The storm system that's hammered California this week is heading east - but not before dousing the state with more torrential rain and knocking out power with ferocious winds. Daily rainfall records were shattered Tuesday in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. The deluge will keep hitting Southern California on Wednesday before moving east, threatening 25 million people in the central US. California Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded a state of emergency to cover 43 of the state's 58 counties Tuesday night as high winds and intense rain wrought havoc in the state. Some cities endured hurricane-force winds. Top wind gusts of 97 mph were measured at Santa Clara County's Loma Prieta, 93 mph at Alameda County's Mines Tower and 74 mph at San Francisco Airport, according to the National Weather Service. In San Francisco, firefighters believe fierce winds sent out glass falling from a downtown high-rise building, they said.

President Joe Biden called efforts to restrict transgender rights in Florida "close to sinful" in an interview released Monday, suggesting federal laws should be passed to protect those rights in all states. "What's going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. It's just terrible what they're doing," Biden said during an interview with Kal Penn for "The Daily Show." Biden's comments came as an unprecedented number of measures are introduced in state legislatures this year that are seeking to restrict LGBTQ rights. The proposed bills cover a wide range of policies, including some that seek to restrict transgender people from competing on sports teams or using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

The heavy rains accompanying Cyclone Yaku led to flooding Wednesday in seven districts of Peru's capital, a desert city that rarely experiences significant precipitation. Prime Minister Alberto Otarola said the government will declare a state of emergency in the beachfront district of Punta Hermosa, which suffered a massive mudslide during the overnight hours. Cabinet ministers are "directing aid and coordinating with the local authorities" in all of the affected areas of the Lima metropolitan area, which includes the port city of Callao and is home to nearly a third of Peru's 34 million people. In Cieneguilla, on the eastern side of the capital, district Mayor Emilio Chavez told TVPeru that rain-driven mudslides forced some 2,500 residents from their homes. The houses of at least 100 families were completely destroyed, he said.

Alexander Dugin argues that the conflict has transformed from a limited SMO into a full-scale conflict against the unipolar neoliberal world order. One year into the Russian special military operation (SMO), Alexander Dugin argues that the conflict has transformed from a limited SMO into a full-scale conflict against the unipolar neoliberal world order. According to Dugin, the miscalculations which shifted the course of the war came early and were only reacted to later: "[t]he Kremlin probably did not take into account either the psychological readiness of the Ukrainian Nazis to fight to the last Ukrainian, or the scale of Western military aid." From my perspective here in the United States, I was aware of the Nazi presence in the Maidan coup since 2014, as were a good many others. Yet, what caught me off guard was the complete, total/totalizing, and in fact uncritical acceptance that Ukraine=Humanity and Russia=Barbarism. I wrote about this in the early days of the special...

An avalanche on Monday morning killed a 28-year-old Dutch skier near the ski resort of Nendaz, Switzerland. The victim had been skiing off-piste with two friends on the heights of Nendaz in an area known amongst Freeriders as 'Stairway to Heaven' when the avalanche was triggered. His friends located him, dug him out, and contacted search and rescue, which tried resuscitation. He was revived and transported to the hospital but later died. Unfortunately, he did not survive. On Wednesday, a separate, massive avalanche was triggered outside the marked tracks in the same location near the Col de Gentianes on the Nendaz side. It was between 300 and 400 meters wide and triggered an extensive search and rescue effort involving eight rescue helicopters and several search dogs. It was unclear at the time how many people may have been buried in the snow. At one stage, it was believed that up to ten skiers were in the avalanche, but apparently, all could free themselves and did not require...

A snowboarder died after an avalanche south of Bend, Oregon, at Paulina Peak Wednesday afternoon. Deschutes County Sheriff's Sgt. Jason Wall told KTVZ that a person had died several hours after a call for help was received by dispatchers. Three snowboarders had used snowmobiles to reach the area and were snowboarding down the 7,984-foot (2,433-meter) peak, located east of La Pine and the highest point on the Newberry Volcano, when the avalanche happened, according to Wall.

We received 6 reports about a fireball seen over AL, AR, LA and TX on Wednesday, March 15th 2023 around 05:00 UT. For this event, we received 2 videos and one photo.

A week ago an interesting story surfaced briefly in the news about how the developing Republican presidential candidate bids by Nikki Haley and others had been attacked over the past eleven months by possibly as many as hundreds of thousands of false automated personas, referred to in the trade as "bots," on Twitter and other internet based social media. Interestingly, the activity was discovered and shared with Associated Press by an Israeli internet security company called Cyabra, which also claimed that the "bots" generation seem to have originated in three separate networks of false Twitter accounts. The accounts appear to have been created in the United States and it is believed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications are increasingly being used to create completely lifelike fake personas, extremely difficult for security filters and censors to detect. The article claimed that those thousands of electronically generated non-persons had been programmed to disparage Haley...

Under the guise of stopping mass shootings, a surveillance system backed by top Mossad, CIA and FBI officials is being installed in schools, houses of worship, and other civilian locations throughout the country, much of it thanks to the recent donation of an "anonymous philanthropist." Launched in 2016 in response to a Tel Aviv shooting and the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, Gabriel offers a suite of surveillance products for "security and safety" incidents at "so-called soft targets and communal spaces, including schools, community centers, synagogues and churches." The company makes the lofty promise that its products "stop mass shootings." According to a 2018 report on Gabriel published in the Jerusalem Post, there were an estimated 475,000 such "soft targets" across the U.S., meaning that "the potential market for Gabriel is huge." Gabriel, since its founding, has been backed by "an impressive group of leaders," mainly "former leaders of Mossad, Shin Bet...

A waterspout was seen swirling near Darwin Harbour in the Northern Territory on Wednesday, March 15. Credit: Taryn Hirst via Storyful

At least 4 people have died and 7 are missing after floods and landslides in the provinces of West Java, South Sulawesi, Lampung and South Sumatra in Indonesia over the last few days. Meanwhile, search and rescue operations at the site of the massive landslide in Serasan, Natuna Regency, have found the bodies of 46 victims. As of 12 March, 9 people were still missing. West Java Province Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) reported heavy rain caused a large landslide in Empang Village, South Bogor District in West Java Province on 14 March. The Bogor City Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) reported that the landslide material then buried 6 houses and 1 place of worship. As a result, 17 people were buried under the rubble. Eleven people have since been found safe. Two of the victims died and 4 others are still missing.

Disaster authorities in Turkey report at least 1 person has died and 4 are still missing after torrential rain caused flash flooding in parts of the southeastern anlurfa and Adyaman provinces. Flooding struck on 15 March 2023 following heavy rain. According to figures from Turkey's General Directorate of Meteorology, in a 24-hour period to 15 March, Karakpr in anlurfa recorded 104.5 mm of rain and elikhan in Adyaman recorded 125.6 mm. Areas of neighbouring Malatya Province also recorded very heavy rain, with Doanehir recorded 151.4 mm during the same period. Local media reported the rivers broke their banks in Adiyaman Province. Trkiye's disaster management agency AFAD, police, gendarmerie and municipality teams were evacuating residents from flooded areas. One person died and 4 were reported missing in Tut District. Search and rescue operations are ongoing.

The ongoing conflict with Ukraine is not about achieving some geopolitical gains, the president says. The ongoing conflict with Ukraine - and the West - is a fight for Russia's very existence, rather than a mere geopolitical game, President Vladimir Putin has said. He made the remarks on Tuesday while meeting with aircraft factory workers in the capital city of Russia's Buryatia Republic, Ulan-Ude. "For our Western so-called 'partners' - for, actually, our adversaries, we can say that openly today - the matter is about improving their geopolitical stance," Putin stated, adding that the situation is very different for Moscow.

A powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Pacific Ocean near the Kermadec Islands, far north of New Zealand's mainland, seismologists say. Small tsunami waves were observed at a nearby island. The earthquake, which struck at 1:56 p.m. local time on Thursday, was centered about 195 kilometers (121 miles) southeast of Raoul Island, the largest of the Kermadec Islands, or 1,125 kilometers (700 miles) northeast of Auckland. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0, down from 7.1 in an earlier assessment. It struck about 22 kilometers (14 miles) below the seabed, making it a shallow earthquake. Tsunami alerts - which were initially issued for the Kermadec Islands, Fiji, New Zealand and Tonga - were canceled when it was determined there was no longer a threat.

House Oversight Committee reviews 14 years of financial records related to Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has revealed that a new Biden family member has emerged in the investigation into Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings - Hunter Biden is the son of President Joe Biden. Comer, who is spearheading the investigation into the matter, declined to reveal the identity of the family member Tuesday but said the revelation raises more national security concerns about foreign "influence peddling."

New research paper, in draft form, comes from the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Pentagon officials said in a draft document last week that aliens could be visiting our solar system and releasing smaller probes like missions conducted by NASA when studying other planets. A draft research report authored by Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and Abraham Loeb, chairman of Harvard University's astronomy department was released on March 7 and focuses on the physical constraints of unidentified aerial phenomena.

Settlements between the countries could be arranged in local currencies or gold, a senior lawmaker has suggested. The central banks of Russia and Zimbabwe should establish settlements in local currencies and look at opportunities for securing trade in gold reserves, the speaker of the Zimbabwean ruling party ZANU-PF, Christopher Mutsvangwa, told RIA Novosti on Wednesday. The southern African country has been under Western sanctions for 22 years, the official noted, adding that curbs imposed on Russia should not handicap trade between the two countries. Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia and countries in Africa were developing a cooperation strategy to replace the US dollar and the euro in settlements, adding that the parties were preparing documents on rearranging the mechanism of cooperation under Western sanctions.

Do childhood vaccines impact a child's mortality risk? While controversy around this issue continues to swirl, peer-reviewed research suggests the answer is a yes. In 2011, Neil Miller, Ph.D., and Gary Goldman, Ph.D., published a paper in the journal Human & Experimental Toxicology showing infant mortality rates correlated with childhood vaccination rates, with high-uptake countries having higher child mortality. As detailed in the abstract:1 "The U.S. childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year the most in the world yet 33 nations have lower IMRs. Using linear regression, the immunization schedules of these 34 nations were examined and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants.

Israeli security forces killed a man suspected of planting a roadside bomb that injured a man near the occupied West Bank this week, the military said on Wednesday, adding that the suspect's potential ties to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah were being investigated. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortened a scheduled trip to Berlin on Wednesday, according to his office, which earlier said he had held consultations "on developments in national security". While a preliminary itinerary circulated last week had said he would return on Friday, the new statement said he would return on Thursday.

More than 7,000 tonnes of foul-smelling rubbish and waste continued to pile up in Paris, blocking doorways and pavements, as refuse collectors extended their nine-day strike for at least another five days in protest at Emmanuel Macron's plan to increase the retirement age. With bin lorries grounded at depots and at least three waste incinerators in the Paris area at a standstill, the national government and the capital's socialist-run city hall were engaged in a bitter standoff over rotting debris in the city. The interior minister, Grald Darmanin, instructed the Paris police chief to make city hall force bin collectors to break their strike and go back to work. But the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said that while the city was working on its own solutions for urgent cases, it supported the strikes against pension changes.

Teachers, London Underground train drivers and civil servants joined striking doctors Wednesday in a mass stoppage as Britain's finance minister unveiled his tax and spending plans. With hundreds of thousands of walking out, it was expected to be the biggest single day of industrial action since a wave of unrest began last year. From nurses to lawyers, workers hit by a cost-of-living crisis have been striking across the economy, pitting unions against the government which insists big pay hikes are unaffordable and will only fuel inflation.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Wednesday reiterated his support to Russia in the fight with "old and new Nazis." "I want to take advantage of the moment, as this is my first visit since the [start of the] special operation in Ukraine, and reiterate the Syrian position in support of the special operation against the old and new Nazis. I'm saying they are old and new Nazis because the West accepted old Nazis on its soil, and now it supports them again," the Syrian leader said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Assad arrived in Moscow on Tuesday evening. He was met at the airport by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who is also the presidential special envoy for the Middle East and Africa, Syrian Ambassador to Russia Bashar Jaafari and Russian Ambassador to Syria Alexander Yefimov. Putin and Assad last met in September 2021 when the Syrian president came to Moscow.

A record drop in shares at Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse on Wednesday has fanned fears of a possible banking crisis. US-listed shares at the global investment bank plummeted by more than a quarter after the banks largest shareholder the Saudi National Bank said it would not inject in more cash into the bank. The Financial Times reported that Credit Suisse had appealed to the Swiss National Bank for a public show of support, citing people familiar with the matter. At the close of trade in Europe on Wednesday, Credit Suisse's stock price was down 24%, having recovered slightly from its lowest ebb during the day. It was trading at around 1.84 compared to almost 3 per share last week and more than 7.50 per share late last March.

On Sunday afternoon, September 14, 2008, hundreds of employees of the financial giant Lehman Brothers walked into the bank's headquarters at 745 Seventh Avenue in New York City to clear out their offices and desks. Lehman was hours away from declaring bankruptcy. And its collapse the next day triggered the worst economic and financial devastation since the Great Depression. The S&P 500 fell by roughly 50%. Unemployment soared. And more than 100 other banks failed over the subsequent 12 months. It was a total disaster. These banks, it turned out, had been using their depositors' money to buy up special mortgage bonds. But these bonds were so risky that they eventually became known as "toxic securities" or "toxic assets". These toxic assets were bundles of risky, no-money-down mortgages given to sub-prime "NINJAs", i.e. borrowers with No Income, No Job, no Assets who had a history of NOT paying their bills. When the economy was doing well in 2006 and 2007, banks earned record...

Pushing blocs like AUKUS and NATO into the region will cause confrontation, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned... The West's expansion of its military presence in Asia risks causing a prolonged conflict because people in the region will not accept the move, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. At a gathering in Moscow on Tuesday, he said: "By pushing "bloc structures, such as AUKUS and NATO infrastructure into Asia, Western leaders are making a serious bid for a confrontation lasting for many, long years. I cannot imagine the great Asian civilizations toeing the line the way the EU unfortunately did, and obediently delivering Washington's agenda." AUKUS - a military alliance comprising the UK, US and Australia - was touted as a mechanism to counter China's influence in the Asia-Pacific region when it was founded in 2021. Beijing this week reiterated its criticism of AUKUS and Canberra's plan to procure US-made nuclear-propelled submarines, citing the risk of...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom lobbied the White House and the Department of the Treasury about the pending bailout of Silicon Valley Bank, even as three of his private wineries had apparently been among the bank's clients, according to a Tuesday report by Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept. According to Klippenstein's reporting, Newsom's personal relationship with SVB went beyond the wineries. One anonymous former employee who handled Newsom's finances told Klippenstein that Newsom "maintained personal accounts at SVB for years." It is unclear whether those personal accounts were still active at the time of the bank's collapse last week. If they were, Newsom could have stood to benefit directly from the Biden administration's rescue package, which will reimburse SVB account holders even if their balances surpass the $250,000 limit insured by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Religious freedom is being held hostage by the Ukrainian authorities, Russia's Foreign Ministry insisted on Wednesday. Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was commenting on attempts to evict monks of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC) from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery, which is considered the most important Orthodox Christian site in the country. When asked the previous day about the planned eviction, Ukrainian Minister of Culture Aleksandr Tkachenko said senior clergy and church administrators should be the first to leave, as they had carried out "illegal construction" at the Lavra. "We'll be able to talk about the rest after that," he added. The UOC monks at the Lavra, who are refusing to vacate the monastery and describe the eviction order as illegal, "always have a choice," Tkachenko continued. Their stance may "change drastically" once the leadership of the Moscow-linked church is out of the monastery, he suggested.

Khartoum is eager to expand trade ties with Moscow, the Sudanese ambassador to Russia has said... Sudan and Russia are mulling ways to switch to national currencies in mutual settlements, Sudanese ambassador to Russia, Hassan Mohammed Elghazali Eltijani Sirraj, has told RIA Novosti news agency. According to the diplomat, the countries' central banks are currently discussing the possibility. Sirraj explained: "Russia has suggested to Sudan to use a system of financial transactions, in which we would use national currencies. This issue is being discussed by the central banks of both countries; we will see if this is possible. This is largely a technical issue. The central banks will study this issue, see how it actually works, and in the near future we should see the result." Russia has been actively moving away from the US dollar and euro in foreign trade for months, after Western sanctions against the country made the currencies unreliable. Instead, it has been expanding its circle...

More than 9,500 lightning strikes hit France on Monday (March 13), a figure not seen on a single day in March since records began 35 years ago. Monitoring service Mtorage recorded the strikes, which numbered 9,549, beating the previous record of 9,134 in March 2001. The French storm observatory, Keraunos, said Monday was "the stormiest day of the previous 15 years". A statement on its website read: "The indicator of storm severity was at 19.7 for the day of March 13, 2023, which makes it the stormiest day since the start of our data in 2009."

Days of heavy rain triggered severe flooding in parts of the Cesar Department in Colombia where hundreds of homes have been damaged. Colombia's National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) reported heavy rainfall from 08 March caused flooding in the municipality of Curuman on 11 March. The Animito, San Pedro, and Palmar rivers and the San Ignacio and the La Cubana streams all broke their banks, UNGRD said. More than 600 homes have been severely damaged in affected areas. Many residents have lost material possessions. Wide areas of crops have also been damaged.

An Oregon high school is facing severe backlash from parents after a health teacher allegedly assigned students to write a short story about a sexual fantasy. Kirk Miller, health teacher and football coach at Churchill High school in Eugene, allegedly wrote that the essays should not "involve penetration of any kind or oral sex," but that they should reference at least three items from a list of suggestions including "romantic music, candles, massage oil, feathers, a feather boa and flavored syrup," reports Oregon Live.

The one-time payment will be used to "counter disinformation" and support English-language broadcasting. The British government has announced an unexpected one-off payment to state broadcaster the BBC. The 20 million ($24.13 million) tranche will be transferred to the broadcaster over the next two years, the UK Foreign Office said on Monday. The package comes as part of an Integrated Review program document advocating for a 'Global Britain' originally adopted under former PM Boris Johnson.

A Pakistani court has ordered police to halt an operation to arrest Imran Khan after fresh clashes between supporters of the former prime minister and security forces trying to detain him at his residence in the northeastern city of Lahore caused dozens of injuries. Local media reported that more than 60 people -- as many as 50 of them police officers -- were injured in the clashes that extended overnight and into March 15, with dozens of people being admitted to hospital for treatment. Comment: "Video images released by PTI showed police hitting Khan supporters with batons and lobbing tear-gas canisters, some of which landed on the lawn of Khan's house, while Khan's supporters hurled rocks and bricks at the officers." Following the incidents, the Lahore High Court ruled that the police operation be paused until March 16 at 10 a.m. local time. The clashes started on March 14, when followers of Khan's political party, Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI), gathered outside Khan's residence...

President Joe Biden patted himself on the back Monday morning as multiple banks have collapsed in recent days, claiming that the "quick action" of his administration has stabilized the banking industry. "Your deposits will be there when you need them. Small businesses across the country that deposit accounts at these banks can breathe easier knowing they'll be able to pay their workers and pay their bills," Biden said. "And their hardworking employees can breathe easier as well." Biden said he was focused on reducing the risk of other financial institutions collapsing. "During the Obama-Biden administration, we put in place tough requirements on banks like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, including the Dodd-Frank law to make sure the crisis we saw in 2008 would not happen again," he said. "Unfortunately, the last administration rolled back some of these requirements."

James O'Keefe appeared on the Charlie Kirk Show to promote his newest project since being ousted from Project Veritas, the O'Keefe Media Group, or OMG. O'Keefe launched the website on Wednesday and urged viewers to sign up, as did Kirk.

Therapies that build on the natural tissue clearance by fibroblasts may accelerate healing, especially in slow-to-heal burn wounds. WASHINGTON - Burn wounds are notoriously prone to bacterial infection and typically lead to a larger amount of scar tissue than laceration wounds. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP publishing, researchers from Boston University and Harvard University created a biomimetic model to study wound healing in burn and laceration wounds. They discovered that fibroblasts - normally considered building cells that give shape and strength to tissues and organs - clear away damaged tissue before depositing new material. This part of the healing process is slower in burn wounds, where more tissue damage is present. Cell biologists identify four phases of wound healing: bleeding stoppage, inflammation, new tissue formation, and tissue strengthening. During the inflammation and formation stages, immune cells are thought to clear bacteria and dead cells from the wound....

The Vermont school sparked a firestorm last month in high school sports. A Vermont Christian school that forfeited a game in the girls state basketball playoffs because its opponent had a transgender student on the team's roster will be prohibited from participating in future tournaments, the sports governing association in the state said Monday. The Vermont Principals' Association (VPA) ruled that Mid Vermont Christian School had violated policies and is ineligible to participate in future tournaments that it sanctions. The move applies to all sports. "The VPA again reiterates its ongoing support of transgender student-athletes as not only a part of building an inclusive community for each student to grow and thrive, but also as a clear expectation by Vermont state law(s) in the Agency of Education Best Practices, and in VPA Policy regarding transgender student athletes," the governing body said in a statement.

Former President Donald Trump is set to release 150 private letters sent to him from an array of high-profile political figures and celebrities including former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and Oprah Winfrey. The letters will be published in Trump's new book, titled "Letters to Trump," which will be released on April 25, according to the book's publisher, Winning Team Publishing. The publisher describes it as "a colorful photo book" that captures the "incredible, and oftentimes private correspondence, between President Donald J. Trump and some of the biggest names in history throughout the past 40 years."

The US government may have paid twice for grants it doled out to fund research at labs in Wuhan, China, according to a newly launched federal probe that found tens of millions of dollars in potentially fraudulent payments. The "risky" projects bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health and the US Agency for International Development would have helped pay for medical supplies, equipment, travel expenses, and salaries at the Wuhan labs, according to CBS News, which broke the story Monday. Among them was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where taxpayers funded controversial gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses that federal officials now admit Among them was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where taxpayers funded controversial gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses that federal officials now admit may have led to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A bill introducing stricter punishment for disinformation about the nation's military operations has been passed by the State Duma Russian laws protecting military service members from slander and "fake news" are to be expanded. Amendments were approved by the State Duma on Tuesday, which are intended to protect the country's military from disinformation attacks amid the ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine. Russia already has laws which prohibit knowingly publishing false information about its military forces or slander against service members. The two linked bills passed by the lower house of parliament will apply the same rules in respect of volunteer units, organizations and individuals assisting the armed forces.

Heavy rains in areas of the state of Amazonas in northwestern Brazil on 12 March triggered deadly landslides in the state capital Manaus. The government of Manaus said at least 11 houses were destroyed after a landslide in the Jorge Teixeira neighbourhood. Eight bodies were located under the rubble and debris. Three people were rescued alive.

It is snowing again in the Alps following the huge snowfalls in France, as well as some ski areas in western and northern Austria, Italy and Switzerland at the weekend. The snowfall today (Tuesday 14th March 2023) is more widespread than the weekend falls, with many areas further east in Italy and Switzerland as well as in Austria posting good falls down to the valley floor. The snowfall follows a temperature spike yesterday which saw many areas see afternoon highs of +10 to +15C on lower slopes, and is expected to just last a day or so before drier weather for the rest of this week. The weekend snowstorm brought up to 1.5 metres (five feet) of snowfall to ski areas in the northern French Alps. Avoriaz, Cervinia, La Rosiere and Tignes were among the resorts posting the biggest jumps in their upper slope base depths (at least a metre each). Avalanche danger levels have also risen to 3 (considerable) or 4 (high) on the scale to a maximum of 5. Tignes had the deepest upper slope base...

The season's first nor'easter has dropped nearly 3 feet of snow over parts of the US Northeast as of Tuesday evening, piling on trees and power lines and causing power outages for tens of thousands in the frigid weather with more snow possible into the night. More than 240,000 customers across the region were without electricity as the sun went down Tuesday, including in New York, Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us. Areas from upstate New York into southern New England have reported snowfall totals of at least 2 feet since Monday night, and parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine could see another 6 to 12 inches through the night, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

We received 9 reports about a fireball seen over MD, NJ, PA and VA on Tuesday, March 14th 2023 around 06:44 UT. For this event, we received one video.

Wallace partnered with the state Department of Environmental Protection, the EPA and its contractors to collect 15 soil samples from farms across the region for more testing. Farmers in western Pennsylvania began offering their soil samples for collection in recent weeks after contamination concerns about the train derailment in nearby East Palestine, Ohio went unaddressed. Cliff Wallace, president of the Beaver-Lawrence Farm Bureau, told The Center Square on Tuesday he's spoken with property owners seven miles out from the burn site who say they saw plumes of smoke drifting over their land in the aftermath of the crash.

Many in the West have been predicting a downturn in the China-Russia alliance in the wake of the ongoing Russian Special Military Operations in Ukraine. A recent article in the Foreign Affairs magazine pointed out 'key' points of disagreement between Beijing and Moscow to highlight the obvious 'limits' of the otherwise 'no limits' friendship. According to such projections, we should have seen conflict between both countries. But what we are actually seeing is the exact opposite of this prediction: China and Russia recently reaffirmed their 'no limits' friendship, an alliance that originally started almost a year ago ('no-limits 1.0') and is now growing to the next level as 'no-limits' 2.0. This reaffirmation has caused some trouble in the Western world, as the latter has already started to scramble allies to 'punish' China for its persistent support for Russia against the combined strength of NATO. As reports in the mainstream media show, the US is already consulting with its G7...

Karl Lauterbach is Germany's Federal Minister of Health. Yesterday, he dropped a bombshell on Germans in an interview. It has been posted on Youtube with English subtitles. You can find the video here (start: 3:54; end:15:17 [interview with minister of health starts at 8:07). The COVID-19 'vaccine'-induced injuries that were covered in this program are severe, life-altering, and permanent. More people are waking up to the reality that more of these severe injuries have occurred and continue to emerge than what has ever been admitted publicly by those pushing the shots. This is the nature of passive monitoring systems, particularly when coupled with active dissuasion of reporting. COVID-19 'vaccine'-injured people are finding themselves falling between the cracks in health care systems. This is horrible, but unfortunately, is not news for most of us. The news agency and Minister of Health confirmed that the Pharma companies are free of liability due to 'vaccine' injuries. This...

Last week, Congress and the federal government stomped on press freedom and the press said nothing. Four watershed events lead to the inescapable conclusion that the entire Democratic Party and parts of the GOP have become the enemy of free speech and, astonishingly, they are aided and abetted by the most prestigious brands in news media, that have become tools of oppression, rather than defenders of the First Amendment. 1. Democrats in Congress tried to force a journalist to reveal his sources. Nowhere more sickening was the Democratic Party's lockstep defense of censorship than in Thursday's hearing of the House "Weaponization of Government" subcommittee. Independent liberal journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were asked to testify about the censorship regime imposed by the federal government, academia, NGOs and Twitter, as revealed in the Twitter Files. For their trouble they were slimed and threatened by Democrats.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the US would blow up the global economy to prevent China from laying claim to Taiwan's semiconductor factories. Former White House National Security Advisor Robert C. O'Brien has hinted at a sinister US contingency plan in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Rather than see Taiwan's semiconductor factories fall into the hands of the Communist Party of China, the US and its allies would simply pull a Nordstream. "The United States and its allies are never going to let those factories fall into Chinese hands," O'Brien told Semafor, a news outlet that has been funded by jailed Democratic financier Sam Bankman-Fried and his brother. O'Brien went on to compare the destruction of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) to Winston Churchill's bombing of a French naval fleet after the country's surrender to Nazi Germany. Semiconductors made in Taiwan are necessary for the functioning of everything from smartphones to cars. Taiwan...

Shares of First Republic rose sharply on Tuesday as regional banks attempted to rebound from a deep sell-off, but some of the stocks struggled to hold their ground as the day progressed. First Republic ended the day with a 27.8% gain after climbing more than 60% earlier in the session. PacWest was up nearly 34% after following a similar trajectory, and Charles Schwab added about 9%. However, the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) rose just 2% as other regional banks struggled to hold onto their gains. The volatility was evident in Zions Bancorp. and Western Alliance, which each turned negative briefly in afternoon trading after rising earlier in the session. The banks then finished the day with gains of 4% and 14%, respectively. Those moves come after regional banks fell sharply Monday, even though U.S. regulators took extraordinary measures to backstop all depositors in the now-failed Silicon Valley Bank. The KRE suffered its biggest one-day loss since March 2020, tumbling...

The Kremlin says only through "military means" Russia can "achieve its goals" in Ukraine, more than a year after Moscow began the war in the ex-Soviet republic. At a press conference on Monday, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the moment there were no preconditions for the transition of the process into a peaceful course in Ukraine. "For us, the absolute priority continues and will always remain the achievement of the goals set. At the moment they can only be achieved by military means," the Kremlin spokesman said.

A U.S military MQ-9 surveillance drone crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday after being intercepted by Russian fighter jets, in the first such incident since Russia's invasion of Ukraine over a year ago. The Pentagon said that one of the Russian Su-27 jets struck the propeller of the drone, making it inoperable, while Russia's defense ministry blamed "sharp maneuvering" of the unmanned drone for the crash and said that its jets did not make contact. Although no lives were lost, it was a reminder of the risk of direct confrontation between the United States and Russia over Ukraine, which Moscow invaded over a year ago and which Western allies have supported with intelligence and weapons. Comment: The West has admitted it is directing Ukraine's forces, and Germany's minister recently admitted that the West 'is at war with Russia': US & EU special forces and the CIA ARE on the ground in Ukraine after all - Coordinating Ukraine's weapons, training, and 'attack app'

Bankers in Israel were able to successfully transfer $1 billion in funds from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) right before it collapsed on Friday, according to reports. The Times of Israel is reporting that the country's two largest banks, Bank Leumi and Bank Hapoalim, were able to move the money before it was seized by the feds. The funds were transferred to bank accounts in Israel.

China will once again start issuing a range of visas to foreigners as of Wednesday, the country's foreign ministry said, in a major easing of travel restrictions in place since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The move marks the latest step towards reopening China to the outside world, as Beijing breaks with the strict zero-Covid strategy that defined its pandemic response until a few months ago. In addition to new visas being reviewed and approved, those issued before March 28, 2020 that remain valid will once again allow entry to China, said a notice posted Tuesday on a social media account affiliated with the foreign ministry's consular affairs bureau. Similar notices appeared on the websites of several overseas Chinese missions, including its embassies in the United States and France.

The New York Times has fired a fresh salvo at India's right-wing government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for its muscular Hindutva policies aimed at neutralizing Islamist separatists in the troubled Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) region. The US outlet, which has found itself at odds with the Modi administration since it came to power in 2014, mounted a fresh two-pronged attack with two articles on March 8. In doing so, it provoked stinging rebukes from the Indian government.

Movie star Steven Seagal made an appearance at the inaugural meeting of the International Russophile Movement in Moscow on Tuesday, claiming he was actually "a million percent Russian" himself. The actor received Russian citizenship back in 2016 and currently serves as a special envoy of the Russian Foreign Ministry on humanitarian relations between Moscow and Washington. Speaking at a press conference following the event, Seagal said that roughly half of Americans still "love" Russia despite the ongoing international turmoil. The actor also spoke about his ancestry - his grandfather immigrated to America from Russia - revealing what it means for him to be Russian. "To be Russian is to stand for the truth, to fight for the truth. ... I can say that I am one hundred percent Russophile and a million percent Russian," Seagal stated.

Armenia does not want to leave the six-nation Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has stressed. "It is not that Armenia is leaving the CSTO, the CSTO is leaving Armenia, which is of a great concern to us," Pashinyan said at a press conference on Tuesday. Armenia, which is locked in a territorial dispute with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, has been reducing its involvement with the CSTO, which incorporates Russia and former Soviet Republics Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In January, Pashinyan warned that he might ask the United Nations to deploy peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh to protect its ethnic-Armenian population after the five-year mandate of Russia's peacekeeping contingent there runs out in 2025.

A Wolf-Rayet star is a rare prelude to the famous final act of a massive star: the supernova. As one of its first observations in 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope captured the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 in unprecedented detail. A distinctive halo of gas and dust frames the star and glows in the infrared light detected by Webb, displaying knotty structure and a history of episodic ejections. Despite being the scene of an impending stellar 'death', astronomers also look to Wolf-Rayet stars for insight into new beginnings. Cosmic dust is forming in the turbulent nebulas surrounding these stars, dust that is composed of the heavy-element building blocks of the modern Universe, including life on Earth. The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly-detectable stars known was one of the first observations made by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Webb shows the star WR 124 in unprecedented detail with its powerful...

To understand how driverless vehicles can navigate the complexities of the road, researchers often use game theory mathematical models representing the way rational agents behave strategically to meet their goals. Dejan Milutinovic, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz, has long worked with colleagues on the complex subset of game theory called differential games, which have to do with game players in motion. One of these games is called the wall pursuit game, a relatively simple model for a situation in which a faster pursuer has the goal to catch a slower evader who is confined to moving along a wall. Since this game was first described nearly 60 years ago, there has been a dilemma within the game a set of positions where it was thought that no game optimal solution existed. But now, Milutinovic and his colleagues have proved in a new paper published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control that this long-standing dilemma does not...

In what was truly a bizarre scene, soldiers belonging to the British Army's Brigade of Gurkhas filled the populated streets of Cahors in southern France. The sound of blank ammunition rounds being fired off echoed down bustling avenues as locals casually strolled by and life went on seemingly as normal as the mock battle unfolded around them. While it looked like a war was being fought in Cahors, what was really happening was a hyper-realistic training scenario that was part of a much larger set of multi-national exercises that are ongoing in France. While this may be the most realistic military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) training we have ever seen based on the very un-canned setting, it serves as another reminder that militaries are racing to ready themselves for fighting in huge cities with all their unique impediments and tactical opportunities which, according to the Pentagon, is where future wars are likely to take place.

If China's journalists, foreign intelligence analysts, and People's Navy staff have needed an opportunity to demonstrate, if not to the Middle Kingdom audience, then to the US exceptionalist public how peripheral and how mediocre American legends have become, Seymour Hersh has provided it in an interview he recorded with China's state broadcaster CGTN on Saturday. For the first time since Hersh's earlier interviews with American, British, German, and Russian reporters, Hersh faced skepticism and cross-examination of the account he published on February 8 of what he claimed then, and insists still, was a joint US and Norwegian operation to destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines on September 26, 2022. According to Hersh, the operation was directed by the White House and ordered by President Joseph Biden, with the reluctant support of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In his 28-minute interview with Liu Xin, Hersh repeats his original claims; makes fresh mistakes of fact;...

The Lockdown Files have shown it was a complete lack of leadership that led to the unprecedented historical step of shutting down the UK... The 19th-century sage William Hazlitt once observed that those who love liberty love their fellow men, while those who love power love only themselves. Matt Hancock says that he has been betrayed by the leaking of his WhatsApp messages. But few people will have any sympathy for him. He glutted on power and too obviously loved himself. Some things can be said in his favour. The Lockdown Files are not a complete record. No doubt there were also phone calls, Zoom meetings, civil service memos and the like, in which the thoughts of ministers and officials may have been more fully laid out. Not all the accusations levelled against him are fair. Care homes, for example, were probably an insoluble problem, given the absence of other places for many elderly patients to go, and the scarcity of testing materials in the early stages of the pandemic....

Strengthening military ties with the US will bind the Philippines to a "chariot of geopolitical strife," Beijing has claimed... The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Sunday cautioned the Philippines against strengthening military cooperation with the US, saying it will be used to serve Washington's geopolitical agenda to the detriment of Manila's own security. The latest warning from the Chinese embassy in Manila cited Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s decision last month to give US troops access to four additional military bases in the Southeast Asian country. "Such cooperation will pull the Philippines against China and tie the country to the chariot of geopolitical strife, seriously jeopardizing Philippine national interests and regional peace and stability." The Chinese embassy urged the Marcos administration to avoid getting sucked into US efforts to maintain global hegemony. "We should abandon the perverse path of sowing dissension and causing trouble, not to mention...

Elizabeth Warren has called twice to apologize. Over a month later, Kamala Harris hasn't called back. In a local Boston radio interview in late January, Warren was enthusiastic about President Joe Biden running for reelection but, asked if Biden should keep Harris as his running mate, she said, "I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team." The incident and its aftermath, different details of which were described to CNN by multiple people close to the Massachusetts senator and people close to the vice president, has fed an ongoing breakdown of accusations and purported misunderstandings. "Pretty insulting," is how one person close to Harris described the feelings of many in the vice president's office and in her wider orbit. Several people close to Warren said the senator was calling to explain her statement as purely a mistake - a fumbling, unintentional attempt to avoid stepping on a campaign announcement from the president. A spokesperson for Warren...

A long-delayed vote in Hungary's parliament on ratifying the NATO accession bids of Sweden and Finland will likely be postponed again following a proposal from a senior government official. In a letter published Tuesday by Hungarian news website hvg.hu, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen requested that a parliamentary session scheduled to begin on March 20 during which lawmakers were expected to vote on the two Nordic countries joining the military alliance be postponed to a week later. Semjen cited Hungary's ongoing negotiations with the European Union's executive branch over Budapest's alleged breaches of the bloc's rule-of-law requirements as the reason for the delay. The speaker of Hungary's parliament, himself a member of Semjen's ruling coalition, must approve the request for a postponement. Hungary remains the only NATO member country besides Turkey that hasn't yet approved the two Nordic countries' bids to join the Western military alliance. The delay is the second...

Last week, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced a landmark deal, brokered by China in Beijing, to formally restore diplomatic relations. The agreement saw the two sectarian arch rivals in the Middle East agree to put aside their differences and to normalize ties. It was the first ever deal of its kind overseen by China, framing itself as a peacemaker, and showing that its commitment to have good relations with every country in the region is not just based on rhetoric but actual substance. Some have described it as a sign of a "changing global order." To put it mildly, it is bad news for the United States and deals a massive blow to the near-unlimited geopolitical sway Washington has long held over the region via its strategic relationships with countries such as Saudi Arabia. Additionally, it effectively ruins a US led campaign to pressurize and isolate Iran and hinders American efforts to shape regional politics in Israel's favor via the Abraham Accords. It is no surprise that the...

"Every cloud has a silver lining," is a familiar line of reassurance, and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached for it, recently, as he commented on the slew of sanctions imposed on Moscow by the West and its allies in recent years. They are "a powerful step towards greater economic and financial sovereignty, which is crucial," he ventured. Moscow has long been accustomed to sanctions pressure, going back to the Soviet days, and the EU and US began to announce new waves of restrictions from 2014. However, that pressure reached a whole new level last year after Putin launched the military campaign in Ukraine, making Russia the most sanctioned country in the world, ahead of Iran. Moscow has been slapped with ten sanctions packages, from Brussels alone, since February of last year.

Ryan Graves is a former Navy pilot who has called on Congress to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), also known as UFOs, in the skies above the United States. He spoke out on his first-hand experiences with UAPs in an interview with Fox News Digital. Graves spent about 11 years in the Navy flying F-18s, an advanced fighter plane, and was also a flight instructor. However, throughout his career, he has yet to receive a definitive answer on a phenomenon that he and other members of his squadron have dealt with for years. "While I was in the Navy, myself and others in my squadron had an experience that continues to this day and at first was something that we didn't have a name for," Graves said.

South African rapper Costa Titch, whose real name was Constantinos Tsobanoglou, has died at the age of 28 after collapsing onstage while performing at a Johannesburg music festival on Saturday. No cause of death was announced. "Death has tragically knocked at our door. Robbing us of our beloved son, brother, and grandson. Constantinos Tsobanoglou (28), who South Africa had come to love and idolize under his stage name 'Costa Titch,'" the rapper's family wrote on his Instagram page. "It is with deep pain that we find ourselves having to acknowledge his passing at this time," they added. "We are thankful for the emergency responders and all those present in his last hours on this earth." ***VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED***

Disconnection from international finance systems has turned out to be "a blessing in disguise" for Moscow, Dmitry Peskov said The Russian financial sector is practically immune to the effects of the unfolding US banking crisis largely thanks to Western sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday. When asked about a spillover effect from the collapse of US lenders, which has led to a global stock rout, Peskov said problems in the American banking system cannot affect Russia in any way. "Our banking system, of course, has, let's say, certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but for the most part it is under illegal restrictions," he said.

The parent of one child has alleged her 11-year-old was taught about anal and oral sex by a drag queen while attending her local school. The mother of one 11-year-old has expressed outrage after her 11-year-old daughter was reportedly taught about both oral and anal sex by a drag queen while attending school. It comes after another boy in the school was allegedly given detention by the same drag queen after he publicly rejected his claim that there are 73 genders. According to a report by The Mail, the drag queen had come to the Queen Elizabeth II school located in the Crown Dependency of the Isle of Man to teach children sexual education.

Kiev's forces have lost most of their experienced fighters and ammunition is in short supply, the US paper has claimed Kiev's forces have been so "degraded" by a year of fighting against Russia that some Ukrainian officials doubt their ability to execute a planned spring offensive, the Washington Post has reported. The conflict has taken many of the most seasoned Ukrainian troops, with the arrival of inexperienced draftees changing the profile of the country's military, the US paper pointed out on Monday. US and European officials have estimated that up 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the launch of Russia's military operation last February, it added. Kiev keeps information abouts losses secret, even from its Western backers.

Becoming increasingly involved in the military confrontation between Ukraine and Russia is not a priority for the US, Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis wrote in response to a question posed by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday. Carlson asked several "2024 GOP hopefuls" whether opposing Russia in Ukraine was a "vital strategic interest" for the US and shared DeSantis' response on Twitter. The governor stated that the US had many "vital national interests," such as securing its borders, addressing the recruitment crisis within the US military, achieving energy security and independence, and "checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party." However, becoming "further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them," DeSantis noted.

In Part 1 we noted that "money" is no more than a medium of exchange. If we cooperate in sufficient numbers, we could create an economy based upon an entirely voluntary monetary system. We don't need banks to control our exchange transactions and modern Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has made voluntary exchange on a global scale entirely feasible. We contrasted the true nature of "money" with the proposed Central Bank Digital Currencies. CBDC is being rolled out across the world by a global public-private partnership . What we call money is actually fiat currency conjured out of thin air by central and commercial banks. Even so, CBDC is nothing like "money" as we currently understand it. Prior to the pseudopandemic, fiat currency circulated in a split-monetary circuit. Only commercial banks could access a type of money called "central bank reserves" or "base money." In late 2019, the global financial institution BlackRock introduced a monetary plan that advocated "going...

Truck driver William Church reportedly saw a figure on the side of an Arizona highway, and he thinks it could be a ghost A truck driver's dashcam video showing a mysterious figure appearing on the side of an empty road in Arizona has viewers discussing the possibility of a supernatural occurrence. William Church, a truck driver who reportedly drove down Arizona State Route 87 on Saturday, March 11, noticed a bright glare in his dashcam, and he thinks the flashing figure could be a ghost, according to FOX Television Stations. The suspected specter was spotted at around 2:30 a.m. local time while Church passed the highway's 200-mile marker, which is located between Phoenix and Payson, Arizona. Church told FOX Television Stations there were no other cars on the road.

According to the UC Berkeley Central Snow Laboratory at 6,900 on Donner Pass, CA, which has been keeping precise snowfall records since 1946, the Lake Tahoe area has officially reached the title of third snowiest winter in recorded history as of today, March 13. The UCB Snow Lab has seen 651 of snowfall this season so far. "Another 13.2" (33.5 cm) of #snow over the last 24 hours has taken us to the third snowiest winter on record at the lab! We now have 651 (1653 cm) from Oct 1 to present." - UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, 3/13/23

UC physicist explores mysteries of strange metals. International team finds unusual electrical behavior in experiments. Physicists at the University of Cincinnati are learning more about the bizarre behavior of "strange metals," which operate outside the normal rules of electricity. Theoretical physicist Yashar Komijani, an assistant professor in UC's College of Arts and Sciences, contributed to an international experiment using a strange metal made from an alloy of ytterbium, a rare earth metal. Physicists in a lab in Hyogo, Japan, fired radioactive gamma rays at the strange metal to observe its unusual electrical behavior. Led by Hisao Kobayashi with the University of Hyogo and RIKEN, the study was published in the journal Science. The experiment revealed unusual fluctuations in the strange metal's electrical charge. "The idea is that in a metal, you have a sea of electrons moving in the background on a lattice of ions," Komijani said. "But a marvelous thing happens with quantum...

This is a winter we'll all be talking about for a long time to come. Dodge Ridge Mountain Resort located near Pinecrest, CA, broke its all-time season snowfall record today on March 13 with 654 of snow this season so far.

There has been an avalanche of information and numerous theories circulating the past few days about the fate of a bank in California know as SVB (Silicon Valley Bank). SVB was the 16th largest bank in the US until it abruptly failed and went into insolvency on March 10th. The impetus for the collapse of the bank is tied to a $2 billion liquidity loss on bond sales which caused the institution's stock value to plummet over 60%, triggering a bank run by customers fearful of losing some or most of their deposits. There are many fine articles out there covering the details of the SVB situation, but what I want to talk about more is the root of it all. The bank's shortfalls are not really the cause of the crisis, they are a symptom of a wider liquidity drought that I predicted here at Alt-Market months ago, including the timing of the event. First, though, let's discuss the core issue, which is fiscal tightening and the Federal Reserve. In my article 'The Fed's Catch-22 Taper Is A...

Mozambique and Malawi on Monday were counting the cost of Tropical Storm Freddy, which killed more than 100 people, injured scores and left a trail of destruction as it ripped through southern Africa for the second time in a month over the weekend. Freddy is one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the southern hemisphere and could be the longest-lasting tropical cyclone, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It pummelled central Mozambique on Saturday, ripping roofs off buildings and bringing widespread flooding around the port of Quelimane, before moving inland towards Malawi with torrential rains that caused landslides.

Mozambique and Malawi on Monday were counting the cost of Tropical Storm Freddy, which killed more than 100 people, injured scores and left a trail of destruction as it ripped through southern Africa for the second time in a month over the weekend. Freddy is one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the southern hemisphere and could be the longest-lasting tropical cyclone, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It pummelled central Mozambique on Saturday, ripping roofs off buildings and bringing widespread flooding around the port of Quelimane, before moving inland towards Malawi with torrential rains that caused landslides.

A 12-year-old boy died of a dog bite in Amman a few weeks ago. The child's family said that their son was bitten by a dog in the head around 25 days ago in the Qweismeh area, east of the capital, Amman. In a previous statement, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Local Administration Tawfiq Krishan said that the rising issue of stray dogs will be solved in coordination with administrative governors and mayors. Notably, Jordan has seen a rise in stray dogs' attacks during the past few months which caused great controversy regarding the manner in which the issue should be solved.

In yet another incident of a stray dog attack in Telangana, a five-year-old child died on Sunday. Though he was rushed to hospital, he succumbed to the injuries. As per the details of the incident that took place in Khammam district, Telangana, the child Banoth Bharath become a victim of a stray dog attack when he was playing with his friends on Sunday evening. Despite the efforts of his parents, B Ravinder and Sandhya, Bharath sustained severe injuries before being taken to a private hospital in Khammam. Doctors advised shifting him to NIMS in Hyderabad, but the child passed away en route near Suryapet, Telangana. The grieving parents of the child have returned to Putani thanda of Raghunathapalem Mandal, Khammam, and performed the last rites on Monday.

We received 103 reports about a fireball seen over CT, DE, MA, MD, NH, NY, PA, RI and VT on Sunday, March 12th 2023 around 01:01 UT. For this event, we received one video and one photo.

Local media reports say two football players died after being struck by lightning while playing a match in Kisii county in western Kenya. Two other players were taken to the hospital for emergency treatment after they got injuries during the tournament over the weekend. A football federation official (Evans Akang'a - chairman of the Kitutu Chache North Football Kenya Federation) was quoted by the Daily Nation saying the teams were playing a friendly match when it started raining. Akang'a said, "it is quite unfortunate that they lost their lives while playing a game that they loved most. As federation officials, we send our condolences to the affected families." Akang'a urged the authorities to install lightning arrestors on public buildings including schools and churches to reduce the occurrence of such incidents.

An earthquake measuring 6.3 magnitude on the Richter scale has struck eastern Papua New Guinea. The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said that the epicentre of the earthquake occurred at a depth of 211 km, 456 km northwest of the capital, Port Moresby. There were no reports of casualties or material damage due to the earthquake. Papua New Guinea is located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a region that extends along the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, and is characterised by high activity of earthquakes and volcanoes. The last earthquake struck northwest of the Kimbe town in Papua New Guinea on Mar 1, with a magnitude of 6.5 without causing material damage or human losses.

Silicon Valley Bank, the second-largest U.S. bank to collapse, had recently been putting effort into multiple LGBTQ diversity programs, including a "safe space," just before the institution folded. As reported by the New York Post, the company spent money on a month-long LGBTQ pride campaign and a new online resource for LGBTQ youth spearheaded by Jay Ersapah, head of Financial Risk Management at the bank's UK branch. "As a queer person of color and a first-generation immigrant from a working-class background, there were not many role models for me to 'see' growing up," said Ersapah of the diversity and inclusion initiatives. Comment: This is definitely where you want the focus to be for your bank.

BuzzFeed, Inc. announced financial results for the full year and fourth quarter on Monday, with the media company reporting a huge net loss. The report also revealed that the California-based company kept a majority of its cash and cash equivalents at the recently-defunct Silicon Valley Bank. The statement went on to quote a joint release from the US Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that says that depositors would be fully protected from the bank's folding. Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed Founder & CEO admitted that the fourth quarter was particularly difficult for the company, writing: "There's no denying that 2022 was a tough year for digital media. The challenges we faced in Q4 are also impacting us in Q1 2023, and it is clear we have more work to do to realize the full potential of our combined brand portfolio."

Famed investor Michael Burry shredded the executives formerly in charge of Silicon Valley Bank on Sunday as the tech lender's sudden collapse prompted fears of a systemic meltdown. Burry, the hedge fund boss made famous in the 2015 film "The Big Short," likened the current banking sector crisis to conditions the market experienced when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and the US housing market imploded in 2008. "2000, 2008, 2023. It is always the same," Burry said in a now-deleted tweet on Sunday. "People full of hubris and greed take stupid risks, and fail. Money is then printed. Because it works so well."

An Oregon man accused of murder is going viral after footage posted to social media showed him fleeing police and escaping the courthouse. Edi Villalobos, 28, who is charged with murdering 33-year-old Artemio Guzman-Olvera, fled the Washington County Courthouse on Feb. 27 during the pretrial jury selection, according to a report. Footage from security cameras shows Villalobos being escorted into a courtroom by two officers who placed him in a chair and removed his handcuffs and leg shackles in accordance with state law.

Formal scientific institutions took a battering during the pandemic, and deservedly so. From the wildly inaccurate predictions of SAGE modellers to the denial of natural immunity by signatories of the John Snow Memorandum, 'Science' (uppercase 's') has not had a good three years. A particularly striking illustration of this is citation patterns in the scientific literature. If things were working well, the best studies would get cited the most. Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case: citations have flowed disproportionately to studies that uphold The Narrative. In June, 2020, researchers from Imperial College London (including our old friend Neil Ferguson) published a paper in the prestigious journal Nature titled 'Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe'. They concluded - on the basis of a complex model-fitting exercise - that lockdowns had saved the lives of 3.1 million people across 11 European countries. That's right, 3.1 million...

Dr. Susan Bradley, a Canadian psychiatrist and pioneer in child gender dysphoria treatment, came out against the popular model of affirming children's transgender identities and putting them on puberty blockers a practice she was once involved in in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Bradley started a pediatric gender clinic in 1975 aimed at treating children with gender dysphoria a deep sense of discomfort with one's body and biological sex in which she offered a therapy-focused approach; most patients outgrew their feelings of being transgender over time, she told the DCNF. Around 2000, the clinic began prescribing puberty blockers to gender-dysphoric children as a way to alleviate their distress, a model which has since become widely adopted by medical establishments around the world, including in the U.S. Bradley, who is now in her early eighties, expressed regret that the clinic had participated in the administration of puberty blockers for gender...

The contamination of mRNA vaccines with DNA is far greater than initially thought at up to 35%, and the DNA's role in inducing human cells to produce the spike protein long term has been confirmed, according to the latest research. Earlier this month, the Daily Sceptic reported on the work of Dr. Kevin McKernan and his team who had subjected the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna to deep sequencing analysis and found alarming levels of DNA contaminants known as plasmids. These are small circular DNA molecules that in principle can self-replicate in bacterial and human cells and induce the cell to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein long term. Each vaccine dose was found to contain billions of these plasmids. The Moderna vaccine appeared to contain DNA contamination at around the 'safe' level set by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) at the equivalent of one part per 3,000 mRNA molecules, though it's not clear how safe this level really is. The Pfizer vaccine, on the other...

In an exclusive interview with The Cradle, Russia's top macroeconomics strategist criticizes Moscow's slow pace of financial reform and warns there will be no new global currency without Beijing. The headquarters of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) in Moscow, linked to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is arguably one of the most crucial nodes of the emerging multipolar world. That's where I was received by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics Sergey Glazyev - who was previously interviewed in detail by The Cradle - for an exclusive, expanded discussion on the geoeconomics of multipolarity. Glazyev was joined by his top economic advisor Dmitry Mityaev, who is also the secretary of the Eurasian Economic Commission's (EEC) science and technology council. The EAEU and EEC are formed by Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia. The group is currently engaged in establishing a series of free trade agreements with nations from West Asia to Southeast Asia. Our...

Just occasionally, a window is opened onto the truth of how the 'system' works. Momentarily, it stands naked in its degeneracy. We avert our eyes, yet, it is a revelation (though it shouldn't be). For, we see clearly how tawdry has been the attire which clothed it. 'Liberalism's' seeming success - almost wholly an ephemeral PR production - serves only to make its underlying internal contradictions more obvious; more 'in your face' - much less credible. This unravelling speaks to a failure to satisfactorily resolve liberal modernity's inherent contradictions. Or, rather its unravelling derives from the choice to resolve a waning legitimacy, through an ever more totalistic and ideological reaching for hegemony. One such window has been the sordid affair of the UK pandemic lockdowns - as revealed by a paper trail leak of 100,000 ministerial WhatsApp messages, managing the lockdown project. What did they show (in the words here of pro-government leading political commentators)? An ugly...

What lies behind this week's scenes in Tbilisi and why was Russia again used as a scapegoat? Tbilisi's main street, Rustaveli Avenue, was blocked for several days this week as thousands of people chanted anti-government slogans in front of the parliament building and sang the Georgian national anthem. Even more protesters gathered at the square in the evenings. By nightfall, the enraged crowd was throwing firecrackers, stones, and Molotov cocktails at the police, attempting to take down an iron fence and storm the parliament. The police used water cannons to promptly put out the fires and showered the crowds with water, at the same time spraying tear gas to disperse those present. What led to this violent confrontation is perhaps difficult to understand from the perspective of a Western reader. It wasn't a "civil society" uprising in the sense you might find, for example, in a country like France. Instead, it was organized by people whose livelihoods were threatened by the proposed...

Germany is facing an inevitable economic decline after losing its access to Russian energy, but cannot do anything about it because it is not a sovereign nation, the secretary of the Russian National Security Council has claimed. "Germany tried for many years to build its economy on a combination of cheap Russian energy and advanced German technologies. Like no one else, it realizes that the terrorist attack against the [Nord Stream pipelines] will definitely cause the German economy to decline further," Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview published in Argumenti i Fakti newspaper on Monday. The advantages that German businesses enjoyed by getting access to Russian fuel has long irritated the governments of the US and the UK, he continued. But Berlin is not at liberty to continue cooperating with Moscow, "because the German nation is not independent."

Ukrainian polar explorers have repainted a signpost at the country's Antarctic station, commemorating the country's "allies," as well as daubing a ceremonial signpost in the red and black colors of the WW2-era Nazi collaborator Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The makeover was announced by the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine in a Facebook post on Saturday, with the agency praising the explorers for their "incredible job." The signpost is located at the Akademik Vernadsky polar station, formerly known as Station Faraday before it was transferred to Kiev by the UK in the mid-1990s. The signpost had remained untouched for some 20 years and direly needed to be repaired, the agency explained.

Brigitte Macron, the First Lady of France, filed a complaint last year against two women who uploaded a YouTube video titled "Brigitte Macron is a man." The video alleged that Brigitte had a gender reassignment at 18. On Wednesday, the French newspaper Le Point reported that Brigitte's complaint against the two women was "voided" by a Paris Judge. In its decision, consulted by AFP, the court declared void the summons issued by Brigitte Macron for invasion of privacy and image rights, considering that the facts she denounced should have been qualified of public defamation. Brigitte Macron, her brother, and the three children of the First Lady had assigned two women on February 15, 2022, one presenting herself as a "medium," the other as an "independent journalist." They asked the court to condemn these two women to pay them damages for having broadcast on the YouTube channel of the "medium", on December 10, 2021, "a perfectly eccentric thesis" according to which Brigitte Macron,...

In a recent interview, Nicholas Burns, the US Ambassador to China, after labelling China the 'threat', bluntly said: "We're the leader in this [Indo-Pacific] region. [And We're] staying". The interviewer, US Congressman Mike Gallagher, described America's new Cold War as no polite tennis match, but an existential struggle for life in the 21st century. President Xi's earlier attempt to reach a 'new dtente' with the US during the November G20 at Bali -- effectively an attempt to explore whether a minimum modus vivendi with US were possible -- is over. The hysteria over the Chinese balloon; the increasing evidence that Ukraine is descending to a dbacle for the Biden Administration in the Bakhmut area; and the coarse threats of 'consequences' for China were it to support Russia militarily (and at the very moment when Washington was promising more weapons for Taiwan), were too much for Beijing.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) admitted on Sunday that her administration's pandemic-era lockdown policies went too far, such as her April 2020 executive order barring most stores from selling gardening supplies, including seeds and plants, to Americans who wanted to grow their own fruits and vegetables. "There were moments where, you know, we had to make some decisions that in retrospect don't make a lot of sense, right? If you went to the hardware store, you could go to the hardware store but we didn't want people to be congregating around the garden supplies," Whitmer told CNN's Chris Wallace. "People said 'oh, she's outlawed seeds.' It was February in Michigan, no one was planting anyway," she continued (except it was in April). "But that being said, some of those policies I look back and think, you know, maybe that was a little more than what we needed to do."

The latest headlines, of course, are all pointing toward the ripple effect of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and they should be. This banking metaphor for the tech sector in particular and the previously described disaster in California as a whole or the matter of banking risk as a theme, require understanding and attention, provided below. Once we get past a forensic look at the data and forces which explain SVB's demise, we quickly discover that SVB is itself just a symbol of a much larger financial (and banking) crisis which ties together nearly all of the major macro forces we've been tracking since Powell began his QE to QT quest to be Volcker-reborn. That is, we confirm that everything comes back to the Fed and bond market in general and the UST market in particular. But as I've argued for years, and will say again now: The bond market is the thing. By the end of this brief report, we also discover that SVB is just the beginning; contagion inside and outside of the banking sector...

Ukraine's general mobilization process has become shrouded in scandal as the authorities become increasingly desperate in their hunt for new recruits... Last year, military conscription became an issue in both Russia and Ukraine. However, the extent has been completely different in the two countries. While in Russia the mobilization was partial, lasting barely more than a month and affecting around 300,000 people, according to official figures - a significant part of whom already had military experience - a completely different picture has developed in Ukraine. Kiev instituted a general conscription drive which has been in force for more than a year. The exact number of those taken to the armed forces during this time is not known for certain and the process has been accompanied by numerous scandals. Cases where law enforcement officers have applied force when handing out conscription notices and illegally delivered men to enlistment offices have given rise to public discontent....

A fascinating new report in Nikkei Asia has unearthed and detailed the findings of an elite Chinese state-linked think tank which reports directly to the People's Liberation Army. Nikkei in the context of examining the timing and motives behind China's 12-point peace plan said that Chinese military experts are predicting the Russia-Ukraine war will end this summer. To review, the 12-point plan urged implementation of a ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations toward a permanent peaceful settlement, and was unveiled on the one-year Feb.24 anniversary of the war. But the Nikkei report asserts there's specific rationale driving Beijing: The reason for China's sudden change can be traced back to a report issued two months earlier by a top think tank in Beijing. The Academy of Military Sciences [AMS] reports directly to the People's Liberation Army. Although it cannot be found on a map, the institution is located in Beijing's Haidian district, which itself is home to the ruins of...