Baltic Dry Index. 2857 +188 Brent Crude 72.69
Spot Gold 1878
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken.
In other G-7, Great Leaders news, it’s all about elitist agenda issues, like the “opening session on "building back better", saving the planet from normal people, “a pledge to protect at least 30 percent of the world's land and oceans by 2030,” sustainable growth, forcing EVs on an innocent unsuspecting world, universal minimum corporate taxes, (if President Biden can get it through the US Congress, good luck with that,) and finally all ganging up on Russia and China.
Nothing about fixing the runaway Magic Money Tree global economy, stopping runaway rising global inflation, ending America’s forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and the humanitarian crisis/war in Yemen. Nothing about the growing risk of an international food price crisis later this year and next.
But a good time seems to be had by all in 5 star luxury, amid North Korean style security from the little people. So good in fact, they’ll probably do it all again next year in similar 5 star luxury, although probably in a country with better weather.
“The G7 this weekend will also tackle climate change, and safeguarding global biodiversity, to lay the groundwork for the UN's pivotal COP26 environmental summit in Scotland in November.”
They must be mad! Scottish weather in November!
G-7 summit outlines health pact to stop future pandemics
Issued on:
G7 leaders are on Saturday set to agree a joint declaration aimed at preventing another pandemic, as they resume wide-ranging talks at their first in-person summit in almost two years.
The group of leading economies -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- will also try to showcase Western democratic cohesion against a resurgent China and recalcitrant Russia.
They will be joined by the leaders of Australia, South Africa and South Korea, along with India taking part remotely, as the agenda broadens to foreign policy issues and climate change.
The G7 is meeting face to face for the first time since 2019, at a beachside venue in Cornwall, southwest England, after the coronavirus led to the cancellation of last year's summit.
The leaders opened the three-day summit Friday with expectations of a pledge to donate one billion vaccine doses to poor countries this year and next -- much too slow to end the crisis now, campaigners said.
US President Joe Biden arrived with a message of solidarity and resolve in stark contrast to the isolationist stance of his predecessor Donald Trump.
After the traditional family photo and opening session on "building back better" from Covid-19, the leaders spent the evening at a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Cornwall's Eden Project.
A renowned attraction showcasing the world's ecological riches, the site also hosted a G7 meeting with Prince Charles and 10 international business leaders to discuss ramping up sustainable growth.
The G7 this weekend will also tackle climate change, and safeguarding global biodiversity, to lay the groundwork for the UN's pivotal COP26 environmental summit in Scotland in November.
The leaders are debating a pledge to protect at least 30 percent of the world's land and oceans by 2030.
More
Biden sells G-7 on global tax, but U.S. Congress is a hurdle
President Joe Biden might have persuaded some of the world’s largest economies to hike taxes on corporations, but the U.S. Congress could be a far tougher sell.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that leaders of the Group of Seven — which also includes the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan — agreed with Biden on placing a global minimum tax of at least 15% on large companies. The G-7 leaders, participating in a three-day summit in England, affirmed their finance ministers who earlier this month endorsed the global tax minimum.
“America is rallying the world to make big multinational corporations pay their fair share so we can invest in our middle class at home,” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, said Friday on Twitter.
A minimum tax is supposed to halt an international race to the bottom for corporate taxation that has led multinational businesses to book their profits in countries with low tax rates. This enables them to avoid taxes and encourages countries to slash rates. The minimum rate would make it tougher for companies to avoid taxes, and could possibly supplant a digital services tax that many European nations are imposing on U.S. tech firms that pay at low rates.
Biden administration officials believe the use of overseas tax havens has discouraged companies from investing domestically, at a cost to the middle class. The president hopes a G-7 endorsement can serve as a springboard for getting buy-in from the larger Group of 20 complement of nations.
The agreement is not a finished deal, as the terms would need to be agreed upon by countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and implemented by each of them. The president needs other countries to back a global minimum tax to ensure that his own plans for an enhanced one in the U.S. don’t hurt American businesses.
”It has the potential to stop the race to the bottom,” said Thornton Matheson, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. “It would be a huge sea change in the way things have been going in corporate taxes for the last three decades.”
The idea of an enhanced global minimum tax is also an integral part of Biden’s domestic agenda, but it faces resistance in Congress.
The president has proposed using a global minimum tax to help fund his sweeping infrastructure plan. His budget proposal estimates it could raise nearly $534 billion over 10 years, but Republicans say the tax code changes would make the United States less competitive in a global economy.
----Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said GOP lawmakers would fight “tooth and nail” against the tax. Republicans view lower taxes as encouraging companies to invest and hire, putting little stock in Biden’s argument that improved infrastructure and better-educated workers would help increase growth.
“It is an economic surrender,” Brady said Friday. “President Biden has managed to do the impossible -- he has made it better to be a foreign company and a foreign worker than an American company and an American worker.”
More
Finally, so you really, really don’t want a limited range, slow to recharge, limited winter use Electric Vehicle. Your overlords have other ideas. Ve hav vays of makin yu comply!
G-7 Eyes Ambitious Shift to Electric Cars and Away From Oil
Alberto Nardelli June 10, 2021, 7:00 AM EDT
Group of Seven leaders are discussing ambitious plans to shift the balance of car buying away from gasoline to greener vehicles by the end of the decade, as part of a package of measures to combat climate change.
Under one proposal contained in a document seen by Bloomberg, G-7 governments would “strive” to ensure that the majority of all new passenger car sales are not petrol or diesel-powered “by 2030 or sooner.” Countries are divided on how specific the measures should be.
All seven national leaders gathering for their summit in Cornwall, southwestern England, are also set to promise more funding to help the developing world cut carbon emissions, though details of how much are not clear.
The commitments have not yet been agreed to by G-7 officials who are drafting the conclusions of this weekend’s summit. But setting the goal for moving away from gasoline could represent a turning point in efforts to reduce global oil consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A U.S. official declined to say whether the White House supports the drafting under discussion, including whether to set a goal that more than half of vehicles sold in 2030 are non-emitting.
The official said Biden believes in strong investment in electric vehicle markets and the supply chain as a way to tackle climate change and create jobs. But the U.S.’s domestic plan doesn’t go as far as to call for a ban on combustion engine cars.
The biggest U.S. automakers have recently set targets for greener vehicle production. General Motors Co. announced in January that it aspired to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035. Ford Motor Co. pledged last month that four of every 10 vehicles Ford sells would be battery powered by 2030.
Sales of new electric cars will reach 34% of the global total by 2030 and 68% by 2040, assuming no further policy incentives from governments, according to BNEF forecasts.
More
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. Mencken.
Global
Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Steel’s Massive Rally Is Hitting All Parts of the Global Economy
Joe Deaux June 11, 2021, 5:00 AM EDT
The steel industry is booming like never before as the
global economy recovers from the pandemic, and the ripple effects are being
felt by everyone from home builders to appliance makers.
Demand is so frenzied that U.S. mills have stopped taking orders from customers
in recent weeks, according to Dan DeMare, director of sales at Heidtman
Steel Products Inc. DeMare said the mills may not begin taking new
orders until late summer so that they can clear backlogs.
In a global economy already shaken by supply shortages and inflation worries, the mills’ moves may signal more delivery snags and even higher prices for a commodity key to a wide swath of industries. Across the world, about 500 pounds of it is used per person each year, in everything from paper clips and automobiles to skyscrapers and toasters.
Steel in the U.S. has tripled in 12 months as the swifter-than-expected economic recovery caught producers by surprise, while in China futures reached a record after authorities pledged to lower output in a push to control emissions. Prices have also surged in Europe, so imports may only rise a certain amount even if the U.S. were to lift Trump administration tariffs.
“The sharpness and speed of the moves has been something like I’ve never seen before,” Phil Gibbs, an analyst at Keybanc Capital Markets in Cleveland, said in a phone interview. “I’ve been covering this space now close to 15 years, so I’ve seen some pretty crazy runs.”
While prices have surged across commodities, the 220% jump in U.S. steel in the past year eclipses other high-fliers such as copper and crude oil. A Standard and Poor’s index of steel companies, which includes Nucor Corp., Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. and U.S. Steel Corp., is up 69% in 2021, easily the benchmark’s best performance through the first five months of the year.
More
United Airlines says rising travel demand will spare flight attendants, thousands of others from furlough this fall
United Airlines told more than 40,000 employees on Friday that their jobs are safe when federal Covid-19 aid for the sector expires this fall thanks to a rebound in travel demand.
The recovery in bookings, led largely by U.S. leisure travelers, has encouraged airlines, including United, American, Delta and Spirit, to set plans to resume hiring pilots.
“Given the increase in customer demand and our current outlook for the future, we’re excited to announce that we will not need to furlough flight attendants assigned to active, open Inflight bases again this fall when the current Payroll Support Program (PSP) funding ends on October 1,” wrote John Slater, senior vice president of inflight services, to United’s roughly 23,000 flight attendants. “This news provides great relief to many of our flying partners who were facing an uncertain future.”
Airport operations workers and customer service agents on Friday received similar memos, which were reviewed by CNBC, which said that United “will not furlough” them when the latest round of aid expires.
“With vaccination rates continuing to climb across the U.S. as the pace of infections decline, additional countries are reopening to vaccinated visitors,” said United in a statement. “Given the current outlook for the future of United, we continue to move closer to full frontline staffing levels to support our operation.”
United told storekeepers, who work with mechanics, that the airline expects to offer a “sufficient” number of permanent positions before the aid expires on Oct. 1.
More
If the other fellow sells cheaper than you, it is called dumping. 'Course, if you sell cheaper than him, that's mass production.
Will Rogers.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
CDC To Hold "Emergency Meeting" After 100s Suffer Heart Inflammation Following COVID Vaccines
by Tyler Durden Thursday, Jun 10, 2021 - 08:30 PM
Update (2000ET): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an "emergency meeting" of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
The new details about myocarditis and pericarditis emerged first in presentations to a panel of independent advisers for the Food and Drug Administration, who are meeting Thursday to discuss how the regulator should approach emergency use authorization for using COVID-19 vaccines in younger children.
As CBS reports, the CDC previously disclosed that reports of heart inflammation were detected mostly in younger men and teenage boys following their second dose, and that there was a "higher number of observed than expected" cases in 16- to 24-year-olds. Last month, the CDC urged providers to "ask about prior COVID-19 vaccination" in patients with symptoms of heart inflammation.
----The reports of myocarditis or pericarditis were submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a passive reporting system run jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration, through May 31.
The bulk of the reports described heart inflammation appearing after the second of two doses of either the Pfizer of Moderna vaccines, both of which utilize messenger RNA technology.
Authorities stress that anybody can submit reports through the reporting system but authorities have already verified that 226 of the reports meet the CDC’s working case definition, Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a deputy director at the agency, said during a presentation of the data. Followup and review are in progress for the rest.
Of the 285 case reports for which the disposition was known at the time of the review, 270 patients had been discharged and 15 were still hospitalized, officials said. Myocarditis typically requires hospital care. No deaths were reported.
More
Why do some people get side effects after COVID-19 vaccines?
Why do some people get side effects after COVID-19 vaccines?
Temporary side effects including headache, fatigue and fever are signs the immune system is revving up -- a normal response to vaccines. And they’re common.
“The day after getting these vaccines, I wouldn’t plan anything that was strenuous physical activity,” said Dr. Peter Marks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief, who experienced fatigue after his first dose.
Here’s what’s happening: The immune system has two main arms, and the first kicks in as soon as the body detects a foreign intruder. White blood cells swarm to the site, prompting inflammation that’s responsible for chills, soreness, fatigue and other side effects.
This rapid-response step of your immune system tends to wane with age, one reason younger people report side effects more often than older adults. Also, some vaccines simply elicit more reactions than others.
That said, everyone reacts differently. If you didn’t feel anything a day or two after either dose, that doesn’t mean the vaccine isn’t working.
Behind the scenes, the shots also set in motion the second part of your immune system, which will provide the real protection from the virus by producing antibodies.
Another nuisance side effect: As the immune system activates, it also sometimes causes temporary swelling in lymph nodes, such as those under the arm. Women are encouraged to schedule routine mammograms ahead of COVID-19 vaccination to avoid a swollen node being mistaken for cancer.
Not all side effects are routine. But after hundreds of millions of vaccine doses administered around the world — and intense safety monitoring — few serious risks have been identified. A tiny percentage of people who got vaccines made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson reported an unusual type of blood clot. Some countries reserved those shots for older adults but regulatory authorities say the benefits of offering them still outweigh the risks.
People also occasionally have serious allergic reactions. That’s why you’re asked to stick around for about 15 minutes after getting any type of COVID-19 vaccine — to ensure any reaction can be promptly treated.
Finally, authorities are trying to determine whether temporary heart inflammation that can occur with many types of infections also might be a rare side effect after the mRNA vaccines, the kind made by Pfizer and Moderna. U.S. health officials can’t yet tell if there’s a link but say they’re monitoring a small number of reports, mostly male teens or young adults.
Southern states have a ‘real vulnerability’ to Delta Covid variant this summer, warns Dr. Peter Hotez
Dr. Peter Hotez warned that Southern U.S. states could feel the impact of the highly transmissible Delta Covid variant as early as this summer, due in part to low vaccination rates.
“I’m really holding my breath about the South and what happens over the summer,” said Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital.
“Here in the South, particularly in Louisiana, Mississippi, we’re seeing really low vaccination rates. And less than 10% of adolescents are vaccinated in many of these southern states, so we have a real vulnerability here,” Hotez said.
A new study in the U.K. found Pfizer’s vaccine is 88% effective against the Delta variant, which was first discovered in India.
Vaccination rates vary across the U.S.: More than 50% of the population in many Northeastern states is now fully vaccinated, compared with just around 30% of the population in many Southeastern states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
----Hotez also told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that he’s still recommending Covid vaccinations to adolescents, despite CDC warnings over a higher-than-expected number of cases of heart inflammation in 16- to 24-year-olds.
“I’m pretty convinced that the possibility of severe Covid-19 from this new Delta variant is a far bigger concern, so I’m strongly recommending for adolescents to get their two doses of the vaccine,” Hotez said.
Next, some very useful 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
FDA information. https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some more useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
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. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
High-density hard drive packed with graphene stores 10 times the data
Nick Lavars June 06, 2021
By leveraging the wonder material graphene, a group at the University of Cambridge is claiming an advance in data storage that resembles more of a leap than a step forward. The new design unlocks higher operating temperatures for hard disk drives (HDDs) and with it, unprecedented data density, which the team says represents a ten-fold increase on current technologies.
In a HDD, data is written onto fast-spinning platters by a moving magnetic head. Special layers called carbon-based overcoats (COCs) protect these platters from mechanical damage and corrosion during operation, though these can only perform within a certain temperature range and also take up a lot of space.
The Cambridge researchers were able to replace the COCs used in commercial HDDs with between one and four layers of graphene, a material that is a single layer of carbon atoms with incredible strength and flexibility, among other highly-valued properties. The thinness of the graphene enabled significant space savings but also outperformed current COCs in preventing mechanical wear, reduced corrosion by 2.5 times and also offered a two-fold reduction in friction.
But most promisingly, the incorporation of the graphene layers increased the operating temperature the HDD was capable of. This is because it enabled the team to use an advanced writing technology called Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), which heats the recording layer to higher temperatures and allows data bits to be far smaller and more tightly packed together, while remaining stable.
HAMR is incompatible with current-day COCs, but the wonder material graphene can take the heat. The combination of this with the space-savings led to what the scientists say is an unprecedented data density of 10 terabytes per square inch, a tenfold increase on today's solutions.
“Demonstrating that graphene can serve as protective coating for conventional hard disk drives and that it is able to withstand HAMR conditions is a very important result," says Dr Anna Ott from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, one of the co-authors of this study. "This will further push the development of novel high areal density hard disk drives."
The research was published in the journal Nature Communications
https://newatlas.com/computers/hard-drive-graphene-10-times-data-density-increase/
This weekend’s musical diversion. An 8 year old Russian plays Mozart’s piano concerto No. 3, part one, flawlessly from memory. Approx. 9 minutes.
Mozart Concerto No 3 Mysin Elisei Piano Елисей Мысин Young pianist composer Enisey reincarnation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q32C1vdU6mQ
This weekend’s chess masterclass. The world’s newest Grandmaster is a female champion. Approx. 10 minutes.
Brilliant Attacking Game by World's Newest Grandmaster, Zhansaya Abdumalik!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6qcxoYEq9I
This weekend’s maths masterclass. Approx. 9 minutes.
Mesolabe Compass and Square Roots – Numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VVPBS_flOI
“Will the man in the street ever feel that freedom of the mind is as important and as much in need of being defended as his daily bread?”
George Orwell.
No comments:
Post a Comment