.
Afrika
2018. IX. 14 Miért fogja Afrika gyarmatosítani Európát? Az ideológiai és morális lózungoktól kondicionált európai vezetők makacsul igyekeznek figyelmen kívül hagyni ezt a realitást, és inkább a fejlődés mítoszához ragaszkodnak. Különböző mértékben mindnyájan „a gazdasági fejlődés lassítja a migrációt” posztulátumát szajkózzák – és mindnyájan tévednek. Ahogyan azt néhány heterodox közgazdász, politikailag inkorrekt történész és a kutatási területével szemben tisztességes afrikanista már évek, sőt évtizedek óta ismételgeti, Afrika állítólagos „fejlődése” csupán egy illúzió, sőt néha egyenesen intellektuális és politikai szélhámoskodás. Alapvetően két fő okból: egyrészt még ha valós is lenne, akkor is csak nagyon hosszú távon lenne eredménye, holott már most is azonnali szükséghelyzet áll fenn; másrészt az afrikai országok függetlenségének több mint hat évtizeddel ezelőtti kikiáltása óta már mindent megpróbáltak ezen a területen, de hiába, és a „beindítására” elherdált kolosszális összegek ellenére Afrika valójában folyamatosan hanyatlik. Ahelyett, hogy fejlődne, globálisan évről évre szegényebb lesz. Tényleges gazdasági súlyát (vagy inkább súlytalanságát) jellemzi, hogy az ENSZ 2013-as adata szerint a világkereskedelem alig 3,2 százalékát képviseli. Ez önmagában ékesen cáfolja azt a haladó berkekben előszeretettel hangoztatott lózungot, miszerint Afrika azért fejletlen, mert a nyugati multik kifosztják a nyersanyagforrásait. Valójában a nemzetközi árucserék terén gyakorlatilag elhanyagolható tényező, és az egyetlen dolog, amit globális méretekben exportál, az a népességfölöslege. (Forrás: Demokrata)
South Africa
11 September 2018 South Africa's murder rate rose again last year, official statistics showed today, with over 20,000 killed across the country - about 57 a day. (Source: France24)
China
Sept. 19, 2018 Hong Kong’s development agency to create hundreds of acres of “new” land by blasting caverns into mountains and hills around the city. The agency is studying the feasibility of moving more than a dozen facilities - including a garbage-transfer station, city archives and a vehicle depot - into enormous man-made caves. In 2009 the University of Hong Kong developed a campus on land once occupied by saltwater reservoirs that were moved into a cave. In the future, concert halls, swimming pools, shopping complexes and dozens of other community facilities could be relocated, city officials say. (Source: TheWallStreetJournal)
September 18, 2018 China as the largest foreign creditor to the U.S. China’s ownership of U.S. bonds, bills and notes slipped to $1.17 trillion, the lowest level since January and down from $1.18 trillion in June. Japan, the largest foreign investor in Treasuries after China, increased its holdings, as did Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Singapore and France. The first salvos in the U.S.-China trade conflict were fired on July 6, when the Trump administration activated tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods, which sparked immediate in-kind retaliation from Beijing. The escalation caused the yuan to drop roughly 2 percent in July. The tit-for-tat tariff battle has since widened, with each country imposing duties on another $16 billion of goods and the U.S. slated to hit a further $200 billion of Chinese imports on Sept. 24. Beijing plans retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods. China’s foreign exchange reserves rose in July to $3.12 trillion, even amid a continued slide in the currency. The yuan has tumbled more than 8 percent since the end of March while the nation’s stocks have fallen 16 percent. Japan saw its holdings rise by $5.1 billion to $1.04 trillion. Expensive hedging costs have caused Japanese investors to sour on U.S. Treasuries in recent months in favor of European debt. (Source: Bloomberg): https://tinyurl.com/yc69gz4a
15 September 2018 Two nuclear power plants stand on the projected path of Typhoon Mangkhut, which is expected to make landfall in mainland China as early as morrow afternoon. Taishan Nuclear Power Plant and Yangjiang Nuclear Power Station, both in Guangdong province, said they were “in combat readiness” mode as the superstorm approached. China has more than 40 nuclear power reactors in operation and more under construction as Beijing moves to reduce its dependence on coal plants. After barrelling through the Philippines today, Mangkhut is expected to head through the South China Sea before reaching the Chinese mainland, somewhere between Yangjiang and Wenchang in Hainan province, just days after Typhoon Barijat slammed the region. Hong Kong prepares for worst as most powerful storm since records began. (Source: SouthChinaMorningPost): https://tinyurl.com/ybsrfmx
Saudi Arabia
September 16, 2018 Prosecutors seek death sentences for influential imams. The jailed clerics are among Saudi Arabia’s best-known and most popular Sunni Muslim religious figures: Odah, who has more than 14 million Twitter followers; Qarni, author of a best-selling self-help book; and Alomari, a TV preacher. They were arrested a year ago in a roundup of imams with large followings for not openly supporting the government’s pressure campaign against Qatar. They are now facing trials in a national-security court on charges that include conspiring against the monarchy and supporting terrorism. Mr. Odah faces 37 charges for alleged crimes including spreading discord, incitement against the ruler, and being active in the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Odah, 61 years old, was once a hard-core Islamist who led the antimonarchy “Islamic Awakening” movement in the 1990s, which criticized Saudi Arabia’s decision to allow the U.S. military into the country to protect it from a potential Iraqi invasion. He went to prison for five years and embraced more moderate views after his release. Mr. Alomari faces 30 charges related to terrorism, including allegedly forming a terrorist youth organization. Mr. Qarni is charged with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups in Saudi Arabia designated as terrorist organizations. He is also accused of the crimes of stirring public discord, conspiring against the kingdom’s leaders, and sympathizing with those arrested in security cases. The House of Saud has remained the country’s ruling family for over eight decades through an alliance with imams who adhere to a strain of Islam known as Wahabbism. (Source: TheWallStreetJournal)
United States
20 September 2018 When you learn something, your brain physically changes. Connections are made and strengthened in a process called neuro-plasticity. Researchers claim to have developed a simulator which can feed information directly into a person’s brain and teach them new skills in a shorter amount of time. Researchers from HRL Laboratories, based in California, say they have found a way to amplify learning. They studied the electric signals in the brain of a trained pilot and then fed the data into novice subjects as they learned to pilot an aeroplane in a realistic flight simulator. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, found that subjects who received brain stimulation via electrode-embedded head caps improved their piloting abilities and learnt the task 33 per cent better than a placebo group. (Source: TheTelegraph)
Sept 20, 2018 Google Inc. told lawmakers it continues to allow other companies to scan and share data from Gmail accounts, responding to questions raised on Capitol Hill about privacy and potential misuse of the information contained in users’ emails. 'Developers may share data with third parties so long as they are transparent with the users about how they are using the data,' Molinari, the company’s vice president for public policy and government affairs for the Americas, wrote in July. Using software tools provided by Gmail and other email services, outside app developers can access information about what products people buy, where they travel and which friends and colleagues they interact with the most. In some cases, employees at these app companies have read people’s actual emails in order to improve their software algorithms. (Source: TheWallStreetJournal)
Sep 19, 2018 A federal search warrant reveals that Sunspot Solar Observatory was shut down as FBI agents conducted computer forensic searches for child pornography. A janitor is the main suspect in the search. The warrant states the suspect would use the observatory Wifi and a personal laptop to download the child pornography. (Source: KTSM)
September 19, 2018 Nearly half, a record 67 million - 21.8 percent of U.S. residents - in the nation’s five biggest cities do not speak English at home, choosing instead their native language. That is nearly double in 27 years. In New York City and Houston it is 49 percent; in Los Angeles it is 59 percent; in Chicago it is 36 percent; and in Phoenix it is 38 percent.” More and more reports emerge about both Americans and foreigners getting into heated debates over speaking English. In 2017, there were 85 cities and Census Designated Places in which a majority of residents spoke a foreign language at home. These include Hialeah, Fla. (95 percent); Laredo, Texas (92 percent); East Los Angeles, Calif. (90 percent) and places like Elizabeth, N.J. (76 percent); Skokie, Ill. (56 percent); Germantown, Md., and Bridgeport, Conn. (each 51 percent). In rural areas outside of metropolitan areas just 8 percent speak a language other than English at home. Nationally nearly one in four public school students now speaks a language other than English at home.3 In California, 44 percent of school-age (5-17) children speak a foreign language at home, and it's roughly one-third in Texas, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and Florida. Of those who speak a foreign language at home, 25.9 million (39 percent) told the Census Bureau that they speak English less than very well. (Source: WashingtonExaminer)
September 14, 2018 Ten years ago, the collapse of Lehman Brothers signaled that the U.S. was hurtling toward a financial crisis. In the years that followed, consumers faced difficulty managing debt as the economy contracted, unemployment accelerated and incomes stagnated. The Federal Reserve enacted extraordinary monetary policy to stem the decline, lowering interest rates to near zero to ease the burden of debt and buying securities to support the credit markets. These actions, along with initiatives from the Department of the Treasury, helped borrowers and lenders weather the Great Recession. Treasury, with other regulators, created programs to assist borrowers with their mortgage debt, including homeowners who found themselves "underwater" - owing more on their mortgage than their homes were worth - as home prices fell. Congress crafted more stringent capital rules to shore up banks. So where are we 10 years later? Consumer debt has increased to levels higher than those prior to the crisis. This is offset by an increase in personal income, though such gains have been sluggish by historic standards. U.S. consumers have a lower debt ratio. Americans have improved their financial condition as debt levels fell to 80 percent of GDP from a peak of 99 percent at the start of the crisis in 2008. Delinquency rates are down. From a high of 10 percent of mortgages in 2010, now just 4.36 percent of mortgages are delinquent. Credit card delinquencies are down to 2.47 percent from 6.77 percent in 2009. The one area of concern is subprime auto loan delinquencies, which are now higher than before the crisis. The debt service ratio is down. The portion of income borrowers use to service debt, is now 10.21 percent, down from a high of 13.22 percent in 2007. However, this is up from a low of 9.89 percent in 2012 as consumers have added some debt since then. Consumers are set to further improve, or at least sustain, their favorable financial condition because of the recently enacted Tax Cut and Jobs Act. Although most of the benefits will float to the higher-income brackets, there should be some improvement in aggregate consumer finances. However, those tax breaks come with a cost: a deteriorating fiscal position for the U.S. government. The Congressional Budget Office's long-term budget outlook, released in June 2018, reveals an unprecedented accumulation of federal debt. Path to $100 trillion: Under the new baseline incorporating recent changes in law, the national debt reaches $99 trillion in 2048 - equivalent to 152 percent of GDP. Trillion-dollar deficits: The federal budget deficit is expected to break through a trillion dollars in 2020 and never look back, reaching $2 trillion in 2032 and $6 trillion in 2048. These projections indicate that federal budgets will be under significant pressure. Underlying these projections is the assumption of continued favorable interest rates, and notably, no recessions are modeled in the projection period. Adverse real-world events could result in poorer fiscal outcomes. And although current policy suggests further near-term improvement, it comes at a price: An increasing the risk that federal debt could precipitate a new crisis. (Source: CBSNews)
September 12, 2018 Mysterious observatory evacuation stirs alien conspiracy theories. The FBI showed up and evacuated the remote Sunspot solar observatory in southern New Mexico. Almost a week later, no one knows why. Some say the evacuation could be part of a government effort to cover up a discovery involving aliens, an impending solar flare or something else extra-planetary. Others on Reddit and elsewhere think the security issue may involve a foreign power attempting to use the observatory's antennas to spy on nearby White Sands Missile Range. The observatory was built by the military in 1947 when it realized the sun could interfere with radio communications. The National Science Foundation ran the facility from the 1960s until this year, when operation was transferred to AURA and New Mexico State University. (Source: CNet): https://tinyurl.com/ycrr9vej
Mexico
18 Sep. 2018 Ongoing cartel violence in Tijuana. A pack of street dogs were discovered fighting over a discarded human head there late last week. Tijuana is experiencing a record-breaking homicide rate attributed to turf wars involving Cártel Tijuana Nueva Generación (CTNG), aligned with El Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, against the Sinaloa Cartel. The cartels are grasping for control of the lucrative street-level markets and routes leading into the United States. Tijuana is approaching 1,700 homicides for 2018. The previous record was in 2017 when 1,742 murders were registered for the year. (Source: Breitbart)
Globalization
September 20, 2018 Tech luminary and former Google CEO Schmidt predicted that the internet will bifurcate into Chinese-led and US-led versions within the next decade. Under Pichai's leadership, Google has explored the potential to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, stirring up controversy internally and outside the company. (Source: CNBC)
Sept 19, 2018 The War Room will house a team of about 20 focused on rooting out disinformation, monitoring false news and deleting fake accounts that may be trying to influence voters before elections in the United States, Brazil and other countries. Chakrabarti leads Facebook’s elections and civic engagement team. In July and August, the company detailed previously undisclosed efforts by Iranians and Russians to mislead users of the social network through divisive ads and posts. Now, with the midterm elections in the United States just seven weeks away, Facebook is in an all-out sprint to convince the world that it is ready to handle any new attempts at such meddling. The company has taken steps to build defenses against spammers, hackers and foreign operatives, including hiring thousands of people to help moderate content and starting an archive to catalog all political ads. One of the tools the company is introducing is custom software that helps track information flowing across the social network in real time, to view into how activity on the platform is changing. It allows employees to zero in on, say, a specific false news story in wide circulation or a spike in automated accounts being created in a particular geographic area. Facebook created what it calls its elections and civic engagement team in 2007 to work with governments and campaigns on how they could use the social network most effectively. For a long time, the team numbered just a few dozen people in Silicon Valley; it expanded in 2013 to include members in other offices outside the United States. Facebook has said each of its units - including Instagram and WhatsApp - has been told to make election security a top priority when designing products. Once a problem reaches the War Room, the dashboards will be set to spot and track unusual activity, while data scientists and security experts take a closer look. (Source: TheNewYorkTimes)
12 September 2018 The European Parliament’s positionon the Digital Single Market Directive What’s in there for libraries? (Source: International Federation for Library Assiciations and Institutions): https://tinyurl.com/y8k5rlm4
September 11, 2018 Google has battled against France at the European Court of Justice in a landmark case to determine people's "right to be forgotten" online. The "right to be forgotten" could censor search engine Google, Bing and Yahoo in Europe, banning them from sharing people's personal information online if they have been asked to erase it. It is also likely to impact social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The European Court of Justice will determine what type of information should be removed from search engines that operate in Europe, and whether it should apply worldwide. (Source. Yahoo)
Earth
Tuesday, 09/11/18 The National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico has been closed since last Thursday. All these solar/space cams down at the same time: AXIS 232D Network Dome Camera located in Sydney Australia Webcams located at SOAR Observatory – The Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope located in Chile. BRT Tenerife Telescope Webcam located in Spain Webcam located at Mauna Kea observatory at the University of Hawaii Hilo Webcam from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope observatory in Hawaii Webcam at JAT OBservatory in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania (Source: ZeroHedge): https://tinyurl.com/yabms36r
Space
Sept. 13, 2018 NASA, Roscosmos Statement on Aug. 29-30 International Space Station Leak. NASA Administrator Bridenstine and Roscosmos General Director Rogozin met for the first time yesterday via teleconference to discuss the status of International Space Station (ISS) operations in response to a request from Roscosmos. “As part of their discussion, Rogozin informed his American counterpart about Roscosmos’ decision to establish a Roscosmos-led Commission to investigate the cause of the leak in the Soyuz (MS-09/55S) spacecraft currently docked to the station. “The Administrator and the General Director noted speculations circulating in the media regarding the possible cause of the incident and agreed on deferring any preliminary conclusions and providing any explanations until the final investigation has been completed. The entire crew is dedicated to the safe operation of the station and all docked spacecraft to ensure mission success. “The Administrator and the Roscosmos General Director agreed to conduct their first face-to-face meeting at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on or about Oct. 10 when the NASA Administrator will visit Russia and Kazakhstan in conjunction with the upcoming Soyuz crew spacecraft launch of American astronaut Hague and Russian cosmonaut Ovchinin.” (Source: NASA)
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