Baltic
Dry Index. 726 -20
Brent Crude 76.53
Spot Gold 2760 US 2 Year Yield 4.21 +0.02
US Federal Debt. 36.414 trillion!
Other years of the snake were in 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013 and 2025.
Not exactly an encouraging list, featuring the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbour 1941, the Korean War Truce 1953, 1965 the year the USA massively entered the Vietnam War, 6.5 percent US inflation in 1977, the fall of communism 1989, the dot con crash of 2001 and the US Government funding crisis of 2013.
Anyone got a list of happy events for these years? 2025?
Chinese New Year 2025: What is the Year of the
Snake and what does it mean?
Wednesday marks a new Lunar Year for millions across the globe - with 2025 representing the Year of the Wood Snake.
29 January 2025.
An annual celebration is coming up this
week which marks a fresh beginning for millions worldwide.
Chinese New Year is celebrated on
Wednesday, January 29 – ushering in 2025 as the Year of the Snake.
The holiday has roots stretching back some
3,500 years to ancient China, signifying the end of winter and the arrival of a
new year.
This year’s festivities fall between
January 28 and February 4.
In line with tradition, homes will be
thoroughly cleaned to banish bad luck and decorated and red lanterns will adorn
doorways to invite good fortune. Families gather from far and wide to share
meals and exchange gifts, often wearing new clothes in the colour red to
symbolise prosperity and happiness.
What does the Snake represent?
The Snake in Chinese astrology is
particularly known for its association with intelligence, intuition, and
critical thinking, with people born in that year thought to possess a natural
elegance and charm.
Other years of the snake were in 1929,
1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013 and 2025.
Each year is also linked to one of five
elements, with this year to mark the Year of the Wood Snake. This serpent is
especially charming and creative but it can also carry a secretive dark side,
adding to its complexity.
More
Chinese New Year 2025: What is the Year of the Snake and what does it mean? | STV News
In stock markets news.
Japan and Aussie stocks rise after Wall Street
declines overnight; most Asia markets closed for holiday
Published Wed, Jan 29 2025 6:36 PM EST
Japanese and Australian markets climbed
Thursday, breaking ranks with Wall Street that fell overnight as the Federal
Reserve kept interest rates unchanged. Several Asia-Pacific markets were
closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.13%
while the broader Topix index was flat in choppy trading.
Shares in investment holding company SoftBank Group were down
0.5%, following news that it
was in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI. Japanese tech stocks
continued to advance: Advantest rose
5.12% while Tokyo
Electron gained 2.03%.
Meanwhile, Toyota Motor reported
sales of 10.8 million vehicles in 2024, enabling it to retain the
spot of the world’s top-selling
automaker for a fifth straight year.
The automaker’s shares were up 0.29%,
following the announcement.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 extended
gains from the previous session to end the day up 0.55% at 8,493.70, its
highest since Dec. 5.
Australia’s export price index climbed
3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2024, but fell 8.6% through the year, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed. Its
import price index rose 0.2% in the same quarter, but fell 1.9% through the
year. These indexes reflect the changes in prices of exports from and
imports into the country.
India’s benchmark Nifty 50 advanced 0.55%,
while the BSE Sensex Index gained 0.41%.
Overnight in the U.S., benchmark indexes
fell after the Federal Reserve left
interest rates unchanged in its first policy decision of the year on
Wednesday.
The S&P 500 slid 0.47% to
close at 6,039.31, while the Nasdaq
Composite lost 0.51% to end at 19,632.32. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed
136.83 points, or 0.31%, to 44,713.52.
Artificial intelligence darling Nvidia lost 4.1%, after a
strong showing in the previous session.
The chipmaker’s shares hit session lows
after reports from Bloomberg News that Trump administration officials had
discussed curbing its chip sales to China following the challenge posed by the
country’s DeepSeek AI model.
Asia markets live updates: Japan stocks and Aussie rise; most Asia markets closed
European markets head for higher open anticipating
ECB rate cut; Shell and Deutsche Bank earnings on deck
Updated Thu, Jan 30 2025 12:34 AM EST
European markets were set to open higher
Thursday as investors await key earnings, economic data and the European
Central Bank’s latest monetary policy decision.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 index is expected
to open 2 points lower at 8,555, Germany’s DAX up 24 points at 21,649,
France’s CAC up 25
points at 7,892 and Italy’s FTSE
MIB up 72 points at 36,627, according to data from IG.
The ECB is expected to kick off its first
meeting of 2025 with a 25-basis-point interest rate cut Thursday. The move
would bring its key overnight deposit facility rate to 2.75%, marking its fifth
cut since the bank began easing monetary policy last June.
Market watchers expect further easing this
year despite euro zone inflation ticking upwards over the past few months;
activity in the single currency area’s manufacturing and services sectors
remains broadly subdued and consumer confidence is below its
long-term average, European Commission data shows.
Against this backdrop, investors will be
closely watching the latest growth data from France, Germany and the euro zone
on Thursday, as well as euro zone unemployment, economic sentiment
and consumer confidence figures.
On the earnings front, Nokia, ABB, Roche, Deutsche Bank, H&M, Shell, BT Group, Sage Group, Wizz Air, Electrolux, BBVA, Caixabank, Nordea and Sanofi are all due to
report Thursday.
Overnight in the
Asia-Pacific region, Australian and Japanese stocks extended gains from the
previous session. Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and China markets are closed
for Lunar New Year holidays.
Meanwhile, U.S.
stock futures rose Wednesday night as Wall Street digested recent
quarterly results from several megacap tech companies, and the
Federal Reserve’s decision to hold steady on rates.
European markets live blog: stocks, news, data and earnings
In other news, news Washington, London and Oslo would rather you didn’t know, Russia’s pot calls Ukraine’s kettle black.
Oh, what a happy war. In 2025, does anyone seriously think that in war, proxy or not, either side hold back, whether in the Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon or the West Bank?
Moscow releases report on Kiev’s war crimes
Over 5,000 civilians, including children
as young as four months old, were affected by the “Ukrainian aggression” in
2024, according to the document
28 Jan, 2025 16:09
The Russian Foreign Ministry released a
report on Tuesday on war crimes committed by the Kiev regime in 2024 against
the country’s civilians.
The document, published on the ministry’s
website, provides detailed information on Kiev’s attacks against Russian
territory, mainly along the combat line and territories controlled by Ukrainian
forces.
According to the report, at least 5,399
civilians suffered from “Ukrainian aggression” last year, with
809 killed, including 51 children – the youngest being a four-month-old girl.
The Russian regions of Belgorod, Kursk,
Kherson, and Bryansk, as well as Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic, all of
which border Ukraine, have been targets of Kiev’s shelling and drone attacks.
On average, at least 15 civilians were reported as victims of Ukrainian
military actions daily.
The report said that in total, there were
over 87,880 recorded cases of Russian civilian targets being hit last year.
“On average, 240 strikes were carried out daily over the year, using the
entire available arsenal of weapons supplied by the West at the expense of
taxpayers of these countries,” the document stated.
The Ukrainian military predominantly used
155mm NATO artillery shells equipped with fragmentation, high-explosive, and
cluster munitions, according to Rodion Miroshnik, the official tasked by the
Russian Foreign Ministry to record alleged Ukrainian atrocities.
Speaking at a press briefing following the
release of the ministry’s report, the senior diplomat stated that Ukrainian
drones (UAV) were the second most frequently used weapon to target civilians,
resulting in significant casualties.
Kiev also repeatedly engaged in “energy
and nuclear terrorism,” according to the report, citing repeated
attempts to attack the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and nearby infrastructure
in Energodar.
More than 3,500 UAV attacks targeted
various energy facilities, such as the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and others,
posing significant risks of radiation contamination. Daily strikes on power
substations and energy infrastructure left hundreds of thousands of people
without electricity, while residential homes, hospitals, maternity wards, and
educational institutions were also targeted.
Kiev also deliberately targeted
ambulances, medical facilities, and medical institutions, thus violating
international law. According to the report, Ukrainian drones often hovered over
impact sites, targeting rescuers and medics to increase the casualties and deny
victims access to lifesaving aid.
The report further documented a “large
number of attacks” on churches, monasteries, and sacred buildings of
the Russian Orthodox Church in frontline zones, resulting in casualties among
clergy, parishioners, and novices.
Investigations into the crimes are
ongoing, according to the report, with new evidence of mass murders, violence,
and looting by Ukrainian forces being uncovered. The number of confirmed
murders and other crimes will inevitably increase, Miroshnik stated.
In 2024 alone, the Russian authorities
completed 163 criminal investigations involving 185 Ukrainian servicemen and
foreign mercenaries accused of crimes against civilians, the report concluded.
Moscow releases
report on Kiev’s war crimes — RT World News
Lone Russian hacker exposes covert arms delivery
to Ukraine
Norway secretly agreed to provide
additional NASAMS anti-aircraft systems to Kiev, leaked documents reportedly
show
28 Jan, 2025 16:04
A Russian hacker claims to have obtained
highly sensitive documents exposing covert Norwegian arms deliveries to
Ukraine, after accessing the servers of defense company Kongsberg. The
documents allegedly reveal not only the type of weapons involved but their
location and plans for their movement, according to the hacker.
Known under the alias PalachPro, the
hacker told Russian media that he obtained the leaked documents on Tuesday, and
detailed how he hacked the defense firm.
According to the documents, the company
reached a secret deal with the Ukrainian government, agreeing to deliver 10
additional Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), worth
around $3 billion. The delivery, expected to be made later this year, has not
been publicly announced by either side.
The deal was reportedly reached earlier
this year by Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who is currently
embroiled in a major corruption scandal involving arms procurements at grossly
inflated prices. Apart from the NASAMS systems, Norway also agreed to invest
some $66 million to design anti-drone systems, as well as to modernize the
Ukrainian fleet, the leaked documents suggest.
The hacker said he managed to get ahold of
the sensitive data thanks to social engineering, breaching the company’s file
exchange systems with the help of one of its employees. Apart from the arms
contracts documents, PalachPro claimed to have obtained other top-secret files
related to the deployment of NASAMS systems in Ukraine.
More
Lone Russian hacker exposes covert arms delivery to Ukraine — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Fed holds rates steady, takes less confident view
on inflation
Published Wed, Jan 29 2025 2:00 PM EST Updated
Wed, Jan 29 2025
The Federal Reserve held its
key interest rate in check Wednesday, reversing a recent trend of easing policy
as it examines what is likely to be a bumpy political and economic landscape
ahead.
In a widely anticipated move, the central
bank’s Federal Open Market Committee left unchanged its overnight borrowing
rate in a range between 4.25%-4.5%.
The decision followed three straight cuts
since September 2024 worth a full percentage point and marked the first Fed
meeting since frequent Fed critic Donald Trump assumed the
presidency last week and almost immediately made known his intentions
that he
wants the central bank to cut rates.
The post-meeting
statement dropped a few clues about the reasoning behind the decision
to hold rates steady. It offered a somewhat more optimistic view on the labor
market while losing a key reference from the December statement that inflation
“has made progress toward” the Fed’s 2% inflation goal.
“The unemployment rate has stabilized at a
low level in recent months, and labor market conditions remain solid,” the new
language read. “Inflation remains somewhat elevated.”
A stronger labor market and stubborn
inflation would provide less incentive for the Fed to ease policy. The
statement again indicated that the economy “has continued to expand at a solid
pace.”
During
a news conference, Chair Jerome Powell added that the labor market has not
been a significant source of inflationary pressure. He said the central bank
would need to see “real progress on inflation or some weakness in the labor
market before we consider making adjustments.”
Stocks fell
after the decision to leave rates unchanged.
Recent statements from policymakers have
shown some apprehension about whether progress in bringing down inflation has
stalled. Officials also have said they want to see how the previous cuts are
working their way through the economy though most expect rate reductions this
year.
More
Fed rate decision January 2025: Fed holds rates steady, takes less confident view on inflation
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
After new CIA finding, China says ‘extremely unlikely’ COVID-19 came
from a lab
Nathaniel Weixel
Mon 27 January 2025 at 6:35 pm GMT
China on Monday dismissed
the possibility that the virus that caused COVID-19 leaked from a lab, after
the CIA said it now favors the so-called lab leak theory over natural
transmission.
“It is extremely unlikely
the pandemic was caused by a lab leak,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman
Mao Ning told reporters. “This has been widely recognized by the international
community, including the scientific community,” she said.
Mao added that the
conclusion was reached by the joint China-WHO expert team from field visits.
Mao did not say where the
virus originated, only that any judgment should be made by scientists
The CIA on Saturday said
it believes the virus came from a Chinese lab. The new assessment, though it
was made with low confidence, dumped new fuel on the debate over the origins of
COVID-19.
“CIA assesses with low
confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more
likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting. CIA
continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of
the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” an agency spokesperson told The Hill.
“We have low confidence
in this judgement and will continue to evaluate any available credible new
intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s
assessment.”
The swift release of the
conclusion came just days after new CIA Director John Ratcliffe was sworn in.
It also comes after the
Biden administration ordered further review of the origins of COVID-19,
contributing to the divide in the U.S. government over whether the virus was
introduced naturally or from a lab accident.
Federal agencies,
including the Intelligence Community, have not come to a definitive conclusion.
In 2023, a classified report from
the Department of Energy reportedly concluded with low confidence the virus
originated from a lab. That same year, the FBI also said a lab leak was more
plausible than natural exposure.
---- Intelligence agencies typically share their
conclusions with a low, moderate or high degree of confidence. It’s unusual for
intelligence agencies to publicize assessments with a low degree of confidence.
More
After new CIA finding, China says ‘extremely unlikely’ COVID-19 came from
a lab
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section. Updates as they get reported.
Alibaba releases AI model it says surpasses
DeepSeek
By Eduardo Baptista January 29, 20259:12 AM GMT
BEIJING, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Chinese tech company
Alibaba (9988.HK), opens new tab on Wednesday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model that
it claimed surpassed the highly-acclaimed DeepSeek-V3.
The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max's release, on
the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and
with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's
meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas
rivals, but also its domestic competition.
"Qwen 2.5-Max
outperforms ... almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and
Llama-3.1-405B," Alibaba's cloud unit said in an announcement posted on
its official WeChat account, referring to OpenAI and Meta's most advanced
open-source AI models.
The Jan. 10 release of
DeepSeek's AI assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, as well as the Jan.
20 release of its R1 model, has shocked Silicon Valley and caused tech shares
to plunge, with the Chinese startup's purportedly low development and usage costs prompting investors to question huge
spending plans by leading AI firms in the United States.
But DeepSeek's success has
also led to a scramble among its domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI
models.
Two days after the release of
DeepSeek-R1, TikTok owner ByteDance released an update to its flagship AI model, which it claimed outperformed Microsoft-backed
OpenAI's o1 in AIME, a benchmark test that measures how well AI models
understand and respond to complex instructions.
This echoed DeepSeek's claim
that its R1 model rivalled OpenAI's o1 on several performance benchmarks.
DEEPSEEK
VERSUS DOMESTIC COMPETITORS
The predecessor of DeepSeek's
V3 model, DeepSeek-V2, triggered an AI model price war in China after it was released last May.
The fact that DeepSeek-V2 was
open-source and unprecedentedly cheap, only 1 yuan ($0.14) per 1 million tokens
- or units of data processed by the AI model - led to Alibaba's cloud
unit announcing price cuts of up to 97% on a range of models.
Other Chinese tech companies
followed suit, including Baidu (9888.HK), opens new tab, which released China's first equivalent to ChatGPT in March 2023, and the country's most
valuable internet company Tencent (0700.HK), opens new tab.
More
Alibaba releases AI model it says surpasses DeepSeek | Reuters
Graphene’s
Game-Changing Role in Batteries and Energy Storage Systems
24 June 2025
insights from industryI-Ling TsaiSenior Application SpecialistGraphene
Engineering Innovation Centre
In this interview, industry
expert I-Ling discusses graphene’s transformative role in energy storage,
tackling industry challenges, and advancing sustainable, next-generation
battery technologies for applications in automotive, renewable energy, and
beyond.
To start, could you share a bit about your role as a Senior
Application Specialist at the GEIC and the key areas of research the Energy
team focuses on?
As a Senior Application
Specialist, I lead projects with industrial partners to address real-world
challenges. My work includes managing projects, including the training of
technicians in battery research and ensuring that our applications align with
market demands. Unlike traditional academic research, which often focuses on
small-scale experiments, our team at the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre
(GEIC) bridges the gap between lab discoveries and industrial-scale
applications.
Our energy team applies 2D materials like graphene
to energy storage devices, scaling up lab discoveries to industrial levels for
commercialization. This involves addressing challenges like material quality,
scalability, and cost-effectiveness, focusing on technology readiness levels 3
to 6.
For those unfamiliar with graphene, what makes it such
an exciting material, particularly in the energy storage and battery sectors?
Graphene, first discovered in
Manchester in 2004, is renowned as the pioneering 2D material. It’s a single
layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, giving it unique
characteristics like high electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and
mechanical strength. These properties improve energy storage devices by
enabling faster charging, enhancing safety by reducing risks like thermal
runaway, and strengthening components to increase durability. Its versatility
makes it a game-changer in energy storage applications.
How does graphene enhance specific battery components
like electrodes and membranes?
Graphene’s high electrical
conductivity reduces resistance in electrodes, enabling faster charging and
better power delivery. Its mechanical strength also prevents cracking during
the constant expansion and contraction of electrodes in charging cycles, which
is crucial for next-generation batteries like lithium-sulfur or silicon anodes
that experience significant volume changes.
For membranes, particularly in solid-state
batteries, graphene can be used to strengthen ceramic and polymer materials,
creating more robust hybrid electrolytes. It also improves the interface
between solid electrodes and electrolytes, which is a major challenge in
solid-state systems. This better contact reduces internal resistance, enhancing
the battery’s performance and lifespan. Importantly, the effectiveness depends
on selecting the right type of graphene, as not all graphene is the same. The
GEIC is quite a specialist in this area.
More
Graphene’s Game-Changing Role in Batteries and Energy Storage Systems
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
“It
would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”
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