U.S. Navy Robot Submarine Would Be Able to Kill Without Human Control
March 9th, 2020Via: New Scientist:
The US Navy is quietly developing armed robot submarines controlled by onboard artificial intelligence. The vessels could potentially kill without explicit human control.
The Office of Naval Research is carrying out the project, known as CLAWS, which it describes in budget documents as an autonomous undersea weapon system for clandestine use. CLAWS will “increase mission areas into kinetic effects”, say the documents – military-speak for destroying things.
Gates-Funded Program Will Soon Offer Home-Testing Kits for New Coronavirus
March 8th, 2020Gates and coronavirus over here. Gates and coronavirus over there. Gates and coronavirus everywhere.
See: Canada’s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg
The initiative grew out of the Seattle Flu Study, a 2-year-old research project based at the University of Washington to track the spread of infectious diseases like influenza. Funded with $20 million from Bill Gates’ private office, the project recruited thousands of volunteers and sent them self-test kits. The focus has now shifted entirely to the new coronavirus, using similar methods to aid the public-health response.
When the expanded testing system is up and running, people in the Seattle area who think they might be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the scientific name for the new coronavirus, can fill out a questionnaire online. If their symptoms are consistent, they can request a test kit, which will be delivered to their home within two hours. The swabs will be collected and delivered to the UW lab.
OIL DOWN 31%, S&P 500 LIMIT DOWN 5%
March 8th, 2020Holy shit.
Via: Yahoo Finance:
The world’s faltering effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak hammered stocks and crude oil on Sunday, as new cases surfacing across the U.S. amplified fears of a global downturn.
Brent crude (BZ=F) prices collapsed, falling by as much as 31% on Sunday evening in what was the largest single-day drop since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 1991.
OPEC’s failure last week to strike a deal to cut production prompted Saudi Arabia to lean in aggressively on cheaper oil prices, which fanned concerns about a full-fledged price war that sent oil into free-fall. Investors appeared to price in the likelihood that Saudi Arabia’s fight with Russia over market share will worsen the dramatic spiral lower in prices, taking place against a backdrop of falling demand and plentiful supply.
Global Air Traffic Set For Worst Year On Record
March 8th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
Covid-19 has become a significant headache for the global air travel industry, according to a new report from Jefferies. In fact, it is about to become the biggest shock for airlines on record as global air traffic is expected to dive 8.9% this year as the global viral pandemic paralyzes transportation routes across the globe.
In its report cited by Bloomberg, Jefferies said that the latest demand shock to hit the airline industry is the largest drop in data that goes back to 1978, and it even dwarfs the impact seen during the 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. “It’s unprecedented,” said Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu.
OIL DOWN OVER 7%
March 6th, 2020Update: Oil Closes Down 9.43%
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Russia refuses to cut output.
Via: Reuters:
OPEC’s plans for deep and prolonged oil cuts were derailed on Friday as non-OPEC Russia refused to support the move arguing that it was too early to predict the impact of a coronavirus outbreak on global energy demand, sources told Reuters.
Canada’s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg
March 6th, 2020Dr. Frank Plummer, a scientist who received $8.3 million in grant money from the Gates Foundation, and was the director of Canada’s National Microbiology Lab when it received coronavirus samples, died in Kenya weeks after the official start of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak… Which happened weeks after a Gates Foundation simulation of a coronavirus outbreak.
We also have a wrist slap punishment for smuggled Ebola materials and Chinese scientists in, “Policy breach.”
Something is very wrong here.
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In 2000, he accepted the position of Scientific Director General of the National Microbiology Laboratory, Health Canada, in Winnipeg. In 2001, Dr. Plummer returned to Canada and rejoined the Department of Microbiology at the University of Manitoba and subsequently in 2003 was appointed Director General of the Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control (CIDPC).
In June 2005, Dr. Plummer and his team received $8.3 million US over five years from the Gates Foundation to continue the studies on Kenyan prostitutes and develop a potential vaccine against HIV.
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In 2009, a former researcher at the lab was convicted of trying to smuggle genetic material from the Ebola virus across the Manitoba-North Dakota border.
Konan Michel Yao had 22 vials of the substance in the trunk of his car when he tried to cross the border.
The vials were wrapped in aluminum foil inside a glove and packaged in a plastic bag, along with electrical wires.
Yao told officers he was taking the vials to his new job with the National Institutes of Health at the Biodefense Research Laboratory in Bethesda, Md., because he didn’t want to start from scratch in his research.
Yao was sentenced to 17 days in jail, which he had already served, and fined $500.
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2013: Canada’s National Lab Has Sample of New Coronavirus:
Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg has a sample of the new coronavirus that is causing infections in a number of countries, most notably Saudi Arabia.
Scientific director Dr. Frank Plummer says the lab obtained the virus from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
The Dutch lab was the one that first identified the new virus last June in a sample from a Saudi man who had died of a mysterious illness.
Plummer says the coronavirus arrived at the Winnipeg facility on May 4.
He says the lab is growing up stocks of the virus and will use it to assess diagnostic tests being used in Canada.
As well Winnipeg scientists plan to do some work to see which animal species can be infected with the new virus.
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2014: Dr. Frank Plummer Ended 14-Year Tenure as Head of the National Microbiology Laboratory:
Dr. Frank Plummer ended his 14-year award-winning career with the Level 4 virology containment facility in Winnipeg at the end of March.
…
“Dr. Plummer stepped down for personal reasons,” said Taylor.
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2019: Chinese Researcher Escorted from Infectious Disease Lab Amid RCMP Investigation:
A researcher with ties to China was recently escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in Winnipeg amid an RCMP investigation into what’s being described as a possible “policy breach.”
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and an unknown number of her students from China were removed from Canada’s only level-4 lab on July 5, CBC News has learned.
A Level 4 virology facility is a lab equipped to work with the most serious and deadly human and animal diseases. That makes the Arlington Street lab one of only a handful in North America capable of handling pathogens requiring the highest level of containment, such as Ebola.
Security access for the couple and the Chinese students was revoked, according to sources who work at the lab and do not want to be identified because they fear consequences for speaking out.
…
Cheng also works at the lab as a biologist. He has published research papers on HIV infections, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), E. coli infections and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome.
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2019: Questions Surround Canadian Shipment of Deadly Viruses to China:
Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory shipped Ebola and Henipah viruses to Beijing on March 31, raising suspicions from experts in biochemical warfare, who say they think China may use the pathogens to develop offensive biological agents.
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December 2019: First Covid2019 Case Using Absurd Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market Narrative
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2020: Dr. Frank Plummer Dies in Kenya:
World-renowned scientist Dr. Frank Plummer of Winnipeg has died.
Plummer, 67, was in Kenya, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the University of Nairobi’s collaborative centre for research and training in HIV/AIDS/STIs.
Dr. Larry Gelmon, who helped set up that meeting, said Plummer collapsed and was taken to hospital in Nairobi, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
No confirmed cause of death has yet been released.
Plummer was born and raised in Winnipeg, where he headed up Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory for several years.
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Newly-released access-to-information documents reveal details about a shipment of deadly pathogens last year from Canada’s National Microbiology Lab to China — confirming for the first time who sent them, what exactly was shipped, and where it went.
CBC News had already reported about the shipment of Ebola and Henipah viruses but there’s now confirmation one of the scientists escorted from the lab in Winnipeg amid an RCMP investigation last July was responsible for exporting the pathogens to the Wuhan Institute of Virology four months earlier.
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and her students from China were removed from Canada’s only level-4 lab over what’s described as a possible “policy breach.” The Public Health Agency of Canada had asked the RCMP to get involved several months earlier.
The virus shipments are not related to the outbreak of COVID-19 or research into the pandemic, Canadian officials said.
…
“It is suspicious. It is alarming. It is potentially life-threatening,” said Amir Attaran, a law professor and epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa.
“We have a researcher who was removed by the RCMP from the highest security laboratory that Canada has for reasons that government is unwilling to disclose. The intelligence remains secret. But what we know is that before she was removed, she sent one of the deadliest viruses on Earth, and multiple varieties of it to maximize the genetic diversity and maximize what experimenters in China could do with it, to a laboratory in China that does dangerous gain of function experiments. And that has links to the Chinese military.”
Gain of function experiments are when a natural pathogen is taken into the lab, made to mutate, and then assessed to see if it has become more deadly or infectious.
Most countries, including Canada, don’t do these kinds of experiments — because they’re considered too dangerous, Attaran said.
“The Wuhan lab does them and we have now supplied them with Ebola and Nipah viruses. It does not take a genius to understand that this is an unwise decision,” he said.
“I am extremely unhappy to see that the Canadian government shared that genetic material.”
Through Apps, Not Warrants, ‘Locate X’ Allows Federal Law Enforcement to Track Phones
March 6th, 2020Via: Protocol:
U.S. law enforcement agencies signed millions of dollars worth of contracts with a Virginia company after it rolled out a powerful tool that uses data from popular mobile apps to track the movement of people’s cell phones, according to federal contracting records and six people familiar with the software.
The product, called Locate X and sold by Babel Street, allows investigators to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint mobile devices that were within that area, and see where else those devices have traveled, going back months, the sources told Protocol.
They said the tool tracks the location of devices anonymously, using data that popular cell phone apps collect to enable features like mapping or targeted ads, or simply to sell it on to data brokers.
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Babel Street has kept Locate X a secret, not mentioning it in public-facing marketing materials and stipulating in federal contracts that even the existence of the data is “confidential information.” Locate X must be “used for internal research purposes only,” according to terms of use distributed to agencies, and law enforcement authorities are forbidden from using the technology as evidence — or mentioning it at all — in legal proceedings.
Did ISS Live-Feed Accidentally Capture “Top Secret” Hypersonic Vehicle Test?
March 5th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
Scott C. Waring, the founder of UFO Sightings Daily, claims he has come across a strange video recorded from the International Space Station’s (ISS) NASA Space Cam that shows the moment an unidentified flying object rockets into orbit.
“Super Puke” – U.S. Stocks Crash As Credit Markets & Yields Collapse
March 5th, 2020*chortle*
Via: ZeroHedge:
‘just one waffer-thin mint’…
India Lifts Ban on Cryptocurrency Trading
March 4th, 2020Via: Techcrunch:
India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned central bank’s two-year-old ban on cryptocurrency trading in the country in what many said was a “historic” verdict.
The Reserve Bank of India had imposed a ban on cryptocurrency trading in April 2018 that barred banks and other financial institutions from facilitating “any service in relation to virtual currencies.”
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In the ruling today, the bench, headed by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman, overruled central bank’s circular on the grounds of disproportionality.
