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US equity futures pointed to a sharp jump at the open on Tuesday, with the Nasdaq eying a return to the old highs, as traders celebrated the return of floor traders to the New York Stock Exchange as a symbol of the resilience of the capitalist system – or maybe it was the latest suspiciously preliminary vaccine news.

Two days after the NYT published the names of American coronavirus dead on the front page of its Memorial Day Weekend edition in solemn remembrance of the 100k milestone, the US still hasn’t actually crossed the threshold. Virginia became the latest state to report a one-day record jump in new cases over the weekend after the US saw a jump in cases and a slight uptick in hospitalizations last week.

Experts expected a jump in cases and hospitalizations as states adjusted to the first few weeks of ‘Phase 1’ reopening. Most hope that a ‘seasonal effect’ will help offset the increase in social interaction

An uptick in new cases was expected, due to the inevitable increase in interactions as restrictions are lifted. States have also expanded testing access as they’ve loosened restrictions.

With Brazil and Russia still accounting for ~1/5th of all new cases reported on Monday, the global total number of confirmed cases has broken above 5.5 million, though many experts believe the roughly 330k confirmed cases in Brazil represents just a quarter of the total infections in the country.

I haven’t commented publicly on the situation with Dominic Cummings as I have waited to hear the full details. I welcome the statement to clarify matters, but there remains aspects of the explanation which I have trouble with. As a result I have resigned as a government Minister. pic.twitter.com/6yXLyMzItJ

— Douglas Ross MP (@Douglas4Moray) May 26, 2020

as we noted earlier, over the weekend, the CDC released its first official estimate of the overall infection fatality rate (IFR). The number? Just 0.26% – a full 3.2 percentage points below the WHO’s official estimate of 3.4%. The CDC also estimated the rate of “asymptomatic” infection (patients who showed few or no symptoms) at 35%.

I NYC alone, 0.3% of all city residents have died from the virus (more than 30k have died in the US alone). “According to some surveillance studies using antibody tests, roughly a quarter of NYC residents have been infected. This would suggest the mortality rate might be closer, or just above, 1%, but still well below the WHO number that unleashed a wave of panicked lockdowns across the world.

Source: WorldoMeter

To be sure, roughly 50% of deaths across the US have occurred in nursing homes. This alarmingly high rate is due in part to certain Democratic governors instituting obviously dangerous policies allowing COVID-19-positive patients to be returned to the managed-care facilities where they lived. Some have suggested that better protecting the most vulnerable patients might greatly mitigate the mortality rate. But we digress…

As the WHO warns that the world remains mired in the ‘first wave’ of the outbreak, the AP reported Tuesday that states are scrambling to spend billions of dollars on PPE and medical supplies to replenish depleted stockpiles. But more than 2 months into the supply scramble, few states are sharing information about what they’re buying and how much they’re paying (remember, reports about states and cities being swindled have proliferated during the crisis). While many states have obscured their spending, Illinois has released a detailed database that can be accessed by the public.

With the US inching ever-closer to the 100k fatality mark, the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care said the country had surpassed 47,000 deaths on Tuesday, coming ever-closer to the 50k mark which Boris Johnson’s government had once said would be a ‘worst-case’ scenario for the outbreak. Meanwhile, Tory Junior minister Douglas Ross resigned on Tuesday, saying Dominic Cummings’ interpretation of the lockdown guidelines weren’t shared by the majority of Britons.

The ONS said 42,173 people had died in England and Wales with suspected COVID-19 as of May 15, bringing the UK total to 47,343 – which includes earlier data from Scotland, Northern Ireland, plus recent hospital deaths in England, Reuters reports. Chatter about Johnson being “replaced” – not unlike his predecessor, Theresa May – as Tories begin to see him as a liability has intensified.

As scrutiny of the EU’s paycheck subsidies intensifies, the bloc’s global campaign to fund the development of vaccines and therapies against COVID-19 has so far raised $10.4 billion, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

On Tuesday, as images of packed Ozark beaches lingered in the minds of Americans, the WHO warned of the risks of an “immediate second peak” as Europe, the US and others ease up on lockdown conditions, while urging countries to step up surveillance, testing and tracking.

In vaccine news, after a flurry of conflicting reports, Pharmaceutical giant Merck, which has “largely kept to the sidelines” of the vaccine race according to Reuters, has unveiled plans to buy privately-held Austrian vaccine maker Themis Bioscience. Merck also said it plans to collaborate with research nonprofit IAVI to develop two separate vaccines.

Merck also announced a partnership with privately-held Ridgeback Biotherapeutics to develop “an experimental oral antiviral drug” to help patients infected with the virus.

Maryland-based biotech firm Novovax announced early Tuesday that it had begun injecting its experimental coronavirus vaccine candidate into test subjects in Australia on Tuesday, CNBC reports. 

The company hopes to release a vaccine by the end of the year if its early studies find success. Novavax will inject 131 volunteers in the first phase of the trial testing the safety of the vaccine and looking for signs of its effectiveness, the company’s research chief Dr. Gregory Glenn said. At this point, roughly a dozen experimental vaccines are in early stages of testing, or are poised to start in the near future; most of these are based in China, the US and Europe.

“We are in parallel making doses, making vaccine in anticipation that we’ll be able to show it’s working and be able to start deploying it by the end of this year,” Glenn told a virtual news conference in Melbourne from Novavax’ headquarters in Maryland.

Finally, as Beijing scrambles to test millions of people in Wuhan and China’s northeaster Jilin Province, Taiwan on Tuesday announced plans to lift its coronavirus-related restrictions on mass gatherings and the sale of masks next month as China’s ‘wayward province’ has nearly stamped out the virus.

On seemingly every cable news channel, pundits are bemoaning the ‘politicization’ of the coronavirus pandemic. While their conclusion is typically to blame the president, we suspect there might be another reason why it sometimes seems like red states and blue states are experiencing different versions of the same reality.

Because they, effectively, are.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

A new EU draft policy announced last week calls for “insect-based proteins” to be extensively promoted as a replacement for animal products, to save the environment.

The European Commission announced the Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy, touting it as a “fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly” program that will focus on “increasing the availability and source of alternative proteins such as plant, microbial, marine, and insect-based proteins and meat substitutes.”

The draft noted that the program “will not happen without a shift in people’s diets”.

“Moving to a more plant-based diet with less red and processed meat and with more fruits and vegetables will reduce not only risks of life-threatening diseases, but also the environmental impact of the food system,” claims the strategy, revealed last Wednesday.

EU centric news site EURACTIV, noted that the policy is calling for eating bugs, and spoke to Constantin Muraru from the international platform of insects for food and feed (IPIFF), an EU non-profit organisation which represents the interests of the insect production sector.

Muraru lauded the idea of both humans and animals eating more bugs, saying that there is “enormous potential.”

“Currently, the EU is heavily reliant on the importation of feedstuffs, but the disruption in the past few months with the coronavirus outbreak has made it increasingly apparent that we must look to make our agriculture more self-sustainable,” he said.

“Insects can be produced locally and are a highly nutritious, protein-rich foodstuff that can be produced in high quantities in a small area,” he added.

The EU continues to push the idea of eating bugs, with its Food Safety Authority having approved the sale of bugs as “novel food” earlier this year, meaning that they are likely to be mass produced for human consumption throughout the continent by the end of the year.

“These have a good chance of being given the green light in the coming few weeks,” the secretary-general of the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed, Christophe Derrien, told The Guardian.

Would you switch to an insect-based diet? Although insects are viewed as a highly promising solution to the challenges facing the food industry, many Europeans still see them as novelty food at best.@EURACTIVBerlin reports.https://t.co/15bRNTc0oO

— EURACTIV (@EURACTIV) March 7, 2020

The craze for eating insects stems from UN guidelines that “promote insects as a sustainable high-protein food.”

As we have previously highlighted, eating bugs has been heavily promoted by cultural institutions and the media in recent years because people are being readied to accept drastically lower standards of living under disastrous global ‘Green New Deal’ programs.

This will be exacerbated by the expected economic recession, or even depression, caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

This is why globalist publications like the Economist have been promoting the idea of eating bugs despite the fact that the kind of elitists who read it would never consider for a second munching on crickets or mealworms.

Unsurprisingly, restaurants are not seeing a big uptake for worm burgers, otherwise known as ‘bug macs’, or cricket based cuisine.

Spain is attempting to revive its crashed economy as Madrid and Barcelona enter the early phases of a staged recovery on Monday, which permits social gatherings in limited numbers, restaurant and bar service (only outdoors), and some social and sports activities, reported Bloomberg. 

Oscar Fernandez, a restaurant operator in Madrid, said he served his first patrons in nearly two months on Monday afternoon amid virus lockdowns. 

“Since we’re a family business, every moment we’re shut is lost income,” said Fernandez, adding that customers were wearing masks and tables were spaced apart that met social distancing rules. He said, “our only employee is still off work with coronavirus.” 

Fernandez said strict social distancing rules had slashed his operating capacity by 50%. As a result, he must now serve customers from 6 am to 11 pm, a four extension to regular operating hours to make up for lost sales.   

Besides mask-wearing, social distancing separated tables and an abundance of hand-sanitizer, he said the most disturbing thing is that some of his elderly customers died because of the virus. 

“We are also a little sad today, as we have lost two of our more elderly regular customers,” Fernandez said. “They used to come every day but now they have left us.”

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has implemented a phased reopening of the economy that will allow it to recover while potentially prevent future transmission of the virus. 

Madrid and Barcelona entered the second phase of the recovery on Monday, which allows for gatherings of up to ten people, smaller shops to reopen, religious services, and limited capacity at gyms. The third phase is already underway in Spain’s northern Atlantic coastline, the Canary Islands, and the Andalusia region, allowing shopping malls, beaches, and restaurants to reopen.

Spain and Greece, two of Europe’s hottest vacation destinations, take major steps to reopen their economies https://t.co/oZdZaDAdwJ pic.twitter.com/v9rYKMpE4u

— Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) May 25, 2020

Spain’s Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said Monday, foreign tourists could be allowed back as soon as July. Maroto’s comments come as the country is starting to ease restrictions, but fears of a second coronavirus wave are already materializing in other parts of Europe.

Dr. Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview that the pandemic is not over and countries lifting lockdown restrictions is now the “time for preparation, not celebration”.

Several weeks ago a tit-for-tat border dispute between Spain and France unfolded as both countries could soon impose quarantines on travelers. We outlined how Europe would be rather difficult to reopen, despite Brussells calling for “free movement and cross-border travel” to restart the tourism industry on the continent.

Mask-wearing at bars and restaurants with limited capacity only suggests that there will be no V-shaped recovery in Europe’s economy this year. 

Authored by Bonnie Evans via The Epoch Times,

China has been building key government offices and facilities in African countries for decades and fitting them with gear that likely allows the Chinese government to spy on everyone, from presidents and prime ministers to judges and generals and beyond, according to a recent Heritage Foundation report.

More than 186 buildings constructed by China in 40 of the 54 nations in Africa house the sort of sensitive data and activity that invites surveillance, Heritage researcher Joshua Meservey found.

The Palace of Justice in the Angolan capital of Luanda was built in 2012, while in the notorious kleptocracy of Equatorial Guinea, the Chinese erected the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in 2015. And in Zimbabwe, where its former leader, the late Robert Mugabe, once called Chinese leader Xi Jinping “a God-sent person,” China has built the country’s National Defense College and is constructing its parliament, according to the report.

In all, “Chinese companies have built, expanded, or renovated at least 24 presidential or prime minister residences or offices; at least 26 parliaments or parliamentary offices; at least 32 military or police installations; and at least 19 ministries of foreign affairs buildings,” the report states.

That gives Beijing extraordinary access to gain insights into the most intimate workings of governments across Africa, and to the information that gives China clairvoyant-like powers to adjust its tactics to maximum advantage.

In conjunction with physical assets, China has also built 14 “intra-governmental telecommunication networks,” with Chinese-made systems such as those from Huawei. Meservey expects that those networks are all compromised in favor of China’s intelligence-gathering activities, giving the regime a significant advantage over not only its political and commercial competitors in Africa, but also over host-country officials who may themselves be liable for misdeeds.

The breadth and depth of intelligence coverage China has been able to achieve through its construction projects across Africa is a sign of the continent’s importance to Beijing’s geopolitical strategies, the report points out.

The Evidence

The suspicion that many of these facilities act as listening stations for Beijing is bolstered by two factors.

China has already been caught red-handed vacuuming up years of data from one of Africa’s most important public buildings. In 2018, first Le Monde and then the Financial Times ran stories exposing two systemic security breaches that China had hard-wired into the building it constructed and donated for the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The first was the discovery that the AU’s servers, also a Chinese gift, were uploading data to servers in Shanghai, nightly from midnight to 2 a.m.

The other breach at the AU was more tactile. A physical inspection of the AU building uncovered listening devices throughout the building.

Aside from the AU case, which offers direct evidence of China’s ability, and, more importantly, its willingness to spy on and compromise a friend, a second factor adds compelling circumstantial evidence to the likelihood that China is spying on Africa through the medium of its building infrastructure there.

That evidence is found in China, where for decades, apartment compounds and hotels were built that exclusively housed foreigners. In most if not all of those facilities, listening equipment was deployed to monitor conversations and movements of residents and guests, according to multiple Chinese Communist Party and foreign business and diplomatic sources. Those compounds include groups of diplomatic apartment buildings in Beijing, as well as hotels operating under major Western European and American brand names.

Indeed, even foreign students in China are known to have found microphones in their dormitories.

The Ramifications

The high probability that China is using infrastructure that it builds in Africa to spy on political and business leaders and events should give the United States pause, the report suggests. If the capability to spy in Africa is being used, then it means that China “has better surveillance access to Africa” than any other nation operating on the continent, Meservey writes.

Using that access and the inside knowledge it provides gives China an advantage in competitive commercial negotiations.

It also tips Beijing about who in Africa can be influenced to make decisions favorable to China’s goals, and how to exert and recruit that influence.

But the scope of surveillance isn’t limited to Africans, the report points out. Anyone in a room built or equipped by China can be the subject of Beijing’s listening capabilities, including U.S. and other foreign officials.

In addition, activities that take place in those physical locations between a host country and any other foreign nation also become vulnerable to Chinese spying, compromising “diplomatic strategies, military counterterrorism operations, [and] joint military exercises.”

Which is why, Meservey advises, “the U.S. should try to complicate Beijing’s surveillance … as part of a strategic response to the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] effort to reshape the global order.”

Beijing’s Reaction

In his May 22 press conference, Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, called the Heritage report’s claims “ridiculous” and “based on nothing but lies, illusions, and ideological bias,” in response to China Daily’s request to comment on the report.

In addition, “African leaders publicly refuted such rumors on multiple occasions,” Zhao said.

The Heritage report anticipated that response.

“Expect little help—and perhaps even resistance—from some African states. Given how adroitly the CCP has built influence in Africa and the many examples of African countries fearing to defy Beijing, the U.S. should not expect these governments to offer much assistance in ameliorating America’s counterintelligence problem in Africa,” the author writes.

In fact, “some, if asked, or in an attempt to curry CCP favor, may even actively collaborate with Beijing to hinder American efforts to protect its interests on the continent.”

In 1913, 412 million people lived under the control of the British Empire, 23 percent of the world’s population at that time.

It remains the largest empire in human history and at the peak of its power in 1920, it covered an astonishing 13.71 million square miles – that’s close to a quarter of the world’s land area. Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that at its height, it was described as “the empire on which the sun never sets” but of course the sun finally did set on it.

Today, Britannia no longer rules the waves and its remnants consist of 17 small dependent and unincorporated territories scattered across the world such as the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The Mongol Empire existed during the 13th and 14th centuries and it is recognized as being the largest contiguous land empire in history. It of course originated in Mongolia and once stretched from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan, extending into the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, covering 9.27 million square miles.

The Russian Empire comes third on the list with a peak land area of 8.8 million square miles.

The data for this infographic was published by website World Atlas.