This is Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy
>Quebec to introduce financial penalty for unvaccinated
yikes
>yikes
>Trump has a time machine.
want any of these
>want any of these
>want any of these
Developer Sunac China Holdings Ltd. is seeking to raise $500 million in a top-up share placement, partly to repay short-term loans, after saying earlier Wednesday it had resolved a dispute that triggered a rout in its dollar bonds.
Sunac’s onshore unit had been told by a local court in Shenzhen that some of its equity interests would be frozen. The company is now working toward withdrawing that order, it said.
Some of China’s most stressed property developers face a raft of key payments this week, a test for the country’s volatile credit market. China Evergrande Group, which already failed to repay dollar debt on time, is seeking to avoid its first onshore default when holders vote on whether to allow the firm to defer payment Thursday.
Almost half of China’s provinces saw revenue from land sales drop more than 20% in 2021, a report showed separately.
>holders vote on whether to allow the firm to defer payment Thursday
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013fh7
It's been a year since the mobilising power of a conspiracy theory nearly brought American democracy to its knees, when a coalition of extremists attacked the capital convinced that the US election was rigged. At the heart of that conviction was QAnon.
In 2020, the BBC's Stephanie Hegarty reported on the dramatic rise of this vast conspiracy during the pandemic. A year on from the attack on the Capitol, she has travelled to the US to meet some of those who still believe in the conspiracy. With a new president in power, QAnon's shadowy leader no longer posting online, and the movement all but banned from social media, why are some people still held in the grip of this conspiracy?
Electronic records show Peter Strzok, who led the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server as the No. 2 official in the counterintelligence division, changed Comey’s earlier draft language describing Clinton’s actions as “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless,”
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/peter-strzok-james-comey/index.html
CNN has also learned that Strzok was the FBI official who signed the document officially opening an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to sources familiar with the matter. As the No. 2 official in counterintelligence, Strzok was considered to be one of the bureau’s top experts on Russia.
But the news of Strzok’s direct role in the statement that ultimately cleared the former Democratic presidential candidate of criminal wrongdoing, now combined with the fact that he was dismissed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team after exchanging private messages with an FBI lawyer that could be seen as favoring Clinton politically, may give ammunition to those seeking ways to discredit Mueller’s Russia investigation.
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/clinton-grossly-negligent-comeys-draft-statement-email-probe
“Although Director Comey’s original version of his statement acknowledged that Secretary Clinton had violated the statute prohibiting gross negligence in the handling of classified information, he nonetheless exonerated her in that early, May 2nd draft statement anyway, arguing that this part of the statute should not be enforced,” Grassley said in a letter today to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
>Omicron revelation surfaces in Canadian wastewater
“It was surprising to us to see a viral signal in early November. Only in retrospect were we able to see that it was a variant and not the original,” he said. The cases were confirmed to be Omicron on December 13 and were linked to a Covid-19 outbreak at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/researchers-wastewater-track-covid-19-1.5612926
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/new-data-shows-omicron-was-in-nova-scotia-wastewater-in-november-1.6303962
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/omicron-testing-canada-cases-hospitalizations-po-1.6304195
June 15, 2020
Graham Gagnon and Amina Stoddart are leading a project that will use wastewater as a means to find the virus.
>https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/new-data-shows-omicron-was-in-nova-scotia-wastewater-in-november-1.6303962
New data shows Omicron was in Nova Scotia wastewater in November
However, a provincial spokesperson clarified on Monday that Strang was not referring to the latest water samples. In an email, Kristen Lipscombe said Dalhousie University researchers identified two different wastewater samples as potentially containing the Omicron variant.
The first, taken in fall 2021, was confirmed to contain the Alpha variant and not Omicron. The second sample was taken in early December and sent to the province's public health team on Jan. 4.
Lipscombe said Strang had not received information about the second sample at the time of his comments, so he was referring only to the first sample.
"Results from the second sample are suggestive, but not conclusive, that Omicron is present in wastewater, but this isn't surprising given current community spread of this variant," Lipscombe said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kazakhstan-investigates-how-peaceful-demonstrations-turned-violent-11641991426
Kazakhstan Investigates How Peaceful Demonstrations Turned Violent
Rioting and looting erupted amid demonstrations over fuel prices; government and picketers alike see criminals involved
For three days early this month, protests in Kazakhstan triggered by fuel-price rises remained largely peaceful. Demonstrators in cities across the country sang the national anthem, remonstrated with officials, and chanted “old man out,” referring to their longtime potentate, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Then, as night fell on Jan. 5, new groups took over the streets of Almaty, the largest city: young men wielding guns, sledgehammers and makeshift weapons. They stormed official buildings, attacked police and torched cars. They breached the airport and ransacked it. They raided banks and looted shops.
The chaos shook the government and prompted President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to request Russian troops to help restore order, handing Moscow renewed influence in its Central Asian neighbor.
Mr. Tokayev and his protector, Russian President Vladimir Putin, say their forces have largely re-established control. But a central conundrum remains: How did mostly peaceful protests explode into violence?
The government and protesters more or less agree on one point: Peaceful demonstrations were hijacked by violent criminals.
Mr. Tokayev says the forces were armed terrorists and bandits, some of whom were trained abroad, seeking to destabilize the country and effect a coup. He hasn’t said who exactly he believes was behind the violence, but authorities have detained the powerful former security-service chief on suspicion of treason. Some analysts say the violence was triggered by high-level infighting between the president and men close to his predecessor, Mr. Nazarbayev, who served as president for nearly three decades before appointing Mr. Tokayev as his successor in 2019. As power slipped away from Mr. Nazarbayev’s camp, they said, fighting spilled into the streets.
Some civil-rights groups blame the government, saying authorities ignored people’s grievances, leading the protests to spiral out of control and allowing criminals to take advantage.
Wherever the truth lies, the explosion points to a potentially grim future for Kazakhstan’s long-beleaguered opposition, which has campaigned for broad political change. Mr. Tokayev has blamed media and activists for fomenting the violence, although his government pledged not to crack down on them.
“We hope for a peaceful outcome of events and the punishment of criminals, and not of peaceful residents and peaceful protesters,” the civil-rights group “Oyan, Qazaqstan!,” or “Wake up, Kazakhstan!” wrote on its Facebook page. “We call for the blame for what happened not to be laid on independent media, rights defenders and activists.”
Kazakh authorities said they detained nearly 1,700 people on Wednesday in connection with the unrest, bringing the total to some 12,000, according to the Associated Press.
Initial protests in western Kazakhstan were sparked by a rapid rise in the price of a kind of gas used as an inexpensive car fuel. They began on Jan. 2 in Zhanaozen, an oil town where more than a dozen demonstrators were shot in 2011 amid protests over low wages and poor working conditions.
Mr. Tokayev, who promised to listen to people’s complaints after he was selected to succeed Mr. Nazarbayev, dispatched a government delegation to speak with protesters. But demonstrations were already spreading to other industrial cities in the region and taking on a more political character.
Some were calling for the ouster of Mr. Tokayev and Mr. Nazarbayev, who continues to hold significant sway.
Mr. Nazarbayev built an authoritarian system that opponents said was corrupt, allowed little room for dissent and diverted the spoils of the country’s rich natural resources to people close to him rather than the impoverished population. Mr. Nazarbayev denied that. Mr. Tokayev, a former prime minister, promised political and economic overhauls, but made largely cosmetic changes.
In Almaty, Kazakhstan’s cultural and business hub, protesters from various opposition and civil-society groups gathered in the afternoon of Jan. 4. By the evening, the crowd had swelled to several thousand people.
Police moved forcefully to detain protesters, using flashbang grenades, tear gas and charging into crowds to grab people and remove them to vans. Some fought back, scuffling with law enforcement and, in at least one incident, chasing away army vehicles.
“The government will not fall,” Mr. Tokayev said. He imposed a curfew that night.