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Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening.
Sometimes, someone is.
Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices. The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa’s understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands.
The Alexa voice review process, described by seven people who have worked on the program, highlights the often-overlooked human role in training software algorithms. In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching.
The team comprises a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who work in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania, according to the people, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program. They work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazon’s Bucharest office, which takes up the top three floors of the Globalworth building in the Romanian capital’s up-and-coming Pipera district. The modern facility stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure and bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon’s presence.
The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as “Taylor Swift” and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording.
Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault. When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases, they were told it wasn’t Amazon’s job to interfere.
“We take the security and privacy of our customers’ personal information seriously,” an Amazon spokesman said in an emailed statement. “We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone.
“We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it.”
Amazon, in its marketing and privacy policy materials, doesn’t explicitly say humans are listening to recordings of some conversations picked up by Alexa. “We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems,” the company says in a list of frequently asked questions.
In Alexa’s privacy settings, the company gives users the option of disabling the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features. A screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the recordings sent to the Alexa auditors don’t provide a user’s full name and address but are associated with an account number, as well as the user’s first name and the device’s serial number.
The Intercept reported earlier this year that employees of Amazon-owned Ring manually identify vehicles and people in videos captured by the company’s doorbell cameras, an effort to better train the software to do that work itself.
“You don’t necessarily think of another human listening to what you’re telling your smart speaker in the intimacy of your home,” said Florian Schaub, a professor at the University of Michigan who has researched privacy issues related to smart speakers. “I think we’ve been conditioned to the [assumption] that these machines are just doing magic machine learning. But the fact is there is still manual processing involved.”
“Whether that’s a privacy concern or not depends on how cautious Amazon and other companies are in what type of information they have manually annotated, and how they present that information to someone,” he added.
When the Echo debuted in 2014, Amazon’s cylindrical smart speaker quickly popularized the use of voice software in the home. Before long, Alphabet Inc. launched its own version, called Google Home, followed by Apple Inc.’s HomePod. Various companies also sell their own devices in China. Globally, consumers bought 78 million smart speakers last year, according to researcher Canalys. Millions more use voice software to interact with digital assistants on their smartphones.
Alexa software is designed to continuously record snatches of audio, listening for a wake word. That’s “Alexa” by default, but people can change it to “Echo” or “computer.” When the wake word is detected, the light ring at the top of the Echo turns blue, indicating the device is recording and beaming a command to Amazon servers.
Most modern speech-recognition systems rely on neural networks patterned on the human brain. The software learns as it goes, by spotting patterns amid vast amounts of data. The algorithms powering the Echo and other smart speakers use models of probability to make educated guesses. If someone asks Alexa if there’s a Greek place nearby, the algorithms know the user is probably looking for a restaurant, not a church or community center.
But sometimes Alexa gets it wrong—especially when grappling with new slang, regional colloquialisms or languages other than English. In French, avec sa, “with him” or “with her,” can confuse the software into thinking someone is using the Alexa wake word. Hecho, Spanish for a fact or deed, is sometimes misinterpreted as Echo. And so on. That’s why Amazon recruited human helpers to fill in the gaps missed by the algorithms.
Apple’s Siri also has human helpers, who work to gauge whether the digital assistant’s interpretation of requests lines up with what the person said. The recordings they review lack personally identifiable information and are stored for six months tied to a random identifier, according to an Apple security white paper. After that, the data is stripped of its random identification information but may be stored for longer periods to improve Siri’s voice recognition.
At Google, some employees can access some audio snippets from its Assistant to help train and improve the product, but it’s not associated with any personally identifiable information and the audio is distorted, the company says.
A recent Amazon job posting, seeking a quality assurance manager for Alexa Data Services in Bucharest, describes the role humans play: “Every day she [Alexa] listens to thousands of people talking to her about different topics and different languages, and she needs our help to make sense of it all.” The want ad continues: “This is big data handling like you’ve never seen it. We’re creating, labeling, curating and analyzing vast quantities of speech on a daily basis.”
Amazon’s review process for speech data begins when Alexa pulls a random, small sampling of customer voice recordings and sends the audio files to the far-flung employees and contractors, according to a person familiar with the program’s design.
Some Alexa reviewers are tasked with transcribing users’ commands, comparing the recordings to Alexa’s automated transcript, say, or annotating the interaction between user and machine. What did the person ask? Did Alexa provide an effective response?
Others note everything the speaker picks up, including background conversations—even when children are speaking. Sometimes listeners hear users discussing private details such as names or bank details; in such cases, they’re supposed to tick a dialog box denoting “critical data.” They then move on to the next audio file.
According to Amazon’s website, no audio is stored unless Echo detects the wake word or is activated by pressing a button. But sometimes Alexa appears to begin recording without any prompt at all, and the audio files start with a blaring television or unintelligible noise. Whether or not the activation is mistaken, the reviewers are required to transcribe it. One of the people said the auditors each transcribe as many as 100 recordings a day when Alexa receives no wake command or is triggered by accident.
In homes around the world, Echo owners frequently speculate about who might be listening, according to two of the reviewers. “Do you work for the NSA?” they ask. “Alexa, is someone else listening to us?”
Source: NewsMax America
U.S. President Donald Trump displays an executive order he signed on energy and infrastructure at the International Union of Operating Engineers International Training and Education Center in Crosby, Texas, U.S., April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
April 11, 2019
By Jeff Mason and Timothy Gardner
CROSBY, Texas/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump signed two executive orders in the heart of the Texas energy hub on Wednesday targeting the power of states to delay natural gas, coal and oil projects as he looks to build support ahead of next year’s election.
Trump’s orders direct his Environmental Protection Agency to change a part of the U.S. clean water law that has allowed states to delay projects on environmental grounds. New York has delayed pipelines that would bring natural gas to New England, for example, and Washington state has stopped coal export terminals.
“My action today will cut through destructive permitting delays and denials … what takes you 20 years to get a permit, those days are gone,” said Trump, surrounded by workers in hard hats and yellow vests.
He signed the orders at a training center for petroleum industry workers near Houston, an event sandwiched between fundraising events for the 2020 presidential campaign.
Critics vowed to oppose Trump’s actions. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the orders were a “gross overreach of federal authority that undermines New York’s ability to protect our water quality and our environment.” Any attempt to usurp state authority on the projects will be fought “tooth and nail,” the Democrat said.
Chris Stockton, a spokesman for Williams Cos Inc, which has fought Cuomo’s denial of its Constitution gas pipeline from Pennsylvania, said the company supported Trump’s effort to “foster coordination, predictability and transparency in federal environmental review.”
The orders direct the EPA to review and update guidance issued during the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama on the so-called 401 provision of the Clean Water Act. The measure required companies to get certifications from states before building interstate pipelines and projects approved by the federal government.
In 2017, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat and 2020 candidate for president, used the provision to block a permit for the Millennium Bulk Terminal, a coal export facility that would have expanded the ability of companies to send Western coal to Asian markets.
Inslee, who has centered his campaign on tackling climate change, said Trump’s orders would put the country on a “fatal path” of unconstrained fossil fuel use and hold back clean energy development.
‘EVERY TOOL AT OUR DISPOSAL’
The orders are part of the Trump administration’s “energy dominance” policy to increase oil, gas and coal production, but forcing the EPA changes will take time.
A senior administration official told reporters the agency would have to follow normal procedures, including a comment period, and that projects already tied up in litigation “are obviously a much longer-term issue.”
A lawyer with experience in energy regulation in the U.S. government said it was unclear how much impact the orders would have. A change in the clean water law’s requirement for companies to get permits from the states would have to be made in Congress, said Fred Jauss, a partner at the firm Dorsey & Whitney.
Michael Brune, the chief of the Sierra Club, which sues the government frequently, said the group would fight the orders “with every tool at our disposal.”
One order directs the transportation secretary to propose allowing liquefied natural gas, a liquid form of the fuel, to be shipped in approved rail cars.
The orders also give the president the power to issue permits for projects that span international borders, taking that power from the secretary of state. Trump issued a presidential permit last month for the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline to bring crude from Canada.
Canadian pipeline operator Enbridge Inc supports the orders’ “focus on enhancing the predictability of the permitting process and the critical importance of investing in energy infrastructure in the U.S. and Canada,” company spokesman Michael Barnes said. Enbridge had an oil pipeline project from Canada to the United States halted by opposition in Michigan.
The orders could also speed projects in Texas. Energy investors vying for permits to build oil export terminals along the Gulf Coast say they have worked closely with Trump officials in a bid to speed regulatory reviews of facilities capable of loading supertankers.
U.S. and state agencies overseeing permit applications have taken too long to approve projects, the investors said, adding they were worried their projects would miss the most profitable years of the U.S. crude export boom.
Four energy groups led by Trafigura AG, Carlyle Group, Enterprise Products Partners LP and Enbridge have applied to build terminals in Texas.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Crosby, Texas,and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington, Collin Eaton in Houston and Jessica Resnick-Ault and Scott Disavino in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
Source: OANN
Imagine a dystopian science-fiction future where hospital ventilation systems are pumping out a deadly superbug, right into the open atmosphere, where winds carry it to local communities and farms, infecting crops and foods with chemical-resistant fungal strains that have a reported 41% – 88% fatality rate in humans.
And imagine the CDC knew about it, but refused to tell you which hospitals were infected. Local hospitals hid the fact that their own hospital rooms and intensive care units were being overrun with this fatal fungi, and that all the world’s epidemiological experts had no idea where the pathogen had come from or how to stop it.
But they all kept it a secret, because they didn’t want to “alarm” the public. And they sure didn’t want hospitals to be seen as hubs of superbug infections.
Well, imagine no more. This is real. It’s happening right now. And this pandemic has been silently spreading over the last four years, with virtually zero media reports, very little information from the CDC, and a coordinated cover-up by the hospitals of the western world to keep patients in the dark while they’re being infected and killed by a deadly pathogen.
This is the true story of Candida auris, a superbug fungal strain that has emerged from the widespread use of chemical fungicides in agriculture. In this extended Natural News report — initially based on a New York Times report but significantly expanded — you will learn why this silent pandemic has already invaded America’s hospitals and why it cannot be stopped using any known medical defense. It may already be too late for the planet. By abusing agricultural chemicals, humanity has given rise to a superbug that could, under the right conditions, kill a billion people and collapse the entire western medical system.
And you may already be “colonized” by this fungus, serving as a carrier who will infect others in your own family and community.
How did this happen? Understanding Candida auris
According to a bombshell New York Times investigation — yes, even the New York Times occasionally commits acts of real journalism — this pandemic has already found its way into some of the largest hospitals in New York, Chicago and London. The superbug fungus has spread to nursing homes and is carried from patient to patient by health care workers. It grows on IV lines and ventilators, and it infects hospital gowns and clothing. Aggressive sterilization efforts using aerosolized hydrogen peroxide do nothing to kill this fungus, and the cover-up continues, even as rates of infections and fatalities are exploding across the western world.
The fungus is called Candida auris, or C. auris for short. It’s called Auris because it was originally discovered to be living in a woman’s ear in Japan. But now, it has spread to every continent, and its rise has only been made worse by a coordinated cover-up by the CDC, hospitals and the corrupt medical industry that places its own profits over the safety of the public. If there were a vaccine for Candida auris, these infections would be front page news across the globe, and journalists would be screaming at everyone to get injected with the vaccine. But since the medical establishment has no treatment whatsoever for this deadly pathogen, they’ve conspired to cover it up.
This Natural News report aims to explain how this happening and how the science lies of the chemical agricultural giants have now put the entire human race at risk from this exploding superbug pathogen.
To understand how we got here, we have to go back a few years and take a closer look at fungi that grow naturally in crop soils.
The mass chemical contamination of farm soils in the name of “crop yields”
Soil is a complex living ecosystem, and soils naturally harbor an astonishing array of microbiology, including bacteria, fungi and viruses. In healthy soils, the most dangerous organisms are crowded out by good organisms. This survival competition keeps the really nasty bugs in check, preventing them from expanding their colonies and gaining ground.
But modern farming relies heavily on chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. These chemicals, which are routinely sprayed on food crops, demonstrate selective chemical toxicity that kills some organisms but leaves others untouched. Even worse, some strains develop resistance to agricultural chemicals through a process of adaptation and microbiological natural selection. This leads to the rise of so-called superbugs. (See Superbugs.news for more reports.)
“Superbugs” is a generic term that can apply to insects that develop chemical resistance, or it can describe microbes and even fungi that develop resistance to chemicals that would otherwise kill them. Any organism that survives the onslaught of toxic chemicals and develops a physiological survival mechanism to nullify or eliminate those chemicals will suddenly find itself able to grow and spread at a ferocious rate. That’s because its competition has been wiped out by the agricultural poisons such as fungicides. So as farmers sprayed fungicides on virtually every vegetable and fruit crop in existence, this practice led to the inevitable rise of a superstrain of Candida auris, which now finds itself able to replicate and spread in ways that never could have been possible when all the other fungi were competing for the same resources.
Killing off the “good” fungi, in other words, allowed the really dangerous fungal strains to succeed like never before. And the more chemicals are sprayed on food crops, the more dangerous the pathogens become. This is all caused by human intervention via chemical agriculture — an artificial way to produce food for the masses.
Millions of tons of fungicides are sprayed on food crops every year in the United States alone
By 2023, it is estimated that annual expenditures on fungicides will reach $21 billion worldwide. In 2016, an average of 4.26 pounds of fungicide chemicals were applied per acre in the United States, and one of the largest classes of fungicide chemicals is called “azole fungicides.”
Azole fungicides now account for one third of global sales of fungicides, and various derivatives of azoles are heavily applied to crops every day, all over the world, including triazoles and benzimidazoles. These chemicals end up not merely in our food, but in agricultural runoff, eventually contaminating water supplies, rivers and even oceans. Over time, as these azole chemicals were repeatedly applied to food crops year after year, Candida auris developed robust immunity to these chemicals, enabling the fungus to survive on food crops due to the fact that it now had no competition, since most other fungi strains were killed by the chemicals.
So crops harvested from food fields carried this fungus to food markets and grocery stores. There, consumers purchased the products and prepared them at home, touching those fruits and vegetables with their bare hands and transferring the fungal colonies to their homes, their clothing and other family members. Almost instantly, Candida aurisspread from foods to home environments, persisting in damp kitchens, dark drawers and closets, effectively colonizing humans who then carried it to other humans.
From here, it was only a matter of time before C. auris found its way to hospitals, nursing homes, surgical centers and retirement centers. Today, C. auris is no doubt colonizing children in day care centers; co-workers in office environments; friends at social gatherings and family members at holiday events.
Everything in hospital rooms is infected: The bed rails, window shades, curtains, doors, bed and even the ceiling
When a man died at Mount Sinai hospital in Brooklyn after being infected with C. auris, his hospital room was tested for the pathogen, reports the New York Times:
“Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.”
The fungus preys on those with weakened immune systems, including infants and the elderly. Its symptoms include extreme fatigue, and in certain immune-weakened populations, it has so far been observed to kill 41% of those it infects. (See below for more statistics showing an even higher fatality rate.)
People with strong immune systems are apparently able to fight off the effects of the fungus, but even if they show no symptoms, they may be carriers of the strain, infecting others who may suffer from weakened immune function. This includes infants and seniors, but can also impact those who have caught a cold or a flu, or even people who have endured an extremely strenuous workout at the gym, placing themselves in an immunosuppressed condition for 2-3 days. “[T]hey are most lethal to people with immature or compromised immune systems, including newborns and the elderly, smokers, diabetics and people with autoimmune disorders who take steroids that suppress the body’s defenses,” the NYT explains.
It is self-evidence that C. auris will also attack those who are taking antibiotics, as their own personal gut flora are wiped out by the antibiotic drugs in exactly the same way that friendly fungi are wiped out across crop fields by azole fungicide chemicals. Thus, the people who undergo surgical procedures at hospitals and are routinely given antibiotics as part of the treatment are also being kept in the very same hospital rooms where Candida auris is increasingly festering.
This combination is a public health catastrophe waiting to happen. Hospitals have now become colonization centers where humans are exposed to deadly fungi. Hospitals, in a very real sense, are spreading the pandemic. Again, from the NYT:
[T]he germs are easily spread — carried on hands and equipment inside hospitals; ferried on meat and manure-fertilized vegetables from farms; transported across borders by travelers and on exports and imports; and transferred by patients from nursing home to hospital and back.
Five warnings from the CDC’s fungal expert, Dr. Tom Chiller
The CDC’s own chief of its fungal research division, Dr. Tom Chiller, warns about Candida auris, “behaving in unexpected and concerning ways, causing severe disease in countries across the globe, including the United States.” In a Medscape article published in 2017, Dr. Chiller lays out some facts about Candida auris that even the New York Times decided not to report. Via Dr. Chiller’s warning: (my comments are added in parenthesis)
Warning #1) C auris can spread between patients in healthcare facilities and cause outbreaks. In this way, it appears to behave much like some multidrug-resistant bacteria (eg, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or Acinetobacter).
Warning #2) C auris can colonize a patient’s skin for months or longer. (Yes, months. That means carriers can remain carriers for a very long time.)
Warning #3) This hardy yeast can live on surfaces for a month or more, and preliminary testing suggests that quaternary ammonium compounds commonly used for healthcare disinfection may not be sufficiently effective against C auris. (In other words, the usual chemicals that hospitals use to clean rooms simply don’t work against Candida auris.)
Warning #4) C auris is quickly becoming more common. In some international healthcare facilities, it has gone from an unknown pathogen to a cause of 40% of invasive Candida infections within a few years. We need to act now to prevent this from happening in the United States. (Too late. It’s also endemic in U.S. hospitals in Illinois, New Jersey and New York, although the CDC refuses to tell us which hospitals have been colonized by the fungus.)
Warning #5) C auris is often multidrug resistant. Some strains have been resistant to all three major antifungal classes, including echinocandins, the first-line treatment for Candida infections.
But it’s far worse than all that, in reality. Candida auris is airborne, and it floats through the air inside hospitals, infecting patients, hospital staff and colonizing hospital rooms and surgical areas. Even worse, the deadly pathogen is now escaping hospitals and infecting surrounding communities. Hospitals have, in effect, become hubs for spreading this deadly superbug across the country and around the world.
“Aerial samples of hospitals” test positive for the deadly pathogen… hospitals are factories that churn out this deadly disease
In 2013, a published science paper examined the spread of azole-resistant Aspergillus fumigatus arising from the agricultural use of azole fungicides. The paper was published in PLOS Pathogens with the title, “Emergence of Azole-Resistant Aspergillus fumigatus Strains due to Agricultural Azole Use Creates an Increasing Threat to Human Health.”
The paper supports the astonishing conclusion that people are acquiring fungicide-resistant strains through “environmental sources” rather than experiencing fungal mutations in their own bodies while being treated with anti-fungal drugs. As the study explains:
Several recent findings support the hypothesis that ARAF (azole-resistant A. fumigatus) strains in patients with invasive aspergillosis were more likely to be acquired from environmental sources rather than from de novo mutation and selection within patients during azole therapy.
The supporting evidence for this extremely disturbing realization is also cited by the science paper as follows:
#1) “ARAF strains have been found in patients who had never been treated with azole antifungal drugs.”
#2) “ARAF strains have been found in many environmental niches including flowerbeds, compost, leaves, plant seeds, soil samples of tea gardens, paddy fields, hospital surroundings, and aerial samples of hospitals.” This means that hospitals are effectively pumping out the fungal strains to surrounding areas.
#3) “These strains showed cross-resistance to voriconazole, posaconazole, itraconazole, and to six triazole fungicides used extensively in agriculture.” In other words, the fungus is almost certain to have emerged from repeated exposure to agricultural fungicides, since those are the chemicals for which it has developed innate resistance.
As the paper explains, it is the agricultural use of azole fungicides that supplies the most likely explanation for fungicide-resistant superbug fungi:
For example, azole fungicides are broadly used to control mildews and rusts of grains, fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals; powdery mildew in cereals, berry fruits, vines, and tomatoes; and several other plant pathogenic fungi. Over one-third of total fungicide sales are azoles (mostly triazoles) and over 99% of the DMIs (demethylase inhibitors) are used in agriculture. In addition, there are over 25 types of azole DMIs for agricultural uses, far more than the three licensed medical triazoles for the treatment of aspergillosis. Furthermore, the azoles could persist and remain active in many ecological niches such as agricultural soil and aquatic environments for several months.
The widespread application of fungicide for agricultural use, in other words, is the credible, rational explanation for the widespread development of azole-resistant fungi strains that colonize and kill people, including people who have never been known to carry the non-resistant strains in the first place.
Azole-resistant Aspergillosis killed human patients with a mortality rate of 88%
One of the most horrifying findings of scientists who study azole-resistant fungi is the startlingly high mortality rate. Azole-resistant Aspergillosis was found to kill 88% of patients who were infected. As the PLOS Pathogens study cited earlier describes:
In fact 50% of the patients with invasive aspergillosis due to ARAF are known to be azole naïve and the outcome of patients with azole-resistant invasive aspergillosis has been dismal, with a mortality rate of 88%. (Van der Linden JWM, Snelders E, Kampinga GA, Rijnders BJA, Mattsson E, et al. (2011) Clinical implications of azole resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus, the Netherlands, 2007–2009. Emerg Infect Dis 17: 1846–1852.)
Even more alarmingly, it looks like patients currently being diagnosed as having chronic pulmonary infections may actually be victims of azole-resistant fungal infections. As the study explains, the genetic analysis (via PCR) of tissues from patients suffering chronic lung infections found that over half showed mutations characteristic of azole-resistant fungal strains:
[T]he same mechanism has also been reported in patients with chronic and allergic pulmonary infections [20]. For example, Denning et al. detected TR34/L98H and M220 mutations in 55.1% respiratory samples of CPA and ABPA patients by direct PCR…
This same genotype was, “found in 90% of ARAF isolates obtained from azole-naïve patients,” the study reports, meaning it’s a near-certain sign that these patients have been colonized by azole-resistant fungal strains.
Chemical agriculture has unleashed a deadly global pathogen with no known medical treatment… and the entire medical establishment is burying the truth while exposing millions of hospital patients every day
The upshot of all this is that chemical agriculture has given rise to a deadly global pathogen that has spread across the globe and has no known medical treatment. The NYT article quotes Dr. Lynn Sosa, the deputy state epidemiologist for Connecticut, saying, “It’s pretty much unbeatable and difficult to identity.” That story adds that nearly 50% of patients who contract Candida auris are dead within 90 days, according to what appears to be reluctant statements from the CDC. There, the head of the fungal research branch, Dr. Tom Chiller, described the fungal superbug as “a creature from the black lagoon,” the NYT reported. “It bubbled up and now it is everywhere.”
Except that it didn’t have to be that way. There has been a cover-up for years. The very medical establishment that is entrusted with keeping people safe from deadly pathogens has, itself, become both the distribution hub for spreading the disease while simultaneously colluding with the CDC to hide the truth about all this from the public. It is the hospitals that are now “fungal factories” which are spreading the disease, literally releasing superbug pathogens into the open air, contaminating entire communities with fungal spores that are stronger than any treatment chemical known to western medicine.
There simply is no treatment, no cure, and very little honesty about the reality of the situation. To his credit, the CDC’s Dr. Chiller did post a warning about all this in 2017, but the CDC itself has refused to name the hospitals where these outbreaks are taking place.
The NYT describes the bizarre combination of panic and collusion that’s now taking place in hospitals across the world:
In late 2015, Dr. Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College London, got a panicked call from the Royal Brompton Hospital, a British medical center outside London. C. auris had taken root there months earlier, and the hospital couldn’t clear it.
“‘We have no idea where it’s coming from. We’ve never heard of it. It’s just spread like wildfire,’” Dr. Rhodes said she was told. She agreed to help the hospital identify the fungus’s genetic profile and clean it from rooms.
Under her direction, hospital workers used a special device to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide around a room used for a patient with C. auris, the theory being that the vapor would scour each nook and cranny. They left the device going for a week. Then they put a “settle plate” in the middle of the room with a gel at the bottom that would serve as a place for any surviving microbes to grow, Dr. Rhodes said.
Only one organism grew back. C. auris.
It was spreading, but word of it was not. The hospital, a specialty lung and heart center that draws wealthy patients from the Middle East and around Europe, alerted the British government and told infected patients, but made no public announcement.
“There was no need to put out a news release during the outbreak,” said Oliver Wilkinson, a spokesman for the hospital.
This hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients — or prospective ones.
Now it’s in America… and it’s silently spreading while doctors, hospitals and the CDC are still hiding important facts from the public
According to the CDC, a total of 617 cases of Candida auris have been reported so far in the United States. This is detailed on the CDC’s Candida auris page, which warns that C. auris has “caused outbreaks in healthcare settings,” meaning hospitals and nursing homes are now spreading the superbug pathogen in America.
The CDC’s “tracking” page for Candida auris warns that hospitals around the world are spreading the disease, specifically naming the following countries as locations where healthcare-related pathogen transmission has been reported:
India, Kenya, Kuwait, Pakistan, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela
Outside hospitals, multiple cases of Candida auris are currently being tracked by the CDC and have been recorded in the following countries:
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States (primarily from the New York City area, New Jersey, and the Chicago area) and Venezuela
The CDC even warns that hospitals are spreading the disease, saying, “in some of these countries, extensive transmission of C. auris has been documented in more than one hospital.”
Illinois, New York and New Jersey are the hubs for Candida auris infections in U.S. hospitals and healthcare facilities
Candida auris is rapidly spreading across the United States, and the CDC publishes a chart with state-by-state statistics on where the infections are being found, even while refusing to tell the public which hospitals are infected:
https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/candida-auris/tracking-c-auris.html
Currently, the CDC’s tracking page shows 144 infections recorded in Illinois, 104 in New Jersey and 309 in New York. Twelve cases have been reported in Florida, 7 in Massachusetts with a smattering of isolated reports from California, Texas, Virginia and Connecticut.
Importantly, the CDC is so far refusing to name the hospitals or nursing homes where these cases are being found. This means the CDC, as usual, is hiding the truth about a deadly outbreak from the public. This behavior by the CDC will obviously lead to even more people being infected by visiting the hospitals where Candida auriscolonization is already complete. But the CDC seems more interested in protecting the profits of hospitals than in protecting the public from a deadly superbug pathogen, so it looks likely that the secrecy will continue.
Alarmingly, even the CDC says the numbers it has so far published coming out of Illinois, New Jersey and New York are only just the beginning. “Beyond the clinical case counts reported above, an additional 1056 patients have been found to be colonized with C. auris by targeted screening in seven states with clinical cases,” the CDC says. Yet to no one’s surprise, the CDC refuses to name which seven states.
Death by secrecy
Being “colonized” with Candida auris means you’re carrying it, spreading it to other people even though you may not show any symptoms yourself. As the CDC explains, “Colonization means that these patients are found to be carrying C. auris on their bodies, even though they are not sick with the infection.”
If there are 1,056 people across seven states who have already been found to be colonized with Candida auris, it means we are way beyond the Ebola scenario that scared the nation a few years ago when the geniuses at the CDC brought an Ebola patient to a Texas hospital, where that patient promptly spread Ebola to at least one nurse, causing a nationwide panic over a viral outbreak that thankfully failed to explode across the U.S. heartland. But Candida auris has already exploded across America, and the early numbers are only a hint of the scope of the real problem, given that “colonization screening” hasn’t even begun to encompass all of America’s cities or states.
With the CDC hiding the names of the hospitals where this deadly pathogen is spreading — and with the continued heavy application of azole-class fungicides on agricultural products across the country — it seems we’re already at a stage-six pandemic that has only just begun to be fully realized. It’s as if we’re all sailing on the Titanic, and the ship is already 80% under water by the time we realize something’s wrong. This pathogen is already endemic in America.
It’s likely that nearly every hospital, nursing home, public school and day care center in America is already colonized with Candida auris (or will be soon). No person can visit any hospital or healthcare facility without the reasonable expectation of being exposed to this superbug fungal strain, meaning that every visit to the hospital is now a potential death sentence, especially given the 41% – 88% fatality rates that have so far been associated with azole-resistant fungal strains.
Why Western medicine will ignore the obvious solution: Ultraviolet light
What’s even more horrifying about all this is that no one in the western medical system seems capable of thinking outside the realm of chemical treatments, so they all miss the obvious solution: Ultraviolet light. UV light — which everyone can get for free from the sun — kills nearly all fungi and viral strains. But hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities are unnatural places, characterized by artificial light and dark, damp hallways and rooms. Hospitals are breeding grounds for fungal colonies, and combined with the disturbingly high failure rates of hand washing among health care staff, it is inevitable that azole-resistant fungal strains will colonize every hospital in America over the next several years.
With window shades drawn to keep out the light, hospitals will try to fight the fungus with yet more chemicals, ultimately breeding even more dangerous, drug-resistant strains that could one day bring the world’s western health care system to a grinding halt.
Until that day comes, hospitals across America and around the world are pumping out billions of fungal spores into the open air, contaminating soils, streets and buildings in the surrounding communities. Even being near a hospital makes you a likely victim of fungal colonization. And just like the vaccine holocaust that maims and kills children all across America, the pharma-controlled media will no doubt bury this pandemic and decry those who warn about it as “conspiracy theorists.”
The fact that the New York Times even reported on this is practically a six-sigma event, but it’s an outlier, not the new rule. When health care dollars are at stake, journalism quickly folds to the profit interests of powerful corporations. Soon, the very mention of Candida auris will be decried as “anti-science,” and the World Health Organization will warn that “scare stories” about the superbug fungus are preventing people from visiting doctors and hospitals, thereby interfering with global health care. (This is exactly what the W.H.O. has done to vaccine skeptics who dare talk about the health risks of toxic vaccine ingredients such as squalene or aluminum-based adjuvants.)
Not long after the censorship crackdown on the “Candida conspiracy quacks,” the CDC will scrub its own website of any mention of the pathogen, just like the CDC deleted all its web pages that once admitted 98 million Americans were exposed to cancer viruses found contaminating polio vaccines. Western medicine isn’t good at solving health problems, but it’s very good at covering them up.
Remember: Rockland County, NY recently declared a state of emergency over a handful of measles cases. Yet a deadly fungal pathogen that now threatens to colonize and overrun every hospital and nursing home in the country gets almost zero mention anywhere. It’s clear that government officials and media propagandists have no real interest in protecting public health, but they have a huge interest in promoting the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry.
Conclusion: Chemical agriculture has already killed humanity… it’s too late to stop this
Five years ago, I warned that chemical agriculture was going to lead to humanity’s destruction. I was attacked and vilified by several science publications, of course, and labeled an “anti-science” nut case. In the years since, I launched what has now become a multi-million dollar ISO-accredited laboratory facility (CWClabs.com); I co-authored a peer-reviewed science paper published in the LC/GC chromatography journal; I launched a book — “Food Forensics” — that achieved a No. 1 science book ranking on Amazon.com; and I was awarded two scientific patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:
Patent #1) Cesium Eliminator, an invention for removing radioactive cesium-137 isotopes from the human digestive tract. (See Google patents link here.)
Patent #2) Heavy Metals Defense, an invention that removes toxic heavy metals from foods or liquids that are consumed by people or animals. (See Google patents link here.)
Also during those years, juries in California have now twice confirmed that glyphosate herbicide causes cancer, meaning that the U.S. food supply is heavily saturated with a deadly chemical that kills people. Using triple quad mass spec analysis, my laboratory has developed and validated a method for the quantitation of glyphosate in food and water, and we’re using that method to investigate retail food items sold at grocery stores across America. (Our science paper describing this method will soon be submitted for publication in science journals.)
In nearly every fresh food sample we test, we find fungicide chemicals. We also find traces of glyphosate in a fair number of samples (cereals, grains, beer, wine, beans, legumes, etc.), and we find shockingly high levels of lead and cadmium in many superfoods, dietary supplements and nutritional products.
With the Candida auris pandemic now confirmed by the New York Times, the last five years have confirmed that my original warning was correct. Agricultural chemicals are killing humanity; and we’ve only just begun to understand the vectors of emerging pathogens that have now turned virtually the entire global health care system into a suicide mission from the point of view of patients.
Agricultural chemicals don’t even have to kill us directly to be an apocalyptic threat to humanity, you see: They merely have to give rise to deadly pathogens that invade, colonize and infect every hospital, nursing home, subway station, public transport bus, mall, movie theater, church and synagogue across America. It is those pathogens that carry out the killing, not the original agricultural chemicals that gave rise to their existence.
In essence, chemical agriculture has spawned what Dr. Tom Chiller of the CDC calls, “a creature from the black lagoon.” In Dr. Chiller’s own chilling words, he summarizes what I’ve been trying to warn humanity about for fifteen years: “It bubbled up and now it is everywhere.”
And Big Pharma has no answers, no treatment and no cure. The real answer is, quite literally, sunlight. Yet the drug giants can’t patent the sun or charge royalties on it, so sunlight will never be mentioned by the establishment as the most obvious and powerful weapon for eradicating this insidious pathogen.
Meanwhile, hospitals across America will continue serving toxic food and administering toxic drugs to their patients, reveling in the repeat business that comes from the ongoing sickness and suffering that now characterizes western civilization’s chemical approach to everything.
“Better living through chemistry” has now collapsed into tragedy. The future we now face is, “The chemically-induced suicide of the human race.”
That’s the true story of how agricultural fungicides transformed every hospital visit into a suicide mission. If the food doesn’t kill you first, the visit to the doctor surely will.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: A passenger plane flies over a Shell logo at a petrol station in west London, in this January 29, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Files
April 10, 2019
By Vladimir Soldatkin and Shadia Nasralla
ST PETERSBURG/LONDON, Russia (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell has decided to exit a Baltic liquefied natural gas (LNG) project led by Russian state gas major Gazprom on the Russian Baltic coast.
The development comes as Western firms struggle to expand in Russia because of pressure from sanctions imposed by the United States, while for Gazprom it could mean limited access to Shell’s technology as well as the need to fund the project without the help of the Anglo-Dutch major.
Shell, which has a long history of energy cooperation with Russia, said earlier it was studying the possible implications of a recent decision by Gazprom to move toward the full integration of its Baltic LNG and gas processing plants.
“Following Gazprom’s announcement on March 29 regarding the final development concept of Baltic LNG, we have decided to stop our involvement in this project,” Cederic Cremers, Shell Russia’s chairman, said in a statement.
“We have a number of other ongoing projects with Gazprom, including as part of the Strategic Alliance established between the two companies in 2015, which are not impacted by this decision,” Cremers added.
Gazprom declined to comment.
Shell remains a shareholder in the Gazprom-led Sakhalin-2 plant, which produces LNG on the Russian Pacific island of Sakhalin. Shell has been struggling to increase output of the frozen gas at the project for a number of reasons.
Its decision to leave the Baltic LNG project leaves open a question about the availability of technology needed for this project as Shell will not be providing it.
Shell had developed a technology specifically for the Sakhalin Energy LNG plant, and in February said it had created a 50/50 venture with Gazprom that would use Shell’s LNG know-how to develop Russia’s own technology for supercooling gas.
KEY TECHNOLOGY
The venture was expected to effectively insulate Russia from any new U.S. sanctions on LNG, a sector in which key technology belongs to a handful of players – mainly global majors such as Shell, Exxon and Total.
Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, has been under Western sanctions since 2014 due to its role in the Ukraine crisis.
While the production of seaborne LNG is not directly affected by the sanctions, the sales and marketing of it, as well as foreign participation, have become more complicated due to the restrictions.
Shell previously suspended some shale oil and gas projects due to the introduction of sanctions on Moscow.
On March 29, Gazprom said in a statement that together with its partner RusGazDobycha it had made a decision on the final configuration of the project for a large-scale complex that would process ethane-containing gas and produce LNG in the Leningrad region. That statement did not mention Shell.
Shell said on Wednesday that its representations and those of Gazprom had not discussed the Baltic LNG project at their meetings in the Hague on Tuesday and Wednesday. These were their regular annual meetings to discuss progress on projects which are part of the strategic alliance, Shell added.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Shadia Nasralla; Writing by Tom Balmforth and Polina Devitt; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and David Holmes)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A logo of the Brazil’s state-run Petrobras oil company is seen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes/File Photo
April 10, 2019
By Carolina Mandl and Tatiana Bautzer
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – State-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA is preparing to sell three more gas pipelines after successfully selling its larger TAG unit to France’s Engie for $8.6 billion, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The group of pipelines, considerably smaller than the TAG unit sold by Petrobras, as the company is known, could be valued at more than $3 billion altogether, one of the sources said.
Petrobras has hired the investment banking unit of Credit Suisse AG to sell the pipelines that link oil fields in the so-called pre-salt area in the Santos basin to onshore infrastructure, said the sources, who asked to remain anonymous as the discussions were not yet made public.
Petrobras and Credit Suisse declined to comment.
Petrobras had initially planned to sell only a minority stake in the units, but after getting a better-than-expected price for the TAG unit, the company may sell control of the pipelines, two of the sources said.
A controlling stake would lure more investors than a minority one, one of the sources said. Some of the investors that participated in the TAG deal were interested in the other pipelines, which similarly offer table cash flows.
A final decision will be made once Petrobras’ new Chief Financial Officer Andrea Marques de Almeida, who was appointed last month, starts in her new role, one of the sources said.
The three units, known as Rota 1, Rota 2 and Rota 3, comprise roughly 1,000 kilometers (621.37 miles) of pipelines stretching from the Santos basin to the coast.
Two of those units already transport natural gas generated in sub-salt fields in the Santos basin to onshore facilities in the coast of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and the third one is still under construction.
The process of selling the additional pipelines will probably not start before the second half of the year, one of the sources said. That’s because Petrobras needs to get the approval of its oil exploration partners in the pre-salt oil fields for the sales since they own stakes in the natural gas production in the fields.
Those partners include France’s Total SA, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and China’s CNPC.
(Reporting by Carolina Mandl and Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Christian Plumb and Bernadette Baum)
Source: OANN
Russian president Vladimir Putin said he’s ready to turn the leaf on the first two years of diplomatic scandals between the US and Russia, and is seeking areas of cooperation with his US counterprart (and according to various now debunked lunatics, spy) Donald Trump, calling the furor over election-meddling allegations part of the deep political crisis in Washington.
In his first public comments on the outcome of Robert Mueller’s investigation which found no collusion or conspiracy between Trump and Russia, Putin welcomed the controversial findings.
“We said from the very start that this notorious commission of Mr. Mueller wouldn’t find anything because we know this better than anyone,” Putin told the International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, adding that it was “utter nonsense aimed solely at a domestic audience and used for internal political struggle in the U.S.”
In retrospect, he was right.
As a reminder, Trump scored the biggest political victory of his presidency – even as the credibility of the US liberal medial plumbed new lows – last month after AG William Barr published a summary of Mueller’s finding that there was no collusion during the campaign. Trump, who repeatedly – and correctly – condemned the 22-month inquiry as a “witch hunt” said he’d been completely exonerated.
Agreeing with his US colleague, Putin said that witch hunts are “a black page” in U.S. history and “I would not like it ever to happen again” (here the conspiracy nuts should be ready to chime in with a witty rejoinder). The outcome of the Mueller investigation showed that “a mountain gave birth to a mouse,” the Russian president said.
While Putin said when the two leaders met in Helsinki last year that he’d wanted Trump to win the 2016 election because of his pledge to improve relations – and because Hillary Clinton’s State Department did everything in its power to set the stage for a war between Russia and Ukraine – he avoided generating more controversy, and said he supports Trump’s re-election in 2020.
“We respect the wishes of the American people,” he said. “Whoever is president, we’re ready to work with them.”
To be sure, much bad blood remains between the US “deep state” and Moscow: recall that US intelligence agencies “concluded” that Russia was behind hacking aimed at damaging Democratic Party contender Hillary Clinton (which unveiled that the DNC had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders, and that Hillary Clinton was a professional in saying one thing to the public and something else to Wall Street). Russia, naturally, rejects the allegations. Trump pledged during his campaign to improve ties with Russia and has repeatedly said he wants good relations with Putin.
As for how the former KGB spy and Trump are getting along currently, Putin said he has “plenty of disagreements” with Trump, whose administration has imposed a series of new sanctions on his country, but is ready to work with the U.S. on issues of joint interest including terrorism and arms control.
“We hope that when this situation normalizes, opportunities will emerge for bilateral cooperation on all issues,” Putin said.
* * *
Separately, Putin also said that Russia will dramatically increase its presence in the Arctic region by building new ports and other facilities and expanding its fleet of icebreaker vessels, as the competition for the area’s natural resources intensifies.
Putin told the leaders of Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden at the Forum that Russia’s efforts will help quadruple the level of cargo shipments across the Arctic sea route.
“This is a realistic, well-calculated, and concrete task. We need to make the Northern sea route safe and commercially feasible,” he said.
And here is another irony: climate change is directly benefiting Russia – the shrinking polar ice in the Arctic region is expected to offer new opportunities for resource exploration and the development of new shipping lanes, leading Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, and Norway into a competition for jurisdiction in the region.
Putin set a goal for the amount of cargo carried across the shipping lane to rise to 80 million metric tons by 2025 from the 20 million tons transported in 2018, the majority under Russian-flagged vessels. Russia, the only country with a fleet of nuclear icebreakers, is moving to expand its current inventory of four nuclear-powered vessels to a total of nine by 2035, he said. It also has four nonnuclear icebreakers in its fleet, according to RFE.
In 2017, Jim Mattis, the former U.S. defense secretary noted the Russian buildup and said that “America has got to up its game in the Arctic.”
“The Arctic is key strategic terrain. Russia is taking aggressive steps to increase its presence there. I will prioritize the development of an integrated strategy for the Arctic,” said Mattis, who left his position at the end of 2018.
At the Arctic forum, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defended the military buildup, saying, “We don’t threaten anyone.”
“We ensure sufficient defense capabilities given the political and military situation around our borders,” He added.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: A Credit Agricole logo is seen outside a bank office in Vertou near Nantes, France, February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo
April 10, 2019
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Credit Agricole needs to reduce costs at its investment bank but will stop short of restructuring, a senior official said as the industry faces slowing revenue.
Xavier Musca, deputy chief executive officer of the French lender, told journalists that there were too many investment banks not sufficiently focused on their business.
But Credit Agricole already restructured in 2011 and 2012 to downsize the investment bank to refocus, he said.
“We will not announce a restructuring,” Musca said. “We will need to reduce costs, but it will not be a restructuring as announced by others.”
Societe Generale plans to cut 1,600 jobs, mainly at its corporate and investment banking arm, in an attempt to boost profits after a poor performance last year, France’s third-largest bank said on Tuesday.
And Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is considering scaling back its bond and equity sales and trading operations in London and New York as part of a broader restructuring of its global markets division, two sources said on Tuesday.
Musca said the bank would announce a medium-term strategic plan on June 6 but that radical change was not in store.
“We have a good business model, and we will not change it,” he told a club of business journalists in Frankfurt on Tuesday evening. The comments were embargoed for Wednesday.
Musca is also chairman of the board of directors at Amundi, the asset manager mostly owned by Credit Agricole.
Musca said that Amundi was open to acquisitions, though focused on organic growth.
“We consider Amundi as a natural consolidator in Europe, in particular in the euro zone,” he said. “We have capabilities to buy a lot of things, because we are a strong bank and have capacity to invest.”
Speculation has been mounting over recent weeks that DWS, the asset manager mostly owned by Deutsche Bank, could go on sale to finance a merger with Commerzbank.
Deutsche Bank and DWS declined to comment.
(Reporting by Hans Seidenstuecker; Writing by Tom Sims; Editing by Michelle Martin)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The Trafigura logo is pictured at the company entrance in Geneva, Switzerland March 11, 2012. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
April 10, 2019
By Dmitry Zhdannikov
LONDON (Reuters) – One of the world’s biggest traders, Trafigura, booked a $254 million loss from oil and gas market hedges last year, highlighting the challenges traders face when taking large loans to protect against price swings in illiquid commodities.
To be sure, those losses are on paper and could be eliminated or turn into gains in the future if the market turns in Trafigura’s favor. Or they could get bigger if the opposite happens.
The hedging losses at privately owned Trafigura, which made a net profit of $873 million last year, have not been previously reported.
Like many other trading houses, Trafigura has moved into the fast-growing, global market for liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Privately owned traders Vitol and Gunvor and listed Glencore are also expanding in LNG and said they were using hedges to protect their exposure in that sector.
In 2018, Trafigura signed a deal with U.S. company Cheniere to buy LNG for 15 years and export it to Europe and Asia. On signing the deal, Trafigura hedged its exposure to U.S. LNG prices against sharp price moves in the rest of the world.
But hedging LNG is complicated and contains risks, says Trafigura’s own 2018 report and its auditor PwC, which reviewed and signed off on Trafigura’s accounts for last year.
To hedge the deal, Trafigura had to rely on a combination of liquid prices such as those of U.S. natural gas or Brent crude and assumptions on the correlation of those liquid benchmarks to illiquid global LNG prices for up to five years forward.
“This hedge is not perfect but it is the best one available out there at the moment,” a Trafigura source said. As the LNG market develops, he said, more instruments will appear.
“It is extremely difficult to effectively hedge these long-term contracts, especially in a new market like LNG,” said Arnaud Vagner, founder of Iceberg Research. Vitol also said contract maturities created hedging complexities.
BIG VALUE MOVES
International financial reporting standards (IFRS) require companies to mark-to-market – or measure the changes in fair value over time – the short and long positions they use for hedging.
In addition to LNG, Trafigura in 2018 hedged its U.S. oil pipeline and refining deals against sharp moves in U.S. crude versus Brent prices.
To hedge LNG, pipelines and refining Trafigura built a short position with a fair value loss of around $1.9 billion using liquid instruments such as Brent, U.S. natural gas and diesel.
The margin calls were financed via a revolving credit facility and other bank lines adding to Trafigura’s debt, which stands at a total of $32 billion. Its adjusted net debt – debt less cash and inventories – stands at $6 billion.
On the other side of the hedge – the long side – Trafigura had fair value gains of $1.75 billion from LNG, pipelines and refining deals. The LNG portion of the gains was $646 million.
Fair value gains and losses were up more than 10-fold compared to 2017, before Trafigura entered into those LNG, pipeline and refining hedging deals.
Fair value gains and losses impact both balance sheet and profits as they are included in the cost of sales.
Because the short position was built on liquid instruments, the fair value losses belonged to the so-called level 1 accounting hierarchy – the strictest category that makes few assumptions.
By contrast, fair value gains were based on level 2 and, in the case of LNG, on level 3, the most judgmental category in the fair valuation accounting hierarchy, which is mainly based on price modeling rather than market prices.
“Changes in these estimates may significantly impact the group’s future results,” said PwC, adding that it was still able to conclude that judgments were reasonable and free from bias.
“Level 3 gives a lot of flexibility to commodity traders as in practice future prices are whatever the trader has decided they would be,” Iceberg’s Vagner said.
PERFORMANCE RISK
As losses from the shorts exceeded gains from the longs, Trafigura had to book a $254 million loss representing a reduction of 22 percent of the potential net profit it would have otherwise achieved in 2018.
Besides mid-term price risk, such hedges also bear the longer-term risk of deals falling apart.
For example, in the unlikely event the United States bans LNG exports, traders would be stuck with shorts against non-performing longs.
“When you hedge market risk, you take performance risk. This is how hedging works,” the Trafigura source said, adding that “the performance risks can be mitigated notably by insurance mechanisms”.
Vagner said: “The LNG contract is 15 years long. This type of contract is risky as anything can happen to your supplier and its market during that time”.
Vagner is known for having accused Singapore-based trader Noble Group of using fair value accounting to inflate profits. Noble denied the allegations but subsequently defaulted and sold many of its assets as profits collapsed.
By contrast, Trafigura said it uses fair value accounting only on its hedging deals, inventories and certain other financial instruments.
“We don’t take profit or loss on unrealized physical transactions. Traders are remunerated on their realized performance,” the Trafigura source said.
Officials and sources at other trading houses also said they were not booking unrealized profits from LNG hedges.
“Gunvor only mark-to-markets contracts in the active trading period,” a spokesman said, without specifying the timeframe.
(Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Richard Mably and Dale Hudson)
Source: OANN
The logo of SK Innovation is seen in front of its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 3, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
April 10, 2019
By Joseph White, Hyunjoo Jin and Heekyong Yang
SEOUL (Reuters) – SK Innovation Co Ltd is in talks to set up separate battery-making joint ventures with Volkswagen AG and Chinese partners, as the South Korean petrochemicals producer aggressively expands its involvement in electric vehicles (EVs).
The company confirmed talks with Germany’s Volkswagen for the first time, telling Reuters the pair were discussing building a factory together. It also said it was on the cusp of agreeing to build a plant in China with undisclosed partners.
The talks come as EV battery makers boost capacity to cope with fast-growing demand, as automakers race to develop vehicles powered by means other than petrol to meet increasingly stringent emissions regulations worldwide.
SK Innovation, South Korea’s biggest oil refiner, is a latecomer to a market led by compatriots LG Chem Ltd and Samsung SDI Co Ltd plus Japan’s Panasonic Corp. Since starting mass production in 2012, customers have included Germany’s Daimler AG as well as Volkswagen.
“Compared with rivals, we’ve been matching or exceeding investment in the area since last year,” YS Yoon, president of SK Innovation’s battery business, said in an interview. “We tried to find the right moment for massive investment.”
The broader SK Group, South Korea’s third-biggest conglomerate, has increased focus on EV batteries as demand slows at memory chip-making unit SK Hynix Inc.
By 2022, SK Innovation plans to spend 4.51 trillion won ($3.95 billion) to boost EV battery capacity. Last month, it broke ground on a $1.7 billion plant in the United States to primarily supply lithium-ion battery cells to Volkswagen. It is also building two factories in Hungary.
“Our strategy is to keep up with technological advancement by having relationships with some of our key customers,” Yoon said, adding that “nothing has been decided” regarding a JV with Volkswagen.
The JV would be the first in which Volkswagen, one of the world’s biggest automakers, will be co-investing in battery production, similar to the joint battery investment of Panasonic and U.S. EV maker Tesla Inc, analysts said.
“We are considering an investment in a battery manufacturer in order to reinforce our electrification offensive and build up the necessary know-how,” Volkswagen said in a statement to Reuters.
In March, Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess said the automaker was “taking a close look at possible participation in battery cell manufacturing facilities in Europe of our own.”
Volkswagen’s other suppliers include LG Chem, Samsung SDI and China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd.
“There are so many battery requirements from Volkswagen,” Yoon said. “So I think it is natural for Volkswagen to have multiple suppliers even if it has joint ventures with some.”
SECOND CHINA PLANT
Separately, SK Innovation plans to soon sign a deal to build its second EV battery factory in China, the world’s biggest EV market, Yoon said, without identifying the local partners.
The firm broke ground in August on its first Chinese plant under a joint venture with Beijing Electronics Holding Co Ltd and BAIC Motor Corp Ltd, with investment reaching 5 billion yuan ($744.30 million) by 2020.
SK Innovation had aimed to begin construction in 2016, but postponed as EVs equipped with Korean batteries were not included on a government list of EVs eligible for subsidies.
“We hope China’s market opens up in 2021” when the subsidies are phased out, Jay Rhee, SK Innovation’s head of battery research and development, said in a separate interview.
COBALT CULL
Meanwhile, SK Innovation is in the industry-wide race to reduce batteries’ cobalt content, with Panasonic in May saying it was working on a cobalt-free battery. The mineral is mined in harsh conditions and subject to significant price fluctuation.
The firm plans to start production of batteries containing 5 percent cobalt in 2022 from 10 percent at present, Rhee said.
Cobalt is primarily mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but SK Innovation is also sourcing cobalt from Australia and extracting the mineral from waste batteries, Yoon said.
“I expect we won’t need to secure fresh cobalt after 2025,” Yoon said.
(Reporting by Joe White, Hyunjoo Jin and Heekong Yang; Additional reporting by Edward Taylor in FRANKFURT; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO – Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko greet heads of diplomatic missions during a tea party in the celebration to mark the 30th year of his reign at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Japan February 26, 2019, In this photo released by Imperial Household Agency of Japan. Imperial Household Agency of Japan/Handout via Reuters
April 10, 2019
By Linda Sieg
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Emperor Aikihito and Empress Michiko celebrated their Diamond anniversary on Wednesday, marking six decades of a marriage that helped modernize the monarchy.
Akihito, 85, will abdicate on April 30 and be succeeded by his elder son, Crown Prince Naruhito.
“Sixty shining years of mutual support” wrote the often-staid Nikkei business daily in a take-out on their marriage – including a photo of Michiko, 84, calmly helping Akihito when he mixed up the pages of his speech at a recent ceremony.
The fairy-tale romance that began on a tennis court and captured popular imagination also led to strains for Michiko, the first commoner to marry an heir to the ancient Japanese throne.
“To break with tradition in Japan is extremely difficult,” said Kazuo Oda, who was present when Akihito and Michiko met at a tennis match in August 1957, two years before they wed.
Their marriage, widely portrayed as a love-match, fanned hopes that Michiko, the vibrant daughter of a wealthy businessman, would modernize the tradition-bound court.
In many ways, Michiko did just that. She raised her two sons and daughter herself, even making them pack their school lunches. By tradition, royal children had been raised by wet nurses and royal helpers.
She also took the lead in a popular outreach to common folk including elderly, handicapped and victims of disaster, often kneeling down to embrace or speak to people – a gesture that shocked conservatives but endeared her to the general public.
But the public picture was often marred by news of Michiko’s ill-health, which commentators and insiders attributed to harsh treatment by royal courtiers and her imperial mother-in-law.
Michiko has often referred to her own “sadness and anxiety”.
“Living as crown princess and later empress was not an easy position for me by any means,” she said in remarks ahead of her 84th birthday last October.
Akihito has often expressed his gratitude to Michiko and on their 50th anniversary acknowledged he was not always “sufficiently considerate”, given their different backgrounds.
“The empress suffered various rough times. That was natural given her position,” said one acquaintance. “A lot of time has passed, but I think the emperor wonders what he should have done at those times.”
The imperial couple was marking their anniversary with a series of low-key ceremonies including formal congratulations by family and officials and a dinner at the imperial palace.
(Reporting by Linda Sieg; Editing by Michael Perry)
Source: OANN
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