>>13477737

>>13477863

Only commercial planes at high altitude north of Bali. Both air and sea appear rather quiet for a search OP.

Odd.

Air Sauce: https://flightaware.com/

Sea Sauce: https://www.vesselfinder.com/

Indonesia searching for missing submarine with 53 on board

Indonesia's navy is searching for a missing submarine with 53 people on board that went missing on Wednesday and is seeking help from neighbouring Australia and Singapore in the hunt, the Indonesian military chief told Reuters.

The German-made submarine, KRI Nanggala-402, was conducting a torpedo drill in waters north of the island of Bali but failed to relay the results as expected, a navy spokesman said.

"We are still searching in the waters of Bali, 60 miles (96 km) from Bali, (for) 53 people," military chief Hadi Tjahjanto told Reuters in a text message.

The military chief confirmed that assistance in the search for the submarine and missing crew members had been sought from Australia and Singapore. He said that contact with the vessel was lost at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Representatives of the defence departments of Australia and Singapore did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The 1,395-tonne KRI Nanggala-402 was built in Germany in 1978, according to the Indonesian cabinet secretariat's website, and underwent a two-year refit in South Korea that was completed in 2012.

Indonesia in the past operated a fleet of 12 submarines purchased from the Soviet Union to patrol the waters of its sprawling archipelago.

But now it has a fleet of only five including two German-built Type 209 submarines and three newer South Korean vessels.

Indonesia has been seeking to upgrade its defence capabilities but some of its equipment still in service is old and there have been deadly accidents involving in particular ageing military transport planes in recent years.

Sauce: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesian-navy-checking-submarine-after-failure-report-back-exercise-2021-04-21/

China’s Xi Agrees to Take Part in Biden’s Climate Summit

(Bloomberg) – Chinese leader Xi Jinping accepted an invitation from U.S. President Joe Biden to join a summit on climate change, one area where the two countries are cooperating despite frosty ties on other issues.

Xi will attend via video link on Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday. China hopes the conference promotes “a global joint response to climate change,” ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular briefing in Beijing. He repeated that the Asian nation is ready to cooperate with the U.S. on the basis of mutual respect.

Washington and Beijing are at odds over a range of issues, from allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang and China’s tightening political grip over Hong Kong to U.S. efforts to curb China’s role in supply chains. Xi used a speech Tuesday to the Boao Forum on Asia to challenge Washington’s global leadership, saying the world needed “justice, not hegemony.”

Still, the two nations have shown they’re eager to work together to tackle climate change. A joint statement released after U.S. climate envoy John Kerry visited Shanghai last week said Washington and Beijing would support implementation of the Paris Agreement and promote a successful United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow this year.

“China maintains an open attitude when it comes to climate cooperation and welcomes dialogue,” said Zhang Monan, senior fellow at the U.S.-Europe Institute at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a think tank in Beijing.

“However, if countries continue to pressure China or adopt confrontational and non-cooperative tactics, then China will address this with corresponding actions,” she said.

Xi met German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron last week for a virtual climate conference. The European leaders welcomed his renewed commitment for China to achieve CO2 neutrality by 2060, a spokeswoman for Merkel said, and the three also discussed the coronavirus pandemic and global vaccine supplies.

Washington dropped out of the Paris climate accord under the Trump administration, and China has been critical of the move. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said during Kerry’s visit that the U.S. is to blame for delaying the agreement’s progress.

The U.S. is preparing to host 40 world leaders at the summit on Thursday and Friday. The virtual conference will bring together 17 countries responsible for 80% of global emissions and gross domestic product, the White House said.

Biden will pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by at least half by the end of the decade, the Washington Post reported, citing two people briefed on the plan.

Sauce: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-s-xi-agrees-to-take-part-in-biden-s-climate-summit/ar-BB1fS6vR

Date: 04/21/2021

London Bridge station evacuated as police investigate suspicious item

London Bridge station in central London was evacuated on Wednesday after police were called to investigate reports of a suspicious item on board a train, British Transport Police said.

"Officers were called to London Bridge station at12.33pm following reports of a suspicious item on board a train," a British Transport Police spokeswoman said.

"The station has been closed as a precaution while specialist officers assess the item."

Train operators Southern and Southeastern said on Twitter that trains were not stopping at the station, one so London's busiest commuter hubs.

Network Rail, which manages the station, said on its twitter account to expect disruption until1400GMT.

Sauce: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/london-bridge-station-evacuated-emergency-services-respond-incident-2021-04-21/

Date: 04/21/2021

China Warplanes Are Flying Near Taiwan in Record Numbers

Chinese warplanes have flown into Taiwan's air defense zone in record numbers this month, with the country's defense ministry reporting an additional nine military aircraft intrusions on Tuesday.

Five J-16 fighters and four Y-8 reconnaissance planes of different variants were among the People's Liberation Army Air Force assets to violate Taiwan's self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ), according to the ministry. It illustrated the flight paths on its website and said it had tasked interceptor jets and tracked the Chinese aircraft using missiles.

Local enthusiasts monitoring Taiwan's airwaves told Newsweek that the Republic of China Air Force issued seven radio warnings to China's warplanes between 08:52 a.m. and 5:32 p.m. Taipei time. The majority of warnings go unanswered, but there have been some notable PLAAF responses in recent weeks.

Tuesday marked the 17th day this month that PLA warplanes had flown into Taiwan's ADIZ, with most incursions occurring in the southwest corner, south of the Taiwan Strait and near the mouth of the South China Sea. Between January and March, the island's Ministry of National Defense reported 27, 17 and 18 days of ADIZ violations.

However, a comparison of the total aircraft figures shows the more concerning side of what analysts have described as China's "gray-zone warfare" against Taiwan.

Beijing sent 69 planes toward the Chinese-claimed island nation last September, the month Taipei first began publicly reporting ADIZ violations. Chinese military intimidation against Taiwan rose in January with 81 total sorties—a response to perceived "provocations" by former President Donald Trump and later newly inaugurated Joe Biden—before falling to 40 and 54 in February and March respectively.

The PLAAF shattered the ceiling this month with 96 sorties thus far, bringing the yearly total to 269 as of April 20—already 70 percent of the 380 total aircraft detected in 2020. Last Monday, the Chinese military also set a record for single-day aircraft intrusions, flying 25 warplanes into Taiwan's ADIZ after the State Department announced new guidelines for interactions between Taipei and Washington.

A March defense ministry report prepared for Taiwan's lawmakers revealed that ROCAF pilots had flown an additional 1,000 hours in order to deter Chinese warplane intrusions last year.

Taiwan's top national security minds have likened Beijing's gray-zone tactics—encompassing all measures short of war—to a form of psychological warfare, which goes hand-in-hand with disinformation campaigns and targeted cyberattacks.

China's use of the PLA to intimidate Taiwan tends to spike during perceived improvements to U.S.-Taiwan relations, experts say. The military operations in the Taiwan Strait also serve as attempts to tax the island's outnumbered air force and pile pressure on the Taiwanese government to accept Beijing's preferred regional arrangement, one in which democratic Taiwan is subsumed into the mainland as a province.

In the meantime, President Tsai Ing-wen continues to receive bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and will look to the United States—her country's most important international backer—to help bolster Taiwan's self-defense capabilities.

When Taiwan begins the first phase of its annual Han Kuang military exercise this Friday, before following it up with live-fire drills in July, members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party say the island will be looking to present an image of determination and a state of preparedness in the face of an existential threat from across the strait.

Sauce: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-warplanes-are-flying-near-taiwan-in-record-numbers/ar-BB1fTkmq?ocid

Date: 04/21/2021

Bitcoin's Rally Could Suffer Momentum Decay, Says J.P. Morgan

Bitcoin is facing technical trading resistance pressure from a buildup of long positions in the futures market that could spell big trouble for the world's biggest cryptocurrency, according to strategists at J.P. Morgan Chase.

In a research note to clients, J.P. Morgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said that if bitcoin isn't able to break back above the $60,000 mark soon, momentum signals will collapse, in turn leading to a cascading downdraft in bitcoin's value.

"Over the past few days bitcoin futures markets experienced a steep liquidation in a similar fashion to the middle of last February, middle of last January or the end of last November," Panigirtzoglou wrote, according to a Bloomberg report.

In those three previous instances, the overall flow impulse was strong enough to allow bitcoin to quickly break out above the key thresholds, yielding further buildups in position by momentum traders, the strategist said.

"Whether we see a repeat of those previous episodes in the current conjuncture remains to be seen," Panigirtzoglou said, adding that the likelihood it will happen again seems lower because momentum decay seems more advanced and in turn more difficult to reverse.

"Momentum signals will naturally decay from here for several months, given their still elevated level," Panigirtzoglou said.

Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and even Dogecoin have shown volatility this week following a weekend rout that saw bitcoin fall by as much as 15%, raising concerns that the 2021 cryptocurrency rally that has pushed bitcoin to successive records may be over.

Bitcoin in particular has surged this year as investors continue to pile into the cryptocurrency game amid expectations that digital currencies - whether they're used to buy a cup of coffee or a Tesla or bought in mass quantities as a bigger investment in a broader investment portfolio - are here to stay.

Panigirtzoglou himself made headlines at the start of the year when he predicted a long-term price target for bitcoin of more than $146,000 amid institutional demand for the cryptocurrency at the expense of gold, which has traditionally been used as an inflation and volatility hedge, as well as protection against a falling U.S. dollar.

Bitcoin rose as high as $64,870 around the time of the Nasdaq listing of Coinbase Global , but has retreated back below $60,000. At last check, bitcoin was down 0.6% at $55,325, according to CoinDesk. It is still up about 90% year to date.

Sauce: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/bitcoins-rally-could-suffer-momentum-decay-says-jp-morgan/ar-BB1fTebf?ocid

Date: 04/21/2021

Former Des Moines school custodian sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexual abuse

Jesse Allen McIntosh, 43, of Des Moines was charged in February with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a child under the age of 12 at a Des Moines home, according to criminal complaints. He pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree sexual abuse April 7 and was sentenced last week.

McIntosh will serve two consecutive 10-year terms, according to court documents, and must register as a sex offender.

McIntosh started as a custodian for DMPS in August 2018 and had been at Weeks Middle School since August 2019. After his arrest in February he was placed on unpaid leave, according to DMPS spokesperson Phil Roeder, and his employment was terminated upon conviction.

Sauce: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/former-des-moines-school-custodian-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison-for-sexual-abuse/ar-BB1fTjWy?ocid

Date: 04/21/2021

Kidnappers Abduct Unknown Number of Nigerian University Students

KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Kidnappers killed one person and took an unknown number of students from a university in northwest Nigeria's restive Kaduna state, police said on Wednesday, in the latest in a series of abductions at educational institutes.

Armed groups have repeatedly struck northern Nigerian schools and universities since December, abducting more than 700 students for ransom.

The government and security forces have largely been unable to stop the attacks as they struggle to contain worsening violence and criminality across the West African country.

The armed kidnappers came on foot and struck Greenfield University in Kaduna at around 8.15 p.m. (1915 GMT) on Tuesday, state police spokesman Mohammed Jalige said by telephone.

"One of the staff of the university was shot dead, but the number of students abducted is not yet ascertained," said Jalige, adding that police should know the number later on Wednesday.

A university staff member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the kidnappers had seized17male students.

Greenfield University could not immediately be reached for comment.

The abduction of hundreds of students since December has mainly hit northwestern Nigeria and drawn global attention to the country's deteriorating security situation.

Kidnap for ransom has become common in the region in recent years. President Muhammadu Buhari urged state governments in February to "review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles, warning that the policy might boomerang disastrously."

In March, attackers stormed a forestry college in Kaduna, seizing dozens of students despite the compound's proximity to a military academy.

After over a month in captivity, kidnappers released 10 of the college's students for a ransom of17million naira ($44,620), said Abdullahi Usman, a parent of one of those still being held. Reuters was unable to verify the alleged ransom payment.

($1 = 381.0000 naira)

Sauce: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-04-21/kidnappers-abduct-unknown-number-of-nigerian-university-students

Date: 04/21/2021