Baltic Dry Index. 4235 +40 Brent Crude 72.73
Spot Gold 1816
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 30/08/21 World 217,214,884
Deaths 4,515,053
History is written by the winners.
Napoleon
The big story this week will be how much damage did hurricane Ida do to US oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and to related oil and gas infrastructure along the Gulf coast, together with tomorrow’s final US troops pullout of Kabul Airport.
Baring a shooting pullout from Kabul Airport, the bigger immediate concern will be the oil and gas damage, if any, from Hurricane Ida.
But it should be an interesting week.
The damage to USA prestige and international leadership following from America’s “B” team’s defeat in Afghanistan will be argued over for months and years. My take, it will likely be years, if ever, before the USA elect another 78 year old, non-entity, “buggin’s turn,” professional politician as President.
In the 21st complicated century, the job now requires a younger man or woman with some real-world experience at hiring “A” teams.
Though events in Afghanistan will eventually come to have a major impact on the stock gambling houses, barring an ending shooting retreat from Kabul today and tomorrow, that doesn’t seem likely this week in the run up to the coming US Labor Day long weekend holiday.
Asia-Pacific stocks rise; Australia shares recover from earlier slip as Covid infections spike
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific rose in Monday trade as investors look ahead to the release of Chinese food delivery giant Meituan’s earnings.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 advanced 0.41% while the Topix index gained 0.89%. South Korea’s Kospi traded 0.35% higher.
Mainland Chinese stocks nudged higher as the Shanghai composite rose 0.34%, while the Shenzhen component gained 0.237%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index traded 0.35% higher.
The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia recovered from an earlier slip, last trading about 0.2% higher. The country’s most populous state New South Wales had reported on Monday a record one-day rise in new Covid-19 infections, according to Reuters.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.59%.
Investors in the region looked ahead to the release of earnings from Chinese food delivery giant Meituan on Monday.
In other Chinese tech developments, Beijing is reportedly looking at new rules that would restrict domestic internet firms from going public in the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal.
Shares of Meituan in Hong Kong were up 0.36% by Monday afternoon in the city. Other Chinese tech shares in Hong Kong were mixed: Tencent slipped 1.29% while Alibaba gained 1.28%. The Hang Seng Tech index climbed 0.76%.
Elsewhere, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell indicated Friday that the central bank is likely to begin tapering before the end of the year, though there is still “much ground to cover” before rate hikes.
Oil prices were mixed in the afternoon of Asia trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures up 0.33% to $72.94 per barrel. U.S. crude futures slipped 0.17% to $68.62 per barrel. Those moves came as investors assessed the impact of a hurricane in the U.S. Gulf Coast.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/30/asia-markets-meituan-earnings-federal-reserve-currencies-oil.html
New Orleans Facing Weeks of Darkness on Hurricane Damage
Mon, August 30, 2021, 1:30 AM
(Bloomberg) -- New Orleans may be without power and air conditioning for more than three weeks in the wake of Hurricane Ida, which roared ashore with more powerful winds than Hurricane Katrina, according to utility owner Entergy Corp.
Almost 750,000 homes and businesses were without power across Louisiana as of 7:26 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outages. The blackouts were concentrated in the southeastern tip of the state that includes New Orleans and where Ida made its U.S. landfall.
Hours earlier, Entergy shut its 1,152-megawatt Waterford nuclear plant about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the city and will keep it offline until local grid issues are assessed after the storm.
“Customers in the hardest-hit areas should plan for the possibility of experiencing extended power outages,” the company warned in a tweet.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/orleans-facing-three-weeks-darkness-173547496.html
Rockets hit neighborhood near Kabul airport amid US pullout
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Rockets struck a neighborhood near Kabul’s international airport on Monday amid the ongoing U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It wasn’t immediately clear who launched them.
The rockets struck Monday morning in Kabul’s Salim Karwan neighborhood, witnesses said. Gunfire immediately followed the explosions but it wasn’t immediately clear who was firing.
The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said they heard the sound of three explosions and then saw a flash in the sky. People fled after the blasts, they said.
U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. U.S. military cargo planes continued their evacuations at the airport after the rocket fire.
In Washington, the White House issued a statement saying officials briefed President Joe Biden on “the rocket attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport” in Kabul.
“The president was informed that operations continue uninterrupted at HKIA, and has reconfirmed his order that commanders redouble their efforts to prioritize doing whatever is necessary to protect our forces on the ground,” the statement said, using an acronym for Kabul’s airport.
----The U.S. is to withdraw from Afghanistan by Tuesday. By then, the U.S. is set to conclude a massive two-week-long airlift of more than 114,000 Afghans and foreigners and withdraw the last of its troops, ending America’s longest war with the Taliban back in power.
The U.S. State Department released a statement Sunday signed by around 100 countries, as well as NATO and the European Union, saying they had received “assurances” from the Taliban that people with travel documents would still be able to leave the country. The Taliban have said they will allow normal travel after the U.S. withdrawal is completed on Tuesday and they assume control of the airport.
More
https://apnews.com/article/business-kabul-b657e37e182c445eb985a585bbde8b5e
Finally, why was so much US modern weaponry left behind to fall into Taliban hands? Where will it eventually end up? Will President Biden be forced to buy most of it back from the Taliban?
Saudi Arabia’s former intel chief calls weapons proliferation risk in Afghanistan very worrying as terror threat grows
Published Sun, Aug 29 2021 7:19 PM EDT
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief says he is very worried that American weapons could fall into the hands of militant groups such as Al Qaeda, bolstering a sworn enemy of the United States in the wake of an exit from Afghanistan that he says was mismanaged.
“I don’t know which word to use, whether incompetence, carelessness, bad management — it was all a combination of those things,” Prince Turki Al-Faisal told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble in Paris on Saturday.
Prince Turki Al-Faisal served as head of the Saudi intelligence services between 1979 and 2001, helping to coordinate anti-Communist activity in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. He later tried — and failed — to negotiate the return of Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in the years before 9/11.
“You know Al Qaeda targeted the kingdom first before anyone else,” Al-Faisal said, referring to Saudi Arabia. “It is very worrisome, that aspect of it, and now with this weaponry the ally of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, may get their hands on, it’s going to be even more worrisome,” he added.
Taliban forces have been pictured with a range of U.S.-made weaponry and vehicles seized from the Afghan military, sparking fear in Saudi Arabia about the enduring threat of ISIS and Al Qaeda and where and with whom the equipment might end up.
“When Mr. Trump made the deal with the Taliban before he left office, it was inevitable that the government would lose its legitimacy,” Al-Faisal said. “It’s difficult to know what led the United States to negotiate with them,” he added.
The comments are the first openly critical response from America’s Gulf Arab allies since the fall of Kabul on August 15.
----The increasingly complex threat from ISIS-K and others is a major challenge for the U.S. and western forces racing to evacuate the remaining military personnel and Afghan allies escaping Afghanistan before the August 31 withdrawal deadline.
NATO has been clear that it expected the Taliban to keep its “commitment” that it will not allow Afghanistan to become a haven for terrorists, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNBC in a recent interview, but it’s still unclear if the Taliban is capable of managing the possible contagion, or if the most recent attack in Kabul could embolden individuals or terror groups around the wider region.
Prince Turki said it would be Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran, Pakistan, and foreign powers in strategic competition with the U.S. like China and Russia that will wield significant influence in Afghanistan and among the terrorist groups that interconnect there after the American withdrawal.
“We’ve seen the Russian ambassador, Chinese ambassador, Iranian ambassador and Pakistani ambassador not only remaining in Kabul, but making statements about future relations with the Taliban,” he said.
“There is something going on between the Taliban and these countries about where they’re going to go in the future,” he said.
More
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
Galeazzo Ciano, 1903-1944, Italian politician.
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
US Debt Clock.
The interest on US official debt is now rising at $1,000 a second. In reality higher.
U.S. Port Problems Reach Worst of Pandemic Amid Crush of Imports
August 28, 2021
The number of ships waiting to enter the biggest U.S. gateway for trade with Asia reached the highest since the pandemic began, exacerbating delays for companies trying to replenish inventories during one of the busiest times of the year for seaborne freight.
Forty-four container carriers were anchored and awaiting a berth space outside the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, as of late Friday, topping the record of 40 initially set in early February, according to officials who monitor marine traffic in San Pedro Bay. The average wait rose to 7.6 days, from 6.2 in mid-August, according to L.A. port data.
Vessels are lining up because imports are pouring into the world’s largest economy just as inland transportation -- like trucking and railroads -- contends with its own bottlenecks of shipping containers that aren’t being moved fast enough into distribution centers and warehouses.
Labor shortages are part of the problem, but companies are also trying to stock up ahead of the year-end holidays. August and September are key months for shipping goods out of China before that country’s Golden Week holiday in early October.
On top of those issues, importers that rely on goods from Asia in particular have experienced virus-related shipping disruptions like the one Mike Witynski, the chief executive officer of Virginia-based discount retailer Dollar Tree Inc., shared on a conference call this week.
“One of our dedicated charters was recently denied entry into China, because a crew member tested positive for Covid, forcing the vessel to return to Indonesia to change the entire crew before continuing,” he said. “Overall, the voyage was delayed by two months.”
With ships thrown off schedule and most of them fully laden with boxes of goods, container ports on both U.S. coasts are experiencing record volumes that they’re having difficulty handling over a sustained period. Just off the coast of Georgia, for instance, Bloomberg mapping data showed at least a dozen cargo ships anchored in a cluster with the Port of Savannah listed as their destination.
Dow CEO Warns of Price Tag on Clean-Energy Plans
Jim Fitterling says the chemical company supports net zero carbon targets, but warns against restrictions on natural-gas use
Updated Aug. 27, 2021 9:25 am ET
Dow Inc. Chief Executive Jim Fitterling wants to know how Congress plans to pay for a proposed move to zero-carbon emission electricity that he says could dramatically increase energy costs, especially if it restricts natural-gas use.
Mr. Fitterling expressed his concerns in an interview this week as the White House and Democrats seek to implement a clean-electricity standard in their proposed budget. He warned about the potential consequences of any policy that would exclude natural gas from the energy mix.
Dow supports efforts to reduce carbon emissions to address the threat of climate change, he said, but called the current debate in Washington over how to get there polarizing and not rooted in economic realities.
“It’s not incrementally more expensive than what we do today, it’s much more expensive than what we do today, and the challenge…is the government has to figure out how to pay for it,” Mr. Fitterling said. “What we have to do is create a clear rationale for this move to zero carbon, and start to get some economics behind it.”
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dow-ceo-warns-of-price-tag-on-clean-energy-plans-11630056602
Covid: Report finds big rises in garden furniture prices
29 August, 2021
Retailers have blamed rising shipping, freight and raw material costs for big increases in the prices of garden furniture over the past two years.
Consumer group Which? found some items were about twice as expensive as they were in 2019.
In one case it found the price of a shed sold by a leading DIY retailer was 155% dearer in 2021.
Retailers pointed to availability issues and said they were working with suppliers to keep prices down.
The "eye-watering" rises tended to occur at times when delays at UK ports were particularly severe, Which? said.
Customers were also facing items being out of stock and delivery days for multiple months.
Which? analysed 2,000 items across six major retailers - Homebase, Toolstation, B&Q, Amazon, Wickes and Screwfix - finding that on average prices had risen by 2% from July 2019 to June 2020 and by 9% from July 2020 to June 2021.
More
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58372882
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Western Hemisphere accounts for 46.9% of COVID-19 deaths
By Allen Cone Aug. 29, 2021 / 2:45 PM
Aug. 29 (UPI) -- The Western Hemisphere, despite holding only 18% of the world's 7.9 billion population, has nearly a majority of coronavirus-related deaths and nearly 40% of the infections with five nations in the top 10 for most fatalities.
The global death toll from COVID-19 was 4,514,346 and infections were 217,177,661Sunday, according to tracking by Worldometers.info. In one week, fatalities decreased 0.5% and infection were down 2%.
The Western Hemisphere accounts for 47% of he deaths and 39% of the cases.
Specifically, North America's death toll was 990,529 and cases were 47,608,017, or 22% for both categories despite only 8% of the population. The United States remains the world leader in deaths at 654,689 with a 6% rise in one week and cases at 39,665,515 with a 2% drop from seven days ago. Its 7,214 deaths in the past week were the most in the world, according to Worldometers.info.
Mexico ranks fourth with the most deaths at 257,906, rising 9% in one week, and 15th in cases, going down 11% to 3,328,863.
In South America, there have been 1,128,501 deaths, decreasing 12% and 36,862,549 cases, going down 16%.
Brazil has the most deaths in South America at 579,308 in second place overall with cases 20,741,815 in third. Over one week Brazil's fatalities have dropped 11% and infections 17%.
RELATED Study: Long-used cholesterol drug may help fight severe COVID-19
Also in the top 10 in South America for deaths: Peru fifth at 198,167 and Colombia 10th at 124,811. Argentina is 12th with 111,383 deaths and Chile 20th with 36,885.
Elsewhere in the world, India is second in cases at 32,695,030 and third in deaths at 437,830.
In North America, the United States' non-essential travel ban with Canada and Mexico has been extended one month to Sept. 21. It began one year ago in March. Earlier, Canada announced it was reopening to vaccinated Americans.
The United States has administered at least one dose to 61.4% of its total population with Brazil at 63.2%. India's one-shot rate is 34.8%. China doesn't list the one-dose rate but for the fully vaccinated it is 63.5% in a nation of a world-high 1.5 billion people.
More. Much, much, more.
Comparing
SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity:
reinfections versus
breakthrough infections
Abstract
Background:
Reports of waning vaccine-induced immunity against COVID-19 have begun to
surface. With that, the comparable long-term protection conferred by previous
infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear.
----Conclusions:
This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and
stronger protection against infection,
symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of
SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.
Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a
single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta
variant.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf
Covid: Delta doubles hospital risk vs Alpha variant
Issued on: 28/08/2021 - 01:20
The Delta variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 doubles the risk of hospitalisation compared to the Alpha variant it has supplanted as the dominant strain worldwide, researchers reported Saturday in The Lancet.
Only 1.8 percent of the more than 43,000 Covid cases assessed in comparing the two variants were in patients who had been fully vaccinated.
Three-quarters were completely unvaccinated, and 24 percent had only received one jab of a two-dose vaccine.
"The results from this study therefore primarily tell us about the risk of hospital admission for those who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated," said co-lead author Anne Presanis, a Senior Statistician at the University of Cambridge's MRC Biostatistics Unit.
Researchers analysed healthcare data from 43,338 COVID-19 cases in England from March 29 to May 23 of this year, including vaccination status, emergency care, hospital admission and other patient information.
All virus samples underwent whole genome sequencing, the surest way to confirm which variant had caused the infection.
Just under 80 percent of the cases were identified as the Alpha variant, and the rest were Delta.
Around one in 50 patients were admitted to hospital within 14 days of their first positive COVID-19 test.
After accounting for factors that are known to affect susceptibility to severe illness -- including age, ethnicity, and vaccination status -- the researchers found the risk of being admitted to hospital was more than doubled with the Delta variant.
Since these samples were taken, Delta has surged and now accounts for over 98 percent of new Covid-19 cases in Britain, the authors said.
Multiple studies have shown that full vaccination prevents infection with symptoms and hospitalisation, for both Alpha and Delta variants.
"We already know that vaccination offers excellent protection against Delta," said Gavin Dabrera, another lead author and a consultant epidemiologist at the National Infection Service, Public Health England.
"It is vital that those who have not received two doses of vaccine do so as soon as possible."
An earlier study from Scotland also reported a doubling in hospitalisation risk with Delta over Alpha, suggesting that Delta causes more severe disease.
More
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210827-covid-delta-doubles-hospital-risk-vs-alpha-variant
Two dead from Moderna's contaminated COVID vaccines in Japan
By REUTERS AUGUST 28, 2021 09:30
Two people died after receiving Moderna COVID-19 vaccine shots that were among lots later suspended following the discovery of contaminants, Japan's health ministry said on Saturday.
The men in their 30s died this month within days of receiving their second Moderna doses, the ministry said in a release. Each had a shot from one of three manufacturing lots suspended on Thursday. The cause of the deaths is still being investigated.
Japan halted the use of 1.63 million Moderna doses shipped to 863 vaccination centers nationwide, more than a week after the domestic distributor, Takeda Pharmaceutical, received reports of contaminants in some vials.
The government and Moderna had said no safety or efficacy issues had been identified and the suspension was just a precaution.
The contaminant is believed to be metallic particles, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported, citing health ministry sources.
Modeling estimates over 100 million Americans had COVID-19 in 2020
Rich Haridy August 26, 2021
According to a new model produced by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers, around one in three Americans had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. Simulating viral transmission across the whole country, the research suggests the number of officially confirmed cases can only account for a small volume of total infections.
“The vast majority of infectious were not accounted for by the number of confirmed cases,” explains Jeffrey Shaman, one of the researchers working on the study. “It is these undocumented cases, which are often mild or asymptomatic infectious, that allow the virus to spread quickly through the broader population.”
The research collected confirmed COVID-19 case data from 3,142 counties in the US and simulated transmission of the coronavirus across the country in 2020. The model estimated 103 million Americans had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by December 31, 2020. This accounts for about 31 percent of the total US population.
Overall, confirmed cases only accounted for 22 percent of the total number of infections. This number is almost exactly the same as ongoing estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC’s surveillance estimates less than a quarter of all SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States are reported.
Infection rates across the US varied wildly depending on the time of year. Los Angeles County, for example, was estimated to harbor stunningly high infection rates at the very end of 2020, with 2.42 percent of its total population potentially contagious with SARS-CoV-2 on December 31st, whereas Miami experienced its infection rate peak in July when it was estimated 1.25 percent of the total population were infected.
Tracking fatality rates across 2020 the new research calculated a significant drop in COVID-19 mortality from spring to winter. During the pandemic’s initial wave the model estimated 0.8 percent of people died from COVID-19. However, by the end of the year this rate had fallen to just 0.3 percent. The drop in fatality rate is thought to be due to improvements in public health measures, such as mask mandates and better testing, and growing knowledge of how best to treat this new disease.
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.
Insulation additive drastically boosts performance of power lines
Ben Coxworth August 26, 2021
As we increasingly move toward renewable energy sources such as wind turbines, we're going to require the best means possible of relaying electricity from them to our cities. A new cable-insulating material may allow us to do so much more efficiently.
One of the problems with sending electricity through power lines is the fact that the farther the current has to travel, the greater the amount of energy it loses through those lines.
Increasing the voltage helps address this issue, but doing so requires the use of high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables. These have a limiting factor of their own, in that if the voltage is too high, the layer of insulating material within them may rupture.
In an effort to address this issue, scientists at Sweden's Chalmers University looked to a conjugated polymer known as poly(3-hexylthiophene) – or P3HT, for short. The material has previously been utilized in applications ranging from replacement retinas to cheaper and more efficient solar cells.
For the Chalmers study, P3HT was added to the polyethylene that's already used for insulation in HVDC cables, at a ratio of just five parts per million. When the resulting composite material was tested, it was found to have just one third the electrical conductivity of pure polyethylene insulation. And while other additives have previously been explored as a means of reducing conductivity, significantly larger amounts of them have been required.
Although more research is required, the results of the study suggest that HVDC cables incorporating P3HT in their insulation could withstand much higher voltages than is currently possible, further minimizing energy losses in the current they're carrying.
"Our hope is that this study can really open up a new field of research, inspiring other researchers to look into designing and optimizing plastics with advanced electrical properties for energy transport and storage applications," says the lead scientist, Prof. Christian Müller.
The research is described in a paper that was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.
Source: Chalmers University
History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.
Joseph Stalin.
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