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Democratic Republic of Congo
December 7, 2018 The second-largest Ebola outbreak in history has spread to a major city in eastern Congo, as health experts worry whether the stock of an experimental vaccine will stand up to the demands of an epidemic with no end in sight. Butembo, with more than 1 million residents, is now reporting cases of the deadly hemorrhagic fever. That complicates Ebola containment work already challenged by rebel attacks elsewhere that have made tracking the virus almost impossible in some isolated villages. The outbreak declared on Aug. 1 is now second only to the devastating West Africa outbreak that killed more than 11,300 people a few years ago. There are currently 471 Ebola cases, of which 423 are confirmed, including 225 confirmed deaths. Without the teams that have vaccinated more than 41,000 people so far, this outbreak could have already seen more than 10,000 Ebola cases, the health ministry said. This is by far the largest deployment of the promising but still experimental Ebola vaccine, which is owned by Merck. The company keeps a stockpile of 300,000 doses, and preparing them takes months. “We are extremely concerned about the size of the vaccine stockpile,” WHO’s emergencies director, Dr. Salama said. (Source: AP)
Bahrain
Dec 2, 2018 Vice Adm. Stearney, who oversaw U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, was found dead yesterday in his residence in Bahrain. Defense officials are calling it an "apparent suicide." Previously the director of operations for U.S. Central Command, Stearney became commander of the 5th Fleet in May 2018, relieving Vice Adm. Aquilino. The 5th Fleet operates in the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean, including the critical strategic choke points of the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal. (Source: CBS)
China
6th December 2018 A three-time World Press Photo award winner Chinese photographer who documented the dark side of life in the communist state mysteriously vanishes. Lu disappeared in China's Xinjiang region last month while documenting the country's oppression of Muslims. Lu was travelling alone in the southern city of Kashgar at the time of his disappearance and national security officers in the heavily-controlled region had taken him away. (Source: TheSun)
03 December 2018 Its controversial former employee He, the scientist who claimed to have produced the world’s first gene-edited babies, has been detained - a spokeswoman for the Shenzhen-based Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTC) said. The scientist has been branded in some quarters as “China’s Frankenstein” after he released a YouTube video last week in which he claimed that gene-edited twins had been born in China. He claimed that his team of researchers had modified the sisters’ embryos to effectively switch off an HIV-related gene because their father has the virus. He was then condemned by Chinese health officials, who said they knew nothing of the experiment. (Source: SouthChinaMorningPost)
Turkey
Decmeber 8, 2018 Paris riots grant Erdogan rare chance to attack Europe on rights. “Those who mocked our police force, accusing it of brutality, should now look at their own police force. Europe has failed the class on democracy, freedoms and human rights.” The Turkish president was addressing supporters in Istanbul, the cultural heartland rocked five years ago by months of unrest that was met with a heavy-handed police response. Erdogan’s message has a resonance among die-hard fans. A Haber, a staunchly pro-government news channel, has been broadcasting the Paris protests all day, portraying the events as a mixture of popular resentment toward social policies in France and as the outcome of a foreign conspiracy aimed at undermining France, much like the anti-government protests that began in Istanbul in the middle of 2013 and spread to the rest of the country. (Source: Bloomberg)
Dec 1, 2018 Around 14,000 people crossed the Evros frontier from January through September of this year, more than double the number for the whole of last year, according to the Greek police. Around half of them were Turkish citizens, according to estimates from Frontex, the European Union’s border agency. Many are judges, military personnel, civil servants or business people who have fallen under Turkish authorities’ suspicion, had their passports canceled and chosen an illegal route out. Nearly 4,000 Turks have applied for asylum in Greece so far this year. But most Turkish arrivals don’t register their presence in Greece, planning instead to head deeper into Europe and further from Turkey. Turkish authorities and pro-government media have branded the thousands who have crossed the Evros as terrorists and accused Greece of harboring them. (Source: TheWallStreetJournal)
United States
7th December 2018 Sensational new documents officials hid for decades. MKUltra was the code name for a top secret and illegal programme of human experiments which the CIA carried out in the early 50s until it was official halted in 1973. The aim of the project was to identify and develop mind-control drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture in a bid to force confessions and control behaviour. Although the CIA admitted to running the covert operation during congressional hearings in the 70s, they claimed that all records relating to it had been destroyed. Researcher Greenewald Jr spent almost 20 years trying to obtain the documents. The new documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal how the CIA experimented on both humans and animals using drugs, hypnosis and electronic devices as part of the top secret - and illegal - mind control project MKUltra. It shows that the entire story is not yet out - which is contrary to what the CIA wants us to believe. "I’m sure that they are using what they found in the fifties and the sixties - and beyond - probably today”, researcher Greenewald Jr, who published the records last week on his website The Black Vault said. (Source: TheSun)
4 December 2018 Abandoning the INF Treaty would be a step toward a new arms race. The United States announced a suspension of its obligations, effective 60 days after December 4, unless Russia returns to full and verifiable compliance, as a remedy under customary international law for Russia’s material breach - a state department spokesperson said. The US has given Russia 60 days to comply with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty or it will no longer abide by the agreement and could produce, test and deploy new missiles, the secretary of state, Pompeo, has warned. The ultimatum could herald a major new arms race, with serious implications for Europe. The INF treaty has kept nuclear-armed missiles off European soil for nearly three decades. If it breaks down, missiles could be returned to Europe as early as February. "The United States today declares it has found Russia in material breach of the treaty and will suspend our obligations as a remedy effective in 60 days unless Russia returns to full and verifiable compliance,” the secretary of state Pompeo said. Under the terms of the INF treaty, the US would have to give six months’ notice of withdrawal. That period would only start at the beginning of February. “During the 60 days, we will still not test or produce or deploy any systems, and we’ll see what happens during this 60-day period.” NATO allies would have to agree unanimously to have any new missile deployed in Europe. Russia is already producing and deploying ground-launched cruise missiles within the banned range limits of 500km and 5,500km and could deploy them widely, in Europe and in the east along the Chinese border. Moscow accuses the US of violating the INF by the deployment of the Aegis missile defence system in Romania and Poland, on the grounds that the launchers used in that system for defensive interceptors could be adapted to fire offensive cruise missiles. The 1969 Vienna convention on treaties allows one party to an agreement to suspend its compliance if another side is in material breach. The US signed but did not ratify that convention. The former US secretary state Shultz helped negotiate the terms of the INF treaty at the 1986 Reykjavik summit between Gorbachev and Reagan. Trump declared his intention to leave the INF treaty on 20 October, Bolton had been pushing for the administration to take that official step at this week’s Nato ministerial meeting. European leaders are seeking to broker a last-ditch compromise between the US and Russia that would save the INF. The German chancellor Merkel convinced Trump at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires to delay formal withdrawal proceedings until the new year. (Source: TheGuardian)
December 1, 2018 The U.S. military hopes that common marine microorganisms might be genetically engineered into living tripwires to signal the passage of enemy subs, underwater vessels, or even divers. The Naval Research Laboratory, or NRL, is supporting the research. You take an abundant sea organism, like Marinobacter, and change its genetic makeup to react to certain substances left by enemy vessels, divers, or equipment. These could be metals, fuel exhaust, human DNA, or some molecule that’s not found naturally in the ocean but is associated with, say, diesel-powered submarines. The reaction could take the form of electron loss, which could be detectable to friendly sub drones. In an engineered context take the ability of the microbes to give up electrons, then use [those electrons] to talk to something like an autonomous vehicle. Then you can start imagining that you can create an electrical signal when the bacteria encounters some molecule in their environment. U.S. Army researchers are focused on getting synthetic organisms out of the lab and into the field, that also means getting useful, new reactions out of abundant organisms and finding new nanoscale (one billionth of a meter in size) techniques to engineer those molecular reactions. Stratis-Cullum leads the biomaterials team at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. (Source: DefenseOne)
December 1, 2018 One of the biggest data breaches on record. Hackers stole information on as many as 500 million guests of the Marriott hotel empire over four years, obtaining credit card and passport numbers and other personal data, including arrival and departure dates. Information about a person’s hotel stay “could be used to incriminate someone. That information could mean knowing when and where government officials are traveling, such as to military bases or conferences. The data included reservations for future stays. The affected hotel brands were operated by Starwood before it was acquired by Marriott in 2016. They include W Hotels, St. Regis, Sheraton, Westin, Element, Aloft, The Luxury Collection, Le Méridien and Four Points. For as many as two-thirds of those affected, the exposed data could include mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passport numbers. Also included might be dates of birth, gender, reservation dates, arrival and departure times and Starwood Preferred Guest account information. The breach of personal information could put Marriott in violation of new European privacy laws, as guests included European travelers. The breach began in 2014. (Source: AP)
Globalization
December 8, 2018 Massive price inflation over the past years in stocks, bonds and real estate In their quest for power and glory (and accompanied by a dead-flat learning curve), the world’s central banks are now pursuing their third, largest, and most ill-considered attempt to defeat the business cycle by replacing it with a credit cycle. The fact that the prior two credit cycles blew up spectacularly doesn't seem to be deterring them in the slightest. A rather minor business cycle slowdown in 1994 was fought with a tidal wave of new credit under Greenspan. That ultimately resulted in the Dot Com Bubble crash of 2000, but the lesson went unlearned. Instead the Fed concluded that the idea was sound, but was simply not taken far enough. The elite cheerleading squad, captained by Krugman, fully supported a doubling down, and the media unquestioningly went along with the program. So Greenspan and Bernanke created the Housing Bubble 1.0 by offering the world’s credit markets a price of money so low it couldn't be refused. Housing was the story, and the Fed supplied the credit. As predicted, that all blew up spectacularly in 2008. And no constructive lessons were drawn from that experience, either. With the political aircover to "save the system" (from the problems that it created!), Bernanke, Yellen, Kuroda and Draghi then led the most aggressive, coordinated central bank bender in all of human history. $Trillions and $trillions were printed up, and many times that amount were leveraged and loaned throughout the banking and speculative finance universes. $250 trillion in debt. 4 times that amount in unfunded liabilities. And a mind-bogglingly massive amount of tangled financial derivatives roughly the same size as both those debts and liabilities put together. Housing has never been more unaffordable to more people than it is now. We've seen more downside volatility in the financial markets this year than in all of 2012-2017. Until and unless the central banks reverse their current tightening course, everything is headed lower. How far could the markets fall from their current prices? Easily 30% to 50%. And that's if we're lucky. (Source: ZeroHedge)
December 2018 The UK Parliament published a cache of secret Facebook documents. British lawmakers seized the bombshell papers last month from Six4Three, a developer that is suing Facebook in the US. The documents are under seal by court order in California but were published using parliamentary privilege in the UK. The papers show Facebook "whitelisting" firms in return for access to data and taking "aggressive positions" against rivals, such as Twitter's defunct video app Vine. The documents include emails sent by Facebook CEO Zuckerberg. (Source: BusinessInsider). All 250 pages of the Facebook documents: https://tinyurl.com/ycvsxwtn
December 1, 2018 It was the lowest common denominator. The G20 communique was finally adopted after all-night haggling by negotiators ensured that the summit in crisis-hit Argentina at least finished with a joint platform, unlike recent G7 and Asia-Pacific summits where Trump's objections caused unprecedented breakdowns. Apart from the United States, all other G20 members agreed to implement the "irreversible" Paris Agreement on climate change, ahead of a UN summit on the planetary threat starting next week in Poland. Trump's opposition defies the international scientific consensus and the findings of his own government, which issued a report last week warning of an enormous hit to the US economy unless action is taken now. The G20 agreed to reform the World Trade Organization, which is accused by Trump of limiting US commercial freedoms to the advantage of China and other rivals. Trump pulled out of a meeting with Russian President Putin, citing Russia's recent seizure of three Ukrainian vessels off Crimea, although the two did cross paths at a G20 dinner. The Russian leader had a more fruitful dialogue in Buenos Aires with Saudi Crown Prince Salman, whom he greeted as a long-lost friend, ignoring Western opprobrium over the prince's alleged role in the murder of a dissident Saudi journalist in October. (Source: Yahoo)
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