Baltic Dry Index. 2824 +23 Brent Crude 65.23
Spot Gold 1875
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 21/05/21 World 165,860,973
Deaths 3,444,989
The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.
Will
Rogers
President Biden and his very left-wing team are proposing a universal minimum tax on corporations, to take over and regulate and tax cryptocurrencies, replace them with a digital dollar, and in effect regulate the entire world from Washington, District of Crooks.
In effect, the current team in Washington wants cut out all competition.
Poor Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore, and a host of island nations worldwide. Without global tax advantages many firms registered in these nations will simply relocate to Delaware USA.
In reality, I can’t see China, Russia, India or the EUSSR going along. Team Biden’s proposals are too socialist even for the rump-EUSSR.
But just 4 months into his Presidency, a worrying Big Brother agenda is back in Washington. Washington knows best and how.
Whether you work and live in Dublin or Delhi, Birmingham or Beijing, Madrid or Milan, the District of Crooks has a tax plan for you and your business.
And don’t even think of using a digital Yuan, Euro, Pound, Rupee. It’s to be a digital dollar for all, competition forbidden!
Under this line of loony, left-wing thinking, coming next, all precious metals must be surrendered for digital dollars.
President Biden seems to be headed down Chairman Mao’s economic line, lite.
Stock futures are flat following a rebound day on Wall Street
Stock futures were flat in overnight trading after major averages rebounded from a three-day losing streak on Thursday led by technology shares.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average last added 18 points, up 0.05%. S&P 500 futures were 0.03% higher. Nasdaq-100 futures ticked 0.07% higher.
The move in futures followed a comeback day on Wall Street with the Dow gaining 186 points and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite ending the day 1.06% and 1.77% higher, respectively. Microsoft, Facebook and Alphabet all rose more than 1% while Netflix and Apple rallied more than 2% each.
Shares of Tesla and other speculative parts of the market bounced back as bitcoin prices recovered after a rollercoaster session Wednesday. However, bitcoin briefly turned negative after the Treasury Department called for stricter cryptocurrency compliance with the IRS.
A new pandemic-low in jobless claims also helped sentiment on Thursday. First-time unemployment benefits claims for the week ended May 15 came in at 444,000, the lowest since March 14, 2020, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting 452,000 new claims.
----Despite the Thursday’s rebound, the Dow is down 0.9% in the past week, on track to see its fourth negative week out of the past five weeks. The S&P 500 is 0.4% lower on the week, on pace for its second negative week in a row. The Nasdaq Composite is up 0.8%, positioned to break a 4-week losing streak.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/stock-futures-are-flat-following-a-rebound-day-on-wall-street.html
U.S. proposes global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%, with an eye on something even higher
Corporations around the world should pay at least a 15% tax on their earnings, the Treasury Department said Thursday as part of its push for a global minimum for businesses.
The final rate could go even higher than that, according to a Treasury release that said the 15% minimum is a “floor and that discussions should continue to be ambitious and push that rate higher.”
U.S-based companies currently pay a 21% rate, a level that was slashed during the Trump administration. Previously, the top rate had been 35%.
Under a proposal from President Joe Biden, the tax rate would be lifted to 28%, part of a plan to raise levies on both companies and the highest earners.
But the White House wants to take its tax plans outside the border.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been touting the benefits of a global corporate minimum tax rate that she said would discourage companies from relocating domiciles to other countries to cut their tax burdens even though most of their operations are in the U.S.
Yellen’s Treasury believes “that the international tax architecture must be stabilized, that the global playing field must be fair, and that we must create an environment in which countries work together to maintain our tax bases and ensure the global tax system is equitable and equipped to meet the needs of for the 21st century global economy,” the department said in a news release.
Yellen has bemoaned a global “race to the bottom” among countries cutting their rates to try to lure foreign companies.
More
U.S. Treasury calls for stricter cryptocurrency compliance with IRS, says they pose tax evasion risk
The Treasury Department on Thursday announced that it is taking steps to crack down on cryptocurrency markets and transactions, and said it will require any transfer worth $10,000 or more to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.
“Cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion,” the Treasury Department said in a release.
“This is why the President’s proposal includes additional resources for the IRS to address the growth of cryptoassets,” the department added. “Within the context of the new financial account reporting regime, cryptocurrencies and cryptoasset exchange accounts and payment service accounts that accept cryptocurrencies would be covered. Further, as with cash transactions, businesses that receive cryptoassets with a fair market value of more than $10,000 would also be reported on.”
Bitcoin reversed course shortly after the Treasury’s announcement and was last seen trading up 1.6%, according to Coin Metrics. Previously in the session, it was up more than 9%.
A growing number of Wall Street analysts have over the past month sounded the alarm that regulators at the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission could soon take a more active role in cryptocurrency regulation.
----Increased regulation will likely upset some cryptocurrency investors, who have seen the value of bitcoin slide about 25% over the past month and talk of capitulation creep into online forums.
With longtime cryptocurrency expert Gary Gensler at the head of the SEC, Raymond James expects it’s only a matter of time until Congress grants the regulator broader jurisdiction.
He told lawmakers earlier this month that allowing the SEC to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges will help ensure investors are protected and prevent market manipulation.
More
The Fed this summer will take another step in developing a digital currency
The Federal Reserve is moving forward in its efforts to develop its own digital currency, announcing Thursday it will release a research paper this summer that explores the move further.
Though the central bank did not set any specific plans on the currency, Chairman Jerome Powell cited the progress of payments technology and said the Fed has been “carefully monitoring and adapting” to those innovations.
“The effective functioning of our economy requires that people have faith and confidence not only in the dollar, but also in the payment networks, banks, and other payment service providers that allow money to flow on a daily basis,” Powell said in a video message accompanying the announcement.
“Our focus is on ensuring a safe and efficient payment system that provides broad benefits to American households and businesses while also embracing innovation,” he said.
Fed officials have emphasized the importance of getting the issuance of a central bank digital currency right rather than participating in a race with its global peers.
However, the moves of multiple countries, most prominently China, in the central bank digital currency (CBDC) space has intensified talk about how aggressively the Fed should move. China’s progress has stirred worries that it could undermine the dollar’s position as the global reserve currency.
More
Next, a story about the Gnomes, not of Zurich but Lugano. In the past I made it to a snowy Geneva and Lausanne. I even made it a few times to searingly hot summer Zurich.
I liked to ride their trams after one of them nearly knocked me down. I especially liked the cog railway up to the Dolder Grand 5 star Hotel. The view there is spectacular, except on the only snowy winter day I had a business lunch there. All we could see through the giant window was falling snow.
But I never made it to Lugano and perhaps that’s just as well.
Swiss Trader Accused of Laundering Mafia Money With Diamonds
By Hugo Miller 20 May 2021, 05:00 BST Updated on 20 May 2021, 09:00 BST· Man allegedly helped Italians who ran $35 million tax scam
· Lugano is a historic center for Italians’ undeclared assets
A Swiss precious metals and gems trader stands trial on Thursday accused of knowingly buying diamonds worth $750,000 on behalf of Italian criminals to help them launder the proceeds of a $35 million tax scam.
C., as he can only be named under local reporting restrictions, knew or should have known that the money used to buy the stones was linked to Italian organized crime, Swiss federal prosecutors wrote in their January indictment.
At the time of the diamond purchases, his three alleged Italian accomplices had already been convicted and sentenced to prison in 2011 for running a VAT tax-fraud scheme that issued fake tax receipts. The case dubbed “Cambio Veloce” -- Italian for Quick Exchange -- by prosecutors has been run out of Lugano, an Italian-speaking financial hub in Switzerland.
The case sheds light on how criminals are turning to gems and bullion as tougher ‘know-your-customer’ rules make Swiss banks more wary of accepting large deliveries of cash, simultaneously sparking a boom in unregulated safety-deposit box businesses.
Read more: Italy’s Tax Dodgers Hide in a Swiss Loophole
Lugano, an hour’s drive from Milan, grew rich over the decades as a hub for Italians looking to park their money outside of their home country. But the city has fallen on harder times amid an Italian crackdown on tax evasion. The number of banks in Ticino, Switzerland’s Italian-speaking canton has dropped by more than 40% over the past 15 years.
A lawyer for C. said he will seek his client’s acquittal.
While penalties under Swiss law are considered lenient by the standards of many other western countries, Switzerland has been toughening its stance on money laundering given the more than $2 trillion dollars of offshore assets stashed there.
Failing to prevent money laundering because of criminal negligence can be punished by up to a year in prison. C. is also accused of active money laundering, which could mean three years in prison if convicted.
C. bought the diamonds through an Israeli diamond exchange outside Tel Aviv to launder the Italians’ illicit gains, prosecutors say. The man is also accused of selling 10 kilograms of gold without sufficient due diligence on the buyer, or the proper authority from Switzerland’s financial regulator Finma.
C. also stands accused of helping a clutch of Italians move more than 1 million Swiss francs ($1.1 million) from Swiss banks to a Hungarian bank without the requisite authority from Finma.
More
Finally, with all the free Magic Money Tree money on offer to everyone and their dog, unsurprisingly, some improbable entities got a whole lot of free money from Uncle Scam.
Happily, it’s only fiat money and there’s plenty more where that comes from. Well, at least for now.
Hundreds of PPP Loans Went to Fake Farms in Absurd Places
An online lending platform called Kabbage sent 378 pandemic loans worth $7 million to fake companies (mostly farms) with names like “Deely Nuts” and “Beefy King.”
Derek WillisLydia DePillisMay 18, 5 a.m. EDT
The shoreline communities of Ocean County, New Jersey, are a summertime getaway for throngs of urbanites, lined with vacation homes and ice cream parlors. Not exactly pastoral — which is odd, considering dozens of Paycheck Protection Program loans to supposed farms that flowed into the beach towns last year.
As the first round of the federal government’s relief program for small businesses wound down last summer, “Ritter Wheat Club” and “Deely Nuts,” ostensibly a wheat farm and a tree nut farm, each got $20,833, the maximum amount available for sole proprietorships. “Tomato Cramber,” up the coast in Brielle, got $12,739, while “Seaweed Bleiman” in Manahawkin got $19,957.
None of these entities exist in New Jersey’s business records, and the owners of the homes at which they are purportedly located expressed surprise when contacted by ProPublica. One entity categorized as a cattle ranch, “Beefy King,” was registered in PPP records to the home address of Joe Mancini, the mayor of Long Beach Township.
“There’s no farming here: We’re a sandbar, for Christ’s sake,” said Mancini, reached by telephone. Mancini said that he had no cows at his home, just three dogs.
All of these loans to nonexistent businesses came through Kabbage, an online lending platform that processed nearly 300,000 PPP loans before the first round of funds ran out in August 2020, second only to Bank of America. In total, ProPublica found 378 small loans totaling $7 million to fake business entities, all of which were structured as single-person operations and received close to the largest loan for which such micro-businesses were eligible. The overwhelming majority of them are categorized as farms, even in the unlikeliest of locales, from potato fields in Palm Beach to orange groves in Minnesota.
The Kabbage pattern is only one slice of a sprawling fraud problem that has suffused the Paycheck Protection Program from its creation in March 2020 as an attempt to keep small businesses on life support while they were forced to shut down. With speed as its strongest imperative, the effort run by the federal Small Business Administration initially lacked even the most basic safeguards to prevent opportunists from submitting fabricated documentation, government watchdogs have said.
While that may have allowed millions of businesses to keep their doors open, it has also required a massive cleanup operation on the backend. The SBA’s inspector general estimated in January that the agency approved loans for 55,000 potentially ineligible businesses, and that 43,000 obtained more money than their reported payrolls would justify. The Department of Justice, relying on special agents from across the government to investigate, has brought charges against hundreds of individuals accused of gaming pandemic response programs.
Drawn by generous fees for each loan processed, Kabbage was among a band of online lenders that joined enthusiastically in originating loans through their automated platforms. That helped millions of borrowers who’d been turned down by traditional banks, but it also created more opportunities for cheating.
---- Kabbage, which was acquired by American Express last fall, did not have an explanation for ProPublica’s specific findings, but it said it adhered to required fraud protocols. “At any point in the loan process, if fraudulent activity was suspected or confirmed, it was reported to FinCEN, the SBA’s Office of the Inspector General and other federal investigators, with Kabbage providing its full cooperation,” spokesman Paul Bernardini said in an emailed statement.
More
https://www.propublica.org/article/ppp-farms
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
PRODUCE INDUSTRY SOUNDS WARNING BELL ABOUT PALLET SHORTAGES
May 20, 2021 Source: United Fresh news release
Washington, D.C. - Although conversations are
occurring within the North American (and global) industry relative to the
current acute pallet shortages, we believe that many do not yet realize the
factors impacting the situation and the potential scope of the issue, including
the availability of produce to consumers.
A multitude of issues are impacting pallet availability
including:
• Efforts of wholesalers, distributors and retailers
to ensure sufficient inventory of non-perishables given previous
pandemic-related impacts.
• The availability of lumber to repair and build new
pallets.
• The escalating price of lumber when it is
available.
• Non-perishable inventory dwell time
increase.
• Lack of available trucks to relocate pallets.
The lack of pallets is adding stress to a supply
chain that is already facing significant challenges which include a lack of available
trucks and shipping containers, ongoing labour challenges, fluctuating fuel
costs, pandemic-related challenges and a pending shortage of resin used to make
reusable containers and pallets. At this time expectations are that the pallet
shortage will continue for months, perhaps for the balance of 2021 - all at a
time when many North American produce items are just beginning seasonal
harvests and shipments.
To give a sample of the scope of the issue, we've
compiled the following information:
More
https://www.agrimarketing.com/s/136405
Kohl’s sales jump nearly 70%, soaring past estimates, retailer hikes full-year outlook
Published Thu, May 20 2021 7:04 AM EDT
Kohl’s on Thursday reported first-quarter earnings and sales that topped analysts’ estimates, and raised its outlook for the full year.
Chief Executive Michelle Gass said momentum built throughout the quarter, especially in Kohl’s stores, where the retailer has been investing in new brands and refreshing displays in activewear, women’s apparel and beauty.
---- Here’s how the company did for the quarter ended May 1, compared with what analysts were anticipating, based on a Refinitiv survey:
- Earnings per share: $1.05 adjusted vs. 4 cents expected
- Revenue: $3.89 billion vs. $3.48 billion expected
Kohl’s net income climbed to $14 million, or 9 cents per share, from a loss of $541 million, or $3.52 per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time adjustments, the company earned $1.05 per share, outpacing expectations for 4 cents, based on a Refinitiv survey.
Revenue soared nearly 70% to $3.89 billion from $2.43 billion a year earlier. That beat expectations for $3.48 billion.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/kohls-kss-q1-2021-earnings-beat.html
UK factories boom but bottlenecks pushing up prices - CBI
May 20, 2021 12:09 PM
LONDON, May 20 (Reuters) - British manufacturers reported the fastest growth in orders since December 2017 in May but fear supply-chain bottlenecks will cause their costs to rise sharply, according to a survey which adds to signs of a rebound for factories.
The Confederation of British Industry’s industrial orders balance - measuring the proportion of firms reporting order volumes above or below normal - rose to +17 from -8 in April.
Overall output growth over the past three months was the highest since December 2018 and represented the first material growth in almost two years, the CBI said.
“The industrial sector is booming ... for now,” Samuel Tombs, economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said.
Export orders lagged behind domestic demand, which Tombs said reflected new post-Brexit trade barriers. Demand for goods was also likely to soften later in 2021 as spending shifted more towards services as the economy reopened.
Official data for March released last week showed factory output was 2% below its level in February 2020, before Britain went into its first COVID lockdown which caused output to slump briefly by 30%.
Other surveys of manufacturers, such as the monthly Purchasing Managers’ Index, have also pointed to strong growth. April’s PMI showed the biggest rise in new orders since November 2013.
However, the pandemic is still having a knock-on impact on global supply chains, with shortages of everything from micro-chips to building supplies. Last month carmaker Jaguar Land Rover temporarily stopped production at two factories in Britain due to a lack of semi-conductors.
More
New Zealand’s economic recovery from Covid is ‘a lot better than expected,’ says deputy prime minister
Published Thu, May 20 2021 2:21 AM EDT
New Zealand’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic has been “a lot better than expected,” its Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson told CNBC Thursday.
That has allowed New Zealand to spend “large sums of money” on helping its low-income population while still keeping its net debt in check, Robertson told CNBC’s Will Koulouris.
Robertson delivered New Zealand’s latest government budget earlier on Thursday.
One highlight of the budget was boosting weekly welfare payments by up to 55 New Zealand dollars (around $39.50) per adult to tackle inequality and child poverty. Robertson said in his budget speech that the planned increase will be the largest in “more than a generation.”
The budget also allocated spending for Covid-19 vaccines, infrastructure, education and welfare of the indigenous Maori.
The planned spending is estimated to raise the budget deficit to 18.4 billion New Zealand dollars ($13.2 billion) in the fiscal year ending June 2022 before declining in subsequent years, according to New Zealand’s Treasury.
Deficit for the current fiscal year ending June 2021 is expected to be 15.1 billion New Zealand dollars.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/new-zealand-budget-2021-economic-growth-covid-recovery-.html
LOGISTICS: Desperate bidding wars for empty containers / Forwarding agents operating in “stone-age mode”? | Plasteurope.com
18 May 2021
Prices
for container shipments are getting crazier by the week: Latest Plasteurope.com
research shows that the rate for transporting a 40-foot container from China to
Northern Europe rose to USD 9,000 (EUR 7,500) in the week ending 16 May 2021.
This represents a huge 8% hike in just one week (see Plasteurope.com of 12.05.2021).
Sending supplies to Mediterranean ports is even more expensive: Importers there
are having to pay an average of USD 9,375 (EUR 7,810).
Crossing the Atlantic from Northern Europe to the US East Coast is also
increasingly becoming a luxury. The freight rate for a container now stands at
USD 3,750 (EUR 3,125) – up almost 5% over the previous week.
But citing just the prices tells only half the story – the true situation is
far more ruthless. Industry news service Lloyd’s List reports that the
shortage of empty containers and transport capacities is now so dramatic that
desperate freight forwarders are engaged in bidding battles for passage slots,
especially for the China-Northern Europe route. Word is spreading of
astronomical prices of almost USD 20,000 (EUR 16,435) for a 40-foot container.
Despite intensive efforts, the Plasteurope.com price team was unable to obtain
official confirmation of this rumour.
Thus, it’s no wonder that increasing numbers of domestic forwarders are surreptitiously complaining about the “ugly face” of the logistics industry. They claim that forwarding agents are increasingly switching to a kind of “stone-age mode”, where only the person willing to pay the most prevails. The binding nature of delivery contracts is now worth no more than the “loyalty oath of a football coach in Germany’s soccer-league”.
More
https://www.plasteurope.com/news/LOGISTICS_t247645/
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar
Wilde.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
House Intel Republicans say 'significant circumstantial evidence' of COVID Wuhan lab leak
A panel report notes investigations into the origins of the virus have been 'stymied by a lack of cooperation' from China
May 20, 2021
EXCLUSIVE: Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee say there is "significant circumstantial evidence" that the COVID-19 outbreak stemmed from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, urging the federal government to put "more pressure on China" to allow for a "full, credible investigation" into the source of the global pandemic.
Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Republicans on the panel released a report Wednesday, first obtained by Fox News, saying it is "crucial for health experts and the U.S. government to understand how the COVID-19 virus originated" to prevent "or quickly mitigate future pandemics."
"International efforts to
discover the true source of the virus, however, have been stymied by a lack of
cooperation from the People’s Republic of China," Republicans wrote.
"Nevertheless, significant circumstantial evidence raises serious concerns
that the COVID-19 outbreak may have been a leak from the Wuhan Institute of
Virology."
Republicans pointed to China’s "history of research lab leaks resulting in
infections," and warnings from U.S. diplomats in China as early as 2017
that the Wuhan lab was conducting "dangerous research" on
coronaviruses without following "necessary safety protocols, risking the
accidental outbreak of a pandemic."
Republicans also pointed to public reports that "several researchers in the Wuhan lab were sickened with COVID-19-like symptoms" in Fall 2019, and the Chinese military’s "involvement in the Wuhan Lab."
More
New cases stay above 600 for 2nd day; virus curbs likely to be again extended
15:06 May 20, 2021
SEOUL, May 20 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's daily new coronavirus cases rose above 600 for the second day Thursday amid continued cluster inflections and spreading variant cases.
The country reported 646 more COVID-19 cases, including 619 local infections, raising the total caseload to 134,117, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
Thursday's daily caseload compares with 654 on Wednesday, 528 on Tuesday and 619 on Monday.
There were four additional virus deaths, raising the total to 1,916.
South Korea will adjust social distancing rules on Friday, but the current rules are likely to be extended.
Currently, the greater Seoul area, home to more than half of the country's 52 million people, is under Level 2 social distancing, the third highest in the five-tier scheme. Gatherings of five or more people are banned nationwide in principle.
South Korea has been raising its guard against sporadic cluster infections across the nation amid the rising number of travelers enjoying warm weather.
The country has reported more than 1,140 cases of variant strains of COVID-19 from Britain, South Africa and Brazil, with southern cities, such as Ulsan, reporting the most variant cases. On Tuesday, 15 more were confirmed to have contracted the Indian variant of the virus.
Lee Yoo-kyung, a senior health official in charge of vaccination analysis, told reporters that health authorities will soon begin a clinical trial of dose mixing.
Five-hundred people who were given their first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be subject to the dose-mixing trial, Lee said.
While it has not been evaluated in trials whether it is safe to administer two different vaccines to the same person, some nations have allowed dose-mixing amid reports of rare blood clots caused by AstraZeneca shots.
For example, France recommends that people age 55 or younger who got their first dose of AstraZeneca receive Pfizer or Moderna for their second shot.
More
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20210520002652320?section=market/economy
Philippines logs 6,100 new COVID-19 cases, 1,165,155 in total
Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-20 16:03:11
MANILA, May 20 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported on Thursday 6,100 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the total tally to 1,165,155.
The death toll climbed to 19,641 after 135 more patients died from the coronavirus epidemic in the Southeast Asian country, according to the department.
The Philippines, which has more than 110 million population, has tested over 12 million people since the virus' outbreak in January 2020.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/asiapacific/2021-05/20/c_139958437.htm
FOCUS: Opposition to Tokyo Olympics grows in Japan with just 2 months to go
By Ayano Shimizu, KYODO NEWS May 2021
Even though the Tokyo Olympics are set to start in two months, calls for them to be canceled have been growing louder in Japan as skepticism mounts over the organizers' ability to hold the multinational sporting event at a time when the country is struggling to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Many people have taken to social media as well as the streets to protest, arguing that Japan cannot welcome tens of thousands of athletes, coaches and officials from around the world when the pandemic is far from over and its medical system is stretched almost to breaking point in some areas.
In mid-May, a group of people held a rally near Tokyo's busy JR Shimbashi Station, not far from government buildings, and marched through the nearby Ginza shopping district. Holding banners with the message "Cancel the Tokyo Olympics," the protesters chanted "We don't need the Olympics" and "Save lives, not the Olympics."
"Japan is experiencing a resurgence (of infections) because of the government's mismanagement. The first thing it needs to do is cancel the Olympics and assist people who need help," said Toshio Miyazaki, 60, one of the organizers of the rally.
Kiyoshi Abe, a sociology professor at Kwansei Gakuin University who has studied public opinion regarding the Tokyo Olympics, said he believes the government and the organizers anticipate that support for the games will increase once they open this summer.
However, he said anti-Olympic sentiment will continue as the organizers push ahead without providing "convincing explanations," such as how it is possible to hold the games safely and why they should be held during these difficult times.
Before the coronavirus swept the world early last year, numerous surveys showed that a majority of the Japanese public backed hosting the Tokyo Games.
But a Kyodo News poll earlier this month found that 59.7 percent of people in Japan believe the Olympics, which were postponed in March last year and are due to open on July 23, should now be canceled.
More
Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford Website. https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator Covid-19 data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.
But what will be the long term effects?
ADM ANNOUNCES SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF ONE MILLION METRIC TON CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE PROJECT
May 20, 2021
ADM reports:
Chicago - ADM (NYSE: ADM) and the University of Illinois announced today the
successful completion of the Illinois Basin - Decatur Project (IBDP), a carbon
capture and storage (CCS) project designed to evaluate and test the technology
at commercial scale. This is one of two CCS projects located adjacent to ADM's
corn processing plant in Decatur, Illinois.
The first-of-its-kind project was primarily funded through the Midwest
Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC) by the U.S. Department of Energy -
National Energy Technology Laboratory with the goal to confirm the ability of
the Mt. Simon Sandstone to accept and store one million metric tons of carbon
dioxide over a period of three years, the equivalent of annual emissions from
about 1.2 million passenger cars according to EPA calculations. Working
together through the MGSC, the Illinois State Geological Survey at the
University of Illinois designed, implemented, and monitored the project and ADM
was the host and operator.
"ADM is committed to leveraging innovation and technology to advance
sustainability across every aspect of our business. Deploying carbon capture
and storage technology in our processing operations is one of the many ways we
are reducing our environmental footprint," said Alison Taylor, Chief
Sustainability Officer, ADM.
As part of its Strive 35 sustainability goals, ADM aims to reduce absolute
greenhouse gas emissions by 25% against a 2019 baseline.
"Today's announcement marks an important milestone, not only for the
Illinois Basin - Decatur Project but also for the advancement of CCS to combat
the climate crisis," said Dr. Jennifer Wilcox, Acting Assistant Secretary
for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the U.S. Department of Energy.
"We congratulate ADM and the University of Illinois, and we're proud to be
a part of this achievement."
The project utilized 20,000 feet of wells to successfully inject carbon dioxide
from ADM's processing plant more than 6,500 feet underground. More than 2,000
visitors from 30 countries have come to the site throughout the project to
learn more about the process and technology.
"The Illinois Basin - Decatur project has successfully achieved its
desired outcome to demonstrate that carbon capture and storage can be
undertaken safely and effectively. This milestone represents a launching point
for the future of this technology, including commercial scale deployments
around the world," said Sallie Greenberg, Principal Scientist Energy &
Minerals, Illinois State Geological Survey.
---- ADM
also began injection operations at a second CCS project, the Illinois
Industrial Sources Carbon Capture and Storage Project, in Decatur in April
2017. The project is currently permitted to operate through 2022 and has the potential
to store up to 5.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
Collectively, these two projects have successfully
stored more than 3.4 million metric tons to date.
https://www.agrimarketing.com/s/136407
Another weekend and time to go out and buy a shovel. Like those poor Anglo Saxons of England when the Vikings and Norsemen turned up looting and pillaging, it’s time in the Biden Presidency to find somewhere to bury some real wealth.
We are now, in the northern hemisphere, just 11 days off from the meteorological start of summer. One month out from the astronomical start of summer. Have a great weekend everyone.
The more you observe politics, the more you've got to admit that each party is worse than the other.
Will
Rogers.
No comments:
Post a Comment