JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Senior citizens who received a second booster of the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination had a 78% lower mortality rate from the disease than those who got one only, a study from Israel showed on Sunday. The country’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit Health Services, said the 40-day study included more than half a million people aged 60 to 100. Some 58% of participants had received a second booster – or two shots in addition to the basic two-shot regimen. The remainder had received only one booster. Researchers recorded 92 deaths among the first group and 232 deaths among the second, smaller group. “The main conclusion is that the second booster is lifesaving,” said Ronen Arbel, Health Outcomes Researcher at Clalit and Sapir College. The report was issued as a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed. The research excluded people who received rival Moderna’s vaccine and those who had taken oral anti-COVID therapy. Israeli health officials have put out a number of studies on vaccine efficacy throughout the pandemic that have impacted policymaking in other countries. NN: if your vaccine is more then 5 months old you have minimal protection. The updated vaccine should be out in September or October… Looks like this one will be a yearly shot. But you got to get from here to their. Say your smart enough to get your booster that the FDA will soon approve in April. Your timing will be perfect for your September/October yearly vaccine.
US, Israel determined Iran will never get nuclear arms – Blinken
US, Israel ‘committed’ to preventing Iran getting nuclear bomb: Blinken The US and Israel are committed to ensure Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday The US and Israel are committed to ensure Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday, as the allies acknowledged differences over negotiations with Tehran. Blinken made the comments in Jerusalem alongside his Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid, who told reporters Israel had “disagreements” with Washington about a possible deal to revive the 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran. Blinken said President Joe Biden’s administration believes that “the return to full implementation” of the deal was “the best way to put Iran’s programme back in the box that it was in but has escaped from since the United States withdrew from the agreement,” under former president Donald Trump in 2018. Israel’s government firmly opposed the terms of the 2015 deal and has said that re-activating the original deal is insufficient to curb the Iranian threat. But, Blinken said, “when it comes to the most important element, (Israel and the US) see eye to eye. We are both committed, both determined, that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon.” Lapid said that amid its differences with Washington, Israel remains in “open and honest dialogue” with its closest ally on the Iran nuclear issue. “Israel will do anything we believe is needed to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Anything. From our point of view, the Iranian threat is not theoretical. The Iranians want to destroy Israel. They will not succeed. We will not let them,” Lapid said. The European Union’s foreign policy chief said at the weekend that a deal with Iran, known as the Joint Collective Plan of Action, will likely be renewed “in a matter of days.” Iran has been engaged for months in talks in Vienna to revive the accord with Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia directly. The United States is taking part indirectly in the negotiations. NN: Another international circle jerk. Iran already has enough fusion material to make at least 6 bombs. AND their ain’t shit anyone can do about it…. The US will at some point be hit by Russian, Chinese, N.Korean and Iranian nuclear tipped HyperMissles……. In the greatest sneak attack in history……. And no their will be no retaliation because at the same time their will be a satellite and cyber attack defeating all counter measures including submarines. Not not tomorrow this is in the future.
Ukraine doomed without serious arms as the wolrd promised them when they gave up their nukes
Speeches and press ditties will not cut it. Not even sanctions…….. Watch as Ukraine is slowly dismembered and Putin becomes a rising world dictator….
Kiev: Russia is destroying Ukraine’s oil, food depots
Russia has started destroying Ukraine’s fuel and food storage depots and bringing troops on rotation to the countries’ shared border, an advisor to Ukraine’s interior ministry said Sunday. Kyiv has asked the International Committee of the Red Cross not to open a planned office in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don, saying it would legitimise Moscow’s ‘deportation’ of Ukrainians. Turkey and other states must still talk to Russia to help end the war in Ukraine, Turkey’s presidential spokesman said on Sunday, adding that Kyiv needed more support to defend itself. “If everybody burns bridges with Russia then who is going to talk to them at the end of the day,” Ibrahim Kalin told the Doha international forum. “Ukrainians need to be supported by every means possible so they can defend themselves … but the Russian case must be heard, one way or the other.” Russia is trying to split Ukraine in two to create a Moscow-controlled region after failing to take over the whole country, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence said on Sunday. “In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” Kyrylo Budanov said in a statement, adding that Ukraine would soon launch guerrilla warfare in Russian-occupied territory. Children who along with family members have fled homes in Ukraine are facing trauma resulting from their rapid departures, along with the need for safe shelter. Some 30,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in France, with half of them travelling through the country to other places such as Spain, French Housing Minister Emmanuelle Wargon said Sunday. Wargon told Franceinfo radio the government was preparing to welcome 100,000 people fleeing the war in Ukraine. France has been granting temporary European Union stay permits to the refugees, which allows them to have access to schools and to work in the country. Ukrainian professor Zakhida Adylova left the city of Lviv in western Ukraine with her 75-year-old mother and 11-year-old daughter for Poland. It was not the first time she and her daughter had left home because of war: They fled Crimea in 2014 after the arrival of Russian forces. Ukraine and Russia have agreed two corridors to evacuate civilians from frontline areas on Sunday, including allowing people to leave by private car from the southern city of Mariupol, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. Fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces continued in the northwest suburbs of Kyiv on Saturday, and Ukraine’s military command said Russian forces were “grouping together” southwest of the capital. FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports. Russia has started destroying Ukrainian fuel and food storage depots, meaning the government will have to disperse the stocks of both in the near future, Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said on Sunday. Speaking on local television, Denysenko also said Russia was bringing forces to the Ukrainian border on rotation, and could make new attempts to advance in its invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has asked the International Committee of the Red Cross not to open a planned office in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don, saying it would legitimise Moscow’s “humanitarian corridors” and the abduction and forced deportation of Ukrainians. The head of the ICRC said on Thursday after his talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian armies was needed before civilians could be evacuated properly from war-torn Ukraine. Russian media reported that Red Cross chief Peter Maurer asked Russia to facilitate the opening of a Red Cross office in Rostov-on-Don. Mykhailo Radutskyi, chairman of the public health committee in Ukraine’s parliament, appealed to the Red Cross to change its plans. “The Committee calls on the International Committee of the Red Cross that it would not legitimise ‘humanitarian corridors’ on the territory of the Russian Federation as well as that it would not support the abduction of Ukrainians and its forced deportation,” Radutskyi said in a statement. Rostov-on-Don is the largest Russian city on Ukraine’s eastern border and administrative capital of the Rostov region, and it has been used by Russia for temporary accommodation camps for people transported out of the war zone. NN: If you listen to US spin the great freedom fighter are defeating the Russians. Nothing can be further from the truth. No dounbt the Ukrainians are fierce fighters.. But that is not enough. They are running out of guns, bullets, rockets and their is virtually no heavy munitions left. You are watching the slow destruction of infrastructure. In essence Russia is saying you can have your country back once we depopulate your cities and turn your infrastructure to a pile of rubble and turn your citizens into starving homeless refunges where its the law of the jungle…..
Ukraine’s grain export situation worsening by the day, says agriculture minister
EU Intake Of Russian Gas Remains High Amid Lower Wind Output
While the European Union looks for ways to reduce its imports of Russian gas, flows via Ukraine remain high, at 109 million cu m daily amid lower wind energy output. Interfax reports, citing data from the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine, that bookings for Thursday stood at 105.2 million cu m while today’s booking are higher, at 105.8 million cu m. The numbers are in line with the long-term contract with Gazprom, which is for deliveries of 40 billion cu m of gas annually. Wind generation, meanwhile, has been on the decline, according to the report. For the week to March 20, wind output made up 17 percent of Europe’s energy mix, and this week this has fallen further to 8.4 percent. The EU remains active in seeking alternatives to Russian gas, meanwhile. Earlier today, Brussels struck a deal with Washington for higher deliveries of liquefied natural gas, with the U.S. committing to supply an additional 15 billion cu m this year. In a fact sheet on the news, the White House said that
“The United States will work with international partners and strive to ensure additional LNG volumes for the EU market of at least 15 bcm in 2022, with expected increases going forward.”
The European Union, at the same time, committed to stoke demand for natural gas. The European Commission will work with EU Member States toward the goal of ensuring, until at least 2030, demand for approximately 50 bcm/year of additional U.S. LNG that is consistent with our shared net-zero goals,” the fact sheet also said, noting that “prices should reflect long-term market fundamentals”. Gas prices in Europe slipped on the news of the EU-U.S. LNG deal but remain far above normal, at over $1,160 per thousand cu m. The price of gas under the month-ahead contract for March with Gazprom is lower than that, at $930 per thousand cu m, Interfax noted. NN: Putin does not plan to “WIN” the war with Ukraine. He just wants to bomb them back to the dark ages and turn the people into staving savages. That will be enough to topple the government. The real war is to scare the shit out of former Soviet States…. and that war he is winning. He has Europe by the energy balls. And all the blow and go about alternative supplies are a decade away. And Europe does not have that much time left! And as far as the rest of the world $100+ oil enriches the Arab states and lets them arm to the teeth. At the same time out of contrition inflation will drive the US into a depression.
No one can immediately replace Russian energy supplies, Qatar energy minister says
Neither Qatar nor any other single country has the capacity to replace Russian gas supplies to Europe with liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the event of disruption due to a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Qatar’s energy minister said yesterday, With most of Qatari volumes locked into long-term contracts mostly to Asian buyers, the amount of divertible volumes that can be shipped to Europe is only 10-15 per cent, Saad Al-Kaabi added. Al-Kaabi’s comments renewed concerns over Europe’s security of gas supplies as tensions escalated between Russia and Ukraine yesterday after Moscow ordered troops into two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine. “Russia [provides] I think 30-40 per cent of the supply to Europe. There is no single country that can replace that kind of volume, there isn’t the capacity to do that from LNG,” Al-Kaabi told reporters at a gas conference in Doha.
“Most of the LNG are tied to long-term contracts and destinations that are very clear. So, to replace that sum of volume that quickly is almost impossible,” he said.
The United States and its European allies are set to announce fresh sanctions against Russia after President Vladimir Putin formally recognised the independence of the two regions in eastern Ukraine. The sanctions could affect the Russian flow of gas into Europe. Germany yesterday halted the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project, designed to double the flow of Russian gas direct to Germany. The move sent gas prices higher yesterday. Qatar and other countries such as Japan have recently been approached by the United States to reroute gas supplies to Europe in case conflict escalates. Sources told Reuters that Qatari LNG exports have been lower over the past few days as two of its mega trains have been down, another factor that could limit the spare amount to be sent to Europe. Japan said earlier this month it will divert some LNG cargoes to Europe after requests from the United States and the European Union. However, the few cargoes that arrived to Europe were cargoes already scheduled under a joint venture between Japan’s JERA and France’s EDF and there was no incremental added supply. Currently facing a cold spell that has depleted LNG inventories, Japan is experiencing re-stocking demand and so it needs more LNG supply. “We’ve not seen anything concrete happen to supply yet. That could obviously change, but clearly, Qatar and Japan will be limited in their ability to help with extra cargoes if Europe loses access to Russian gas,” said Robert Songer, LNG analyst at commodities intelligence firm ICIS.
Pope invokes Fatima secrets in prayers for Ukraine and Russia
Catholics have Fatama, Fundamental Christians have Revelations, Jew have Daniel, Ezekiel. All predict the same events…..
Pope Francis presided yesterday over a special prayer for Ukraine that harks back to a century-old apocalyptic prophecy about peace and Russia that was sparked by purported visions of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917.Francis invited bishops, priests and ordinary faithful around the world to join him in the consecration prayer. Retired Pope Benedict XVI was due to participate and an envoy of Francis was celebrating a simultaneous mass at the Fatima shrine itself. The ritual is of deep spiritual importance to many Catholics. It deals with some of the more controversial aspects of the Catholic faith: purported visions of the Madonna, prophecies of hell, Soviet communism and the death of a pope, and whether the prophecies contained in the so-called “secrets of Fatima” have already been fulfilled. The mass was Francis’s latest effort to rally prayers for an end to the war while keeping open options for dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church and its influential leader, Patriarch Kirill. The Fatima story dates to 1917, when according to tradition, siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto and cousin Lucia said the Virgin Mary appeared to them six times and confided three secrets. The first two described an apocalyptic image of hell, foretold the end of World War I and the start of World War II, and the rise and fall of Soviet communism. According to later writings by Lucia, who became a nun and died in 2005, Russia would be converted and peace would reign if the pope and all the bishops of the world consecrated Russia to the “Immaculate Heart of Mary”. For some traditionalist Catholics, Francis’s pronunciation of Russia in the prayer, as well as his invitation for all the world’s bishops to join him, finally fulfils the original Fatima prophecy. Some quibble that he has added in Ukraine, while others point to the fact that the original call for Russia’s “conversion” – presumably to Catholicism – might well have been a priority for the Catholic Church in 1917 but is not now. Soon after Pope Francis announced his plans, Patriarch Kirill said he, too, was inviting the Russian Orthodox to direct prayers to the Virgin. Kirill has called for peace but has also seemingly justified the invasion by invoking the two countries as “one people’ NN: Old enemies the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, In the Middle East its the Sunnis, and Shiite and throw in the Jews for good measure. These are the ingredients for WWIII.
Russia’s Gazprom says gas exports to Europe via Ukraine continue……. Russia warns West: gas bills in roubles are just days away
Russia warns West: gas bills in roubles are just days away
LONDON (Reuters) -Russia warned the West on Friday that billing in roubles for billions of dollars of natural gas exports to Europe could be just days away, Moscow’s toughest response yet to crippling sanctions imposed by the West for the invasion of Ukraine. With the Russian economy facing its gravest crisis since the years that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hit back at the West, ordering that Russian gas exports should be paid for in roubles.
Putin said the West had declared economic war by freezing Russian assets, and so Russia saw no point in receiving dollars or euros for Russian exports anymore.
The Kremlin on Friday said Putin had ordered Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural gas company, which supplies 40% of Europe’s gas, to accept export payments in roubles, and that it had just four days left to work out how. “There is an instruction to Gazprom from the president of the Russian Federation to accept payments in roubles,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “This information will be brought to the purchasers of Gazprom products.” Gas buyers have been seeking guidance on how they could get the roubles to make any such payments, given the extent of the sanctions on Russia. “Rouble payments are somewhere between very difficult and not possible for the majority of European buyers to organise, and certainly not at short notice,” Jonathan Stern, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told Reuters.
If Gazprom insisted on rouble payments and stopped deliveries if payments were not made in roubles, “then in my view this would be a violation of contract terms,” he said.
Payments in roubles would shore up the Russian currency, which has plummeted since the invasion on Feb. 24. Putin’s speech lifted the rouble 9% against the dollar on Wednesday. [RU/RUB] Meanwhile Dutch gas prices, the European benchmark, have spiked due to concerns over whether countries will be willing or even able to pay in roubles. [NG/EU] Putin’s move, announced just as the European Union was debating additional sanctions on Russia, amounts to one of the sharpest turns in Russian gas politics since the Soviets built gas pipelines to Europe from Siberia in the early 1970s. The man who has been Russia’s paramount leader since 1999 has long railed against the dominance of the U.S. dollar, which he casts as an instrument of a U.S. “empire of lies” aimed at destroying Russia. Moscow was blindsided by the West’s ability to freeze the $300 billion of Russia’s $640 billion “rainy day” reserve that was parked abroad. Russia says the West has defaulted on its obligations to Russia, and that Moscow’s post-Soviet delusions about the West, and the use of dollars and euros, are over. The Kremlin has refused to discuss just how far Putin could go with his bid to conduct trade in roubles; Russia is one of the world’s top exporters of oil, gas and metals – which are all largely priced and settled in U.S. dollars. The mechanism by which up to $320 billion a year of gas exports will be paid for in roubles is still unclear. Euros account for 58% of Gazprom exports, U.S. dollars 39% and sterling around 3%, according to the company. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Friday advised German energy providers not to pay for Russian gas in roubles, as demanded by Moscow. Even the Communist Soviet Union accepted foreign currency for its energy exports, and it was not immediately clear if the change to rouble payments would amount to a breach of contract. Many importers have said long-term contracts with Gazprom stipulate payment in either euros or U.S. dollars. However, despite redoubling efforts to reduce their reliance on Russian gas, European consumers have few short-term options for covering their gas needs elsewhere. NN; The dumb shit Europeans cannot have it both ways. They cannot illegally sanction Russia, Arrest assets with out prorof of ownership or a crime. Without repercussions. So here is a reality check, Russia can change the payment terms for its gas and oil…. And Europe can decide to buy or not to buy. Despite the Biden spin THEIR IS NO replacement FOR RUSSIA GAS AND OIL TO EUROPE. and And AND their will not be any for ten years or more despite gernnieeweinnie wet dreams………
Oil turns to gains on news of fire at Aramco’s facility
A Saudi Aramco oil storage facility located near the Jeddah F1 track was reportedly hit by a terrorist attack just as F1 kicked off its first practice session on Friday. Black was seen billowing in the distance as the facility was ablaze, with initial reports pointing to a missile attack launched by Yemen’s rebel Houthi militia.
https://youtu.be/xQLoktRInco
An F1 spokesman said: “We are waiting for further information from the authorities on what has happened.” Yemen’s Houthi militia have been heavily targeting Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure since the beginning of the year with missiles and drones, which has led to heightened security around this weekend’s F1 event in Jeddah. The Jeddah Corniche Circuit is located approximately 10 km from the Saudi Aramco facility that was attacked, and the burning oil could be smelt at the venue, so much so that a worried Red Bull’s Max Verstappen radioed in during the session to inform his team of the smell.