BlackMask Breaking News

UK’s Jewish Chronicle, citing unnamed intel sources, claims Fakhrizadeh was hit by Mossad team without US involvement, says killing likely set back nuke weapons program by years Top Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in November by a Mossad team using a one-ton automated weapon that had been smuggled into Iran in pieces, according to a Wednesday report in London’s Jewish Chronicle. The US was not involved in the operation, which may have set back the rogue Iranian nuclear weapons program by years, the report said. Apparently based at least in part on unnamed Israeli sources, the report appeared timed to send a message both to Iran, which is openly breaching the 2015 P5+1 nuclear deal, and to the new US administration, which is planning to re-enter the deal, highlighting Israel’s oft-stated determination to take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. Fakhrizadeh was killed on a road outside Tehran on November 27. Iran has blamed Israel for the hit. The team that carried out the hit had over 20 members, both Israeli and Iranian nationals, the Jewish Chronicle reported, citing “intelligence sources.” At least some of those sources were evidently Israeli; one was quoted saying, “Thank God we got all our people out and they didn’t catch anyone. They didn’t even come close.” The agents surveilled Fakhrizadeh for eight months before the assassination, the report claimed. It said agents were on the ground at the time of the assassination to operate the gun from a distance. The report claimed Fakhrizadeh was hit by a burst of 13 bullets from the “hyper-accurate” weapon, which did not injure his wife or 12 bodyguards who were traveling with him. Some of the numerous contradictory reports of the killing at the time, by contrast, claimed several of Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards were also killed in the attack. The weapon was mounted on the back of a Nissan truck and detonated to destroy evidence after the assassination, the report claimed. “The bespoke weapon, operated remotely by agents on the ground as they observed the target, was so heavy because it included a bomb that destroyed the evidence after the killing,” it added. The US was not involved in the assassination, the report said. The Americans were given only a “little clue.” It further asserted that Israeli analysts believe Fakhrizadeh’s killing has extended the time Iran would need to construct a nuclear weapon, if it decides to break out for the bomb, from 3.5 months to some 2-5 years. Furthermore, it said, Iran has “secretly assessed that it will take six years” before a replacement for Fakhrizadeh is “fully operational.” Publication of the report came as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing off against the new administration in the US, with President Joe Biden having said he intends to re-enter the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal negotiated under president Barack Obama, an agreement from which president Donald Trump withdrew. Netanyahu, who publicly lobbied against the 2015 deal, has warned Biden that it would be a “mistake” and “folly” for the US to rejoin the JCPOA. “There is no doubt that whatever approach the Americans take with Iran, Israel will ‘defend itself by itself,’” the Wednesday report said, and quoted an anonymous but plainly Israeli source saying: “Our main strategy for leverage over the United States is to present our 2018 intelligence to the IAEA. But if it doesn’t work, we will act. The US won’t love it, but we will keep our sovereignty and fight every existential threat… If the situation becomes critical, we will ask nobody for permission. We will kill the bomb.” The report’s details of the Fakhrizadeh hit appear to at least partially accord with Iranian media claims after the killing that it was carried out from afar using a remote-controlled machine gun attached to a car. Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said a satellite-controlled gun with “artificial intelligence” was used in the attack. The Jewish Chronicle report said the planning of the assassination began after the Mossad stole a trove of documents from a Tehran warehouse on Iran’s nuclear program, in an operation publicized by Netanyahu in 2018. In a companion piece Wednesday for the Spectator magazine, Jake Wallis Simons, the journalist who wrote the Jewish Chronicle article, elaborated that Fakhrizadeh’s centrality to the rogue Iranian nuclear weapons program was underlined by the discovery that documents in the trove “were found to have been handwritten” by him, and some had his fingerprints “literally” all over them. Fakhrizadeh, the writer said he was told, “was found to be the architect of everything in the archive. He was directing all aspects [of the Iranian program], from the science and the secret sites to the personnel and the knowhow. From that moment – to use Mossad slang – it became clear that the scientist had to ‘depart’.” There have been various reports describing how Fakhrizadeh was killed, including by a team of shooters on the ground and remote weapons controlled by satellites. Israel and the US say Fakhrizadeh headed Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program.

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United States major stock markets closed mixed on Wednesday in a volatile session fueled by the investors’ optimism over the passing of stimulus relief bill as President Biden sought support with government officials as well as CEOs of top American firms. On the other hand, Federal Reserve Bank Chair Jerome Powell gave a speech later in the day expressing concerns regarding the uncertainties of the economic recovery and achieving maximum employment. He also outlined that continued federal support of businesses and workers will be necessary even after the pandemic.The Dow Jones closed at a record high gaining 0.20% led by Walgreens rising 3.22%, while the Nasdaq 100 was down 0.23% as Tesla plummeted 526%. The S&P 500 ended 0.03% in the red with Akamai Technologies dropping 10.91%. The euro remained flat against the dollar changing hands at $1.21204 at 4:04 pm ET. Nick Note: This is the crazy shit you get in a bubble. For now ride the wave

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s swift vaccination rollout has made it the largest real-world study of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine. Results are trickling in, and they are promising. More than half of eligible Israelis – about 3.5 million people – have now been fully or partially vaccinated. Older and at-risk groups, the first to be inoculated, are seeing a dramatic drop in illnesses. Among the first fully-vaccinated group there was a 53% reduction in new cases, a 39% decline in hospitalizations and a 31% drop in severe illnesses from mid-January until Feb. 6, said Eran Segal, data scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. In the same period, among people under age 60 who became eligible for shots later, new cases dropped 20% but hospitalizations and severe illness rose 15% and 29%, respectively. Reuters interviewed leading scientists in Israel and abroad, Israeli health officials, hospital heads and two of the country’s largest healthcare providers about what new data shows from the world’s most efficient vaccine rollout. The vaccine drive has provided a database offering insights into how effective the vaccines are outside of controlled clinical trials, and at what point countries might attain sought-after but elusive herd immunity. More will be known in two weeks, as teams analyse vaccine effectiveness in younger groups of Israelis, as well as targeted populations such as people with diabetes, cancer and pregnant women, among a patient base at least 10 times larger than those in clinical studies.  “We need to have enough variety of people in that subgroup and enough follow-up time so you can make the right conclusions, and we are getting to that point,” said Ran Balicer, chief innovation officer of HMO Clalit, which covers more than half the Israeli population. Pfizer is monitoring the Israeli rollout on a weekly basis for insights that can be used around the world. As a small country with universal healthcare, advanced data capabilities and the promise of a swift rollout, Israel provided Pfizer with a unique opportunity to study the real-world impact of the vaccine developed with Germany’s BioNTech But the company said it remained “difficult to forecast the precise time when herd protection may start to manifest” because of many variables at play, including social distancing measures and the number of new infections generated by each case, known as the reproduction rate. Even Israel, in the vanguard of the global vaccine drive, has lowered expectations of emerging quickly from the pandemic because of soaring cases. A third national lockdown has struggled to contain transmission, attributed to the fast-spreading UK variant of the virus. On a positive note, the Pfizer/BioNTech shot appears to be effective against it. “We’ve so far identified the same 90% to 95% efficacy against the British strain,” said Hezi Levi, director-general of the Israeli Health Ministry. “It is still early though, because we have only now finished the first week after the second dose,” he said, adding: “It’s too early to say anything about the South African variant.” Israel began its vaccination programme Dec. 19 – the day after Hanukkah – after paying a premium for supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Four days later, the more contagious UK variant was detected in four people. While the vaccine is preventing illness in older people, the variant now makes up about 80% of new cases. Finding themselves in a race between the vaccine and the new variant, Israel began giving shots to those over 60 and gradually opened the programme to the rest of the population. Every detail was digitally tracked, down to in which arm the patient was jabbed and what vial it came from. One week after receiving the second Pfizer dose – the point at which full protection is expected to kick in – 254 out of 416,900 people were infected, according to Maccabi, a leading Israeli healthcare provider. Comparing this against an unvaccinated group revealed a vaccine efficacy of 91%, Maccabi said. By 22 days after full vaccination, no infections were recorded. Israeli experts are confident the vaccines rather than lockdown measures brought the numbers down, based on studying different cities, age groups and pre-vaccine lockdowns. The comparisons were “convincing in telling us this is the effect of the vaccination,” said Weizmann Institute’s Segal. With 80% of senior citizens partially or fully vaccinated, a more complete picture will begin to emerge as soon as this week. “And we do expect further decline in the overall cases and in the cases of severe morbidity,” said Balicer, of HMO Clalit. There may be early signs that vaccinations are tamping down virus transmission in addition to illness At Israel’s biggest COVID-19 testing centre, run by MyHeritage, researchers have tracked a significant decrease in the amount of virus infected people carry, known as cT value, among the most-vaccinated age groups. This suggests that even if vaccinated people get infected, they are less likely to infect others, said MyHeritage Chief Science Officer Yaniv Erlich. “The data so far is probably most clear from Israel. I do believe that these vaccines will reduce onward transmission,” said Stefan Baral, from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Maryland. It is unclear whether Israel will be able to keep up its world-leading vaccination pace. “When you vaccinate fast and a lot, you eventually get to the hardcore – those who are less willing or harder to reach,” said Boaz Lev, head of the Health Ministry’s advisory panel. The vaccination pace is seen even more crucial with the British variant’s rapid transmission. “In the race between the UK variant spreading and the vaccinations, the end result is that we are seeing a kind of plateau in terms of the severely ill,” said Segal. The big question is whether vaccines can eradicate the pandemic. Michal Linial, a professor of molecular biology and bioinformatics at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, said data from past decades suggests viruses become endemic and seasonal. She predicted this coronavirus would become far less aggressive, perhaps requiring a booster shot within three years. “The virus is not going anywhere,” she concluded. Nick Note: Its all a matter of knowledge. Suck it up you will need a vaccine AND AND a booster shot every 6 months to a year… SO!

LONDON (Reuters) – World shares rose to new all-time highs overnight and European indexes strengthened, with market sentiment generally upbeat on the prospect of fiscal stimulus and vaccine rollouts and ahead of a speech by U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 49 countries, was up 0.2% at 0833 GMT, having touched new peaks shortly before. Overnight, MSCI’s ex-Japan Asian shares index also broke above its previous high hit in January.. European indexes strengthened after a shaky start, with the STOXX 600 and London’s FTSE 100 both up 0.2%.  The dollar slipped slightly against a basket of currencies, down 0.2% at a two-week low of 90.263. “The reflation rally continues and interestingly with the dollar now weakening which suggests inflows into Asia are being recycled,” wrote Sebastien Galy, senior macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management in an emailed note. “Eventually, the reflation in commodities will start to affect real economic activity and create a negative feedback loop, especially oil,” he said. Oil prices rose overnight but steadied as European markets opened. Brent has risen for eight days in a row, the longest sustained run of gains since January 2019, while U.S. oil gained for seven days, the longest rally since February 2019. China’s consumer price index fell more than expected, but factory prices posted their first year-on-year rise in 12 months, suggesting gathering momentum in the industrial sector. up. Chinese stocks rose to multi-year highs on the last trading day before the week-long lunar new year holidays “China has been able to recover quickly because it controlled the pandemic quickly, which enabled it to fill the gap caused by production bottlenecks in countries where COVID-19 restrictions were still in place,” Marcin Adamczyk, head of emerging markets debt at NN Investment Partners, wrote in a note.  U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he agreed with a proposal by Democratic lawmakers that would limit or phase out stimulus payments to higher-income individuals as part of his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. The U.S. government will begin shipping COVID-19 vaccines directly to community health centres next week, as part of Biden’s goal of administering 100 million doses of the vaccine in his first 100 days in office. Earnings also contributed to market optimism. Japan’s Toyota hiked its full-year earnings forecasts by 54% to a record $19 billion. Societe Generale beat profit forecasts for the fourth quarter, as did Dutch bank ABN Amro. After a slight pullback on Wall Street on Tuesday, S&P 500 futures pointed towards a stronger open, up 0.3%. U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will speak in a webinar about the state of the U.S. labour market at 1900 GMT. “The Fed’s job in avoiding unwarranted moves higher in yields is about to get more difficult,” wrote Derek Halpenny, MUFG head of research for global markets EMEA, in a note to clients. “Tonight’s speech will need to be carefully balanced between an improving outlook due to COVID and continued caution given the high levels of uncertainty and the long road to achieving its new, higher inflation goal.” U.S. CPI data is also due later in the session. The 10-year treasury yield was little changed at 1.1534%, having dipped from a spike on Monday to its highest since March last year. In Europe, the benchmark 10-year German Bund yield was steady at -0.445%. Italian borrowing costs hit a one-month low on Tuesday as Mario Draghi made progress in his attempt to form a government. The euro was up 0.2% at $1.2137, its highest in 9 days. Elsewhere, Bitcoin was trading around $46,763 and Ethereum hit new record highs. Nick Note: Feel the heat…… the stampede of the herd…. The  roar of the crowd. They know no fear. Driven by greed the desperadoes are playing right into our hands.  We are in essence front running them. This is a sophisticated game we play  and rarely comes along. Not every rally has the stupids jumping in with both feet. I have had this trade unfold only a handful of times in the past 40 years. The First was the silver run. My mentor Tome Rubin said to me watch and learn. “The first run (which we are in now in the stock market) builds your bank. The second phase the end of the mania where we short is where fortunes are made”. So hit the fucking reset button as your are starting to figure out this is new all over again.

 

GameStop Corp (NYSE: GME) has been extending its falls on Tuesday and trades at around $48.65 at the time of writing. Shares of the videogaming company that returned to fame due to the frenzy on WallStreetBets – a forum attracting retail traders on Reddit has continued its fall from grace. GME hit a high above $400 at the peak. Shares continue their downtrend despite RobinHood’s removal of restrictions on buying stock during the peak. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been fiercely critical of RobinHood’s conduct.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Bitcoin extended gains on Tuesday to a record high as the afterglow of Tesla Inc’s investment in the cryptocurrency had investors reckoning it would become a mainstream asset class for both corporates and money managers. Bitcoin has more than doubled over two months as institutional investors search for alternative wealth stores and retail traders ride the wave. Monday’s leap after Tesla’s announcement was its largest daily rise in more than three years. It climbed to a new peak of $48,216 late in the Asian afternoon on Tuesday. Rival cryptocurrency ethereum had struck a record high of $1,784.85 in the early morning. Shares of companies that provide trading platforms for bitcoin and the technology to “mine” the cryptocurrency surged in China, South Korea, and Australia, and big computer chip making companies such as SK Hynix also rose. The U.S. dollar slumped against most currencies. Analysts figuredTesla’s announcement that it had bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin and that it would take the cryptocurrency as payment for cars is part of a larger shift as companies and big investment houses follow small traders into the asset. “While you can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin, I wouldn’t suggest doing so,” said Michael Bucella, partner at crypto investment firm BlockTower on CNBC. “We’re in a position where these are the earliest phases of an allocation to bitcoin from the institutional and corporate community.” Bitcoin is already up 62% this year, on top of a 300% rally last year, as investors search for alternatives to the greenback because of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s 0% interest rates. Central bankers and regulators, particularly in China, are also starting to embrace issuing their own digital currencies for everyday use, in a major break from the conventional workings of global finance. “Digital currencies, it seems clear to us, are going to be an increasing part of financial architecture very broadly and potentially portfolios moving forward,” Ben Powell, APAC chief investment strategist at BlackRock’s Investment Institute, said on CNBC. “There isn’t just news in the U.S. with the bitcoin situation, but in China we’ve got a rollout of China’s digital currency with so-called ‘red packets’.”

LONDON (Reuters) – It is not yet clear whether the world needs a new set of vaccines to fight different variants of the novel coronavirus but scientists are working on new ones so there is no reason for alarm, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group said on Tuesday. South Africa has paused a planned rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccines after data showed it gave minimal protection against mild infection among young people from the dominant variant there, stoking fears of a much longer battle with the pathogen.

AstraZeneca and Oxford University aim to produce a next generation of vaccines that will protect against variants as soon as the autumn before the Northern Hemisphere winter, AstraZeneca’s research chief said this month.

“There are definitely new questions about variants that we’re going to be addressing. And one of those is: do we need new vaccines?,” Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, told BBC radio. “I think the jury is out on that at the moment, but all developers are preparing new vaccines so if we do need them, we’ll have them available to be able to protect people.” Vaccines are seen as the swiftest path out of the COVID-19 crisis which has killed 2.33 million people and turned normal life upside down for billions. Researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford said in a prior-to-peer analysis that the AstraZeneca vaccine provided minimal protection against mild or moderate infection from the South African variant among young people. Protection against moderate-severe disease, hospitalisation or death could not be assessed in the study of around 2,000 volunteers who had a median age of 31 as the target population were at such low risk, the researchers said. “I think there’s clearly a risk of confidence in the way that people may perceive you. But as I say I don’t think that there is any reason for alarm today,” Pollard said. “The really important question is about severe disease and we didn’t study that in South Africa, because that wasn’t the point of that study, we were specifically asking questions about young adults.”