Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Largest sovereign wealth fund lost $21B in 1st half of 2020

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- The world's largest sovereign wealth fund on Tuesday reported a $21 billion loss over the first six months of 2020, due to "major fluctuations in the equity market."

Norges Bank Investment Management said Norway's Government Pension Fund declined nearly 7% in value over the period.

The report said the loss was dramatic because equity investments, which have been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, make up nearly 70% of the fund. The fund's total value is $1.18 trillion.

"The year began optimistically, thanks partly to expectations of healthy growth in the real economy," the report said. "The bull market came to an abrupt end as the coronavirus began to spread globally and countries around the world took drastic action to limit contagion.

"Financial markets were hit by a series of liquidity shocks due to substantial demand for cash both in the real economy and among investors. The collapse in share prices was counteracted by a massive monetary and fiscal response."

Norges said economic support packages by various governments have helped relax some economic fears, however.

"Together with a gradual relaxation of the lockdown measures in many developed markets, this made investors more optimistic again," it states.

The Government Pension Fund was created to protect Norway from harmful fluctuations in its oil sector, which accounts for much of the nation's economic productivity.

Reporters Without Borders calls for release of South Korean journalist

NOT NORTH KOREA!

Former Justice Minister Cho Kuk is the plaintiff in a defamation case against a South Korean journalist who made claims about Cho in a 2018 YouTube video. File Photo by Yonhap

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Reporters Without Borders is calling for the immediate release of a South Korean journalist who was sentenced to eight months in prison on charges of defamation.

The Paris-based global journalism watchdog said in statement Tuesday Woo Jong-chang, the journalist who has been charged by former Justice Minister Cho Kuk, is being punished under an "archaic law" after Woo refused to disclose the identity of a source he quoted in a YouTube video.
The sentence, which was delivered to Woo on July 17, came after Cho took action in response to a video uploaded in March 2018.

In the video, Woo alleged Cho met with Judge Kim Se-yoon at an upscale Korean restaurant near the presidential Blue House, according to South Korean news service Newsis. Cho was President Moon Jae-in's senior presidential secretary at the time. Kim was the judge who convicted former President Park Geun-hye on multiple counts of abuse and sentenced her to 24 years in prison in April 2018

According to Woo, Cho's meeting with Kim occurred in January or early February of that year, ahead of Park's conviction. This year, Cho sued Woo on charges of defamation while denying meeting Kim.

"The plaintiff, a former minister of justice who served as a senior presidential secretary at the time of the alleged conspiracy, recently posted a message on his Twitter account threatening the same prosecution on any journalist willing to continue the research that Woo Jong-chang began," Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday.

In July, Judge Ma Seong-yeong said Woo did "not even go through the process of confirming even the minimal number of facts" as a journalist.

RELATED South Korea police to handle spy cases, report says

The remarks Woo made in his YouTube video "have very serious implications" because they suggest the president's office interfered in Park's trial, Ma said.

South Korean conservatives have said Moon should pardon Park, who was convicted of colluding with a friend, Choi Soon-sil, so Choi could receive millions of dollars from major South Korean corporations.

Supernova could explain extinctions at the end of the Devonian period

Researchers suggest radiation from a supernova located 65 light-years away could have caused a series of extinction events some 360 million years ago. Photo by Jesse Miller

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- New research suggests harmful cosmic rays from a nearby supernova might have caused the extinction events that form the boundary between the Devonian-Carboniferous periods.

Around 360 million years ago, a lengthy period of biodiversity declines culminated in a series of extinction events that saw 19 percent of all families and 50 percent of all genera disappear.
Scientists have previously unearthed a diversity of Late Devonian plant spores that show evidence of being burnt by ultraviolet light, signs of a prolonged ozone-depletion event.

"Earth-based catastrophes such as large-scale volcanism and global warming can destroy the ozone layer, too, but evidence for those is inconclusive for the time interval in question," lead researcher Brian Fields said in a news release.

"Instead, we propose that one or more supernova explosions, about 65 light-years away from Earth, could have been responsible for the protracted loss of ozone," said Fields, professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Today, the closest supernova threat is the star Betelgeuse, located 600 light-years away. Scientists estimate a supernova would have to occur within 25 light-years to present a significant threat to life on Earth.

Millions of years ago, however, a variety of closer stars may have presented a graver threat, researchers contend.

RELATED Earth, moon were bombarded by asteroid shower 800 million years ago

Scientists determined that other cosmic threats, like a gamma-ray burst, solar eruption or meteorite explosion, are too short-lived to account for Devonian-Carboniferous extinctions. Some researchers estimate consisted of a half-dozen different events spread out over thousands, even millions, of years.

According to the new study, published Tuesday in the journal PNAS, a supernova could have delivered a one-two punch of electromagnetic energy.

After an initial blast of UV, X-rays and gamma rays, a barrage of supernova debris can sustain a constant supply of irradiation. The effects of a single supernova, scientists estimated, could affect Earth for up 100,000 years.

RELATED Life in ocean abyss recovered quickly after end-Cretaceous mass extinction event

The researchers suggest a series of supernovas might have poisoned Earth with ultraviolet rays for a few hundred thousands years.

"This is entirely possible," said grad student Jesse Miller. "Massive stars usually occur in clusters with other massive stars, and other supernovae are likely to occur soon after the first explosion."

Currently, the possibility that supernova radiation triggered the Devonian-Carboniferous extinctions is only a theory. But researchers claim it's a theory that could be confirmed by the discovery of radioactive isotopes plutonium-244 and samarium-146 in rocks from the period.

"When you see green bananas in Illinois, you know they are fresh, and you know they did not grow here. Like bananas, Pu-244 and Sm-146 decay over time," Fields said. "So if we find these radioisotopes on Earth today, we know they are fresh and not from here -- the green bananas of the isotope world -- and thus the smoking guns of a nearby supernova."

Fields and his colleagues are currently working out what Pu-244 or Sm-146 isotope concentrations might look like in Devonian-Carboniferous era rocks, so that scientists will know what to look for if and when they go prospecting.

"The overarching message of our study is that life on Earth does not exist in isolation," Fields said. "We are citizens of a larger cosmos, and the cosmos intervenes in our lives -- often imperceptibly, but sometimes ferociously."

Farmers should share burden of cultivating wild bees, researchers say

\
California's Central Valley hosts some of the most fertile agricultural land in the United States. Photo by NeedPix/Pixabay

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- To save money and avoid burdensome debt, farmers often share expensive equipment with their neighbors. Whether they know it or not, new research suggests farmers also often share a much lighter asset -- wild bees.

Too often, researchers argue in a new paper, farmers who cultivate habitat for bees go unrewarded, while their neighbors receive pollination services for free. After all, bees don't pay attention to fences or land boundaries.

Authors of the new paper, published Tuesday in the journal People and Nature, argue farmers who make life easier for wild bee populations should be compensated.

"Understandably, farmers with highly valuable crops don't always want to give up plantable space to create habitats for wild bees, especially if their crops could be pollinated by a neighbor's bees for free," lead study author Eric Londsorf said in a news release.

RELATED U.S. beekeepers saw unusually high summertime colony losses in 2019

"What we're proposing is that those farmers providing bee habitat could be rewarded for doing so, to the benefit of all," said Londsorf, a researcher at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment.

To better understand the value created by farmers who cultivate habitat for bees, researchers looked at wild bee ecology, crop values and land ownership patterns in Yolo County, California.

Many of the farmers in the fertile Central Valley country grow bee-dependent crops like berries and nuts, which are worth thousands of dollars per acre.

RELATED Grooming bees help boost colony immunity

It's the opportunity costs, not the startup costs, that keep farmers from cultivating habitat for wild bees, researchers say.

Attracting wild bees is often as simple is letting a patch of land grow wild -- bees benefit from a patch of wild grasses and flowers amidst the rows of commercial crops.

According to the calculations of Londsorf and his colleagues, if 40 percent of farmers in Yolo County grew wild bee habitat, they would miss out on roughly $1 million of revenue, but would generate almost $2.5 million for their neighbors.

RELATED Pesticides harm honeybee nursing behavior, larval development, video shows

Researchers suggest the USDA and other federal agencies take the lead in organizing programs to help farmers coordinate their pollination efforts, ensuring the costs and benefits of cultivating wild bee habitat is shared.

"This is about tackling the tragedy of the commons, the idea that what's good for society isn't always what's good for a particular individual," said study co-author Taylor Ricketts.

"This research shows how and where working together can really increase the benefits for everyone, and just as important: where it won't," said Ricketts, director of the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont.

Survey: 1 in 4 Connecticut nursing home residents had COVID-19

People in nursing homes make up roughly 60% of coronavirus deaths in Connecticut, researchers report.

NATIONALIZE ELDER CARE UNDER MEDICARE

NO PRIVATE NURSING HOMES OR PRIVATIZED CARE GIVERS

By HealthDay News

Photo by Sabine van Erp/Pixabay

When COVID-19 was raging in the Northeastern United States, more than 25% of Connecticut nursing-home residents were suffering from the coronavirus, a new survey reports.

Nursing homes are very susceptible to the pandemic because the patients are elderly, living in close quarters and often have other medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19, Yale School of Public Health researchers said.

Their survey found that 28% of 2,117 people tested in 33 nursing homes were infected with the virus. Testing was completed by mid-June.

"Nursing homes have been the epicenter of the disease in Connecticut, and much of the U.S. and Europe," said lead author Dr. Sunil Parikh, an associate professor of epidemiology and medicine at Yale.

RELATED Universal COVID-19 testing in nursing homes may limit transmission

"Without widespread testing of all residents, it would have been impossible to effectively institute proper infection control measures, such as isolating infected, uninfected and exposed residents from one another," Parikh said in a university news release.

People in nursing homes make up more than 60% of the COVID-19 deaths in the state, the researchers said.

Among 601 infected people, about 90% had no symptoms of the disease. Only a small number of them went on to develop symptoms, Parikh's team found.

RELATED Dementia gene might increase risk for serious COVID-19, study says

"This study also shows how quickly the virus can take hold in congregate settings, as the majority of nursing homes had over half of their residents test positive within a month of identifying their first case, despite standard infection prevention measures at the time," Parikh said. "Clearly, PPE and testing shortages, coupled with a symptom-based testing strategy, made it difficult to get a handle on these outbreaks early on."

The researchers also found:
Infections rates of at least 50% in 19 nursing homes.
Of 530 asymptomatic nursing home patients, 12% developed symptoms within 14 days.
Only three of the tested nursing homes had no positive cases.

"What we need to figure out now is the optimal frequency for repeat surveys of both residents and staff moving forward. Cases in nursing homes have now dramatically dropped, and we also need to rigorously assess the impact of point prevalence surveys on curtailing the outbreaks in these congregate settings," Parikh said.

RELATED Social isolation increases risk for COVID-19, other health problems, studies say

The findings were published in a research letter online recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More information
For more on COVID-19, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

(0) Leave a comment
upi.com/7030735

Belarusian TV journalists replaced by Russian propagandists – ex-news director

DON'T GIVE TRUMP IDEAS

19 August 2020

Tu-214P plane of Russia's FSB landed in Minsk amid ongoing protests. REUTERS

Former director of the Belarusian TV Company Elena Martynovskaya has said Russia deployed two planes carrying propaganda teams to Minsk late on August 18.

Martynovskaya says she was not allowed to her workplace this morning after being blacklisted by her management, along with other protest supporters from among TV channel's staff, TUT.BY reports.

Read also Ukraine decries allegations of "special operation" to arrest Wagner PMC troops as "fake story"

"At 09:00, my colleagues and I were approaching the building. There was a checkpoint, the police officers were there, and they asked where we were going. They said: 'Please, show your ID.' They looked at the name and said: 'Sorry, you can't pass, you're not on the list. We can't let you pass,'" she told TUT.BY.

Martynovskaya also clarified who has replaced her on the job. "Oh yeah. That's a very interesting story. Two planes arrived from Russia, bringing employees who are now performing our functions for a very large pay. Here, in the Republic [of Belarus], we have no money to provide doctors with face masks, we raise funds all over the country, but we do have money for new news teams," she said.

The Belarusian TV Company staff partially supported protests contesting election results. Since the outbreak of a new wave of opposition rallies, journalists started quitting the TV company, while other employees joined the main demands of protesters to hold another election. Earlier, it became known the Tu-214PU aircraft of Russia's FSB had landed in Minsk on Tuesday, August 18, amid protests across the country.

Russia's "support" for Lukashenko Russia became one of the first countries to congratulate Lukashenko on his alleged win in the presidential elections in Belarus, while Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia made no such calls. Ukraine did not congratulate Lukashenko either.

Later, the EU said the Belarus election had been rigged, and recognized Lukashenko persona non grata. In parallel lines, the West is preparing a package of sanctions against those involved in the violence and killings of protesters in the early days of unrest.

At the same time, eyewitnesses spotted convoys of Russian Guard trucks heading toward Belarusian border. Also, several aircraft of the Belarus air force were spotted flying to Russian military bases. Both European diplomats and U.S. legislators, as well as political scientists, have expressed concerns about Russia's meddling in Belarus, with some warning of the unfolding of the "Crimea scenario".

STORIES ON BELARUS FROM UKRAINE NEWS SERVICE
Read more on UNIAN:
https://www.unian.info/world/belarusian-protests-local-tv-newsmakers-replaced-by-russian-propagandists-ex-news-director-says-11117618.html

From Belarus to Lebanon, the US to Thailand, righteous moral outrage is sweeping the globe

Anger, it can seem, is everywhere. It spreads faster than ever. It is viral, but unlike coronavirus cannot be socially distanced into abeyance. Its roots are deep.
BY JEREMY CLIFFE 19 AUGUST 2020

GETTY
A protest against disputed presidential elections results in Minsk on 18 August 2020

Amid demonstrations over Belarus’s fraudulent election, President Alexander Lukashenko tried to bolster his position with a public appearance on 17 August. It did not go well. Travelling by helicopter to avoid protesters on the roads, the president visited what he considered an outpost in his political heartland: a state-owned tractor factory on the outskirts of Minsk. Even there he could not hide from the rage, as workers chanted “resign” until Lukashenko left the stage. Unthinkable until recent days, the scenes illustrated the scale of the public anger in Belarus over the electoral fraud and curtailment of rights.

We are living in an “age of anger”, the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra observes in a book of the same name. Consider the course of the long 2010s: starting with the financial crisis in 2008 and the political revolts it sparked; the Arab Spring uprisings and their descent into autocratic backlashes and even bloodbaths; the rise of nativists and their tribunes, the Erdogans, Modis and Trumps; the terror attacks, the state collapses, the refugee crises, the violence from Ukraine to Yemen, from Myanmar to Brazil, from social media newsfeeds to city squares.

Since Mishra’s book was published in 2017 the anger continues to spool forth. Last year saw an upsurge in street protests in Chile, Lebanon, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Algeria and Hong Kong, as well as the global Fridays for Future marches. These have continued this year – amid a pandemic that has exposed inequities and strained societies – in Bolivia, Ivory Coast, South Africa and Israel, in the ongoing demonstrations in Hong Kong, Iraq and Russia and in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Daily protests fill the debris-strewn public spaces of Beirut over the fatal blast on 4 August and the misrule behind it. Belarus’s protests are the largest in its history. Thailand, too, is experiencing record demonstrations as a younger generation vents its rage at military and royal overreach.

Anger, it can seem, is everywhere. It spreads faster than ever, rippling across social media networks whose algorithms, which constantly push users towards rage-clicks, speed it on its way. It is viral, then, but unlike coronavirus cannot be socially distanced into abeyance. Its roots are deep. Mishra argues that they reach back to unresolved tensions within the Enlightenment, caused by that project’s insensitivity to what Sigmund Freud dubbed “primitive, savage and evil impulses of mankind”. Humans are subjective, emotional and tribal. They are individuals, yes, but also crowds; the mass protagonists of an age symbolised by fists in the air, police sirens and tear gas drifting across city squares.

In their recently published dialogue “Angrynomics” the economists Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth helpfully refine the picture. They differentiate between two forms of anger. On the one hand is primal, tribal rage, which can range from benign forms (sports fans yelling at a referee) to malign ones (social media pile-ons) and ones yet darker still: wraths stimulating desires to dominate, marginalise, and obliterate. This is anger serving what psychologists call the “minimal group paradigm”, humans’ psychosocial predisposition to form groups based on any distinctions available. On the other hand is moral outrage, the Aristo-telian anger at injustice that inspires movements for freedom and justice. This form of anger is in league, not in tension, with the unfinished (indeed, rather dilapidated) project of Enlightenment modernity.

Separating out the two can be tricky. Universalist moral outrage can spawn tribal anger, which in turn can create objects of moral outrage. Nor do crowds have to be tribal and exclusive: as the MP David Lammy notes in his book Tribes, “inclusive group identities” are the fount of belonging and collective organisation. Both forms of anger have intertwined throughout the 2010s, including within individual causes and movements, and continue to do so today.

It is notable that the anger expressed in the protests of 2019 and 2020 has largely been moral outrage: anger at leaders and other elites over economic injustice, racism, environmental degradation, authoritarianism or incompetence, or in many places (Hong Kong, Lebanon, Iran, Belarus, Thailand and the US among them) combinations of the above. These movements have often been leaderless, emerging organically from the citizenry rather than being summoned by figureheads. That makes them harder for authorities to decapitate; the Hong Kong protesters, for example, aim to “be water” – fluid, flexible and ungraspable. Such movements spread their messages on social media and organise through encrypted messaging apps, especially Telegram and WhatsApp. Often they encompass groups previously written off as apathetic: white middle-class Americans joining BLM protests; supposedly materialist, apolitical Gen Z-ers marching for the environment; peoples long cowed by numbing autocracy – Belarusians, Iranians, Thais and others – raising their voices.

We live, then, less in an age of anger than an age of angers; some base and brutish, others defensive and simmering, many a mixture of traits, and some – the factory workers chanting at Lukashenko in an act that would have had them arrested and even tortured days before – overwhelmingly in pursuit of noble ideals. And this is just the beginning.

The coming months alone, including the US election campaign, still-rising coronavirus death tolls and a global economic crisis, will stimulate anger in all of its forms. So expect more tribalism, demagoguery and petty hatreds. But also expect more righteous moral anger, expressed by brave citizens marching on the streets of the world’s cities and towns in a continuation of the wave that began in 2019. The long 2010s? We may already be well into the long 2020s.

Jeremy Cliffe is International Editor of the New Statesman.

Strike in Belarus by Potash Miners Pressures President, Clouds Commodity Market

State-owned mining company is key player in country’s economy and global fertilizer business Belarus Protests: Could Russia and the West Clash Again in Eastern Europe?

After more than a week of mass protests in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko said he was ready to share power. WSJ’s Ann Simmons reports on how the situation could heighten tensions between Russia and the West. Photo: Tatyana Zenkovich/Shutterstock, Nikolai Petrov/Associated Press

Aug. 17, 2020 12:40 pm ET

Workers at the world’s largest miner of potash are joining widespread protests against Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, intensifying pressure on the embattled leader and threatening to disturb the market for a key fertilizer.

JSC Belaruskali controls up to 20% of the global supply in potash, meaning any extended strike action or disruption at the company could impact prices of a commodity widely used by farmers to help plants grow. The state-owned mining company is also a pillar of Belarus’s economy and a major source...

WSJ PAYWALL

Belarusian potash producer to continue strikes, ore mining halted

More than 1,000 staff of the plant took part in the rally as joined by local teachers who came to support the miners

Belarus workers taking part in protests against election results

SOLIGORSK, August 19. /TASS/. Strikes at Belaruskali, one of the world’s biggest producers and exporters of potash fertilizers, will continue, while no decision on a hunger strike has been made, co-chairman of the strike committee at the Belarusian enterprise Anatoly Bokun told a rally on Wednesday.

"A decision was made to continue the strike until our demands are fulfilled. Meanwhile, we believe it is early now to declare a hunger strike," Bokun said.

In pictures: the latest from Belarus protests last updated: 19/08/2020

By Natalia Liubchenkova with AFP, AP

Protesters and police are seen in front of the Minsk Tractor Works Plant in Belarus.
August 19, 2020 - Copyright SERGEI GAPON/AFP or licensorsProtests in Belarus have been taking place for 10 days, pressing for the resignation of longtime President Alexander Lukashenko. He has extended his 26-year rule in the latest election held on Sunday August 9, but the opposition says it was rigged.

The peaceful demonstrations met a harsh police crackdown, thousands were arrested.
The demonstrations are being followed by a widening strike in the country. The workers at state-controlled factories and plants, even actors and broadcasters have formed activists groups or simply walked off the job.
Lukashenko has refused to step down or to hold new elections.
These are the latest photographs from Belarus' ongoing protests.

Striking miners protest against disputed presidential election results in the mining city of Soligorsk, Belarus. August 19, 2020 Sergei Gapon/AFP

Protesters and police are seen in front of the Minsk Tractor Works Plant in Minsk, Belarus. August 19, 2020 Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo

People protest against disputed presidential elections results at Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus. August 18, 2020 Sergei Gapon/AFP

A woman holds a poster showing a photo of a protester allegedly wounded by police and words reading “The future of our children is in your hands” during a rally in Minsk Sergei Grits/AP Photo

Minister of Culture passes a woman holding a banner reading “Art demands freedom” during a protest in support of the troupe that quit after the theatre’s director was firedDmitri Lovetsky/AP

People protest against disputed presidential elections results at Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus. August 18, 2020 Sergei Gapon/AFP

A couple plays draughts during the protest against disputed presidential elections results at Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus. August 18, 2020 Sergei Gapon/AFP

Workers of the Minsk Tractor Works Plant leave the plant after their work shift as activists with old Belarusian national flags greet them in Minsk, Belarus, Tuesday, Aug. 18Sergei Grits/AP Photo

girl walks holding a small old Belarusian national flag as activists greet and support workers leaving the Minsk Tractor Works Plant after their work shift in Minsk, Belarus Sergei Grits/AP Photo

Miners on strike in Salihorsk (Photos) Belarus

2020.08.19 10:03

On August 18, Belaruskali workers went on strike in Salihorsk. They demand new elections, the release of political prisoners and the resignation of those who had committed violence in the country. Maryia Kalesnikava, a representative of the United Headquarters, came to the protesters. Here’s our photo report