form a positive feedback loop. The more panels that are installed, the cleaner
the air becomes and the more efficient existing solar panels become.
Of course, that’s a pretty idealized version of events. In practice, tangible effects may only really be noticed in places with high air pollution in the first place, like Delhi. The researchers say they investigated earlier reports about similar solar power boosts in the UK and Germany, but the data suggests that the biggest contributing factor was merely a run of nice weather.
“The air pollution levels in Germany and Great Britain are generally so low that most PV installations are not significantly affected by them,” says Peters.
With no end to the pandemic in sight, it’s likely that we’ll continue to find interesting side effects in a range of areas.
The research was published in the journal Joule.
Another weekend,
and what anti-China mischief will President Trump get up to this weekend? I’m
sure we won’t wait long to find out.
Hopefully with a
tropical depression headed towards Texas and a distant hurricane developing in
the mid-Atlantic, he might be a little distracted. Have a great, safe weekend everyone.
I
always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to
prophesy after the event has already taken place.
Sir
Winston Churchill.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished June
DJIA: 25,813 -2 Down. NASDAQ: 10,059 +196 Up.
SP500: 3,100 +75 Down.
The NASDAQ has remained up.
The S&P and the DJIA still remain down despite the best efforts of the Fed
to get them to go higher. The Dow has now gone negative.
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