A new study has revealed that high levels of microplastics have been detected in some of the most remote regions of the world.
The discovery, published in the journal Science Advances, is the first international study on microplastics in snow, conducted by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.
Melanie Bergmann, the lead scientist, and her team of researchers found microplastics from the Alps to the Arctic contained high levels of the plastic fragment, raises questions about the environmental and health implications of potential exposure to airborne plastics.
“I was really astonished concerning the high concentrations,” said co-author Gunnar Gerdts, a marine microbiologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute.
Bergmann explains that microplastics come from industrial economies where rubber and paints are used. The tiny fragments end up in the sea, where they’re broken down by waves and ultraviolet radiation, before absorbing into the atmosphere. From there, the plastic particles are captured from the air during cloud development, can drift across the Earth via jet streams. At some point, the particles act as a nucleus around supercooled droplets can condense, and travel to Earth as snow.
“Although there is a huge surge of research into the environmental impact of plastics, there is still so much that we do not know,” said Bergmann.
Bergmann noted how the scientific community was only in its infancy of examining the process of how microplastics get sucked up into the atmosphere then scattered around the world in some form of precipitation. She said, there’s an “urgent need for research on human and animal health effects focusing on airborne microplastics.”
“Once we have determined that large quantities of microplastic can also be transported by the air, it naturally raises the question as to whether and how much plastic we are inhaling,” she said, “raising the question of whether breathing in these particles might increase the risk of suffering respiratory and lung diseases.”
The study’s sampling sites were on icebergs in the Arctic between Greenland and Svalbard averaged 1,760 particles per liter of melted snow, with one approaching 14,600 particles per liter. The highest concentration of all, 154,000 particles per liter found in new snow from the Bavarian Alps.
Bergmann identified a wide range of different plastics in the samples, from varnishes and paints used to coat structures, ships, automobiles, and oil rigs; rubber particles from car tires; fibers from synthetic clothing; and mass-produced synthetics, such as polyethylene, PVC, polystyrene, and polycarbonate.
More research on the full environmental and health impacts of airborne microplastics still need to be done, but preliminary results suggest a silent plastic apocalypse has infected Earth.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OZa6nG Tyler Durden
The latest mass shootings have brought several things to the fore. America doesn’t have a gun problem we have a people problem…a culture problem.
I’m going to put this discussion into two categories – demonizing by name-calling and gun control.
The core element of political correctness is killing free speech. The political correctness police view any speech they don’t agree with as hate speech and by the political correctness rules, such speech must be condemned first and then eliminated, even if by force. The college campuses of America have been the laboratory for this anti-American lunacy. Political correctness is censorship and a direct violation of the First Amendment. These censorship threats and name-calling are designed to compel the opposition to shut up.
The charge of “racist” has been the hammer used by the Left to shut off discussion of any issue that makes the Left uncomfortable. The President has been called racist by every liberal pundit on TV and in print and every Democrat leader and candidate for president. The President is not a racist. There is NO evidence that he is a racist. Additionally, the term racist has been applied to every supporter of the President.
The term racist has now lost its true edge because of its indiscriminate and wide-spread use.
The new cudgel to hammer the President and all of his supporters is as white supremacist or white nationalist. I’m very active in a lot of activities here in East Tennessee ranging from a 3000 member gun club, to a huge charity that raises money for veterans causes, to a 7000 member church, to a 300+ member car club. I’m 70 years old and I’ve never met a white supremacist or white nationalist. Whoever these people are, they are in the underbelly of America and are nothing more than gnats in the atmosphere. Calling the president these names is a despicable act and beyond reprehensible. Now we have the Speaker of the House and Democrat presidential candidates saying the white nationalists are an existential threat to the U.S. This is sheer lunacy. This is the type of mental illness that should exclude these people from having guns.
Sadly, few Republicans have stood up for our president. Republicans have no spine but what about human decency?
As a loyal and patriotic American how can you stand mute when our president is attacked in such a vile manner? How about debunking whole white nationalists as existential threat to the U.S.? But sadly, Republicans are mute.
Now to the issue of the siren call of gun control.The cause of these, and other mass shootings was NOT guns; it is our sick society. Most of the perpetrators legally obtained their guns. Laws against murder, illegal use of firearms, illegal discharge of firearms, assault with deadly weapons and in California transporting a firearm across state lines that is illegal in the Golden State; all of these laws, and no doubt many others, were violated. None of those statutes prevented these crimes, something nobody seems willing to discuss.
We have a society where violence is glorified.Go to a movie or even watch television and the violence is appalling. I refuse to believe that video games don’t contribute to the violence in our culture. There are many games where killing is the score by which you win. Denying this is putting your head in the sand. The same Hollywood that advocates for gun confiscation are the same Hollywood that glorifies guns and killing in their products.
Let’s address so-called “assault rifles.” What is an “assault rifle?” When anti-gun rights Sen. Diane Feinstein was writing the weapons ban bill, they needed to call this class of weapons something scary, so they called them “assault weapons.” This is a made-up term conjured solely for the purpose of scaring people. I spent 30 years in the Army as an infantryman. We didn’t have assault weapons. So the very term “assault weapons” is a product of the gun control crowd. As Feinstein and her staff were writing the “Assault Weapons Ban,” they had a gun catalog and went through the pages picking out pictures of scary-looking guns. Their ignorance of guns is just astounding.
Now we have gun banners talking about “weapons of war” and “killing machines” to add to the fear and apprehension created by “assault weapons” naming convention. The AR-15 is used by millions and millions of Americans for sport, hunting, and home defense.
It is NOT a weapon of war or a killing machine. As a professional soldier, I would never go to war with any gun I could buy commercially.
The Left has been able to define the language and then police violators of the language via political correctness. The gun control crowd has defined “assault weapons” as scary weapons, and scary weapons are weapons of war and killing machines and thus should not be in the hands of the citizenry. And Republicans are mute.
If Republicans want to lose the presidency and the Senate and the House, then pass universal background checks and “Red Flag” laws. If you want to cave, to surrender, to the insane mania of the media and the Left and pass these laws, then you will lose millions like me, law-abiding, freedom-loving, gun owners.
Let’s talk about “universal background checks” as the left dictates. They want the government to control all gun transactions. This is naked government control of the right to keep and bear arms. We have background checks!! The process works when it is applied correctly. There is nothing that can be done if some government agency doesn’t due their due diligence and put the required data into the system. This applies with the current background check system and any new system that the Left would dictate. By the way, there is NO gun show loophole. If someone at a gun show wants to sell a gun to a customer, they are required, by law, to run a background check. There is nothing that can be done to prevent someone from selling a gun illegally, now or with some “enhanced background check.” Additionally, the lie that is frequently told that “90% of Americans, even NRA members, support enhanced background checks” is a true fabrication. Let’s enforce the current laws, including the background check system.
It is worth time mentioning that the Constitution is a document written to preserve individual rights and liberty and to LIMIT the government oversight of those individual rights and liberty. The Founding Fathers felt so strongly about the God-given rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights that they listed them. These rights are a sign post that says, “government hands off.” The government is forbidden to get between these rights and the American citizens.
The government has already gotten between the citizen and the Second Amendment. It started with the National Firearms Act of 1934. These laws were serious infringements of the Second Amendment. Remember the words of the Constitution in the Second Amendment, “…shall not be infringed.” How many Republican presidents and Republican majorities in Congress have turned a blind eye to these egregious infringements on our right to keep and bear arms? If you don’t know about the histories of impacts of these laws, then you are derelict in your duties.
When “universal background checks” was explored by the Obama Administration it was defeated by the outcry of the citizenry. As envisioned by the Obama Administration, their “universal background checks” would control every transaction by a gun owner. If I wanted to sell a gun to a friend, I would have had to go to a licensed gun dealer, pay a fee, and then the buyer would have to undergo a background check. Obama’s own Justice Department produced a document that said the only way for “universal background checks” to work was to have a gun registry. My gun is my property, and as such, I have a right to sell it without asking permission from the government. A logical extension is a government requiring books to have serial numbers and controlling their distribution and sale.
So stay away from some form of “universal background checks.”
Now to “Red Flag laws.” Seventeen states have some form of these laws, but only a couple of them even mention mental health. None of us wants mentally imbalanced people or terrorists to have guns. But these laws are a slippery slope to another way for the government to get between a citizen and their right to keep and bear arms. The gun grabbers are salivating about this. They want the government determining who is eligible to exercise their Second Amendment rights. The Left wants some type of process like was in the movie Minority Report, where the government reads the minds of citizens and takes actions to arrest the citizen before they committed some crime. Of course, reading the minds is a bit of hyperbole, but these laws would have government people across the country determining that someone who tweeted, made a Facebook post, wrote an email is a danger to society and they raid that person’s home and take their weapons. This then becomes a Fourth Amendment violation. So we start with a government deciding that something said by a citizen is unacceptable, violating the First Amendment, the government then violates the Fourth Amendment and deprives a citizen of their Second Amendment right.
Another part of this slippery slope is who reports the “unstable” citizen and then who decides whether the accusation is valid? Maybe a neighbor doesn’t like my MAGA hat and believes the crazy rhetoric of the media, and thus, I’m a white nationalist and therefore a threat and call the Sheriff. The Sheriff then conducts a “no-knock” warrant and breaks in my door in the middle of the night. I think this is a real break-in and defend myself, and I am, or an officer is shot. Imaginary? Not so, this happened recently to some unlucky homeowner. Who’s to blame? Who will be held accountable? If you pass these types of laws, these scenarios will play out over the nation.
“Red Flag laws” are another intrusion/infringement of citizens’ rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
In summary:
American citizens, simply because of their American citizenship, hold God-given rights to defend self and family – and that includes the right to own and use firearms. That God-given right is enshrined in the Constitution, as the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment doesn’t allow for the government to determine whether some have rights to own firearms, versus others who don’t. Seriously: Do we really want government holding this power?
What about the path these “red flag” laws would take under a leftist administration, under Democratic control?
“Red flag” laws bring too many unknowns.
Millions of honest gun owners who didn’t use their firearms for mayhem have good reason to feel they are being penalized for crimes they did not commit. This is not an issue about guns; it’s about rights. These laws are repealing the Bill of Rights one chunk at a time.
When are Republicans going to stand up and defend the Bill of Rights? The President campaigned on and has emphasized his promise to defend the Second Amendment.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30ccSqz Tyler Durden
Hong Kong might not be able to avoid a financial crisis this year or next despite possible stimulus packages to shore up its faltering economy amid violent protests across the city. This has led to a rapid decline in tourism, forcing major hotel chains in the city to substantially slash room prices.
Yiu Si-wing, a Hong Kong lawmaker representing the tourism industry, told Bloomberg that hotel revenue is expected to crash 50% this month thanks to escalating protests. She said visits from mainland China account for 80% of arrivals are significantly lower due to social unrest.
Yiu said hotel occupancy rates averaged 90% in 1H19, could drop by as much as 33% or more in 2H19. Arrivals from the mainland to Hong Kong, a significant source of consumption for the city, could grind to a halt.
“The impact on tourism is huge,” Yiu told Bloomberg. She said at least half of the mainland visitors due in August had canceled their plans. Yiu said top-trending topics on Chinese social media platform Weibo this week included several incidents of where violent protestors attacked government forces.
Some mainland Chinese are shunning Hong Kong because of the risks associated with its airport being closed down for an extended period of time.
Grace Huang, a 20-year-old Wuhan University student, told Bloomberg her layover at Hong Kong International Airport was horrifying earlier this week. “I fear I’m going to be beaten,” she told Bloomberg, as thousands of protestors successfully locked down the airport for several days.
Beijing resident Jasmine Ji, 23, delayed her trip to Hong Kong because she feels protestors would target her for being a Chinese citizen.
“I feel like my personal safety could be severely threatened if they find out I speak Mandarin or am a Chinese citizen,” she said. “I won’t fly to Hong Kong airport until the situation and protests are settled there.”
Chinese officials and state-run media outlets launched an information war against the protestors, describing them as violent extremists.
Hong Kong officials have suggested a recession could be imminent due to social unrest.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po on Thursday announced a $2.43 billion stimulus package to shore up the economy during the social and economic turmoil.
Paul warned that a possible recession could be imminent:
“The situation we are in now is like the typhoon No 3 signal has been hoisted and the typhoon is heading towards us,” he said. “We need to get prepared before it gets worse.”
Paul downgraded Hong Kong’s GDP growth forecast for the year to 0 to 1%, from 2 to 3% previously.
He said the city could slide into a technical recession in the current quarter.
InterContinental Hotels Group Plc, a British multinational hospitality company that owns Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn chains, said the protests in the last several months have contributed to a slowdown in business travel in the region.
Other hospitality companies with exposure to Hong Kong are also feeling the pinch: Sun Hung Kai Properties, owner of Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, and New World Development Co., which operates the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, have seen their stocks enter bear markets in the last month.
Yiu said the downturn in Hong Kong hospitality industry had forced many hotels to slash their room rates by substantial amounts.
A typical room at Conrad Hotel, owned by Hilton Worldwide, is $159 per night this weekend, that’s a 40% discount versus two months ago.
Marriott International Inc. and Shangri-La Asia Ltd. have also cut room rates for their Hong Kong hotels.
Hong Kong could be the first domino to fall that kicks off the next global recession.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MjG9N3 Tyler Durden
Last month China’s military predictably slammed Washington’s recent approval to send $2.2 billion in arms to Taiwan, and now there’s an administration push supported by Republicans in the Senate to “move quickly” on a proposed $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan at a moment when the next round of US-China trade negotiations hangs in the balance, as The Washington Post reports:
The Trump administration is moving ahead with for an $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan despite strong objections from China, a U.S. official and others familiar with the deal said Thursday.
Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on Friday urged Congress to move quickly with the sale given China “seeks to extend its authoritarian reach” over the region.
Image source: Stars and Stripes
This despite Beijing condemning any and all further weapons sales to Taiwan, which it maintains historic claims over, and taking the further significant step of threatening sanction on any US companies involved in such weapons deals.
The New York Times on Friday also confirmed the proposed F-16 plan, based on State Department statements:
The State Department told Congress Thursday night, right after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had signed a memo approving the sale, officials said. Congress is not expected to object to the move. For weeks, lawmakers from both parties had accused the administration of delaying the sale to avoid jeopardizing trade negotiations or to use it as a bargaining chip.
Texas senator Cruz said it is critical “now more than ever” for Taiwan’s defense capabilities to be significantly increased amid threats from China.
China this summer indicated it stands “ready to go to war” if people “try to split Taiwan from the country”— this after the US approved sales of tanks and Stinger missiles to Taiwan in July. Beijing authorities also said the US and breakaway Taiwan were “playing with fire” due to their growing military ties, which the US by treaty is obligated to honor.
The proposed major addition to Taiwan’s current ageing fleet of F-16s comes after prior Chinese media reports last March said Taipei requested from the US a fleet of 66 Lockheed Martin F-16V fighter jets.
This also corresponds to Taiwan on Thursday unveiling its largest defense spending increase in over a decade, to T$411.3 billion ($13.11 billion.), according to Reuters.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YRvpMm Tyler Durden
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s June 27 interview with the Financial Times newspaper in London stating that liberal internationalism is now toxic and dying unleashed a totally predictable wave of outrage across the West. But Putin knew what he was doing and saying and of course he was absolutely right.
The Russian president has been unique among 21st global leaders not just for taking a long view of events – most politicians in power for more than a few months imagine they are doing that. But Putin has always known very clearly where he is in the great continuum of Russian history.
Putin has continually sought peaceful cooperation, partnership and good relations with the West – and almost always been rebuffed except when the West desperately needed Russia’s help. But above all, he has sought to preserve and revive traditional Russian values and create a stable, prosperous and growing society.
After 20 years in power, Putin along with his deputy and longtime right hand man Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has made an astonishing amount of progress to roll back the horrific moral, demographic, environmental and psychological damage inflicted by three quarters of a century of communism. Yet the task remains monumental.
Above all, Putin, like so many other Russia’s remembers and embraces Dostoyevsky’s insight that the communist nightmare grew out of Western liberalism, unleashed and unrestrained. And he sees clearly that since the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War in 1989-91, international liberalism with its unyielding demands of total free trade and total, open borders, pop and population movements has unleashed a new dark age of chaos on suffering humanity.
The pathologies of international human trafficking, trading of millions of young children in sex rings around the world and the chaos caused by currency manipulations and crashing economies have ne ow reached levels unimagined even at the end of the 20th century.
The “future,” Putin realizes, lies with strong, coherent nation states like Russia, China and others reclaiming power and control into their own hands and seeking to cooperate constructively with each other.
The Western delusions of unlimited Free Trade and Open Borders have come to only unleash chaos, poverty, needless wars and the destruction of advanced societies ‘ safety and stability by unlimited and unregulated migration flows. Only drug traffickers, human slavers and terrorists can truly flourish in such a world – and indeed they have.
There was a profound deep irony, Putin, with his deep sense of humor clearly relished, in saying such things to the Financial Times. Along with the Wall Street Journal in New York City, it is one of the two great media pillars of the liberal big business unregulated creed – embodied throughout the 19th century by the arch-hypocrite William Ewart Gladstone.
Gladstone, founder and leader of the famous British Liberal Party and revered as “the People’s William” was the heir to an enormous fortune [worth billions in 21st century terms] made by his father John Gladstone, one of the biggest slave traders in the Port city of Liverpool. And Gladstone himself in the 1860s sought to encourage the victory and survival of the slave holding Confederacy in the US Civil War.
Also, the United Kingdom, the home of modern secular enlightenment liberalism from whence it spread across the United States is now quite literally disintegrating in its conflict with the also deeply-troubled European Union. Putin therefore could not have chosen a more fitting and ironic media platform on which to pronounce secular liberalism’s doom: And he knew it.
Putiun also clearly sees that Dostoyevsky was right in his deepest, darkest reach of prophetic vision. For liberalism prospered and spread for hundreds opf years claiming to spread tolerence, respect diversity and cherish truth. Yet today across the West its adherents reign supreme over colossal media conglomerates and Deep State enormous bureaucracies that routinely bury and squash all truths, skepticism, alternate views and arguments inconvenient and threatening to them.
The historical evidence, overwhelming in reality that nations flourish and grow rapidly in prosperity when their industries and agriculture are preserved from unfair and manipulated foreign competition is simply not taught across the West: It has been smothered into extinction.
The history of President Bill Clinton’s fateful 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is evident to all: Far from bringing prosperity to the United States and Mexico, it has unleashed a new dark age of crime, drugs, criminal exploitation, teen gang terrors and civil war on both those suffering nations.
Yet when rare individuals rise up like Putin or US President Donald Trump and state these obvious realities, they are immediately subjected to waves of hysterical hatred.
The Big Lie nightmares predicted so clearly by Yevgeny Zamyatin and George Orwell flourish more boldly than ever – but in London, Washington and New York, not in Moscow or Beijing.
Yet the Big Lie is dying on its feet: It has delivered suffering, misery, uncertainty and even terror to the subject populations on whom its devotees have imposed their creeds, regardless of the clearly expressed democratic will. Throughout the Western world and, for that matter in Japan and India, populist, national leaders have emerged who are seeking to defy the suicidal principles of open borders, unlimited trade and immigration flows that the supra-national institutions of the past 75 years are trying to impose upon them.
These leaders are not trying to through the world into some new dark age of chaos and war: They are on the contrary doing their utmost to prevent it.
Putin is not alone in the world: He speaks for this great and emerging new constructive consensus. But the forces of darkness and chaos, posing, as the New Testament warned us, as messengers of light remain determined to re-impose their lies.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30dn02y Tyler Durden
China continues to play a large part in preventing Trump’s desire to take Iran’s crude exports down to zero, despite a noticeable drop on its Iran oil imports over the summer after the end of the US waiver program; however, more evidence has emerged that the sanctions evasion continues. A Chinese owned tanker believed carrying about 2 million barrels of oil has been caught ‘ghosting’ according to ship tracking data:
While in the Indian Ocean heading toward the Strait of Malacca, the very large crude carrier (VLCC) Pacific Bravo went dark on June 5, shutting off the transponder that signals its position and direction to other ships, ship-tracking data showed.
Reuters says an American official has put ports in Asia on notice, warning them not to allow the Pacific Bravo to dock in violation of US sanctions.
Illustrative image via Economic Times
Besides ‘ghosting’ — a common tactic used in Iran sanctions busting — the tanker also appears to have tried concealing its identity with a name change, on July 18 suddenly presenting on global trackers as the VLCC Latin Ventura and appearing off Port Dickson, Malaysia.
Tracking data shows this was nearly 1000 miles from where the Pacific Bravo had last been signalling. Reuters describes the gambit was easily uncovered, with US authorities accusing the ship of evading sanctions:
But both the Latin Venture and the Pacific Bravo transmitted the same unique identification number, IMO9206035, issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), according to data from information provider Refinitiv and VesselsValue, a company that tracks ships and vessel transactions…
Since IMO numbers remain with a ship for life, this indicated the Latin Venture and the Pacific Bravo were the same vessel and suggested the owner was trying to evade Iranian oil sanctions.
The investigation found the super tanker is owned by Kunlun Holdings, a company based in Shanghai, also with offices in Singapore, which didn’t comment for the report.
Source: VesselsValue via Reuters
However, the valuable Iranian crude cargo, with an estimated worth of about $120 million at current prices, does appear to have been offloaded at an unknown location in Asia.
When under the name Pacific Bravo, the ship’s transmission data showed it’s tanks were full, but as Reuters reports, the moment it “reappeared 42 days later as the Latin Venture, it was empty, according to Refinitiv and VesselsValue data.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2z7zeOh Tyler Durden
When the December 2018 Cass Shipments Index was negative for the first time in 24 months, we dismissed the decline as reflective of a tough comparison. In January and February 2019, we again made rationalizations. When March was also negative (-1.0%), we warned that we were preparing to “change tack” in our outlook; when April was down (-3.2%), we said, “we see material and growing downside risk to the economic outlook.”
With the -5.9% drop in July, following the -5.3% drop in June, and the -6.0% drop in May, we repeat our message from last two months: the shipments index has gone from “warning of a potential slowdown” to “signaling an economic contraction.”
We acknowledge that: all of these negative percentages are against extremely tough comparisons; and the Cass Shipments Index has gone negative before without being followed by a negative GDP. However, weakness in demand is now being seen across many modes of transportation, both domestically and internationally.
Although the initial Q2 ’19 GDP was positive, it was not as positive upon dissection, and we see a growing risk that GDP will go negative by year’s end.
The weakness in spot market pricing for many transportation services, especially trucking, is consistent with the negative Cass Shipments Index and, along with airfreight and railroad volume data, strengthens our concerns about the economy and the risk of ongoing trade policy disputes. Weakness in commodity prices, and the decline in interest rates, have joined the chorus of signals calling for an economic contraction.
European Airfreight vs EuroZone PMI
European airfreight volumes have been negative since March 2018, but only by small single-digit margins (-1% to -3%), until November 2018. Unfortunately, since then, volumes have started to further deteriorate. Our European Airfreight Index was down a concerning -7.2% in April, only down -2.6% in May, before dropping -7.5% in June. Our preliminary July index is only down -3.4%, and consistent with the deteriorating Eurozone PMI. While the -6.9% July overall drop in London airfreight volume suggests that economic headwinds from Brexit remain, particularly since the largest rates of decline (down -11% to -25%) are being experienced in the lanes between (to and from) London and other EU airports. Although the European data is by itself distressing, it’s the Asian data that has become the most alarming.
Asia Pacific Airfreight
Asian airfreight volumes were essentially flat from June to October 2018, but have since deteriorated at an accelerating pace (November -3.5%, December -6.1%, January –5.4%, February -13.2%, March -3.6%, -10.2% in April, -8.5% in May, -8.6% in June, and preliminary July -7.9%).
Shanghai Airfreight
The volumes of the three largest airports (Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Incheon)
Shanghai Airfreight Inbound vs Outbound Tonnage
The inbound volumes for Shanghai have plummeted. This concerns us since it is the inbound shipment of high value/low density parts and pieces that are assembled into the high-value tech devices that are shipped to the rest of the world.
Hence, in markets such as Shanghai, the inbound volumes predict the outbound volumes and the strength of the high-tech manufacturing economy.
With the current level of civil unrest, leading to Hong Kong airport flight delays and cancellations, we can’t imagine that August data will be anything but worse.
Cass Shipments Index vs GDP
At first glance, the GDP for the 1st and 2nd quarter seems very inconsistent with overall freight volumes. Using the Cass Shipments Index as a predictive proxy, we did not expect the BEA to report 3.2% as its initial estimate or 3.1% as its revision in Q1 or 2.1% in Q2. As we have already explained, dissecting the contributing factors explains much of the disparity, and should point out that freight flows are a leading indicator. It often takes two to three quarters for the trends in freight to become reported economic statistics.
Although we also subdivide the economy via multiple other data feeds that represent smaller segments of freight flows, the Cass Freight Shipments and Expenditures Indexes are two of the strongest proxies for what is happening in the overall U.S. freight markets, and as a result they are strong predictive indicators for the U.S. economy.
Negative GDP in 2019
Based on all three months of data for Q2, the Cass Shipments Index is signaling that GDP may be negative, or at least come close to being negative, in Q3. If it does not, since reported GDP often lags the economic activity represented by freight flows, continued weakness in the Cass Shipments Index at the current magnitude should result in a negative Q4 GDP.
Industrial Production Supports Cass View
The Cass report is consistent with the today’s Industrial Production report and the Global Manufacturing recession already underway.
It was dormant for more than 20 years, exhibiting very little fluctuations in light. Then one day, it woke up, baffling astronomers around the world.
A supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A* has just started flashing 75 times brighter than it has ever been seen before, following a two-decade ‘quiet’ period, RT reports.
UCLA Astronomer Tuan Do and his team observed the transformation of the black hole using the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii over four nights.
The team observed a bizarre flash on May 13, and captured it in a two-hour time-lapse that condensed the phenomenon down to just a few seconds.
Check it out below:
Here’s a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we’ve seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night! pic.twitter.com/MwXioZ7twV
As Do explained, the footage above begins with Sagittarius at its brightest, or at least the brightest point that the team saw and recorded.
Astronomers from all over the world are now scrambling to collect data and figure out exactly what caused the phenomenon.
So far, there are several theories.
“Maybe more gas is falling into the black hole and that leads to higher amounts of accretion, which leads to it being brighter,” Do told a science publication.
There’s also the possibility that the black hole consumed a nearby gas cloud that had been documented nearby in 2014.
But at least five powerful research telescopes will continue to observe the black hole for as long as it’s visible.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33GO0cE Tyler Durden
A superbug, first discovered in a hospital, is evolving to thrive on the sugar-rich diets common in the United States. Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) is a bacterium that can cause a nasty spell of diarrhea and colitis for those unlucky enough to be infected by the superbug.
According to IFLScience, researchers analyzing the genomes of various strains in Nature Genetics have discovered it is a millennia-long process of evolution that will see it separate into two different species. One of those species is particularly adept at evading hospital disinfectants and thrives on a sugar-rich Western diet.
“This largest ever collection and analysis of C. difficile whole genomes, from 33 countries worldwide, gives us a whole new understanding of bacterial evolution,” author Brendan Wren, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Medicine, said in a statement.
“It reveals the importance of genomic surveillance of bacteria. Ultimately, this could help understand how other dangerous pathogens evolve by adapting to changes in human lifestyles and healthcare regimes which could then inform healthcare policies.”
In a healthy person, “good” gut bacteria will fend off the bad superbug while antibiotics extinguish the “good” gut bacteria, leaving the patient vulnerable to infection. Because of this, the bug is frequently found in hospital settings. C. difficile clade A)accounts for roughly 70 percent of the samples collected from hospital patients.
Noticing that it showed differences in genes associated with the metabolization of simple sugars, they monitored its effects in mice. Those given a sugar-rich diet appeared to provide a better host for the bacteria – it seemed to flourish in guts exposed to a high-sugar Western diet.
The team was able to calculate when this species of the C. difficile bacterium first appeared using dating analysis, pinpointing its origin to a time approximately 76,000 years ago. Yet, it was towards the end of the 16th century that things really began to take off, with the number of different strains of C. difficile clade Astarting to increase. –IFLScience
According to the study’s authors, this is the largest genomic study of C. difficile and shows that it is evolving in response to human behavior. “This particular bacteria was primed to take advantage of modern healthcare practices and human diets before hospitals even existed,” explained joint first author Nitin Kumar from the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
“Our study provides genome and laboratory-based evidence that human lifestyles can drive bacteria to form new species so they can spread more effectively,” saidsenior author Trevor Lawley from the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
This means focusing on one’s diet an improving the quality of food eaten could help stave off dangerous and potentially deadly superbugs like C. difficile.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2P2QD5s Tyler Durden
Apparently the month long saga of the Grace-1 is not at all over, and may now seriously escalate even after it was set free from custody. Just as the Iranian supertanker was released from custody off Gibraltar and is preparing to make its way into the Mediterranean, a seizure warrant filed by the US Department of Justice was unsealed in a US district court late Friday.
Documents allege “a scheme to unlawfully access the U.S. financial system to support illicit shipments to Syria from Iran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the DoJ said in a statement.
The seizure warrant and forfeiture complaint alleges the now Iranian-flagged tanker along with its over two million barrels of oil aboard it and $995,000 “are subject to forfeiture,” citing terrorism forfeiture statutes, and bank fraud and money laundering.
The Grace-1, now renamed by Iran the Adrian Darya. Image source: Reuters
“The scheme involves multiple parties affiliated with the IRGC and furthered by the deceptive voyages of the Grace 1,” US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie Liu said in a press release. “A network of front companies allegedly laundered millions of dollars in support of such shipments.”
The warrant is addressed to “the United States Marshal’s Service and/or any other duly authorized law enforcement officer.”
According to Reuters, the Grace 1 – now renamed the Adrian Darya after Iran began flying its flag over the previously Panamanian-flagged tanker – may not have made it far though it was filmed moving on Friday. “The tanker shifted its position on Friday, but its anchor was still down off Gibraltar and it was unclear if it was ready to set sail soon,” the report said.
Given that no doubt the US warrant means leaders in Tehran will be livid, and now with the possibility that American military assets could potentially make a move to actually board the vessel or perhaps even block its as yet unknown route, this puts the fate of the UK-flagged Stena Impero — still under IRGC control — in jeopardy.
A message to all mariners – if you crew an IRGC or other FTO-affiliated ship, you jeopardize future entry to the U.S. #NotWorthIthttps://t.co/v4bqu5SGSu
It’s expected that Iran will release the detained Stena Impero in a tit-for-tat gesture, as Tehran had initially expressed a desire for, possibly at some point this weekend. The US warrant will definitely delay this and quash any level of good faith signalling between Iran and the UK.
What’s more is it looks like the US is ready to pursue sanctions busting consequences to the max, down to ship owners and crew: “A message to all mariners – if you crew an IRGC or other FTO-affiliated ship, you jeopardize future entry to the U.S.,” Secretary Mike Pompeo said in a tweet Friday.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31JxV4a Tyler Durden
