Baltic Dry Index. 1317 -71 Brent Crude 43.34
Spot Gold 1902
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish
things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is
less crowded.
Mark Twain.
“A good
politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
H. L.
Mencken.
Shares retreat globally on U.S.-China tensions, gold soars
July 24, 2020 / 12:50 AM
In a tit-for-tat move, Beijing ordered Washington to close the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in retaliation for China being told earlier this week to shut its consulate in Houston.
Data showing business activity in the euro zone returned to growth failed to cheer investors. German manufacturing avoided contraction for the first time in 19 months in July with a notable upturn in sales abroad.
U.S. data also failed to impress. U.S. business activity rose to a six-month high in July, but companies reported a drop in new orders as a resurgence in new COVID-19 cases across the country weighed on demand.
Technology stocks .SX8P such as SAP SE (SAPG.DE) and ASML Holding NV (ASML.AS) led losses in Europe, while Germany’s export-heavy DAX index .DAX slumped 2%.
A 16.2% slide in Intel Corp (INTC.O) shares after the company said it was six months behind schedule in developing a next-generation, power-efficient chip led U.S. stocks lower.
While a concern, U.S.-China relations are unlikely to get out of hand and equities will continue to grind higher, said Teresa Jacobsen, a managing director at UBS Private Wealth Management in Stamford, Connecticut.
“To some extent this is saber-rattling because we have an election coming,” she said. “It’s really in everyone’s interest to resolve these issues. It’s not good for us, it’s not good for anyone else.”
---- On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 0.68%, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.62% and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 0.94%.
Overnight in Asia, Chinese blue chips .CSI300 retreated 4.4% to wipe out a week of gains. The Chinese yuan CNH=EBS, a barometer of Sino-U.S. relations, posted its worst week since mid May.
Gold resumed its march toward a new record peak, scaling $1,900 for the first time since August and September 2011, when spot prices only traded above that level on four days. The rally has been driven by fears of an economic hit from the pandemic.
Tech stocks drag on markets as U.S.-China relations sour
July 24, 2020 / 4:57 PM
uly 24 (UPI)
-- The three major U.S. stock indexes closed down by at least 0.5% Friday amid
tensions between the United States and China.
The Dow
Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.68%, the S&P 500 fell by 0.62% and the
Nasdaq Composite lost nearly 1% Friday.
The slide was led by losses in major tech stocks, including Facebook, which dropped 0.81% , and Alphabet, which dropped 0.56%.
Each of the three indexes also had declines for the week, with the Dow dropping 0.24%, the S&P 500 dropping 0.28% and tech-heavy Nasdaq dropping 1.33%.
The losses come as tensions further soured between the United States and China over tit-for-tat closures of consulates in Houston and Chengdu.
In North Carolina, unpaid electric and water bills are driving families and cities to the financial brink
With federal aid soon expiring, residents and their government leaders say they are struggling to make ends meet
July 23, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. GMT+1
As many as 1 million families in North Carolina have fallen
behind on their electric, water and sewage bills, threatening residents and
their cities with severe financial hardship unless federal lawmakers act to
approve more emergency aid.
The trouble stems from the widespread economic havoc
wrought by the coronavirus, which has left millions of workers out of a
job and struggling to cover their monthly costs. Together, they’ve been late or
missed a total of $218 million in utility payments between April 1 and the end
of June, according to data released recently by the state, nearly
double the amount in arrears at this time last year.
In some cases, cities that own or operate their own
utilities have been forced to absorb these losses, creating a dire situation in
which the government’s attempt to save people from the financial brink instead
has pushed municipal coffers to their own breaking point.
In Elizabeth City, N.C., for example, about 2,500 residents
haven’t paid their electric bills on time, according to Richard Olson, the city
manager. The late payments at one point proved so problematic that Olson said
he calculated Elizabeth City wouldn’t have enough money to pay for its expenses
in July. In response, city leaders requested and obtained a waiver from a
statewide order, issued in March, that protects people from being penalized for
their past-due utility bills.
The predicament has presented unique budget challenges
throughout North Carolina, while illustrating the consequences of a cash crunch
plaguing the entire country. State and federal leaders have extended a range of
coronavirus relief programs since March to try to help
people through the pandemic. But the money is limited and restricted — and it’s
not clear whether more help from Congress is on the way — creating a crisis in
which the nation’s economic woes are outpacing some of the aid programs adopted
to combat them.
“We are entering a phase where the utilities [may] be able
to shut off power, but what was propping up people’s economic lives, the
unemployment benefits and Cares Act support, won’t be there,” said Paul Meyer,
the executive director of the North Carolina League of Municipalities.
The future of that safety-net support — and other federal
aid — hangs in the balance as lawmakers returned to work this
week in their final sprint ahead of the August recess. The White House and
congressional leaders are split over the contours of the next coronavirus
relief package, including the need to extend more aid to cities and states and
reauthorize an extra $600 in weekly unemployment payments that were approved as
part of the Cares Act in March.
More
Next, so you really want to get back in
a plane. If the guy coughing and sneezing in the row next to you doesn’t finish
you off, when the planes engines shut down, it probably will, unless the Hudson
River happens to be close by.
FAA issues emergency directive on 2,000 Boeing 737 NG, Classic planes
July 24, 2020 / 1:42 PM
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday issued an
emergency airworthiness directive for 2,000 U.S.-registered Boeing 737 NG and
Classic aircraft that have been in storage, warning they could have corrosion
that could lead to a dual-engine failure.
The
directive covers planes not operated for seven or more consecutive days. The
FAA issued the directive after inspectors found compromised air check valves
when bringing aircraft out of storage.
If corrosion
is found, the valve must be replaced prior to the aircraft’s return
to service, the FAA said.
Boeing said
on Friday it had advised operators to inspect the planes and added “with
airplanes being stored or used infrequently due to lower demand during the
COVID-19 pandemic, the valve can be more susceptible to corrosion.”
U.S.
airlines stored thousands of airplanes after the coronavirus pandemic sharply
reduced travel demand and some have been bringing some aircraft back into
service as demand rises.
The
directive covering the 737 NG (600 to 900 series) and 737 Classic (737-300 to
737-500 series) was prompted by four recent reports of single-engine shutdowns
caused by engine bleed air 5th stage check valves stuck in the open position.
More
In coronavirus crisis news, US expert
Dr. Fauci thinks that like flu, Sars-CoV-2 is here to stay. In addition, he was
quoted in MarketWatch saying he would not get on a plane nor eat inside a
restaurant.
Fauci: The Coronavirus Will Probably Be Around Forever
"I don’t really see us eradicating
it." July 23, 2020
“It is so efficient in its ability to transmit from human to human that I think we ultimately will get control of it. I don’t really see us eradicating it,” Fauci told TB Alliance in an interview on Wednesday, as quoted by CNBC.
But not all is lost.
“I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get, I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it’s this year or next year,” Fauci added.
That
scenario would be vastly preferable to today’s, with American casualties
creeping back over 1,000 deaths per day.
“We’ll bring
it down to such a low level that we will not be in the position we are right
now for an extended period of time,” he said.
----“We are certainly not at the end of the game,” Fauci admitted in the TB Alliance interview. “Certainly we are not winning the game right now. We are not beating it.”
Fauci
described how unique the situation is, with the coronavirus differing in many
ways from previous viral epidemics, including SARS in the early 2000s.
“I have
never seen infection in which you have such a broad range literally no symptoms
at all in a substantial proportion of the population to some who get ill with
minor symptoms to some who get ill enough to be in bed for weeks,” he said.
Chinese COVID-19 vaccine candidate shows
promise in animal tests
July 24, 2020 / 10:37 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - Animal tests of a potential COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Chinese researchers show it triggers an immune response against the novel coronavirus, offering some promise as it goes into early-stage human trials, according to a peer-reviewed study here
ARCoV is a messenger RNA vaccine which uses technology similar to candidates being developed by Moderna and BioNtech and Pfizer. It is the second potential COVID-19 vaccine that China’s military-backed research unit has moved into clinical trials.
Results of trials of ARCoV in mice and monkeys, published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Cell on Thursday, show both single and two-dose inoculations induced strong antibody and T-cell responses against several COVID-19-causing virus strains.
However, researchers conducting the trial cautioned they were not yet able to see how long the ARCoV-induced antibodies might last or how strong their protection might be to other strains that cause COVID-19 but were not tested in the study.
ARCoV is
stable at 25°C (77°F) for at least a week, researchers said, which could make it
more attractive for potential immunisation campaigns in hard-to-reach
populations in places where cold-chain storage and transportation are not
always reliable.
While no
COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for sale yet, more than 150 are in
development globally with an aim to help end the global pandemic that has
claimed over 600,000 lives. But whether any will succeed remains far from
clear.
Dogs Can Sniff Out Coronavirus Infections, German Study Shows
By Iain Rogers
July 24, 2020, 12:44 PM GMT+1
Dogs with a few days of training are capable of identifying
people infected with the coronavirus, according to a study by a German
veterinary university.Eight dogs from Germany’s armed forces were trained for only a week and were able to accurately identify the virus with a 94% success rate, according to a pilot project led by the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Researchers challenged the dogs to sniff out Covid-19 in the saliva of more than 1,000 healthy and infected people.
“We think that this works because the metabolic processes in the body of a diseased patient are completely changed,” Maren von Koeckritz-Blickwede, a professor at the university, said in a YouTube video about the project. “We think that the dogs are able to detect a specific smell.”
Dogs, which
have a sense of smell around 1,000 times more sensitive than humans, could be
deployed to detect infections at places such as airports, border crossings and
sporting events with the proper training, according to the researchers. The
study was conducted jointly with the German armed forces, the Hannover Medical
School and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
Von
Koeckritz-Blickwede said that the next step will be to train dogs to
differentiate Covid samples from other diseases like influenza.
Mild COVID-19 symptoms can last up to 3 weeks, CDC says
July 24, 2020 / 4:18 PM
July 24 (UPI) -- More than one-third of people with mild COVID-19
experience symptoms for up to three weeks after they receive a diagnosis,
according to figures released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.This includes more than 25% of young adults ages 18 to 34, agency researchers said.
Younger people are considered to be at lower risk for severe COVID-19, but they constitute a significant portion of new infections in many outbreak hotspots across the country.
"These findings indicate that COVID-19 can result in prolonged illness even among persons with milder outpatient illness, including young adults," the agency researchers wrote.
"Preventative measures, including social distancing, frequent hand-washing and the consistent and correct use of face coverings in public, should be strongly encouraged to slow the spread of [the disease]," they said.
The findings are based on a survey of 294 adults with mild COVID-19, conducted between April 15 and June 25, CDC researchers said. Participants were selected from 14 predominantly urban academic health systems in 13 states, they said.
More
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
Johann Sebastian Bach Keyboard Concerto in E major, BWV 1053
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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