Baltic Dry Index. 1810 -39 Brent Crude 42.10
Spot Gold 1802
Coronavirus Cases 10/7/20
World 12,403,247
Deaths 556,124
What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's
not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of
mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not
work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble
without putting someone else into trouble.
Arthur Laffer.
We
open today with potentially very bad news from Kazakhstan. A Covid-19 mutation?
The new winter flu? Something entirely different?
Best
not to reopen global travel until we know.
Kazakhstan denies Chinese reports of pneumonia deadlier than coronavirus
July 10, 2020 / 3:30 AM
SHANGHAI
(Reuters) - Kazakhstan dismissed as incorrect on Friday a warning by China’s
embassy for its citizens to guard against an outbreak of pneumonia in the
central Asian nation that it described as being more lethal than the
coronavirus.
In a
statement late on Thursday on its official WeChat account, the Chinese embassy
flagged a “significant increase” in cases in the Kazakh cities of Atyrau,
Aktobe and Shymkent since mid-June.
On Friday,
however, Kazakhstan’s healthcare ministry branded Chinese media reports based
on the embassy statement as “fake news”.
The ministry
said its tallies of bacterial, fungal and viral pneumonia infections, which
also included cases of unclear causes, were in line with World Health
Organisation guidelines.
“The
information published by some Chinese media regarding a new kind of pneumonia
in Kazakhstan is incorrect,” the ministry said.
China's Kazakhstan embassy warns citizens of pneumonia deadlier than COVID-19
July 10, 2020 /
3:30 AM
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s embassy in Kazakhstan has warned its
citizens to take precautions against an outbreak of pneumonia in the country
that it says is more lethal than COVID-19.
It said in a statement on its official WeChat account late on Thursday
that there had been a “significant increase” in cases in the cities of Atyrau,
Aktobe and Shymkent since mid-June.
Pneumonia in Kazakhstan had killed 1,772 people in the first half of the
year, with 628 deaths in June alone, including Chinese citizens, the embassy
said.
“The mortality rate of the disease is much higher than that of pneumonia
caused by the novel coronavirus,” it said.
It remains unclear whether it is caused by a virus related to
coronavirus or by a different strain. The embassy said Kazakhstan’s health
ministry and other health institutions were now carrying out a “comparative
study”, but no conclusions had yet been made.
According to a Tuesday report by Kazinform, the state news agency of
Kazakhstan, the number of pneumonia cases “increased 2.2 times in June as
compared to the same period of 2019”.
The Global Times, a tabloid run by China’s People’s Daily, said the
Kazakhstan foreign ministry “didn’t respond to questions about the Chinese
embassy’s warning”.
Kazakhstan has recorded more than 50,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19,
including 264 deaths. The number of new cases rose to a daily record of 1,962
on Thursday, Kazinform reported.
Now
back to the all news is good news gambling casinos. Not for much longer I
suspect.
Asian stocks fall on virus worry, China stock rally pauses
July 10, 2020 /
12:43 AM
TOKYO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Asian shares and
U.S. stock futures fell on Friday as record-breaking new coronavirus cases in
several U.S. states stoked concerns that new lockdowns could derail an economic
recovery, while investors looked forward to earnings season.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 0.76%. Australian stocks dropped 0.42%, while Japanese stocks .N225 declined by 0.4%.
Shares in China .CSI300 fell 0.72%, the first decline in more than a week, as investors booked profits on a surge in equities to a five-year high.
E-mini futures for the S&P 500 EScv1 erased early gains to trade down 0.01%.
The Antipodean currencies fell and the yen rose as traders shunned risk and sought safe havens.
More than 60,500 new COVID-19 infections were reported across the United States on Thursday, the largest single-day tally of cases by any country since the virus emerged late last year in China.
That heightened concerns that renewed lockdowns could hurt the economic recovery.
The number of Americans filing for jobless
benefits dropped to a near four-month low last week, data showed.
But investors remained cautious as the report also said a record 32.9 million people were collecting unemployment checks in the third week of June, supporting expectations the labor market would take years to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Weakness in financial stocks, with the bank sub-index down 2.5%, comes ahead of next week’s Q2 reporting season that sees JP Morgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo all report next Tuesday and following news that Wells Fargo is planning to cut ‘thousands’ of jobs starting later this year,” said Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at National Australia Bank.
On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 1.39% and the S&P 500 .SPX dropped 0.56%, but the tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC rose 0.53% to its fifth record closing high in six days.
More
Japan's economy to shrink at fastest pace in decades this fiscal year due to pandemic - Reuters Poll
July 10, 2020 /
5:17 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s economy will
shrink at the fastest pace in decades in the year through March 2021, forcing
the government to compile another stimulus package to cushion the blow from the
coronavirus pandemic, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.
Many respondents predicted the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ’s) next policy step
would be to expand stimulus, but they do not see the pandemic triggering a
banking sector crisis this year.
The world’s third-largest economy is forecast to contract 5.3% this
fiscal year, a July 3-9 poll of over 30 economists shows, the most it has
shrunk since comparable data became available in 1994.
It will rebound 3.3% next year, according to the poll.
The economy will grow at an annualised 10.0% pace in the current quarter
of the calendar year 2020 after having shrunk 23.9% in the second quarter ended
June, the poll shows.
More
Exclusive: Chinese banks prepare contingency plans over threat of U.S. sanctions - sources
July 9, 2020 / 11:53
AM
BEIJING/HONG
KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese state lenders are revamping contingency plans
in anticipation of U.S. legislation that could penalise banks for serving
officials who implement the new national security law for Hong Kong, sources at
five state financial institutions said.
In worst-case scenarios under consideration by the Bank of China and
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the lenders are looking at the
possibility of being cut off from U.S. dollars or losing access to U.S. dollar
settlements, two sources said.
The dollar is the dominant global currency for international payments
and central bank reserves.
“We are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. You never know
how things will turn out,” one of the sources said.
Reflecting concern over the erosion of the former British colony’s
autonomy, the U.S. House and Senate unanimously passed the bill last week. It
has yet to be signed into law by President Donald Trump.
The bill calls for sanctions on Chinese officials and others who help
violate Hong Kong’s autonomy and on financial institutions that do business
with them. But it does not spell out what the sanctions would look like.
More
Next, everyone
loves a good scandal. In addition to billions of missing money and a missing
former COO on the run, German prosecutors suspect that Wirecard was engaged in
money laundering. No really, no kidding.
Come back Commerzbank,
all is forgiven.
German prosecutors probe Wirecard for money laundering
July 9, 2020 /
11:34 AM
MUNICH (Reuters) - German state prosecutors are
investigating Wirecard (WDIG.DE)
for suspected money laundering, a spokeswoman for the Munich prosecutor’s
office said on Thursday. “We are investigating suspected money laundering,” the spokeswoman told Reuters, saying the inquiry was directed at individuals from Wirecard. She said it followed a number of criminal complaints this year and last.
Wirecard declined to comment.
The implosion of what was seen as a German success story once worth $28
billion has caused major embarrassment with experts and politicians criticising
what they see as a hands-off approach on the part of the authorities.
Wirecard filed for insolvency last month owing creditors almost $4 billion after disclosing a 1.9 billion euro ($2.1 billion) hole in its accounts that its auditor EY said was the result of a sophisticated global fraud.
Wirecard started out handling payments for gambling and adult websites and now processes payments for companies including Visa (V.N) and Mastercard (MA.N).
Some of the world’s biggest investors held its shares before a whistleblower said it owed its success to a web of sham transactions.
The man who led Wirecard into insolvency
July 9, 2020 /
11:14 AM
FRANKFURT
(Reuters) - On the night of June 18, Wirecard AG’s new compliance chief stayed
up late at his office in the company’s low-rise headquarters in the Munich
suburb of Aschheim to pore over the payment firm’s books.
It was James Freis’ first formal day on the job after his start date had
suddenly been accelerated by the refusal that morning of Wirecard’s auditors to
sign off on the 2019 accounts and the company’s suspension of its chief
operating officer. As Freis, a former financial investigator at the U.S.
Treasury, scanned the books he was struck by Wirecard’s unusual practice of
relying on a third party to hold large sums of money in escrow on behalf of its
subsidiaries that are present in countries where it doesn’t have its own
operating licenses, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The evidence that fraud had probably been committed was obvious to
anyone with financial market experience, this person said. The next day,
Wirecard’s long-time chief executive officer resigned and Freis became interim
CEO.
Over the following week, the 49-year old American was involved in a
rapid wave of decisions that culminated in Wirecard filing for insolvency,
according to people involved in talks on restructuring its debts. In the end,
the process left creditors with scant hope of recovering $4 billion they are
owed and investors holding shares that were nearly worthless.
More
Finally, in the UK
at least, the half free lunch. Half baked socialism, it seems to me. Little
wonder gold is now rising in nearly every currency. I wonder how much “the free
lunch” will cost this time next year.
If tempted, try
not to sit too near to those coughing and sneezing. Try to avoid the rest-rooms
too. Have a good tort lawyer in mind, if/when it all goes wrong.
How will the 'eat out to help out' restaurant scheme work?
Chancellor Rishi Sunak's initiative to support
restaurants, pubs and cafes, explained
Is there such a thing as a free lunch? No, but you might be able to score a big discount in August. Today, Chancellor Rishi Sunak offered the country discounts on meals out as part of his "eat out to help out" scheme to support the hospitality industry.
The scheme is part of his Covid-19 mini budget, announced in the House of Commons today – a £30bn plan designed to rescue the economy from a coronavirus-induced recession.
So, how does it work, to which restaurants does it apply – and how much could you save on a meal out with your family, all while supporting the country’s eateries?
What is the scheme, and how does it work?
The Chancellor said that restaurants participating in the scheme would be able to offer half price meals every Monday to Wednesday throughout August.This means that everyone in Britain is entitled to discounts at restaurants over a total period of 13 days next month.
The scheme starts on Monday August 3 and runs until Monday August 31. Companies can start to register on the Government's website from this coming Monday, July 13.
The restaurants will be able to claim the discount back and will be reimbursed by the Government within five working days, the Chancellor promised.
Some 129,000 businesses employing 1.8million people can sign up, crucially including pubs - of which 90 per cent serve food - restaurants and cafes. The same team which set up and ran the Government's furlough scheme have been deployed by HM Revenue and Customs to run this scheme.
Businesses serving food need to register before the start of August - then, all customers need to do is turn up, order, and pay for the remainder of the bill.
The Government reportedly considered introducing a £500 voucher to scheme to spend on the high street, but that was not among the raft of measures announced.
The Treasury says the scheme will cost £500million. At £10 each, that works out 50million meals, but one official admitted: "That is an estimate - let's see." This is because officials do not know what will be the appetite for the scheme.
More
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Milton Friedman.
Milton was wrong!
Covid-19 Corner
Though
hopefully, we are passing/have passed the peak of new cases, at least of the
first SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, this section will continue until it becomes
unneeded.
Up
first, BatWoman and her US boss, were quite open about what they were up to. When
the research was blocked in the USA, it was simply farmed out to Wuhan. Both the USA and China owe the world a full
explanation.
Published: 09 November 2015
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
Abstract
The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV underscores the threat of cross-species transmission events leading to outbreaks in humans. Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis.
Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.
More
UNC’s Ralph Baric has long been a leader in virus research. Now, the world is listening.
May 28, 2020 06:18 PM , Updated May 29,
2020 08:58 AM
For years Dr. Ralph Baric studied viruses that hardly anyone was paying attention to. Now, as the world faces the coronavirus pandemic that’s taking hundreds of thousands of lives, it is looking to him and his research as the basis for treatments and a vaccine.
Baric, 66, a distinguished researcher and professor in the department of epidemiology and department of microbiology and immunology at UNC-Chapel Hill, saw this crisis coming. He has spent three decades studying coronaviruses. from the minute details of how they replicate to identifying strains in other species that could jump to humans to testing drugs that could treat patients during a future outbreak.
“It’s certainly not a position I expected to be in,” Baric said. “Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming, but you get up the next day and you keep going. It’s never ending, and it’s immediate. And it’s life and death for people.”
Baric is The News & Observer’s Tar Heel of the Month, which honors people who have made significant contributions to North Carolina and the region — and in this case the world.
Dr. Mark Denison, professor of pediatrics and pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University and a longtime collaborator with Baric, said preparing for a pandemic has driven a lot of their coronavirus research over the years. He compared it to a hurricane hitting the North Carolina coast.
More
PMCID: PMC1232869 PMID: 16115318
Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread
Martin
J Vincent,1 Eric
Bergeron,2 Suzanne
Benjannet,2 Bobbie
R Erickson,1 Pierre
E Rollin,1 Thomas
G Ksiazek,1 Nabil
G Seidah,2 and Stuart
T Nichol
1
Background
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused
by a newly discovered coronavirus (SARS-CoV). No effective prophylactic or
post-exposure therapy is currently available.
Results
We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral
effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are
observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after
exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.
In addition to the well-known functions of chloroquine such as elevations of
endosomal pH, the drug appears to interfere with terminal glycosylation of the
cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This may negatively
influence the virus-receptor binding and abrogate the infection, with further
ramifications by the elevation of vesicular pH, resulting in the inhibition of
infection and spread of SARS CoV at clinically admissible concentrations.
Conclusion
Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread
of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed
when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV
infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein
represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-CoV antiviral
compounds.
More
2010
Nov 4;6(11):e1001176.
Zn(2+) Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity in Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture
Aartjan
J W te Velthuis 1 , Sjoerd
H E van den Worm, Amy
C Sims, Ralph
S Baric, Eric
J Snijder, Martijn
J van Hemert
Affiliations
- PMID: 21079686
- PMCID: PMC2973827
- DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1001176
Free PMC article
Abstract
Increasing the intracellular Zn(2+) concentration with zinc-ionophores like pyrithione (PT) can efficiently impair the replication of a variety of RNA viruses, including poliovirus and influenza virus. For some viruses this effect has been attributed to interference with viral polyprotein processing. In this study we demonstrate that the combination of Zn(2+) and PT at low concentrations (2 µM Zn(2+) and 2 µM PT) inhibits the replication of SARS-coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and equine arteritis virus (EAV) in cell culture. The RNA synthesis of these two distantly related nidoviruses is catalyzed by an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), which is the core enzyme of their multiprotein replication and transcription complex (RTC). Using an activity assay for RTCs isolated from cells infected with SARS-CoV or EAV--thus eliminating the need for PT to transport Zn(2+) across the plasma membrane--we show that Zn(2+) efficiently inhibits the RNA-synthesizing activity of the RTCs of both viruses.Enzymatic studies using recombinant RdRps (SARS-CoV nsp12 and EAV nsp9) purified from E. coli subsequently revealed that Zn(2+) directly inhibited the in vitro activity of both nidovirus polymerases. More specifically, Zn(2+) was found to block the initiation step of EAV RNA synthesis, whereas in the case of the SARS-CoV RdRp elongation was inhibited and template binding reduced. By chelating Zn(2+) with MgEDTA, the inhibitory effect of the divalent cation could be reversed, which provides a novel experimental tool for in vitro studies of the molecular details of nidovirus replication and transcription.
Conflict of interest statement
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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.
Hack Brief: Hackers Are Exploiting a 5-Alarm Bug in Networking Equipment
For companies that haven't patched their
BIG-IP products, it may already be too late.
07.06.2020 01:10
PM
Any company that uses a certain piece of networking equipment from Seattle-based F5 Networks had a rude interruption to their July 4 weekend, as a critical vulnerability turned the holiday into a race to implement a fix. Those who haven't done so by now may now have a much larger problem on their hands.
Late last week, government agencies, including the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team and Cyber Command, sounded the alarm about a particularly nasty vulnerability in a line of BIG-IP products sold by F5. The agencies recommended security professionals immediately implement a patch to protect the devices from hacking techniques that could fully take control of the networking equipment, offering access to all the traffic they touch and a foothold for deeper exploitation of any corporate network that uses them. Now some security companies say they're already seeing the F5 vulnerability being exploited in the wild—and they caution that any organization that didn't patch its F5 equipment over the weekend is already too late.
"This is the pre-exploit window to patch slamming shut right in front of your eyes," wrote Chris Krebs, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a tweet Sunday afternoon. "If you didn’t patch by this morning, assume compromised."
----When reached for comment, F5 directed WIRED to a security advisory the company posted on June 30. "This vulnerability may result in complete system compromise," the page reads, before going on to detail how companies can mitigate it.
How Serious Is
This?
F5's bug is particularly concerning because it's relatively easy to exploit while also offering a large menu of options to hackers. Security researchers have pointed out that the URL that triggers the vulnerability can fit into a tweet—one researcher from South Korea's Computer Emergency Response
Team posted a two versions in a single tweet along with a video demo. Since the attack targets a vulnerable device's web interface, it can be pulled off in its simplest form just by tricking someone into visiting a carefully crafted URL.
While many of the public proofs of concept demonstrate only the most basic versions of the F5 attack, which merely grab an administrator’s username and password from the device, the bug could also be used for more elaborate schemes. An attacker could redirect traffic to a server under their control, or even inject malicious content into traffic to target other users or organizations. “A sufficiently savvy actor would be able to do that,” says Joe Slowik, a security analyst at industrial control system security firm Dragos. “This gets really scary, really quickly.”
More
Another weekend, and
another weekend closer to a President Biden or a second term President Trump.
But with both advanced in age and highly susceptible to coronavirus should
either be campaigning at all? Given the advanced age of most of the US Supreme
Court, will they ever return to real sittings, coughs and advocates, and
all? Have a great weekend everyone.
When in
doubt predict that the present trend will continue.
Pandemics
for Dummies, with apologies to Anon.
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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