News Burst 22 April 2020 – Live Feed

News Burst 22 April 2020

• Over the past decade, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has become the World Health Organization’s second largest donor. They may now have moved up to take their place as the agency’s largest donor. Until just last week, when President Trump halted US funding to the WHO, the only donations higher than those from the Gates Foundation came from the US government. Money donated by countries to the WHO’s General and Fiduciary Funds totaled $1.06 billion in 2017. This was less than the contributions from non-state actors, which amounted to $1.08 billion. Along with the Gates Foundation, other prominent sources of funding included the Brussels EU Commission, which gave over $84 million; the ‘Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’, an organization promoting the use of antiretroviral drugs and other pharmaceutical approaches, which contributed over $16 million; and UNITAID, another organization promoting the use of pharmaceuticals, which gave almost $30 million.

• President Trump shared a report that said indictments could be coming this week in U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the Russia investigation. Part of a flurry of retweets late Monday evening, Trump’s verified Twitter account, which has 77.8 million followers, shared a post from Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett’s personal website with the headline: “More Russia Spygate Indictments Coming ‘This Week.’”

• Finland has requested from the Russian Security Service access to World War II archives after the publication of declassified documents revealing the details of atrocities and torture exacted upon prisoners of Finnish concentration camps in occupied Karelia during the war.

• Spain’s best-known bull running festival in the northern town of Pamplona has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, Pamplona city hall said Tuesday. Hundreds of thousands of people typically attend the centuries-old San Fermin celebration, which sees half-tonne fighting bulls chase hundreds of daredevils, many wearing traditional white shirts and scarves, though the narrow streets of the city each morning.

• Three persons have been arrested on the charge of smuggling wood from a forest in Ramdhuni, Nepal. Acting on a tip-off, a team of Armed Police Force and forest officers arrested the trio red-handed while they were loading felled timbers of Sakhuwa species in the tractor inside the Ramdhuni Forest. The forest falls under the National Forest Area in Sunsari. The team also seized nine logs of Sakhuwa, a motorcycle and four mobile sets from their possession.

• Cambodia Post on Saturday notified customers that it has suspended mail to all countries due to the spread of Covid-19, which has interrupted air transportation almost completely. The post office did not confirm when it will resume International services again.

• Myanmar will free almost 25,000 prisoners in an amnesty to mark the traditional New Year, the president’s office said on Friday, its largest mass pardon in recent years. President Win Myint said 24,896 people jailed across the country, including 87 foreigners, would be freed unconditionally “to bring delights to the citizens of Myanmar and taking into consideration humanitarian concerns”. The president gave no details of the crimes the prisoners were convicted of.

• Oil’s epic price collapse is giving Indian bonds the upper hand over Indonesian debt in a market where dollars are in short supply and developing nations compete for foreign money. For oil-importing India, the implosion in Brent crude oil prices this year will give Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government leeway to heal an economy hurt by virus lockdowns. That puts Indonesia at a disadvantage as the two Asian high-yield sovereign-bond issuers attract bargain hunters.

• Thailand has found the largest number of nests of rare leatherback sea turtles in two decades on beaches bereft of tourists because of the coronavirus pandemic, environmentalists say. The 11 turtle nests authorities have found since last November were the highest number in 20 years, said Kongkiat Kittiwatanawong, the director of the Phuket Marine Biological Center. “This is a very good sign for us because many areas for spawning have been destroyed by humans,” he told Reuters. No such nests had been found for the previous five years. Leatherbacks are the world’s largest sea turtles. They are considered endangered in Thailand and listed as a vulnerable species globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

• The temperature in Metro Manila hit 35.8 degrees Celsius yesterday, the hottest recorded so far this year, the state weather bureau said. Meanwhile, the heat index – the temperature as felt by the human body – reached 39 degrees Celsius. China virus there is reported at 6,600 cases.

• While US report 800k + cases none is believing China had 84K cases of the Wuhan Virus; Now the thing is, shall we add one or two Zeroes to their numbers?

• The Lyrid meteor shower peaks tonight when Earth passes through a stream of debris from Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1). Northern sky watchers could see as many as 15 meteors per hour during the dark hours before sunrise on Wednesday, April 22nd

Sun Activity

Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 16 days
2020 total: 86 days (77%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

Strongest EQ in Europe M3.4 Greece
Strongest EQ in North America M4.1 Idaho
Strongest EQ on the Planet 5.0 557 km South of the Fiji Islands
Deepest EQ M4.6 594 km Ndoi Island, Fiji