Jamaica earthquake YESTERDAY mapped: Where did HUGE 7.7 quake hit? Latest updates

AN EARTHQUAKE has struck in the ocean between Jamaica and Cuba at a huge magnitude of-7.7, and has triggered a tsunami warning. 

But where exactly did the quake strike? Here are the latest maps.

By GEORGINA LAUD
PUBLISHED: 20:00, Tue, Jan 28, 2020 

A powerful earthquake of magnitude-7.7 struck south of Cuba on Tuesday. The quake has triggered a tsunami waves warning for Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the International Tsunami Information Center.

Jamaica earthquake: Major 7.7 magnitude quake shakes region

Jamaica earthquake: Is there a tsunami warning? Is Jamaica on alert?
Where did HUGE 7.7 quake hit?

The massive earthquake was initially reported as a magnitude-7.3 before being upgraded to a magnitude-7.7

The epicentre was in the sea between Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Cuba, at a shallow depth of 6.2 miles (10 km).

According to the USGS the earthquake struck in the ocean 77 miles (125km) north-northwest of Lucea, Jamaica.

Red More: Jamaica earthquake: WATCH Miami buildings shake as residents evacuated
 

Jamaica earthquake: A huge magnitude-7.7 quake has shaken Jamaica (Image: USGS)

It was centred 86 miles (139km) north-west of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and 87 miles (140km) west-southwest of Niquero, Cuba.

It hit at 2.10pm local time (7.10pm GMT) and now the Cayman Islands disaster management agency has warned residents in coastal and low-lying areas to “evacuate vertically” as a precaution following the quake.

A statement from the International Tsunami Information Center said: "Hazardous tsunami waves from this earthquake are possible within 300 km (186 miles) of the epicentre along the coasts of Jamaica... Cayman Islands and Cuba."

The Center later added: "Hazardous tsunami waves are forecast for some coasts".

 

Jamaica earthquake today: A tsunami warning is in place for several countries (Image: TWITTER) Jamaica: Earthquake creates HUGE holes in road

A tsunami warning of up to three feet has been issued for Belize, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Cayman Islands and Jamaica.

Dr Enrique Arango Arias, head of Cuba's National Seismological Service, told state media that there had been no serious damage or injuries reported.

The quake could be felt strongly in Santiago, the largest far-eastern Cuban city, according to those in the area.

Belkis Guerrero who works in a Catholic cultural centre in Santiago said: "We were all sitting and we felt the chairs move.

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"We heard the noise of everything moving around."

Ms Guerrero said there was no apparent damage in the heart of the colonial city.

She added: "It felt very strong but it doesn't look like anything happened."

The quake was not strongly felt in the Cuban capital of Havana or in Kingston, Jamaica, according to witnesses.

Jamaica earthquake today: Workers wait outside buildings in Miami after the quake struck (Image: GETTY)

Meanwhile, Mikhail Campbell, a police media relations officer in the Cayman Islands, said he was not immediately aware of any reports of serious damage.

The earthquake was also felt a little farther east at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the south-eastern coast of the island.

Several South Florida buildings were evacuated as a precaution, according to city of Miami and Miami-Dade County officials.

The quake also hit the Cayman Islands, leaving cracked roads and what appeared to be sewage spilling from cracked mains.

There have been reported aftershocks close to the Cayman Islands, the largest of which was recorded as measuring magnitude-6.5.

Claude Diedrick, 71, who owns a fencing business in Montego Bay, said he was sitting in his vehicle reading when the earth began to sway.

He said: "It felt to me like I was on a bridge and like there were two or three heavy trucks and the bridge was rocking but there were no trucks."

Mr Diedrick said he had seen no damage around his home in northern Jamaica.

Large undersea earthquake strikes in the Caribbean

The epicenter was located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica, prompting initial fears of a tsunami, though those concerns have since passed. The tremors peaked at a strength of 7.7, the US Geological Survey recorded.


A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in the Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and Cuba on Tuesday, causing tremors from Mexico to Florida. However, there were no casualties were reported.

The quake's epicenter was 117 kilometers (73 miles) northwest of Jamaica's town of Lucea and just south of Cuba, and had a depth of 10 kilometers, according to the US Geological Survey.

The quake was felt across much of the island of Jamaica, lasting for several seconds, the Kingston-based Jamaica Observer newspaper reported.

People gather outside after evacuating buildings in Miami, Florida

In Cuba's capital Havana, residents were evacuated out of buildings when the city was rattled by the quake (pictured), which was also felt in Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba and Cienfuegos.

It was not immediately clear if the earthquake caused any damage or injuries. The International Tsunami Information Center (ITC) issued an initial warning, though this was later lifted.

"The tsunami threat has now largely passed," the ITC said.

Meanwhile, the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said that based on all available data, waves reaching 0.3 to 1 meter above the tide level were possible for portions of Belize, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica.


A hole appeared caused by the earthquake at Public Beach on West Bay, Grand Cayman

Indeed, the Cayman Islands recorded an aftershock of magnitude 6.5 as a result of the quake that left cracked roads and what appeared to be sewage spilling from damaged mains.

Purdue Pharma taps a Gilded Age history of pharmaceutical fraud

March 4, 2019  Jonathan S. Jones

Classified advertisement for Leslie Keeley’s Gold Cure. 

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1884

Newly unsealed documents from a lawsuit by the state of Massachusetts allege that Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin and other addictive opioids, actively sniffed out new, sinister ways to cash in on the opioid crisis.

Despite years of negative press coverage, unwanted attention from regulators, multi-million dollar fines and several major lawsuits, Purdue staff and owners sought to expand the company’s sights beyond its usual array of opioid painkillers. Purdue planned to become an “end-to-end pain provider,” by branching into the market for opioid addiction and overdose medicines, looking to peddle these medicines even while the company continued to aggressively market its addictive opioids. Internal research materials coldly explained the rationale behind this plan: “Pain treatment and addiction are naturally linked.”

As thousands of Americans continue to overdose on opioids annually, Purdue’s secret marketing research predicted that sales of naloxone, the overdose reversal drug, and buprenorphine, a medicine used to treat opioid addiction, would increase exponentially. Addiction to Purdue’s opioids would thus drive the sale of the company’s opioid addiction and overdose medicines. Purdue even planned to target as customers patients already taking the company’s opioids and doctors who prescribed opioids excessively, according to the Massachusetts lawsuit filing. To keep the plan quiet, Purdue staff dubbed the scheme “Project Tango.” 

According to the Massachusetts lawsuit, Purdue used this graphic in its internal strategy materials to illustrate Project Tango. State of Massachusetts, CC BY-SA

The audacity of Project Tango enraged many observers. But considered in historical context, the news that Purdue sought to peddle opioid addiction medicines while continuing to sell opioids seems less surprising. In fact, there is clear historical precedent for Purdue’s business plan. Over a century ago, “patent medicine” sellers pioneered this strategy during the U.S.’s Gilded Age opiate addiction epidemic.
Opiate addiction in the Gilded Age

Opiates were some of the most commonly prescribed medicines in American history until the 20th century. Pills containing opium, hypodermic morphine injections and laudanum, a drinkable liquid concoction of opium and alcohol, constituted half or more of all medicines prescribed in American hospitals during most of the 19th century, according to research by the historian John Harley Warner. Opiates were also present in countless “patent medicines,” over-the-counter panaceas made of secret ingredients, often sold under catchy brand names like Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. Americans could choose from 5,000 brands of patent medicines marketed for all manner of ailments by the 1880s. In 1904, just before federal oversight began, patent medicines had matured into an astonishingly profitable industry, with estimated sales at US$74 million dollars annually – equivalent to about $2.1 billion dollars today.

Opiate-laced prescriptions and patent medicines often caused addiction. The historian David T. Courtwright estimates that opiate addiction rates in the U.S. skyrocketed to 4.59 per thousand Americans by the 1890s – a high rate, although lower than the rate of fatal opioid overdoses in recent years. Most individuals developed addictions through medicines, rather than the infamous smoking variety of opium. Victims of “the habit” cut across demographic lines, encompassing middle-class housewives suffering from menstrual pain, Civil War veterans reeling from amputations and many others in between.

Yet even for those who became addicted to prescription opiates, the condition was socially stigmatized and physically dangerous. Like today, addiction to opiates often led to fatal overdose, condemnation and sometimes even involuntary commitment to mental asylums. As one doctor reported to the Iowa Board of Health in 1885, addicted people lived “truly in a veritable hell.”

To avoid these frightful outcomes, desperate, opiate-addicted Americans frequently sought out medical treatment for their condition.

Gilded Age Americans could choose from a range of therapies for opiate addiction. Wealthy patients frequented plush private clinics, where they could receive inpatient treatment for opiate addiction. The most popular were the Keeley Institutes, which offered patients injections of the “Bichloride of Gold” remedy, invented by the doctor Leslie Keeley.

Scores of Keeley Institutes sprang up around the country in the late 19th century, a testament to the popularity of Keeley’s “Gold Cure,” which he marketed for alcoholism and drug addiction. No up-and-coming Gilded Age city was complete without a Keeley Institute. At the height of the Gold Cure craze, there were 118 institutes serving 500,000 Americans between 1880 and 1920. Even the federal government had a contract with Keeley to provide the Gold Cure to addicted veterans. Although injections of the Gold Cure had little intrinsic medical value, historians believe that socializing with other like-minded patients in the Keeley Institutes may have helped some patients recover from addiction.

Advertisement for the main Keeley Center, in Dwight, Illinois, 1908.

Keeley faced stiff competition, however. Other popular therapies for opiate addiction included patent medicine “cures” and “antidotes,” which were cheaper than inpatient care. These could be ordered by mail without a prescription, and consumed in the privacy of one’s home, away from prying eyes.

Fueled by high demand, during its heyday at the turn of the 20th century, addiction cures bloomed into a multimillion-dollar sector of the patent medicine industry. Dozens of pharmaceutical companies peddled their “cures” to willing, opiate-addicted customers, which they marketed through pamphlets, postcards, and newspaper and magazine classifieds.

Ironically, these “cures” for opiate addiction almost universally contained opiates, unbeknownst to hopeful customers, who received little therapeutic benefit by today’s standards. But in an era before federal regulation of medicines and narcotics, there were no effective safeguards to protect addiction patients from medical fraud.
Pharmaceutical fraud

Much like Purdue Pharma, which famously marketed Oxycontin as non-addictive precipitating the opioid crisis, Gilded Age patent medicine companies also fraudulently marketed their addiction treatments as non-addictive, targeting and intentionally deceiving addicted customers. For their part, Gilded Age doctors were deeply skeptical of such products, and they often accused proprietors of fraud in medical journals and newspapers.

Samuel B. Collins of La Porte, Indiana, inventor of the “Painless Opium Antidote,” one of the era’s most popular brands, insisted that his product was not addictive. Collins was proven a fraud, however, by a skeptical Maine doctor, who in 1876 sent off a sample of Collins’ product to several chemists for analysis. Their tests indicated that the Painless Opium Antidote contained enough morphine to perpetuate opiate addiction, actually fueling demand for Collins’s product, rather than curing the underlying addiction.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, however, without any effective medical regulation or oversight, Collins maintained his fraud for decades. His business strategy presaged Purdue’s Project Tango by targeting vulnerable opiate-addicted individuals.Advertisement for Theriaki, a painless cure for the opium habit. Exterior view of Dr. Collins’ Opium Antidote Laboratory, LaPorte, Indiana. National Library of Medicine

After decades of exposés by doctors and journalists, however, the opiate addiction cure trade collapsed during the Progressive Era under mounting public pressure and new federal legislation. One famous “muckraking” exposé, The Great American Fraud by the journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams, pulled back the curtain on the industry of opiate addiction cures for millions of appalled readers.Collier’s ad, Dec., 1905, after the publication of articles on patent medicine fraud. Wikimedia Commons

Hopkins painted such a scathing portrait of opiate addiction cures, whose proprietors the writer dismissed as “scavengers,” that the American Medical Association paid to disseminate Adams’s reporting as part of a lobbying campaign for the regulation of patent medicines. This strategy paid off. Although far from perfect solutions, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 regulated the ingredients and sale of patent medicines and narcotics, including opiate addiction medicines. These measures ultimately ensured that Collins, Keeley and other patent medicine sellers could no longer prey upon opiate-addicted customers.

Like its Gilded Age predecessors, today’s Big Pharma actively schemes to profit off of vulnerable, addicted customers, even while taking steps to ensure that opioid addiction persists. I believe that only sustained, vigilant oversight can prevent the reemergence of a medical Gilded Age, one in which companies like Purdue Pharma can manufacture an addiction crisis and charge customers for “curing” it.

Author
Jonathan S. Jones
PhD Candidate in History, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Disclosure statement
Jonathan S. Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

New Zealand to invest record amount in infrastructure

CONSTRUCTING CAPITALISM

Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-29 17:15:42|Editor: xuxin

ACKLAND, New Zealand, Jan. 29 (Xinhua)

 -- A new program to build and upgrade roads, rail, schools and hospitals was announced by the New Zealand government on Wednesday in Auckland.


The 12-billion-New Zealand-dollar investment package is named Upgrade New Zealand with a focus on infrastructure projects.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the program as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to modernize the country's infrastructure to prepare for climate change and help grow its economy.

New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said the program is the largest investment in infrastructure in decades.

According to the program, road construction projects will receive the largest proportion with Auckland's road alone to receive 2.2 billion New Zealand dollars. Health system, particularly mental health and addiction reduction services will also get a boost.

With the recent record low interest rates, New Zealand Finance Minister Grant Robertson believed it is a good time to invest in infrastructures that have been under-invested and long due.

"It makes sense to take advantage of record low long-term interest rates and invest in infrastructure to grow the economy. These low rates -- around 1.5 percent for 10 years -- can be locked in over the long term, making this programme sensible and affordable," said Robertson. (1 New Zealand dollar equals 0.65 U.S. dollars)

Record Revenues = Job Cuts at CN Rail

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1,600 to be laid off at CN Rail due to weakening economy ...

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16 hours ago - The Canadian National Railway will be laying off almost 2000 staff members. According to a report by the Globe and Mail, the Canadian ...

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https://globalnews.ca › news › cn-rail-layoffs-furloughs

Nov 15, 2019 - CN Rail has made the “difficult decision” to lay off an unspecified number of workers and take other measures to reflect demand.

Record Revenues = Job Cuts at CN Rail, The Canadian ...

https://www.cbj.ca › CBJ News

CBJ — Despite posting its best quarterly revenue numbers in history, Canadian National Railway followed that up by laying off some non-unionized workers.

THE STRIKE DID NOT SAVE THOSE JOBS

STRIKES ARE AN OUTMODED TACTIC 

THE EMPLOYER CAN DEFEAT BEFORE, DURING OR AFTER

IT IS TIME TO OCCUPY THE WORKPLACE AND SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION LAYING OFF THE EMPLOYER

A secret reason Rx drugs cost so much: 

A global web of patent laws protects Big Pharma

January 28, 2020 Faisal Chaudhry


Advocates for lower drug prices held a vigil on Sept. 5, 2019 outside of Eli Lilly in New York City, honoring those who have lost their lives due to the high cost of insulin. Eric McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

The high price of insulin, which has reached as much as US$450 per month, has raised outrage across the country. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has called it a national embarrassment, wondering why U.S. residents should have to drive to Canada to buy cheaper insulin.

As a legal scholar who focuses on the contradictory role of property rights on economic well-being, including through the role of intellectual property rights, my research makes it clear that drug pricing is far more complicated than any candidate on the debate stage has time to explain.

To fully understand these complexities requires looking at a web of international patent law and trade agreements.    

 

Insulin was discovered almost 100 years ago, saving the lives of many people with diabetes. Its soaring costs in recent years has brought outcries from patients and politicians. John Fredricks/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Why no generic insulin?

Scientists working in Canada’s public sector discovered insulin nearly a century ago. The first techniques for synthesizing the compound, which should have more readily allowed for the production of generic versions, emerged some four decades ago. Yet today insulin remains unavailable in any significant generic version.

One of the three companies that control 90% of the world insulin market, Eli Lilly, recently did bow to public pressure by announcing a forthcoming “authorized generic” version called Lispro. But that could still run some people $140 per prescription.

U.S. consumers are not alone in facing high prices of insulin and other life-saving drugs. For the last two decades, intense controversy has raged around multinational pharmaceutical giants being able to monopolize access to vital medicines the world over. A key means of doing so is through the legal power of patents, and the monopoly-like profits – or what some experts call unearned economic rents – they guarantee.

Think of rent as a windfall gained for making little effort of one’s own. Being “unearned,” rents are thus usually distinguished from ordinary business profits. In this way, they are comparable to the fees a medieval lord would charge for access to cropland on a vast estate.

To fully explain the problem of economic rents and access to medicines, however, we need to look still further: to the controversies that have swirled around pharmaceutical patents in countries far less wealthy than the U.S.

A worldwide problem, but hidden from sight

For more than 20 years, in various parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, countries have been battling a global system of rent-taking, or “rentierism” for short, that disproportionately benefits Big Pharma.

This state of affairs could not exist without the government officials whom Big Pharma has lobbied successfully in wealthy countries. Patents and other intellectual property rights allow the multinationals to capture rent by evading competition for years on end.

This global battle around pharmaceutical patents began in earnest with the founding of the World Trade Organization(WTO) in 1994. This included an annex agreement on intellectual property rights known as the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

Many countries already allowed for patents before 1994, but only on “processes” of manufacture or synthesis. After 1994, WTO member countries were required to extend patents to the vital end products of such processes as well.

For inhabitants of developing countries, whose greatest public health problems at the time derived from diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS, this crystallized various questions of great import. Should the agreements enable Big Pharma’s monopoly-like patent rights to trump the ability of the sick and dying to obtain generic versions of life savings medicines? And if so, to what extent?

By 2001, all WTO member states officially had conceded the rights of developing countries to take measures to increase access to lifesaving medicines. But Big Pharma and its allies have never relented in pressing for more, not less, stringent intellectual property protections around the world.

Shaky justifications

Since 1994, Big Pharma has imposed ever more severe requirements around patent rights. They have insisted that patent rights are necessary to “incentivize” the availability of drugs for conditions like tuberculosis and malaria that, having no markets in the developed world, require guaranteed premiums from whatever countries they are sold in.

Yet for just as long, critics have alleged that Big Pharma typically uses inflated, misleading or otherwise opaque cost data to tout the billions of dollars it claims to spend on drug development. Likewise, critics have continuously called attention to the way that most drug development is built on publicly funded research.

And, finally, critics have never stopped highlighting the fact that Big Pharma long ago largely abandoned research and development for drugs for infectious ailments in developing nations, and increasingly switched to spending on blockbuster noninfectious disease drugs.

Yet as diseases such as cancer and heart disease begin to take an even greater toll in the developing world, patents will extract an ever greater toll on patient populations across the world.

In a developing world where public health problems increasingly look similar to the developed world’s, in fact, multinational pharmaceutical corporations could become better – not worse – placed to expand their profits by tapping new markets for drugs like insulin and beta blockers.

A convergence between the sick across the globe

One unexpected lesson from this is that ordinary people around the world will increasingly find themselves in the same boat when it comes to accessing the medicines they need.

Therefore, if countries in the developing world are forced to give up the fight against patent rentierism, it should be a concern both to their own residents and to residents of wealthy countries too.

Just this past September, for example, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signaled that his country – which has a robust generic drugs industry that supplies low-cost medicines to people around the world – was ready to concede to the demands of Big Pharma by moving toward abdicating his country’s vital role as “the pharmacy of the world.” India has now signed an interim trade agreement with the Trump administration that will require it to more strictly enforce the patent rights of pharmaceutical multinationals, with the latest news reports indicating it may even now be finalized.

Over the course of the current battle for the Democratic nomination, many will have heard about the plight of residents of Michigan who are left asking how insulin costs 10 times in the U.S. what it costs 10 minutes away across our northern border.

Given the larger conversation about patent rents and access to medicines that we should be having, however, it behooves those of us who live in places like the U.S. to look not only to Canada but to what is happening around the world, where the sick and dying face increasingly similar ailments – and fights – as our own.

Author

Faisal Chaudhry
Professor of Law, University of Dayton
Disclosure statement
Faisal Chaudhry has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State and Harvard University.
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Seoul: 2.5-magnitude quake detected near North Korea site

MAN MADE EARTHQUAKE

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/10/did-nuke-cause-earth-quake.html

By Elizabeth Shim

North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site has experienced tremors in the aftermath of a sixth North Korea nuclear test in September 2017. File Photo by Airbus Defense and Space/38 North

Jan. 29 (UPI) -- A 2.5-magnitude earthquake was detected in an area near North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site, according to South Korea's meteorological agency on Wednesday.

The tremor occurred on Wednesday at 9:33 a.m. local time in an area near Kilju, North Hamgyong Province, the agency said.

The minor earthquake is believed to be the result, or the aftermath, of North Korea's sixth nuclear test, which occurred in September 2017, Seoul said.

Experts have previously said North Korea's sixth test may have involved a bomb that released the same energy as 108 kilotons of TNT. In 2017, they had also warned of a major environmental disaster as a result of the explosion, or a mountain collapse.

On Wednesday, Seoul's weather agency described the tremor as a "natural earthquake," and said the quake occurred in an area less than two miles from the nuclear test site.

Punggye-ri was also the site of Pyongyang's first nuclear test in 2006. The tunnel used for the test has since collapsed, South Korean news service News 1 reported.

In May 2018, North Korea invited foreign journalists to witness the detonation of the test site.

Park Han-ki, chairman of South Korea's joint chiefs of staff, has said the detonation does not mean the site couldn't be restored.

Tunnels 3 and 4 at Punggye-ri can be repaired for use, Park had said during a parliamentary hearing on Jan. 8, according to News 1.

The minor quake is being reported at a time when the United States and South Korea could be discussing missile guidelines

The Chosun Ilbo reported this week the United States may have agreed to lift caps on South Korean rockets for civilian use, but on Wednesday the presidential Blue House said the report is "impossible to confirm."

U.S.-South Korea missile guidelines date back to 1979 and have been revised three times, in 2001, 2012 and 2017. Rocket thrust is capped at 1 million pounds per second for South Korea, or one-tenth of thrusts allowed in other countries, according to the Chosun.

U.S. military issues furlough notice to South Korean employees

TRUMP COST CUTTING UNDER CUTS US SECURITY IN KOREA

U.S. military issues furlough notice to 9000 South Korean employees

By Thomas Maresca


The U.S. military began issuing furlough notices to its almost 9,000 South Korea civilian employees on Wednesday. Seoul and Washington have been deadlocked over a new defense cost-sharing agreement on the Korean Peninsula. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo

SEOUL, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- The U.S. military has begun issuing a notice of a potential furlough to its nearly 9,000 South Korean civilian employees as a defense cost-sharing arrangement between Washington and Seoul remains unresolved.

In a press statement issued Wednesday, United States Forces Korea, the main command for U.S. troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula, said that residual funds from 2019 being used to pay the salaries of the Korean employees would soon run out.

"Without the Republic of Korea's continued commitment to share the cost of employing our Korean national workforce, USFK will soon exhaust programmed funds available to pay their salaries and wages," the statement said. The Republic of Korea is the official name of South Korea.

An administrative furlough would begin on April 1 if a new Special Measures Agreement, which covers costs for maintaining the roughly 28,500 U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula, is not signed, the statement said.

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The military is issuing the notice 60 days in advance of a possible furlough as required by U.S. law.

"USFK greatly values its Korean national workforce and their contributions to the RoK-U.S. alliance and will continue to provide them timely updates for their preparation of a potential furlough," the statement said.

Seoul and Washington remain deadlocked over the cost-sharing agreement. U.S. President Donald Trump has reportedly asked for a $5 billion annual contribution from South Korea, a more than five-fold increase from the $890 million Seoul paid in 2019.

RELATED North Korea slams South for military exercises
A sixth round of talks to renew the agreement ended earlier this month in Washington, D.C., without a deal.

U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris recently told reporters that the United States has already compromised on its original figure and said the gap between the two sides was narrowing.

However, administration officials are still pressing Seoul to substantially increase its contribution. In a joint op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 16, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper wrote that South Korea "can and should contribute more to its defense."

RELATED South Korea's economic growth slows to decade-low 2%
In a letter to Pompeo and Esper issued Monday, U.S. Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., expressed concern about the lapsed agreement, saying it is "creating increasing diplomatic and military risk on the peninsula" and calling for a "fair and mutually beneficial burden-sharing agreement that reflects the realities of the 21st century."

"Our alliance with Korea is critical to deter adversaries, provide stability to the region, shape the environment and endows U.S. forces in the region with leverage that enhances our nation's security, extends our values and enables our prosperity," the senators wrote. "Yet the current U.S. negotiating position appears to contradict these key principles and undermines our enduring commitment to the Republic of Korea."

South Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement after the latest round of negotiations ended that both sides "broadened their mutual understanding and consensus but confirmed that there are still differences."

Native oysters make comeback, thrive again in Puget Sound
By Jean Lotus

Native Olympia oysters are returning to the shores of Puget Sound and to the restaurants of the Pacific Northwest after nearly being wiped out. Photo courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Jan. 29 (UPI) -- After more than a century of overharvesting and industrial pollution, the Pacific Northwest's only native oyster is making a comeback in Washington's Puget Sound.

The tiny, but resilient, Olympia oyster, or "Oly," is becoming a delicacy again at seafood restaurants after almost being wiped out from 95 percent of its habitat along 2,500 miles of estuary shoreline.

"Olympias are different. They're feistier," said Shina Wysocki, owner of Olympia's Chelsea Farms, which specializes in shellfish. "They survived through all that pollution. Maybe the ones that are left are so strong, and we just got the toughest brood stock."

A 25-year restoration plan is attempting to bring back some of the dense, foot-deep oyster beds that once thrived over about 10,000 acres along the inlet bays of Puget Sound. Oyster bed ecosystems filter algae from seawater and provide habitat for numerous sea creatures.

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This is not a species that is going extinct. It is present throughout this historic range, but in very small numbers," said Betsy Peabody, executive director of the non-profit Puget Sound Restoration Fund. "Olympias are one of the foundational species native to this area. We've lost the lower intertidal habitat structure and the marine architecture that helped support other organisms and critters."

The Puget Sound Restoration Fund set a goal by 2020 to restore 100 acres of dense oyster bed habitat, and it has restored 84 acres so far.

Once rare

Olympia oysters were rare during years when logging and industrial runoff polluted the bay, said former oyster farmer Marlin Holden, an elder of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe and now in his 70s.

"They were almost extinct there for a while. They were once the food of our ancestors," Holden said.

The tribe now operates an oyster farm on tribal land repurchased from logging companies and cleaned up. Workers have begun to breed Olympias.

"They were once the mainstay oyster of our people," Holden said. "I hope we can eat them soon at our tribal picnics."

Olys are smaller and pack a stronger, more robust flavor than Pacific oysters typically served at raw bars.

"They tend to taste of horseradish and copper, a very strong flavor, similar to a European flat oyster," said oyster farmer Wysocki.

During the Gold Rush, starting in 1850, early Puget Sound settler shellfish farmers dredged out entire beds of oysters. The shellfish were shipped by schooner to San Francisco, where they were served with bacon and eggs in a dish called the Hangtown fry. Mark Twain slurped Olympias on the half-shell at the Occidental Hotel in 1864.

Industrial pollution hurt

Then came industrial pollution. Starting in the 1920s, paper pulp mills and logging operations poured effluence into Puget Sound. Native oysters, buried in goopy silt, could not survive. Toxic pulp liquor interfered with larvae breeding.

In the 1990s, the number of native Olympias had dropped so low that Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife declared the species a candidate for listing as "endangered, threatened or sensitive."

But given the right environment, Olympias are hardy opportunists and will thrive, said marine biologist Paul Dinnel of the Skagit County Marine Resources Committee.

Since 2002, Dinnel and volunteers have spread seeded oyster shells along the tidewaters of Fidalgo Bay near Anacortes, Wash., where the number of native oysters had dropped to almost zero.

"From the the original seed of 50,000 larvae, we now have almost 3 million oysters throughout the bay," Dinnel said.

Better survival rates

Olympias also appear to be better able than other oysters to withstand increased acidification of seawater.

Ten years ago, a die-off of commercial Pacific oyster larvae in Puget Sound was traced to lower pH in the ocean water. Carbon in the water was binding in a chemical reaction with calcium, leaving less calcium for the larval baby Pacific oysters to make their shells.

"A decrease in pH makes it harder for Pacific oysters to make their shell, it takes more energy to make the shell very quickly and they often don't make it," said George Waldbusser, associate professor in ocean ecology and biogeochemistry at Oregon State University, who helped identify the problem.

Olympia oysters grow slower in the larval stage, and don't need as much calcium all at once, Waldbusser found. Olympia larvae also brood protected inside their mother's shell instead of being broadcast into the water at the seed stage like Pacific oysters.

Today, commercial shellfish farmers monitor the pH level in hatchery water to protect baby Pacific oysters during their first days.

But even after the larval stage, Olympias are more robust than other types of oysters, Wysocki said.

High survival rate

Almost 90 percent of the Olys survive to harvest, she said, while half of the operation's Pacific oysters die.

The return of native oysters to Puget Sound is a reminder of the importance of the entire ecosystem to all shellfish farmers, who are part of a $270 million industry, Wysocki said.

"The Olympia oyster tells the story of how we were making mistakes in how we were managing Puget Sound early in our history as settlers," she said.

"Olympias dying off was one of the first signs that oyster farmers had to change. And their story resonates with people. Plus, they're delicious, and that doesn't hurt, either."

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23 SKIDOO

Boeing lost $636M in 2019 -- its first annual loss in 23 years

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By

Clyde Hughes

Boeing lost $636 million in fiscal 2019, the company said Wednesday -- its first annual loss since 1997. File Photo by David Silpa/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Owing to a multi-billion-dollar bill over the grounding of its 737 Max fleet, U.S. aviation giant Boeing on Wednesday reported its first annual loss in nearly a quarter-century.

In its fourth-quarter earnings report, the company said it sustained a $2.33 per-share loss in the last quarter of 2019 and revenue fell 37 percent to $17.9 billion. For the year, Boeing reported a loss of $3.47 per share -- or $636 million -- and said the costs stemming from the 737 Max's troubles are approaching $19 billion.

The annual loss is Boeing's first since 1997. The company posted a $10.5 billion profit in 2018 before two crashes overseas forced it to pull the airliner from service. Earlier this month, Boeing suspended production of the 737 Max"We recognize we have a lot of work to do," new Boeing President and CEO David Calhoun said in a statement. "We are focused on returning the 737 Max to service safely and restoring the long-standing trust that the Boeing brand represents with the flying public."

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The planemaker has absorbed billions of dollars in fiscal hits since the 737 Max fleet was grounded worldwide last March. For nearly a year, it has been working on a fix to the model's automated flight software but has yet to make the repairs and secure final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We are committed to transparency and excellence in everything we do," Calhoun added. "Safety will underwrite every decision, every action and every step we take as we move forward. Fortunately, the strength of our overall Boeing portfolio of businesses provides the financial liquidity to follow a thorough and disciplined recovery process."

The three U.S. carriers who fly the 737 Max -- American, Southwest and United -- have all removed the model from their flight schedules until at least mid-2020.

RELATED Southwest Airlines scrubs Boeing 737 Max flights through early June

Calhoun replaced former chief executive officer Dennis Muilenburg in December. Muilenburg gave up his chairman title last October to focus on trouble with the 737 Max but problems getting the airplane back in the air persisted.

Astronomers watch star swallow up matter, emit heatwave blast, in rare event

Only three such events have been observed, out of all the billions of massive stars in the Milky Way.

By James Okwe Chibueze - Associate Professor, North-West University 

This artist’s impression shows the blast from a heatwave detected in a massive, forming star.
(Image: © Katharina Immer/JIVE)

Here on Earth, we pay quite a lot of attention to the sun. It's visible to us, after all, and central to our lives. But it is only one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It's also quite small compared to other stars — many are at least eight times more massive.

These massive stars influence the structure, shape and chemical content of a galaxy. And when they have exhausted their hydrogen gas fuel and die, they do so in an explosive event called a supernova. This explosion is sometimes so strong that it triggers the formation of new stars out of materials in the dead star's surroundings.

But there's an important gap in our knowledge: Astronomers don't yet fully understand how those original massive stars themselves are initially formed. So far, observations have only yielded some pieces of the puzzle. This is because nearly all the known massive stars in our galaxy are located very far away from our solar system. They also form in close proximity to other massive stars, making it difficult to study the environment where they take shape.

One theory, though, is that a rotating disc of gas and dust funnels materials into the growing star.

Astronomers have recently found that the funnelling of matter into a forming star happens at different rates over time. Sometimes the forming star swallows up a huge amount of matter, resulting in a burst of activities in the massive star. This is called an accretion burst event. It is incredibly rare: Only three such events have been observed, out of all the billions of massive stars in the Milky Way.

This is why astronomers are so excited about a recent observation of the phenomenon. I was part of the team that recorded this observation. Now, our team and other astronomers will be able to develop and test theories to explain how high-mass stars gain their mass.

A global collaboration

After the first detection of an accretion burst, in 2016, astronomers from around the world agreed in 2017 to coordinate their efforts to observe more. Reported bursts have to be validated and followed up with more observations, and this takes a joint, global effort — which led to the formation of the Maser Monitoring Organisation (M2O).

A maser is the microwave (radio frequency) equivalent of laser. The word stands for "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". Masers are observed using radio telescopes and most of them are observed at centimetre wavelength: they are very compact.

A maser flare can be a sign of an extraordinary event such as the formation of a star. Since 2017 radio telescopes in Japan, Poland, Italy, China, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (HartRAO, in the country's Gauteng province) have been working together to detect a flare stimulated by a burst in the funnelling of materials into a massive star.

In January 2019, astronomers at Ibaraki University in Japan noticed that one such massive protostar, G358-MM1, showed signs of new activity. The masers associated with the object brightened significantly over a short period of time. The theory is that masers brighten when excited by an accretion burst.

Follow-up observations with the Australian Long Baseline Array revealed something astronomers are witnessing for the first time — a blast of heat-wave coming from the source and travelling through the surroundings of the forming big star. Blasts can last for about two weeks to a few months.
Burst of energy

Blasts like this were not observed in the previous two accretion bursts in massive stars. This may imply that it's a different kind of accretion burst. There may even be a "zoo" of accretion burst types — a whole range of different types which act in different ways that may depend on the mass and evolutionary stage of the young star.

Although the burst activity has died down, the masers are still a lot brighter than they were before the burst. Astronomers are watching with interest to see whether a similar burst will occur again, and at what scale.

This experience shows how valuable it is to have lots of eyes on the sky, from different corners of the globe. Collaboration is astronomy is crucial for new, important discoveries.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.