Baltic Dry Index. 2727 +09 Brent Crude 101.32
Spot Gold 1932
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 15/03/22 World 460,214,203
Deaths 6,067,716
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
It is day one of the US central bank meeting to decide their response to runaway domestic and global inflation. Their decision will be announced tomorrow, although it might be upstaged by Russia if Russia decides to default on its debt.
Day 20 of Russia’s unnecessary invasion of Ukraine now that everyone says Ukraine won’t be joining NATO soon, if ever.
Why didn’t Biden, Blinken, Johnson and NATO say that diplomatically before Russia felt it needed to invade? Only President Macron of France foresaw the looming disaster and tried desperately to use diplomacy to avert it.
There’s not much to add to today’s updates from Reuters and Co., except to note that it’s very hard to make money in highly unpredictable whipsaw markets, meanwhile in the real, non-gambling economy, the wheels seem to be flying off in places like Italy and elsewhere.
I suspect 2022 will go down as a truly historic year, if for all of the wrong reasons.
From Covid Canada, to Australia, to New Zealand, to America, GB and the EU, to Russia and China, we seem to have entered a new almost lawless age. I wonder how this works out.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index drops around 3%; oil prices fall 4%
Published Mon, Mar 14 2022 7:42 PM EDT Updated An Hour Ago
SINGAPORE — Shares in China lagged among Asia-Pacific markets on Tuesday, though some losses were pared following the release of Chinese economic data that was far above expectations.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index momentarily fell more than 4% before recovering partially, sitting 2.99% lower by the afternoon. That came after the benchmark index closed at its lowest since March 2016 on Monday.
Chinese tech stocks in Hong Kong erased some losses, with the Hang Seng Tech index briefly crossing into positive territory before losing those gains, slipping 2.36%. The index had earlier tumbled more than 7%.
As investors continued to assess the prospect of potential delistings from U.S. exchanges, dual-listed Chinese tech stocks continued to stay in negative territory: Alibaba was 6.74% lower while JD.com fell 5.17% and NetEase shed 3.38%.
Electric vehicle maker Nio, another dual-listed stock, fell 7.08% after its U.S. listed-shares plunged overnight on renewed delisting fears.
Sentiment on Chinese tech shares had taken a hit on Monday following a report that Tencent could face a record fine for violating anti-money laundering rules.
“Prospects of a hefty record fine on Tencent on money laundering regulatory breaches sent ripples of fears that Beijing’s opaque crackdown on the tech space may not quite all be in the rear-view mirror just yet,” Mizuho Bank’s Vishnu Varathan wrote in a Tuesday note.
In mainland China, the Shanghai composite slipped more than 2% while the Shenzhen component declined 1.318%.
Data released Tuesday showed Chinese industrial output rising 7.5% year-on-year in January and February as compared with a year earlier, higher than the 3.9% increase predicted by analysts in a Reuters poll.
Retail sales in China for the first two months of the year also beat expectations, gaining 6.7% in January and February as compared with expectations for a 3% rise by analysts in a Reuters poll.
However, China is currently facing its worst Covid-19 outbreak since the height of the pandemic in 2020, with major cities including Shenzhen rushing to limit business activity.
“It really is quite a difficult environment. I mean, markets do look incredibly oversold,” Steve Brice, chief investment officer at Standard Chartered Wealth Management, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Tuesday. “Maybe when things get less bad markets will rebound quite strongly but it’s difficult to see through that ... Often the best time to buy, but it just feels a little bit challenging today.”
Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.56%. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.73%.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan climbed 0.31% while the Topix index advanced 1.02%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan declined 1.59%.
Oil prices dropped in the afternoon of Asia trading hours on Tuesday, with international benchmark Brent crude futures slipping 4.05% to $102.57 per barrel. U.S. crude futures shed 4.1% to $98.79 per barrel. Those moves came after oil prices sharply declined overnight.
Oil prices have seen wild swings since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which raised fears of supply disruptions in an already tight market. Talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials are set to restart on Tuesday, following Monday’s negotiations between the two sides.
Overnight stateside, the S&P 500 shed 0.74% to 4,173.11 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.04% to 12,581.22. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed at 32,945.24.
U.S. Treasury yields rose Tuesday morning Asia time. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 2.1597% after topping 2.14% on Monday. Yields move inversely to prices. The rise in Treasury yields comes amid expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve is set to announce a interest rate hike on Wednesday.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/asia-markets-china-economy-russia-ukraine-war-currencies-oil.html
Oil tumbles to 2-week low on Ukraine talks, fears over China demand
March 15, 2022 5:14 AM GMT
TOKYO, March 15 (Reuters) - Oil prices extended losses on Tuesday, sliding to a two-week low as ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine eased fears of further supply disruptions and surging COVID-19 cases in China fuelled concerns about slower demand.
Brent futures dropped $4.74, or 4.4%, to $102.16 a barrel by 0445 GMT after tumbling by more than $6 to $100.05 earlier in the session.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell below $100 level for the first time since March 1, dropping $4.58, or 4.2%, to $98.43 a barrel. It fell to as low as $96.70 earlier in the session.
Both benchmarks declined by more than 5% the previous day, with Brent sliding 5.1% and WTI skidding 5.8%.
"Expectations of positive developments in the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks bolstered hopes to ease tightness in the global crude market," said Toshitaka Tazawa, an analyst at Fujitomi Securities Co Ltd.
"Fresh lockdowns to curb the COVID-19 pandemic in China also raised concerns over slower demand," he said.
China posted a steep jump in daily COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, with new cases more than doubling from a day earlier to a two-year high as a virus outbreak expanded rapidly in the country's northeast. read more
Further talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators to ease the crisis were expected on Tuesday after discussions on Monday via video ended with no new progress announced. read more
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to travel to Brussels next week to meet with NATO leaders to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine, U.S. and foreign sources familiar with the situation said on Monday. read more
The United States has warned China against providing military or financial help to Moscow. But India may take up a Russian offer to buy crude oil and other commodities at a discount, two Indian officials said, in a sign that Delhi wants to keep its key trading partner on board. read more
More
https://www.reuters.com/business/oil-falls-ukraine-talks-fears-slower-demand-china-2022-03-15/
Putin allows Russian airlines to fly $10 billion worth of foreign-owned planes domestically
Foreign aircraft lessors seeking to recover some $10 billion worth of planes from Russia were dealt a new blow Monday when President Vladimir Putin signed a law clearing the country’s airlines to fly the planes domestically.
Sanctions and reciprocal airspace closures in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month have cut off the country’s air travel market. Boeing and Airbus have said they will no longer supply parts to its airlines. That could force carriers to cannibalize other jets for parts.
There are some 728 Western-built aircraft in the country’s airlines’ fleets, 515 of them leased by foreign lessors, according to Jefferies. Under European Union sanctions, aircraft lessors — some of which are based in EU member Ireland — have until March 28 to recover the planes.
Under the new rules set Monday, the Kremlin will allow the country to provide airworthiness certificates to the planes and register them in Russia, according to state news agency Tass. The law was in the works last week.
“There’s an occasional nightmare but the idea of an entire aviation market being taken offline and flouting international laws, that’s new,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aviation consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory.
Aeroflot and S7, two of Russia’s biggest airlines, last week stopped flying internationally. Flights abroad could risk lessors moving to repossess the planes.
Finally, as goes Italy, so goes the rump-EU?
Russia’s war idles some European mills as energy costs soar
MILAN (AP) — Italian paper mills that make everything from pizza boxes to furniture packaging ground to a halt as Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent natural gas prices skyrocketing.
And it’s not just paper. Italian steel mills, likewise, turned off electric furnaces last week. And fishermen, facing huge spikes in oil prices, stayed in port, mending nets instead of casting them.
Nowhere more than in Italy, the European Union’s third-largest economy, is dependence on Russian energy taking a higher toll on industry. Some 40% of electricity is generated from natural gas that largely comes from Russia, compared with roughly one-quarter in Germany, another major importer and the continent’s largest economy.
Over the past decade, Italy’s dependence on Russian natural gas has surged from 27% to 43% — a fact lamented by Premier Mario Draghi. It will take at least two years to replace, his energy transition minister says.
Even before the war, Europe was facing a serious energy crunch that drove up costs for electricity, food, supplies and everything in between for people and businesses. Ever higher prices tied to fears that the conflict will lead to an energy cutoff are hitting the continent much harder than the U.S. because it imports so much of its oil and gas from Russia.
---- “We are talking about errors made over many years,” said Francesco Zago, CEO of the Veneto-based paper and packaging manufacturer Pro-Gest. “We get too much gas from Russia. In school, they tell us we need to diversify the sources, otherwise there is a danger.”
Natural gas prices were on the rise last year as reserves dwindled in Europe, but Zago said his company was able to stabilize prices and continue operating. That changed with the Russian invasion, when already high prices soared from 90 euros a megawatt hour to over 300 euros a megawatt hour.
“We found ourselves facing huge losses,” Zago said.
To remain profitable, he said they would have had to nearly double prices from 680 euros a ton to 1,200 euros — not doable on the marketplace.
He suspended operations at six mills that recycle paper to supply one-third of all of Italy’s packaging needs, and he is keeping a close eye on the energy market to see when production can relaunch. For now, there is still enough stock to keep open the company’s sites that make cardboard boxes and other packaging, supplying industries from food to pharmaceuticals to furniture. But that could run out soon.
Likewise, Acciaierie Venete shut three of its steel mills for a few days last week as prices spiked to 10 times above normal. The makers of high-quality steel for automotive and agricultural machinery had enough stock to work on finished product, waiting for prices to dip so they could reopen.
“Never, ever has this happened that we had to shut down ovens,” said Francesco Semino, an executive at the steel-making company based in the northeastern region of Veneto.
The urgency of Italy’s energy situation is trickling down to consumers in the form of higher heating bills, and more recently, rising prices at the pump, with gasoline topping 2 euros a liter this week, or nearly $6 a gallon.
---- Truckers who say they can’t afford higher gasoline prices are set to strike this coming week. Fishermen took the hit last week, deciding not to trawl the waters off Italy, with fishing boats along the entire peninsula moored in port.
At current prices, it costs 1,250 euros a day to run boats out of Fiumicino, leaving little room for profits after plying the sea for cod, sea bass, sea bream, octopus, squid and shrimp, said Pasquale Di Bartolomeo, who runs one of 22 boats out of the port near Rome.
More
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
New wave of inflation - and disruptions - hits U.S. factory floors
March 14, 2022 10:21 AM GMT
March 14 (Reuters) - Surging inflation is disrupting everything from carpools to the ability to quote prices on new business at already-strained U.S. factories.
At BCI Solutions Inc., a metal foundry in Bremen, Indiana, 14 workers quit in the last two weeks - over 7% of its total workforce and an unprecedented number compared with pre-pandemic times. BCI has long struggled to hold workers but never lost that many in such a short span.
Company chief executive officer J.B. Brown blames at least part of the sudden loss of workers on the spike in gasoline prices in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has roiled global energy markets and sent prices at the pump through the roof. Regular unleaded gas was a record $4.33 a gallon on Friday, according to AAA, up 85 cents in a month.
"When gas goes up, people want to work closer to home," he said, and with the jobless rate in the surrounding largely rural Marshall County under 1%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, those jobs are easy to find. In some cases, he knows workers who don't want to quit - but do so because the person they carpool with does.
The current wave of disruptions come as many manufacturers felt they were starting to untangle supply chain and labor problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Backlogs at major U.S. ports have declined in recent weeks, for instance.
And it remains too early to fully assess how much the crisis in Ukraine will slow a return to normal operations - or create new issues.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said the central bank would start "carefully" hiking interest rates at its upcoming March meeting as it balances the threat of high inflation and complex new risks posed by the war in Europe. He has also said, however, that the Fed would be ready to move more aggressively if inflation does not cool as quickly as expected.
Powell called the Russian invasion "a game changer" that could have unpredictable consequences. read more
NO PIG IRON
Some of those hard-to-predict things have already hit factory floors. At Gent Machine Co., in Cleveland, that includes disrupting work on a bid for new business.
Rich Gent, who runs the 50-employee company with his brother, said he has been working for five months with a customer who wants his factory to start producing a stainless steel part for its marine products. Stainless prices, as with most metals, shot up during the pandemic and supplies remain tight.
Earlier this week, when Gent called around to his five metal suppliers, none could give him a price estimate for the 5,000 pounds a month he needs. Production of stainless requires nickel, and with Russia a major nickel producer, prices have surged.
More
Chicken boss warns food prices could rise 15 per cent this year amid war in Ukraine
Monday 14 March 2022 9:32 am
A food industry leader has warned prices could rise up to 15 per cent this year as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
2 Sisters CEO Ronald Kers told the BBC’s Today programme it had already been forced to pay 50 per cent more for the chicken it receives from farms.
Russia and Ukraine are global leaders for wheat supply while the price of gas has also skyrocketed, putting pressure on food producers’ margins.
Kers said the UK “may need to start importing less and producing more ourselves” should the war carry on for months.
“We need to work together with all supply chain partners to find a solution… it’s a very complex issue,” he said.
World faces food crisis due to Ukraine war, Russian billionaire Melnichenko says
By REUTERS Published: MARCH 14, 2022 07:41 Updated: MARCH 14, 2022 10:38
A global food crisis looms unless the war in Ukraine is stopped because fertilizer prices are soaring so fast that many farmers can no longer afford soil nutrients, Russian fertilizer and coal billionaire Andrei Melnichenko said on Monday.
Several of Russia's richest businessmen have publicly called for peace since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion on Feb. 24, including Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven and Oleg Deripaska. Read full story
The United States and its European allies have cast Putin's invasion as an imperial-style land grab that has so far been poorly executed because Moscow underestimated Ukrainian resistance and Western resolve to punish Russia.
The West has sanctioned Russian businessmen, including European Union sanctions on Melnichenko, frozen state assets and cut off much of the Russian corporate sector from the global economy in an attempt to force Putin to change course.
Putin refuses to. He has called the war a special military operation to rid Ukraine of dangerous nationalists and Nazis
"The events in Ukraine are truly tragic. We urgently need peace," Melnichenko, 50, who is Russian but was born in Belarus and has a Ukrainian mother, told Reuters in a statement emailed by his spokesman.
"One of the victims of this crisis will be agriculture and food," said Melnichenko, who founded EuroChem, one of Russia's biggest fertilizer producers, which moved to Zug, Switzerland, in 2015, and SUEK, Russia's top coal producer.
---- Putin warned last Thursday that food prices would rise globally due to soaring fertilizer prices if the West created problems for Russia's export of fertilizers - which account for 13% of world output.
Russia is a major producer of potash, phosphate and nitrogen containing fertilizers - major crop and soil nutrients. EuroChem, which produces nitrogen, phosphates and potash, says it is one of the world's top five fertilizer companies.
The war "has already led to soaring prices in fertilizers which are no longer affordable to farmers," Melnichenko said.
He said food supply chains already disrupted by COVID-19 were now even more distressed.
"Now it will lead to even higher food inflation in Europe and likely food shortages in the world’s poorest countries," he said.
Russia's trade and industry ministry told the country's fertilizer producers to temporarily halt exports earlier this month.
More
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-701205
U.S. DROUGHT EXPANDS TO
LARGEST AREA SINCE 2012
Mar. 14, 2022
The U.S. Drought Monitor
released Thursday contained more bad news for ranchers and all of agriculture.
More than 61% of the contiguous US is in some classification of drought. That's
the largest percentage of drought classification since 2012, the year when the
continental US saw an all-time record of 65% during September.
The ongoing drought has increased significantly in
recent weeks. In the last month alone, the percentage of the continental US in
drought has jumped from 55% to more than 61%, an increase of nearly 170,000
square miles; an area larger than the size of California.
"The drought is pretty baked in," Justin
Mankin, assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College and co-lead of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Drought Task Force, told
CNN. "My expectation is fully that the American West is going to be in a
drought through the rest of this year, at the very least."
In northern California, where record December
snowfall boosted the precipitation to 159% of normal, the driest January and
February on record followed, plunging northern California back into severe
drought.
"We were so far above normal early in the
winter," said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services.
"But the rainfall season has just flat-lined. It has died."
While the West continues to see much drier
conditions than the rest of the country, this week's US Drought Monitor
emphasized "the southern Plains and South continue to dry out."
"As spring approaches and dormancy is broken,
impacts are already showing in these areas and drought intensification is
widespread with quickly expanding extreme and exceptional drought areas,"
it noted.
https://www.agrimarketing.com/s/140167
"In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension."
John Kenneth Galbraith.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
China's COVID cases rise as Jilin outbreak grows
March 15, 20224:25 AM GMT
BEIJING, March 15 (Reuters) - China posted a steep jump in daily COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, with new cases more than doubling from a day earlier to a two-year high as a virus outbreak expanded rapidly in the country's northeast.
A total of 3,507 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms were reported on Monday across more than a dozen provinces and municipalities, the National Health Commission said, up from 1,337 a day earlier.
China's case load is still tiny by global standards, but health experts said the rate of increase in daily cases over the next few weeks will be a crucial factor in determining whether its tough "dynamic clearance" approach - which aims to contain each outbreak - is still effective against the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.
A COVID-19 forecasting system run by Lanzhou University in China's northwest predicted that the current round of infections would eventually be brought under control in early April after an accumulated total of around 35,000 cases.
The university said in its latest assessment published on Monday that while the current outbreak was the most serious on the mainland since Wuhan in 2020, China could bring it under control as long as stringent curbs remained in place.
TRAVEL BANS
In the financial hub of Shanghai, authorities battling an outbreak across the city were cordoning off individual apartment buildings and testing all residents.
----Nearly 90% of the mainland's confirmed new symptomatic cases on Monday were found in the northeastern province of Jilin, which has banned its 24.1 million population from traveling in and out of the province and across different areas within the province without notifying local police. read more
Jilin officials should step up the preparation of temporary hospitals and designated hospitals and make use of idle venues to ensure all infections and their close contacts are isolated, a local Communist Party authority-backed paper said, citing the provincial head of the Party.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at 1,768 compared with 906 a day earlier.
China battles multiple outbreaks, driven by stealth omicron
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China banned most people from leaving a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and mobilized military reservists Monday as the fast-spreading “stealth omicron” variant fuels the country’s biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.
The National Health Commission reported 1,337 locally transmitted cases in the latest 24-hour period, including 895 in the industrial province of Jilin. A government notice said that police permission would be required for people to leave the area or travel from one city to another.
The hard-hit province sent 7,000 reservists to help with the response, from keeping order and registering people at testing centers to using drones to carry out aerial spraying and disinfection, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Hundreds of cases were reported in other provinces and cities along China’s east coast and inland as well. Beijing, which had six news cases, and Shanghai, with 41, locked down residential and office buildings where infected people had been found.
“Every day when I go to work, I worry that if our office building will suddenly be locked down then I won’t be able to get home, so I have bought a sleeping bag and stored some fast food in the office in advance, just in case,” said Yimeng Li, a Shanghai resident.
While mainland China’s numbers are small compared to many other countries, and even the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, they are the highest since COVID-19 killed thousands in the central city of Wuhan in early 2020. No deaths have been reported in the latest outbreaks.
Hong Kong on Monday reported 26,908 new cases and 249 deaths in its latest 24-hour period. The city counts its cases differently than the mainland, combining both rapid antigen tests and PCR test results.
More
https://apnews.com/article/covid-business-health-china-taiwan-d2d2a0e6635a90270cfd746854cdd856
As China’s covid outbreak expands, whole cities and provinces are sealed off and key industries closed
Lily Kuo March 14, 2022
China has put several of its industrial hubs under lockdown to confront its worst coronavirus outbreak in two years, restricting the movement of tens of millions of residents in measures that threaten to disrupt global supply chains.
China, one of the few countries in the world to maintain a “zero-covid” strategy, is battling a surge of cases in at least 19 provinces that is testing the government’s commitment to minimizing infections as much as possible.
The surge — and accompanying lockdowns that could severely harm the recovering economy — may force the country to rethink its approach to the virus as much of the world begins to ease pandemic restrictions. Hong Kong’s key Hang Seng index plummeted by 5 percent on Monday over covid worries.
n Shenzhen, officials ordered the city’s more than 17 million people to stay at home starting on Monday through March 20, after just 150 new cases were reported over the weekend.
The city is home to key Chinese companies like Huawei, electric carmaker BYD and Tencent. Apple supplier Foxconn suspended operations, as did circuit board makers Sunflex and Unimicron, also a supplier to Apple and Intel.
Authorities in the northeastern province of Jilin on Monday barred its 24 million residents from leaving, marking the first time officials have sealed an entire province since January 2020 when Hubei was put under lockdown.
Health officials said hospitals were overrun because of the rapid increase in cases since Friday. The province recorded more than 4,605 coronavirus cases on Saturday, while 3,868 residents have tested positive in preliminary tests but were not yet included in the official tally, officials said.
All middle and elementary schools in Jilin must revert to online classes, while students and employees at universities must remain on campus, officials said. Authorities are building four temporary hospitals to house more than 10,000 coronavirus patients.
In the locked-down provincial capital of Changchun, Toyota also halted operations at its plant on Monday.
In Shanghai, the country’s most populous city with more than 24 million people, authorities have sealed off housing compounds and halted intercity bus service while requiring all new arrivals to have a negative coronavirus test to enter. Residents have been told not to leave unless absolutely necessary.
In Qingdao in Shandong province, the Laixi district of more than 700,000 people was put under lockdown after officials found more than 1,600 locally transmitted cases since March 4 through mass testing. In Hebei province, the district of Guangyang, home to 500,000 people, has also been put under lockdown.
In neighboring Hong Kong, authorities are trying to contain an outbreak that has killed almost 4,000 people. In Shenzhen’s Futian district, which borders Hong Kong, authorities inspected homes, checking in closets and under beds for possible covid cases, including residents illegally crossing over from Hong Kong, according to the Caixin media outlet.
The recent outbreak comes weeks after Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics, taking great pains to make sure the event did not result in a new surge in cases. The country’s success over the virus compared with other countries has been held up by Chinese leaders as proof of the superiority of the Chinese system under Xi’s leadership.
----The sudden and aggressive lockdowns, often in response to a relatively small cluster of cases, threaten the country’s economic recovery while raising questions about the long-term sustainability of the approach. Officials have hinted that the country may move away from its initial policy of eliminating the virus.
Zeng Guang, an adviser to China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a post on the microblog Weibo last month that the government was developing a road map to “coexistence” with the virus. His post was later removed.
More
Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada.
NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
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.
Safer, more powerful batteries for electric cars, power grid
Date: March 7, 2022
Source: DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Summary: A new study tackled a long-held assumption that adding some liquid electrolyte to improve performance would make solid-state batteries unsafe. Instead, the research team found that in many cases solid-state batteries with a little liquid electrolyte were safer than their lithium-ion counterparts. They also found, if the battery were to short-circuit, releasing all its stored energy, the theoretically super-safe, all-solid-state battery could put out a dangerous amount of heat.
Solid-state batteries, currently used in small electronic devices like smart watches, have the potential to be safer and more powerful than lithium-ion batteries for things such as electric cars and storing energy from solar panels for later use. However, several technical challenges remain before solid-state batteries can become widespread.
A Sandia National Laboratories-led study, published on March 7 in the scientific journal Joule, tackled one of these challenges -- a long-held assumption that adding some liquid electrolyte to improve performance would make solid-state batteries unsafe. Instead, the research team found that in many cases solid-state batteries with a little liquid electrolyte were safer than their lithium-ion counterparts. They also found, if the battery were to short-circuit, releasing all its stored energy, the theoretically super-safe, all-solid-state battery could put out a dangerous amount of heat.
"Solid-state batteries have the potential to be safer, and they have the potential for higher energy density," said Alex Bates, a Sandia postdoctoral researcher who led the study for the paper. "This means, for electric vehicles, you could go farther in between charges, or need fewer batteries for grid-scale energy storage. The addition of liquid electrolyte may help bridge the gap to commercialization, without sacrificing safety."
----How safe are solid-state batteries?
In order to figure out just how safe a solid-state battery with a little liquid electrolyte would be, the research team started by calculating how much heat could be released in a lithium-ion battery, an all solid-state battery and solid-state batteries with varying amounts of liquid electrolyte. All batteries tested had equivalent amounts of stored energy. Then, they looked at three different bad things that could happen to the batteries, and the heat that would be released due to each type of failure.
"We started by determining just how much chemical energy is in the three kinds of batteries," said John Hewson, a Sandia heat-release calculation expert on the project. "There's only so much energy you can release, which will heat up the battery a certain amount, if a chemical reaction does occur."
----"We found if the solid-state battery has lithium metal, it has the potential to be dangerous, regardless of if it has liquid electrolyte or not," he said. "What we were trying to point out in this paper is that there's a definite trade-off between performance and safety, but adding a bit of liquid may greatly increase performance while only having a small impact on safety."
Understanding this trade-off may help speed up commercialization, Torres-Castro added. "Having the clarity and the confidence that knowing a small amount of liquid electrolyte will not create huge safety issues may help the development of commercial solid-state batteries. Adding liquid electrolyte could fix one of their main problems, the solid electrolyte interface."
This safety study was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Energy Storage Program.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220307113014.htm
John
Kenneth Galbraith.
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