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Stock Down

Another 1.877 million Americans file for unemployment benefits

Heidi Chung
Yahoo Finance
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 19:51 UTC
unemployment usa coronavirus
© Yahoo Finance/David Foster
The state of employment in the U.S. took centerstage Thursday when the U.S. Labor Department released its weekly jobless claims report.

An additional 1.877 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending May 30, exceeding economists' estimates for 1.843 million initial jobless claims during the week. The prior week's figure was revised higher to 2.13 million from the previously reported 2.12 million.

This week's report marked the first time that weekly initial jobless claims came in below two million in 10 weeks. Over the past 11 weeks, more than 42 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance.

After peaking in the week ending March 28, weekly jobless claims have been on a steady decline, but the pace of the decline might not be swift enough, according to economists.

"The downward trend is obviously good news, but in the context of an economy that is re-opening it is extremely high, especially when viewed against previous recessions. It may well be that businesses that had been trying to look after their staff and keep them on the payrolls have had to capitulate," ING Chief International Economist James Knightley wrote in a note Thursday.

"For example, social distancing constraints have made the business unviable or demand has not returned as hoped and they have been forced to adjust the numbers of staff to the new reality," Knightley added.

Comment: Was it worth it?

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Megaphone

Ryanair boss slams UK's 14-day quarantine rules as 'shambolic', claims it won't be enforced, experts predict economic disaster

Kara Godfrey
The Sun
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 08:15 UTC
Ryanair
Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has warned the new quarantine rules for UK arrivals is a 'shambles'
RYANAIR boss Michael O'Leary has hit out once again over the government's 14-day quarantine rules being enforced from next week, calling them a 'shambles'.

He also warned that they won't be enforced as it relies on passengers self-isolating without being monitored.

2Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has warned the new quarantine rules for UK arrivals is a 'shambles'

Mr O'Leary, who has previously slammed the travel rules, told ITV yesterday: "It's been one shambles after another, of mismanagement, making it up as they go along, and the latest of which has been today's frankly shambolic announcement of an ineffective and useless quarantine."

He added: "People now have to fill in a form which the UK government hasn't even published yet."

Yesterday, the government announced that the new quarantine restrictions will start from June 8 and run for at least three weeks.

Comment: Meanwhile the rest of Europe are simply scrapping any idea of quarantine, that includes Italy which claimed to have been hardest hit. But, as noted above, none of it makes sense - and that's because this is political, not scientific, nor has it ever been about the health of the people.

See also:

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Bizarro Earth

Moscow Mayor says that despite not understanding the coronavirus face masks are mandatory until entire city has been vaccinated

Jonny Tickle
RT
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 10:23 UTC
Sobyanin
© Sputnik / Grigory SysoevMoscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin
For much of the world, lockdown feels like it has been going on forever. In Moscow, despite measures and restrictions easing off, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin believes it will take a year for everything to get back to normal.

In an interview with news agency TASS, Sobyanin explained that Muscovites will soon go back to their usual way of life once the pandemic is over.

"People tend to quickly forget the bad. That's how psychology works, thank God. I think that we will completely return to our previous way of life in a year," Sobyanin said. "How long we have to wear masks largely depends on the timing of a mass vaccine. According to various estimates, it will happen between October and February next year. I want to believe that we will receive the first large batches of the vaccine in October."

Comment: If weather had anything to do with transmission, why were most countries throughout Europe, enjoying an unseasonably warm and dry spring, on lockdown? With countryside walkers harassed by police drones? But then, as the Mayor said himself, he doesn't really understand the virus, which is all the more worrying because for someone so admittedly uninformed he seems rather eager to have the populace vaccinated with a rushed, experimental and potentially deadly vaccine: Engdahl: The warp speed push for coronavirus vaccines

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Sherlock

German prosecutors believe Madeleine McCann is dead, investigating 43 year old national on suspicion of murder

Kate Connolly
The Guardian
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 14:26 UTC
McCann
© REX/ShutterstockMadeleine McCann went missing in 2007.
German public prosecutors investigating a German man on suspicion of murder have said they believe that Madeleine McCann, the British girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 aged three, is dead.

"The public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig is investigating a 43-year-old German national on suspicion of murder. From this you can see that we assume that the girl is dead," Braunschweig state prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said.

Madeleine disappeared from her bedroom on 3 May 2007 during a family holiday in the Algarve while her parents were dining with friends nearby in the resort of Praia da Luz.

Comment: See also:

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Handcuffs

Three more officers arrested in killing of George Floyd, Chuavin's charge upgraded to 2nd degree murder

Stephen Montemayor and Chao Xiong
Star Tribune
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 19:41 UTC
kueng lane thao
© HENNEPIN COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICEThe booking mugs of the three former Minneapolis officers charged Wednesday with aiding and abetting murder. From left are J Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao. Derek Chauvin, who was previously charged, had a count of second-degree murder added.
Attorney General Keith Ellison's office on Wednesday upgraded charges against the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck and charged the other three officers at the scene with aiding and abetting murder.

The decision came just two days after Ellison took over the prosecution from Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and followed more than a week of sometimes-violent protests calling for tougher charges against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who had pinned Floyd to the ground and held him there for nearly nine minutes. Protesters also demanded the arrests of the three other former officers who were present but failed to intervene. All three were booked into the Hennepin County jail on Wednesday.

"To the Floyd family, to our beloved community, and everyone that is watching, I say: George Floyd mattered. He was loved. His life was important. His life had value. We will seek justice for him and for you and we will find it," Ellison said

However, he said, he doesn't believe that "one successful prosecution can rectify the hurt and loss that so many people feel. The solution to that pain will be in the slow and difficult work of constructing justice and fairness in our society."

Chauvin, who was recorded on video kneeling on Floyd's neck as he begged for air on Memorial Day, now faces the more serious charge of second-degree murder, in addition to the original charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter with culpable negligence.

Comment: Bail for the three officers has been set at $750k. At the bail hearing, Lane's attorney said the following:
First appearances are typically procedural. But the hearing quickly turned contentious, with Lane's attorney, Earl Gray, arguing that the cases against the officers are weak and that they did nothing wrong. Gray said Lane twice asked if they should roll Floyd on side but that Chauvin said no. "What was he supposed to do... go up to Mr. Chauvin, grab him and throw him off?" Gray said.


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Snakes in Suits

Looking up! Cuomo's inspirational curfew message spawns dystopian memes


RT
Wed, 03 Jun 2020 23:08 UTC
NYPD and victim
© Reuters/Eduardo MunozNYPD officers detain a suspected looter amid heated anti-police brutality protests, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, June 2, 2020.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has taken over a billboard in New York City's Columbus Circle to give updates on the curfew. Its eerie aesthetic drew dystopian comparisons and fueled a lot of memes.

In addition to the curfew schedule, the billboard features a variety of changing text messages, which for whatever reason seem to be designed to look like the governor's tweets: "DO NOT BE A CRIMINAL," "LOOTING INSULTS GEORGE FLOYD'S MEMORY," "HELP ME RESTORE CALM."

The dystopian aesthetic has been widely panned on social media, prompting horrified reactions like "We are living in a dystopian nightmare. Please tell me this isn't real."

Comment: Never expect creativity from politicians. They just can't do it.

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Star of David

Pandemic helps Israel increase control over Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque

Akram Al Waara
Middle East Eye
Wed, 03 Jun 2020 15:21 UTC
Palestinian prayer
© AFPA Palestinian resident of the Old City of Hebron in the occupied West Bank prays on the rooftop of his house in front of the Ibrahimi Mosque on 24 April 2020.
The recent expropriation of land near the flashpoint mosque comes amid ever increasing restrictions on Palestinian movement in the area, seen as part of Israeli annexation efforts.

In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, Palestinian residents of the Old City of Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank, found themselves fighting another battle that, for them, holds far higher stakes than the spread of Covid-19.

On 13 May, the Israeli military issued an expropriation order allowing construction to begin on an elevator project that would make a portion of the ancient Ibrahimi Mosque wheelchair accessible.
Aref Jaber, a local Palestinian activist and resident of the Old City, told Middle East Eye:
"On the surface, making holy sites accessible to people with disabilities seems like a fine idea. But in reality, this is just another dubious way for the Israeli government and settlers to steal more of our land and take it for themselves."
The new elevator project, Jaber said, would swallow up more space of the already restricted Muslim side of the compound.

The Ibrahimi compound - known to Israelis as the Cave of the Patriarchs - was split into a mosque and synagogue following the 1994 massacre of dozens of Palestinian worshipers at the hands of Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein.
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Key

Detained US Navy veteran, Michael White, freed by Iran and on his way home

Matthew Lee, Eric Tucker
AP
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
Michael White
© UnknownNavy veteran Michael White, released from Iran.
A Navy veteran detained in Iran for nearly two years has been released and started making his way home, with the first leg on a Swiss government aircraft, U.S. officials said Thursday. "The nightmare is over," his mother said.

The U.S. special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, flew to Zurich with a doctor to meet freed detainee Michael White and will accompany White to the United States aboard an American plane, the officials said.

White's release was part of an agreement involving an Iranian-American doctor prosecuted by the Justice Department, and followed months of quiet negotiations over prisoners. The two countries are at bitter odds over U.S. penalties imposed after President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear deal and over the killing by American forces of a top Iranian general in Iraq at the beginning of this year.


Comment:
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Fire

Project Veritas infiltrates violent Antifa cell

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 11:10 UTC
antifa
An undercover journalist with Project Veritas successfully infiltrated Portland's Rose City Antifa cell, capturing footage of a meeting in which members discussed how to "get out there and do dangerous things as safely as possible."

Antifa has been a fixture at the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality (with varying degrees of success) which began after the May 25 death of 46-year-old black man George Floyd at the hands of white Minneapolice police officer Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes as onlookers begged him to stop.

According to National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien on Sunday, the violence "is being driven by Antifa."

Comment: See also:

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Snakes in Suits

So now Sweden and the UK each think they were WRONG about their Covid-19 approaches. They can't BOTH be right...

Peter Andrews
RT
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:33 UTC
uk health campaign
© Reuters / Hannah McKay
We were supposed to be "following the science," but now the scientists are falling over themselves to admit they didn't get it right. How on earth did we end up in this ridiculous situation, and can we ever trust "experts" again?

While it seems that the initial coronavirus attack has largely blown over, at least in Europe, learning lessons will be crucial to better deal with the next pandemic. But learning lessons is hard when the "experts" seem more bamboozled than ever.

The first such expert is, surprise surprise, British epidemiologist and academic Neil Ferguson, who has been put in the rather uncomfortable position of having to justify his actions. Hauled up in front of the British House of Lords on Tuesday, Ferguson was forced to admit, in response to a question about the apparent success of the Swedish model, that Sweden had "got a long way to the same effect" without imposing lockdown. This is an overt admission that he now thinks that the UK lockdown was (and is) pointless. As opposed to the covert one that involved multiple illicit visits from his mistress.
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