Baltic Dry Index. 2420 -08 Brent Crude 72.63
Spot Gold 1894
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 09/06/21 World 174,749,068
Deaths 3,762,883
“No one
believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would
be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes
you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
Animal Farm.
Today’s main stories lie in the next two sections, but this section raises some interesting questions. Does Big Brother see all?
Just how safe would a Central Bank Digital Currency be? Suppose you didn’t vote the right way?
Asia-Pacific stocks mostly slip; China’s producer inflation data for May comes in higher than expected
SINGAPORE — Shares in major Asia-Pacific markets were mostly lower in Wednesday trade, as investors reacted to the release of Chinese inflation data.
Mainland Chinese stocks were higher by the afternoon, with the Shanghai composite climbing 0.4% while the Shenzhen component advanced 0.185%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dipped roughly 0.1%.
On the economic data front, official data released Thursday showed China’s producer price index for May jumped 9% from a year earlier, against expectations in a Reuters poll for a 8.5% increase. The country’s consumer price index in May rose 1.3% from a year earlier, lower than an expected 1.6% rise in a Reuters poll.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 shed 0.33% while the Topix index dipped 0.2%.
South Korea’s Kospi also declined 0.56%. The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia fell 0.23%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan slipped 0.19%.
Meanwhile, the World Bank on Tuesday upgraded its growth forecast, with the global economy now expected to grow 5.6% in 2021. That compared against an earlier forecast in January for a 4% global economic expansion in 2021.
---- Overnight on Wall Street, the S&P 500 closed little changed at 4,227.26. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 30.42 points to 34,599.82 while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.31% to 13,924.91.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 90.084 — hovering above the 90 level that it fell below earlier in the week.
The Japanese yen traded at 109.46 per dollar, weaker than levels around 109.2 seen against the greenback earlier this week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.774, as compared with levels around $0.776 seen earlier in the trading week.
Oil prices were higher in the afternoon of Asia trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures rising 0.5% to $72.58 per barrel. U.S. crude futures gained 0.56% to $70.44 per barrel.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/asia-markets-china-inflation-data-currencies-oil.html
Up next, so you really, really, really think you’re free? Bitcoin holders thought that too.
Donald Trump thought that also, but somehow lost that election. General De Gaulle thought that in 1968, but was out of the Presidency by 1969. Don’t mess around with the deep state.
How did federal agents recover bitcoin and access a crypto wallet tied to the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack?
U.S. federal authorities are fairly tight-lipped on the method of recovering some $2.3 million in bitcoin paid to cyber-hackers of Colonial Pipeline Cos., last month. It is a rare, but not unprecedented, win for agents who are part of a newly formed Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force.
But the big question for crypto market participants may be how the government tactically tracked down the bitcoin BTCUSD, -2.62% allegedly obtained by the Eastern European hacking group known as DarkSide and how the federal agents obtained access to a password-protected wallet.
The U.S. Justice Department on Monday said a news conference that it seized about 64 bitcoin paid by Colonial to hackers, valued at roughly $2.3 million, from a virtual wallet.
Here’s what we know through court documents and conversations with those familiar with tactics that may have been employed by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation:
An unidentified special agent with the FBI’s cybercrimes squad, in an affidavit with the California’s Northerrn District, requesting a warrant to seize the digital assets, says that the agency used public blockchain explorers to track payments made to the hackers.
Blockchain explorers have been described succinctly as the Google of cryptocurrencies and blockchain and they allow users to find details related to transactions on specific wallet addresses and blockchains including amounts transacted, sources and destination of funds, and status of the transactions.
In this case, the FBI was able to track the addresses where roughly 75 bitcoins were sent to hackers around May 8, court documents show.
The documents indicate that Colonial Pipeline had reached out to the FBI in early May to advise the agency that it had been instructed to send a ransom payment of approximately 75 bitcoin, calculated at the time to be worth $4.3 million to a specific address that was partly redacted in court filings.
A blog post by Dr. Tom Robinson of blockchain analytics firm Elliptic identified the bitcoin address tied to the Colonial hack as address bc1qq2euq8pw950klpjcawuy4uj39ym43hs6cfsegq — probably the same one mentioned in the seizure affidavit.
Ransomware attacks are those that compel the victim to pay a sum to a specific location to resolve a breach of a company’s computer systems, and increasingly hackers are demanding crypto in exchange for ending their attack.
The filings show that the FBI agent used blockchain explorers to track the movement of the crypto to nearly two dozen addresses.
A private key for a virtual wallet linked to one of the addresses , where the cryto-currency sat for some time, was obtained by the FBI, but the agency didn’t disclose how it obtained the key, which serves as a password for the wallet. A crypto wallet can be used to store bitcoin, user addresses and other private key information.
Advocates of blockchain technology have long touted the traceability of the distributed public ledger as one counterpoint to those who say crypto is largely used for illicit activities.
“This action by US authorities demonstrates the value of blockchain analytics to track down proceeds of crime in cryptocurrency, and ensure that ransomware does not pay for the criminals behind it,” Robinson wrote.
That said, cracking a crypto wallet is usually the remit of hackers and not the FBI.
National Public Radio speculated on 3 possible ways federal agents obtained DarkSide’s private key:
- Carelessness by the perpetrator
- Help from an insider at the ransomware group
- Possible help from a wallet provider or exchange
What is being dismissed is the idea that the Fed somehow employed their own hacking methods to obtain the private key.
-----The Fed’s recovery of the bitcoin may have helped contribute to a slump in bitcoin and other crypto.
“The US government took over the server where the wallet existed and somehow got the private key for the address that held the majority of the funds,” said Edward Moya, Senior Market Analyst, The Americas, at OANDA. “This uncertainty over how they got their private key is scaring many bad players to exit Bitcoin holdings. “
At last check Tuesday, bitcoin prices were down 8% at $32,737.75 on CoinDesk, Ether ETHUSD, -4.02% on the Ethereum blockchain, was down nearly 9%, changing hands at $2,482.89, and popular meme asset dogecoin DOGEUSD, -4.46% was trading over 7% lower at 32.9 cents.
Finally, for those of you in the right part of eastern Canada and the USA, get ready for the coming eclipse on Thursday.
‘Ring of fire’ solar eclipse on June 10
2021’s first solar eclipse
The new moon will sweep in front of the sun to create this year’s first solar eclipse on Thursday, June 10. On that day, the moon in its elliptical orbit around Earth will lie too far from us to cover over the sun completely. So a bright annulus – or ring – will surround the new moon silhouette at mid-eclipse. It’s the outer rim of the sun, not quite hidden from view. People have taken to calling these “ring of fire” eclipses. Essentially, they are partial eclipses, albeit very dramatic ones. As with any partial eclipse, you need eye protection to watch an annular eclipse. Watching with the unaided eye will cause eye damage.
From much of North America, people will see the sun in eclipse at sunrise on June 10. Northerly and easterly locations in the U.S. have the best view. More below.
The path of the annular or “ring of fire” eclipse is shown as the curved red swath on the map below. Astronomers call this the path of annularity. You must be within this narrow track along Earth’s surface to see the “ring of fire.”
All in all, this eclipse lasts for about 1 2/3 hours (100 minutes). It starts at sunrise in Ontario, Canada (on the north side of Lake Superior). Then the eclipse path circles across the northern reaches of the globe. Midway along the path, the greatest eclipse occurs at local noon in northern Greenland. Afterwards, the annular eclipse path swings by the Earth’s North Pole. It ends at sunset over northeastern Siberia.
More
“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”
Animal Farm.
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
China's factory gate prices see fastest growth since 2008, adding to global inflation pressures
June 9, 2021
oomberg | Getty Images
Chipotle Mexican Grill has hiked menu prices by roughly 4% to cover the cost of raising its workers’ wages.
Across the restaurant industry, chains such as Chipotle, Starbucks and McDonald’s have been increasing hourly pay for employees of company-owned locations in a bid to attract new workers and retain their current ones. Consumer demand has come roaring back for restaurant meals, but the workforce has been slower to return, pushing eateries to sweeten the deal. In May, the leisure and hospitality industries added 292,000 jobs, but employment in those fields is still down by 2.5 million compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to the Department of Labor.
In May, Chipotle said that it would raise hourly wages for its restaurant workers to reach an average of $15 an hour by the end of June. Company executives said at the Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference that they would be passing along the price of raising pay to consumers.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/08/chipotle-hikes-prices-to-cover-the-cost-of-raising-wages.html
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Gangrene, Hearing Loss Show Delta Variant May Be More Severe
By Bhuma Shrivastava7 June 2021, 22:00 BST Updated on 8 June 2021, 06:05 BST
· Indian doctors seeing unusual symptoms in Covid-19 patients
· Data from England suggest it has higher hospitalization risk
The coronavirus variant driving India’s devastating Covid-19 second wave is the most infectious to emerge so far. Doctors now want to know if it’s also more severe.
Hearing impairment, severe gastric upsets and blood clots leading to gangrene, symptoms not typically seen in Covid patients, have been linked by doctors in India to the so-called delta variant. In England and Scotland, early evidence suggests the strain -- which is also now dominant there -- carries a higher risk of hospitalization.
Delta, also known as B.1.617.2, has spread to more than 60 countries over the past six months and triggered travel curbs from Australia to the U.S. A spike in infections, fueled by the delta variant, has forced U.K. to reconsider its plans for reopening later this month, with a local report saying it may be pushed back by two weeks. Higher rates of transmission and a reduction in the effectiveness of vaccines have made understanding the strain’s effects especially critical.
“We need more scientific research to analyze if these newer clinical presentations are linked to B.1.617 or not,” said Abdul Ghafur, an infectious disease physician at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai, southern India’s largest city. Ghafur said he is seeing more Covid patients with diarrhea now than in the initial wave of the pandemic.
New Enemy’
“Last year, we thought we had learned about our new enemy, but it changed,” Ghafur said. “This virus has become so, so unpredictable.”
Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, hearing loss and joint pain are among the ailments Covid patients are experiencing, according to six doctors treating patients across India. The beta and gamma variants -- first detected in South Africa and Brazil respectively -- have shown little or no evidence of triggering unusual clinical signs, according to a study by researchers from the University of New South Wales last month.
More
Who Could Cancel the Tokyo Olympics?
A final decision about the Games is a high-stakes game of chicken between Japan and the International Olympic Committee. The Japanese government may have leverage.
June 8, 2021 6:00 am ET
The intensity of the standoff between International Olympic Committee officials and the Japanese public over whether this summer’s Tokyo Games should go on as planned was clear recently when IOC member Dick Pound told a magazine that the event would take place even if Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga asked that it be canceled.
“Mr. Pound’s remarks are simply crazy,” former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama shot back on Twitter. “He should quit mocking the 80% of Japanese that don’t want the Olympics to go ahead.”
The sharp exchange raises a question: Who gets to decide whether this giant and complex global event will proceed despite a wall of pandemic-related obstacles?
The IOC and the Tokyo organizing committee insist that the Olympics are a go. In response to recent questions from The Wall Street Journal, the IOC says it has entered into the “operational delivery” phase of the Olympics and that “it has become clearer than ever that these Games will be safe for everyone participating and the Japanese people.”
However, the Japanese government could move to cancel or postpone the Games if public pressure to do so remains high. Japan itself isn’t a party to the original host-city agreement that underpins the Games, and the country could pull legislative or immigration levers to block the event. Doing so could ignite a court battle that would be damaging to the image of the IOC and the Olympics.
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.
A New Way to Shape Metal Nanoparticles—With a Magnetic Field
Making the tiny nanoparticles used in everything from electronics to paint isn't easy. But a new experiment creates order out of chaos.
06.07.2021 08:00 AM
We are constantly immersed in magnetic fields. The Earth produces a field that envelops us. Toasters, microwaves, and all of our other appliances produce their own faint ones. All of these fields are weak enough that we can’t feel them. But at the nanoscale, where everything is as tiny as a few atoms, magnetic fields can reign supreme.
In a new study published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters in April, scientists at UC Riverside took advantage of this phenomenon by immersing a metal vapor in a magnetic field, and then watched it assemble molten metal droplets into predictably shaped nanoparticles. Their work could make it easier to build the exact particles engineers want, for uses in just about anything.
Metal nanoparticles are smaller than one ten-millionth of an inch, or only slightly larger than DNA is wide. They’re used to make sensors, medical imaging devices, electronics components and materials that speed up chemical reactions. They can be suspended in fluids—like for paints that use them to prevent microorganism growth, or in some sunscreens to increase their SPF.
Though we cannot notice them, they are essentially everywhere, says Michael Zachariah, a professor of chemical engineering and material science at UC Riverside and a coauthor on the study. “People don't think of it this way, but your car tire is a very highly engineered nanotechnology device,” he says. “Ten percent of your car tire has got these nanoparticles of carbon to increase the wear performance and the mechanical strength of the tire.”
A nanoparticle’s shape—if it’s round and clumpy or thin and stringy—is what determines its effect when it’s embedded in a material or added to a chemical reaction. Nanoparticles are not one shape fits all; scientists have to fashion them to precisely match the application they have in mind.
Materials engineers can use chemical processes to form these shapes, but there is a tradeoff, says Panagiotis Grammatikopoulos, an engineer in the Nanoparticle by Design Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, who was not involved with this study. Chemistry techniques allow for good control over shape, but require immersing metal atoms in solutions and adding chemicals that affect the purity of the nanoparticles. An alternative is vaporization, in which metals are turned into tiny floating blobs that are allowed to collide and combine. But, he says, the difficulty lies in directing their motion. “This is all about how you can achieve that same type of control that people have with chemical methods,” he says.
More
“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Animal Farm.
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