RTSat, 21 Mar 2020 15:46 UTC
© Reuters / Vasily FedosenkoA Russian rouble coin inside a bulb with crude oil
Despite efforts by Russia to gradually cut its reliance on oil, a lengthy energy market turmoil could be challenging for the country's economy and could even result in a major economic crisis.
Oil has continued its dramatic fall this week, dropping to more than an 18-year low on Wednesday amid global recession worries and low demand. Both US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and international benchmark Brent slightly rebounded on Thursday, trading at $22.55 and $27.65 respectively.
The key issue now is not how low can crude prices plunge,
but for how long this situation persists, Aleksandr Bakhtin, investment strategist with Premier BCS said in an interview to RT.
Comment: As Russia improves its domestic manufacturing capacity, it will be able to take up more of its oil production internally. It has is a ready-made market that will benefit from lower fuel costs.
Tyler Durden
ZerohedgeFri, 20 Mar 2020 13:25 UTC
Illustrating the extreme lengths to which terrified Americans will go to put their minds at ease, media reports and video circulating on social media show that a line that's 'thousands of cars' and 'several hours' long has formed outside a COVID-19 testing facility in New Jersey's Bergen County.
According to the
Bergen County Record, when reporters visited, all the entrances to the new coronavirus drive-thru testing center at Bergen Community College were blocked off by noon on Friday, and signs warned that the facility was at capacity. Yet many persisted, with hundreds of cars lining up along Paramus Road, waiting to get closer to the facility.
Trying to maintain order, police tried to direct traffic and shouted orders through megaphones.
"It's quite possible folks are going to have to wait a few hours," said Christopher Neuwirth, assistant health commissioner for the state.
First, it is ignored.Second, it is widely ridiculed.Third, it is accepted as self-evident.With COVID-19, we have now entered Stage 2. At first, the media ignored the claims and the analysis that the virus could have originated in the US. But the spread of information and restatements of evidence from all sides, including in the US itself, has become too intense and now the claims are being openly ridiculed in the Western media.
Briefly,
Chinese virologists discovered conclusively that the original source of the virus was not China, nor Wuhan, nor the seafood market, but had been traced to the US, a possible scenario being that the virus might have originated at the US Military's bio-weapons lab at Fort Detrick (which was shut down by the CDC in July, because of outbreaks), and brought to China during the World Military Games in October 2019.
Also,
Japanese and Taiwanese virologists arrived independently at the conclusion that the virus could have originated in the US.The Americans did their best from before the beginning to deflect culpability by crafting tales of bats, snakes, pangolins, the seafood market, the Wuhan University being a bio-weapons facility (which it is not), and the CIA tale leaked through the VOA and Radio Free Asia that the virus leaked from that university. They stated (factually) that Chinese researchers had participated (7 years ago) in similar virus research funded by the US NIH, thus somehow insinuating Chinese culpability, ignoring that the prior research was irrelevant to current events.
Comment: Indeed, the media 'doth protesteth too much' by directly and loudly attacking this particular 'conspiracy theory'.
We like the author's research on this. It's reasonably solid and certainly plausible.
We would like to offer one qualifying remark, however: we do not think anyone in the US intended to do this
deliberately to China. Those US soldiers participating in the Military Games in Wuhan last Fall were more likely unwitting carriers of 'COVID-19' after it leaked containment at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
See also:
© REUTERS / Baz Ratner
As the world continues to combat COVID-19 novel coronavirus, millions in Africa and the Middle East are expected to also be hit with the ever-worsening desert locust crisis, which experts say has the ability to grow at an unprecedented rate due to favorable breeding conditions triggered by climate change.
The desert locust,
dubbed "the most destructive migratory pest in the world" by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's
(FAO) Locust Watch, is positioned to wreak havoc on the food security of millions of people after recently disrupting the lives of individuals in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting expert for the FAO, told The Guardian this week that while the desert locust swarms should be decreasing in the foreseeable future as they historically have, climate change has created a new normal that endangers the food security of some 25 million people.
RTFri, 20 Mar 2020 16:14 UTC
© Reuters / Lucas Jackson
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has banned gatherings of any size and
ordered workers in "non-essential" businesses to stay home or face a fine and mandatory closure, as the state ramped up efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Only employees of "essential businesses" - grocery stores, pharmacies, utilities, public transit, and other critical services - are permitted to commute and work outside the home under strict new rules, Cuomo announced, in an executive order on Friday.
Violators will be hit with a fine and face mandatory closure of their business, the governor told reporters.
These provisions will be enforced.
New York state has 7,102 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 4,408 in New York City, as of Friday. Almost 40 people have died.
Comment: California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a similar
order:
"Everyone is required to stay home except to get food, care for a relative or friend, get necessary health care, or go to an essential job," read a statement on California's coronavirus response website, issued following Newsom's order. "If you go out, keep at least six feet of distance."
Businesses to remain open during the lockdown include banks, pharmacies, gas stations, as well as grocery stores and restaurants - though the latter will be confined to carry-out and delivery only.
Newsom expressed concern during a press conference on Thursday night that tens of thousands of patients could soon swarm California's hospitals as the disease rapidly spreads across the state, putting healthcare facilities far beyond capacity. He earlier projected that some 56 percent of the state's residents - or over 25 million people - could contract the illness within eight weeks.
Where is he getting his numbers? Even the
Diamond Princess cruise ship only saw upwards of 20% get the virus, and that was in an enclosed space.
The U.S. has
suspended visa services worldwide. Germany says
lockdown will happen if people continue socializing:
Germans are already under instruction to stay indoors and avoid the usual mixing and mingling with others, as the novel coronavirus spreads rapidly in the country. Pubs, clubs and non-essential shops have already been closed and large gatherings have been banned by some German states — but there is no official national lockdown of the kind that has been imposed in France, Spain and Italy, and many people are still meeting outdoors in large groups.
Braun said normal socializing "must be stopped now" and, if that doesn't happen, it's possible that "more far-reaching measures" will be implemented — yet so far it seems that responsibility to restrict movement lies with the individual.
Bavaria, in Germany,
has gone into lockdown, however, "shutting down public life almost completely". Paris police are
restricting movement and gatherings. Switzerland banned gatherings of more than 5 people (nearly 1000 tested positive there in the last day). Lombardy region in Italy enlisted the
military to help enforce their own lockdown. UK police announced their first
arrest for breach of quarantine.
European stocks
surged after central bank measures were adopted. Germany
seized medical supplies headed for Switzerland. Senior Finnish health official Mika Salminen
criticized the WHO advisory to test as many people as possible, saying,
"We don't understand the WHO's instructions for testing. We can't fully remove the disease from the world anymore. If someone claims that, they don't understand pandemics." Well, it seems to have worked for South Korea...
Spain's official death toll
surpassed 1000 (up 235 in the last day). And while China reported no new domestic cases, they are
reporting 39 new cases from people coming from abroad. Britain's chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, is
self-isolating after his EU counterpart tested positive. A staff member at the
IAEA also tested positive.
Illinois has become the latest state to go on "
lockdown," with a similar "shelter-in-place" order that was issued in California and New York. Keep in mind it was only 3 days ago that the governor told everyone that it was completely safe to go out and vote in the primary.
See also:
Tyler Durden
ZerohedgeFri, 20 Mar 2020 09:51 UTC
A staggering 9% of working Americans, or 14 million people, have been laid off as a result of the Chinese coronavirus panic, while 25% of workers have had their hours reduced according to extrapolated polling by
Survey USA.
A
SurveyUSA poll taken one week ago showed just
1% of Americans would take home no paycheck.
Comment: As if the numbers of real unemployed in this fake economy weren't already bad enough, the developments we are now seeing in the US will bring financial devestation to many millions of individuals and families.
Jessica Bursztynsky
CNBCWed, 05 Feb 2020 01:20 UTC
© Miguel Vidal / Reuters
While the
new coronavirus ravages much of China and world leaders rush to close their borders to protect citizens from the outbreak,
the flu has quietly killed 10,000 in the U.S. so far this influenza season.At least 19 million people have come down with the flu in the U.S. with 180,000 ending up in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The flu season, which started in September and can run until May, is currently at its peak and poses a greater health threat to the U.S. than the new coronavirus, physicians say. The new virus, which first emerged in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31, has sickened roughly 17,400 and killed 362 people mostly in that country as of Monday morning.
"In the U.S., it's really a fear based on media and this being something new," Dr. Jennifer Lighter, hospital epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health, said of the new coronavirus.
"When in reality, people can take measures to protect themselves against the flu, which is here and prevalent and has already killed 10,000 people."
"Nature just hit the reset button."
Human civilization has seemingly screeched to a halt for many, with those of us fortunate enough to have our good health hunkering down to read that Dostoevsky novel we've put off for many years, catch up on movies and streaming series, or endlessly scroll through our social media feeds.
However, our neighbors in the world of animals don't seem to have received similar orders to self-quarantine or shelter in place. Across countries hit hard by the novel coronavirus — including Japan, Italy, and Thailand — wildlife has spilled into the eerily quiet city streets, creating almost Jumanji-like scenes of creatures roaming carelessly through concrete jungles.
Nara Park in Japan has long been a famous tourist destination due to its large population of gorgeous Sika deer, who are normally fed rice crackers by tourists eager to snap selfies with the beautiful deer, many of which have been trained to bow on command.
Bryan MacDonald
RTThu, 19 Mar 2020 23:59 UTC
© Reuters/Maxim ShemetovPeople take part in celebrations on the anniversary of Crimea's return to the Russian Federation, in Sevastopol, Crimea.
One of the curious things about Western media coverage of Crimea since 2014 has been the consistent narrative that Russia's reabsorption of the peninsula was carried out against the will of locals.
Look, you can make legitimate arguments about international law and the way the process was carried out. But attempts to give
the impression Moscow somehow dragged residents kicking and screaming into the Russian Federation have always been ridiculous.The overwhelming majority of Crimeans want to be part of Russia. This fact is not disputed by any credible expert on the post-Soviet space and is also borne out by
opinion polling, including surveys carried out by American and German companies.
Rakan Abed El-Rahman, Pam Bailey
The New ArabWed, 12 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC
© Getty ImagesPalestinians stranded in Egypt queue for passport transactions at border gate.
For 14 years, Ayman Ghanam, a 43-year-old from the Gaza Strip, has sought to obtain the document that, like an American social security number, governs every aspect of daily life:
a Palestinian ID card. But like 23,500 other Palestinians, he has been refused this basic document by the Israeli government because of a rigid refusal to bend the rules.Ghanam's father had travelled to Egypt when the 1967 six-day war broke out, resulting in the Israeli occupation of Gaza. The Israeli government assumed authority for issuing IDs to its new "subjects,"
but since the elder Ghanam was out of Gaza, he (and many others like him) wasn't assigned one. That means his children, including Ayman, don't have IDs either.Even though Israel insists it stopped occupying the Gaza Strip when it withdrew its 8,000 settlers in 2005, it continues to retain control over who receives Palestinian IDs - along with many other aspects of daily life, such as travel. Without an ID card, Palestinians cannot qualify for a passport.
Comment: As Russia improves its domestic manufacturing capacity, it will be able to take up more of its oil production internally. It has is a ready-made market that will benefit from lower fuel costs.