Author: BlackMask Financial

Bombshell ‘Five Eyes’ Western intelligence dossier claims China lied about human-to-human transmission, ‘disappeared’ whistle-blowers and refused to help other countries prepare a vaccine for coronavirus

 

Chinas ‘risky’ research on bat-related diseases stretching back years. It describes how Beijing was outwardly downplaying the outbreak on the world stage while secretly scrambling to bury all traces of the disease. This involved ‘destroying’ laboratory samples, bleaching wet market stalls, censoring the growing evidence of ‘silent carriers’ of the virus and stonewalling sample requests from other countries. The secrecy has fanned a clamour in Five Eyes nations for Western governments to come down hard on Beijing when the pandemic eventually passes. Tory MP Bob Seely told MailOnline that ‘at the end of this when the dust settles it is also clear that there has to be a re-evaluation by the West of its relationship with China’. In a damning portrayal of a mass cover-up, the bombshell report reveals:

• Chinese researchers of bat-related viruses studied a sample which had a 96 per cent genetic match to Covid-19 as early as 2013;
• Their ‘risky’ research found in 2015 that the disease was transmissible from bats to humans;
  
  • Information on asymptomatic carriers of the disease was ‘kept silent’ by the Chinese state;
  • Beijing started censoring search engines in December to stop any internet surfing relating to the virus;
  • The World Health Organisation followed China by denying evidence of human-to-human transmission until late January despite concerns raised by neighbouring countries’;
  • The Five Eyes countries lashed out at China for criticising other countries’ flight freezes while simultaneously locking down Hubei Province.

  Continue reading “Leaked dossier details China hiding virus info”

The Food and Drug Administration will authorize Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir, a decade-old experimental therapy first tested on Ebola disease patients, as a COVID-19 treatment.

Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day  told investors during an earnings call that talks with the FDA about an emergency use authorization (EUA) or a formal approval have intensified over the last 48 hours. “There’s a big sense of urgency,” he said, according to a FactSet transcript of the call. “We think the FDA will move quite quickly.” Shares of Gilead GILD, -4.84% were down 6.9% on Friday following at least three downgrades of the stock on concerns about remdesivir’s moneymaking potential. (“We don’t know what a sustainable revenue stream from remdesivir will look like,” SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analysts wrote in a note.) Year-to-date, the company’s stock has gained 20.4%, hitting a low of $62.23 on Jan. 21 before soaring to a $85.97 high for the year on March 19. The drug has been widely considered a front-runner in the rush to find viable treatments for a disease that has sickened more than three million people worldwide and killed at least 220,000, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. It would be the first new drug to get an EUA, a type of authorization that the FDA is using during the pandemic. The regulator in March authorized chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to be repurposed for some COVID-19 patients though both drugs have previously been approved to treat other diseases, like malaria. Investors and clinicians have been paying close attention to the snippets of study data about the antiviral drugs, sending the company’s shares up or down depending on the day. Though experts have had mixed responses to the clinical findings so far, it’s clear that demand is high. There are no proven treatments for infections caused by the coronavirus, making it difficult for the nation’s health-care workers to care for the patients who end up in their emergency rooms and intensive care unit beds. There’s also the economic angle. The market largely swings up in response to remdesivir data, driven by the investor stance that a proven treatment, even more so than vaccine, would support the prospect of an economic rebound for the U.S., which is in its worst recession since the Great Depression. Gilead began developing remdesivir in 2009. It was later tested as a treatment for Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), among other diseases. The company said it began providing doses of remdesivir to the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & Prevention in January when the coronavirus outbreak there began to worsen. By February, the investigational therapy had been moved into a number of clinical trials in the U.S. and abroad, including one conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Government officials including President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIAID director, have talked up the results, with Fauci saying remdesivir would become the standard of care in the treatment of COVID-19 patients, other medical experts have been more measured in their responses to the clinical-trial data. “Under the emergency-use authorization, one could charge for the product,” CEO O’Day told investors on the earnings call. “We made a decision, as you know, to donate 1.5 million vials, which is the entirety of our supply through the early summer.” The vials encompass 140,000 10-day treatment courses. O’Day later said during the call that donating the investigational therapy “is the right thing to do at this time.” Nick Note: its a done deal. Their is a cure weather their is a cure or not… ENJOY!

U.S. incomes fell in March but not as much as spending, pushing the savings rate to its highest level in 39 years, the government said Thursday. Income fell 2% in March, with an identical decline in disposable income. At the same time, spending slumped a record 7.5% last month. The spending data was not a surprise as it was contained in the first quarter GDP report released Wednesday, which showed consumer spending contracted at a 7.6% annual rate in the first quarter. Inflation pressures eased in March. The closely watched PCE price gauge fell 0.3% in the month led by energy prices, pushing down the increase over the past year to 1.3% from 1.8%. The core PCE price index slipped to a yearly rate of 1.7% from 1.8%. With spending falling faster than income, the savings rate shot up to 13.1% from 8% in February. That’s the highest rate in 39 years. Spending declined for services, such as health care, dental and food services. Within goods, the leading decline was spending on autos. Real spending on groceries rose 19.1% in the month. Wages and salaries fell 3.1% in March, the government said. While unemployment insurance payments soared, to a record high, it was not enough to offset the drop in wages, said David Berson, the chief economist at Nationwide.  The shutting of businesses and the stay at home orders to combat the coronavirus pandemic have damaged consumer spending, the engine of the U.S. economy. There should be another sharp drop in April before some improvement in May as some governors allow their states to open up. At the same time, inflation seems headed even lower. At least households have the means to boost consumption a little when the lockdown eases,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, referring to the gain in the savings rate.

Every major American art museum is sitting on assets that, from the outside, look enviable. They’re called works of art. If they’re by Vincent van Gogh or Frida Kahlo or Jackson Pollock, they may be worth tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars. Even if they’re by less famous artists and consigned to storage – along with perhaps 90 percent of any given museum’s collection – they can still be valued at eye-watering amounts. Set beside, say, a scary budget deficit or the prospect of having to lay off employees, this knowledge can take on an almost voluptuous glow. To counter the constant temptation to regard art works as a way to get quick cash, the museum world heavily polices the sale of works from permanent collections – otherwise known as deaccessioning. The powerful Association of Art Museum Directors, made up of directors of museums in the United States, Mexico and Canada, has long frowned on any museum that sells off art for purposes other than acquiring new art. AAMD’s frowns have an effect. Museums that dare to ignore its guidelines – as the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, did in 2018, ultimately selling more than 20 works from its collection to raise money for a renovation – are censured, sanctioned and publicly shamed. For a renegade – or perhaps simply desperate – museum director, a decision to sell works from the collection, even if it’s to raise money deemed necessary for survival, might mean career death. However, in an unprecedented move, and as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic, the AAMD has recently relaxed its guidelines. It’s too soon to gauge the effect, but it is already big news in the art world. Once unthinkable, the notion of selling off a Claude Monet or two to plug a budgetary hole – or to fend off a total financial meltdown – is suddenly something to contemplate. The only problem, of course, is that once you’ve sold a Monet, or a Norman Rockwell, or an Albert Bierstadt, it’s very hard to get it back.

Continue reading “This is how bad things are for museums: They now have a green light to sell off their art”

SINGAPORE (Bloomberg) –Oil jumped for a second day as global production cuts deepened and signs of a fledgling demand recovery emerged. Futures in New York rose by as much as 18%. Norway said it will participate in oil-output cuts for the first time since 2002, joining other major producers in reining in supply. Data on Wednesday showed a surprise surge in U.S. gasoline demand, while some European figures are improving. In China, traffic is returning to the streets, supporting a boost in fuel use and refining rates. Physical markets are also showing early signs of firming, although from exceptionally weak levels, with crude from Russia to the Mediterranean pricing more strongly. But while prices have ticked up from their lows, storage capacity is filling fast, and oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc warned it doesn’t expect a market recovery even in the medium-term. “As storage fills up, producers will be forced to act with additional production shut-ins, and lower prices can be expected,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at Rystad Energy. “If more countries curtail their supply, then we really can start talking about a possible resolution to the crisis and may see prices rising back to healthier levels.” Despite the supply cuts and indications of a tentative rebound in demand, there’s still a massive global glut of oil that will need to be cleared before there can be any meaningful recovery in prices. A fleet of supertankers carrying 43 million barrels of Saudi crude is bearing down on the U.S., which will add to the oversupply in the world’s largest economy.

U.S. output will fall by 2 million barrels a day in May compared with March and the price of crude has likely bottomed out, according to the head of trading house Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. Still, Shell said Thursday that the coronavirus outbreak is going to have a lasting impact on consumer behavior.

Lifestyles will probably “be altered for some time to come, whether that is because of the economic bandwidth that people will have or businesses will have, or whether it is because of attitudes,” Chief Executive Officer Ben Van Beurden said.

Singapore — China National Offshore Oil Corp. cut its production and capital expenditure targets by 2.9% and 11.1%, respectively, for 2020 from the original plan amid low oil prices, with the reduction mainly falling on overseas projects, a company executive said late Wednesday during the company’s 2020 first quarter results call. With the adjustment, its oil and gas output target is at 505-515 million boe or 1.39 million boe/d, compared with the original planned 1.43 million boe/d. It’s lower than actual output of 1.45 million boe/day in Q1 and compares with production of 1.39 million boe/d in 2019. The capex target was adjusted to Yuan 75-85 billion ($11.31 billion), down from actual spending of Yuan 79.6 billion in 2019. The 11.1% capex cut is much lower than 20-30% reductions seen by other international oil and gas companies. “We are rich in cash flow. The reduction is based on each individual project appraisal, cutting those ones with no profit and no cash flow contribution,” CFO Xie Weizhi said. The adjusted targets were set in mid-April on the assumption that oil prices would recover to over $40/b in the third quarter, comparing with the original assumption made in January of around $65/b in 2020, Xie said.

Prices of oil soared on Wednesday to recover some losses recorded earlier this month with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) jumping over 15% on OPEC+ output cuts optimism.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak stressed that the country’s oil companies are expected to trim its oil production by as much as 19% to comply with the OPEC+ deal. Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute’s data showed lower-than-expected growth in the United States oil inventories in the week ending April 24.

WTI for June delivery climbed 15.07% to sell for $14.20 per barrel at 3:57 am ET, while Brent for the same month’s settlement went up by 3.91%, trading for $21.26 per barrel a minute later.