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Tuesday 02nd of June 2020
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@crescatkevin Valuation mania still unbroken. Average market cap to GDP ratio when bear markets and recessions bottom out: .47 67% lower than today.
World Of Finance
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Tremendous opportunity on the short side as we take out the fake lows of 2018 and 2020.Too few investors are positioned for it.
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$SPX P/E besides being at the highest level in 20 years, it also has some DeMark sell Countdown 13's in play @TommyThornton
World Of Finance
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Gold @AstroCycle_Net 1738.00
Commodities
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@benbernanke once said People hold gold "As protection against what we call tail risks: really, really bad outcomes"
Commodities
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A stunning 28,375 lots of Comex Jun futures, representing 2.8 million ounces of #gold, were delivered into on Friday. This appears to be the largest ever from what I can see on Bloomberg. @JReade_WGC
Commodities
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Adam & The Ants - Stand And Deliver
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LEARNING FROM THE VIRUS @Artforum Paul B. Preciado
Market Crashes / Panic
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Esposito emphasizes that all biopolitics is immunological: Biopolitics implies a hierarchy with the immunized at the top and the de-munized, who will be excluded from any act of immunological protection, at the bottom. That is the paradox of biopolitics: All protective acts include an immunitary definition of community in which the collective grants itself the power to decide to sacrifice a part of the population in order to maintain its own sovereignty. The “state of exception” is the normalization of this intolerable paradox.To consider the history of pandemics through the prism offered by Foucault, Esposito, and Martin is to arrive at the following proposition: Tell me how your community constructs its political sovereignty and I will tell you what forms your plagues will take and how you will confront them.The virus, neither living nor dead, neither organism nor machine, Derrida said, is always the foreigner, the other, the one from elsewhere.In the late twentieth century, AIDS would be to heteronormative neoliberal society what syphilis had been to colonial capitalism during early modernity. The first official reports appeared in 1981; activists had finally gathered momentum in removing homosexuality from the realm of psychiatric disease. In 1973, after decades as the pathologized pretext for discrimination and persecution, homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. The first phase of the epidemic disproportionately affected what were then called the Four H’s: homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs, and heroin users.We are still in the throes of the transition from a written to a cyber-oral society, from an industrial to an immaterial economy, from a form of disciplinary and architectural control to forms of microprosthetic and media-cybernetic control. In other writings, I’ve used the term pharmacopornographic for this type of management and production of the body as well as to describe the political technologies that produce sexual subjectivity within this new configuration of power and knowledge. We are no longer regulated solely by their passage through disciplinary institutions (school, factory, barracks, hospital, etc.) but by a set of biomolecular technologies that enter into the body by way of microprostheses and technologies of digital surveillance subtler and more insidious than anything Gilles Deleuze envisioned in his famous prognostications about the society of control. In the domain of sexuality, the pharmacological modification of consciousness and behavior, the mass consumption of antidepressants and anxiolytics, and the globalization of the contraceptive pill, as well as antiretroviral therapies, preventative AIDS therapies, and Viagra, are some of the indicators of biotechnological management, which in turn synergizes with new modes of semio-technical management that have arisen with the surveillance state and the global expansion of the network into every facet of life. I use the term pornographic because these management techniques function no longer through the repression and prohibition of sexuality, but through the incitement of consumption and the constant production of a regulated and quantifiable pleasure. The more we consume and the better our health, the better we are controlled.The mutation in progress could ultimately catalyze a shift from an anthropocentric society where a fraction of the global human community authorizes itself to exercise a politics of universal extractivist predation to a society that is capable of redistributing energy and sovereignty. At the center of the debate during and after this crisis will be which lives are the ones we want to save. It is in the context of this mutation, of this transformation of the modes of understanding community (one that encompasses the entire planet, since separation is no longer possible) and immunity, that the virus is operating and that the political strategy to confront it is taking shape...the idea of the physical border as a condition for restoring national integrity and political sovereignty. Israel, the United States, Russia, Turkey, and the European Economic Community have spearheaded the conception of new borders that, for the first time since the fall of the sniper-patrolled Berlin Wall, have been guarded and defended not only via biopolitical means but incrementally via necropolitical devices, using techniques of exclusion and death.European and North American societies have decided to construct themselves like entirely immunized communities, closed to the east and to the south, even though these two regions are its chief suppliers of fossil fuels and consumer goods. The construction of this political immunity exemplified the neo-sovereignist governmentality: Europe closed borders in Greece, Italy, and Spain in 2015 and built the largest outdoor detention centers in history around the Mediterranean. The destruction of Europe—for that is what we are witnessing—paradoxically began with that construction of an immune European community, open in its interior but completely closed to foreigners and migrants.The new frontier is your epidermis. The new Lampedusa is your skin.What is now being tested on a global scale through the management of Covid-19 is a new way of understanding sovereignty. The body, your individual body, as a life space and as a network of power, as a center of production and of energy consumption, has become the new territory where the violent border politics that we have been designing and testing for years on “others” are now expressed, now taking the form of containment measures and of a war against the virus. The new necropolitical frontier has shifted from the coast of Greece toward the door of your home. Lesbos now starts at your doorstep. And the border is forever tightening around you, pushing you ever closer to your body. Calais blows up in your face. The new frontier is the mask. The air that you breathe has to be yours alone. The new frontier is your epidermis. The new Lampedusa is your skin. For years, we considered migrants and refugees infectious to the community and placed them in detention centers—political limbos where they remained without rights and without citizenship; perpetual waiting rooms. Now we are living in detention centers in our own homes...Just as the virus mutates, if we want to resist submission, we must also mutate.
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Culture specimens, Pasteur Institute, Paris 1887. Photo: adoc-photos/Corbis/Getty Images. @Artforum
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Richard Tennant Cooper’s watercolor representation of syphilis,ca. 1912. @Artforum
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One-milligram glass vial of penicillin, London 1946. Photo: Science Museum, London. @Artforum
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Nurses in a Covid-19 quarantine unit, Baghdad Medical City, April 8, 2020. Photo: Murtaja Lateef/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock. @Artforum
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Zoom malfunction (pictured: Axel Honneth). Photo: Twitter. @Artforum
Information & Communication Technology
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Toronto, March 25, 2020. Photo: Cole Burston/Bloomberg/Getty Images. @Artforum
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Hugh Hefner, Chicago 1966. Photo: Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos. @Artforu
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There's no evidence to indicate the existence of life, that we can recognize, beyond that tiny dot. @AntonioParis
Africa
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The fact we appear to be alone, in an obscure corner of the galaxy, is perhaps the most compelling reason to take care of each other. The fate of humanity ... hangs in the balance.
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The Way We Live Now
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It certainly is a new c21st that we find ourselves in. There is a luminous and Fairy Tale feel to life in quarantine and as you know most fairy tales have an oftentimes dark and dangerous and unspoken undercurrent. I sit in my study and its as if my hearing is sharpened. I hear the Breeze, birdsong, Nature in its many forms and the urban background noise which was once the constant accompaniment to daily life has entirely retreated. The Nights are dark, the stars are bright and the neighbiours long gone.
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Very weird in Mt Vernon Triangle DC. DC police in riot gear standing behind NY Ave DC police station and 3 tourists from Kentucky watching asking where they can buy beer. @timcraigpost
Misc.
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Very weird in Mt Vernon Triangle DC. Disturbance at Apple store near Convention Center, DC police in riot gear standing behind NY Ave DC police station. Goups of young people walking around closed Safeway, and 3 tourists from Kentucky watching asking where they can buy beer.
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In the week of April 12-18, top 10 search terms on @amazon were: toilet paper, face mask, hand sanitizer, paper towels, @Lysol spray @Clorox wipes, mask, Lysol,masks for germ protection and N95 mask. @techreview
Retail & Manufacturing
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In the week of April 12-18, the top 10 search terms on Amazon.com were: toilet paper, face mask, hand sanitizer, paper towels, Lysol spray, Clorox wipes, mask, Lysol, masks for germ protection, and N95 mask. People weren’t just searching, they were buying too—and in bulk.
The majority of people looking for masks ended up buying the new Amazon #1 Best Seller, “Face Mask, Pack of 50”.
When covid-19 hit, we started buying things we’d never bought before. The shift was sudden: the mainstays of Amazon’s top ten—phone cases, phone chargers, Lego—were knocked off the charts in just a few days.
Nozzle, a London-based consultancy specializing in algorithmic advertising for Amazon sellers, captured the rapid change in this simple graph.
It took less than a week at the end of February for the top 10 Amazon search terms in multiple countries to fill up with products related to covid-19.
You can track the spread of the pandemic by what we shopped for: the items peaked first in Italy, followed by Spain, France, Canada, and the US. The UK and Germany lag slightly behind.
“It’s an incredible transition in the space of five days,” says Rael Cline, Nozzle’s CEO. The ripple effects have been seen across retail supply chains.
But they have also affected artificial intelligence, causing hiccups for the algorithms that run behind the scenes in inventory management, fraud detection, marketing, and more.
Machine-learning models trained on normal human behavior are now finding that normal has changed, and some are no longer working as they should.
How bad the situation is depends on whom you talk to. According to Pactera Edge, a global AI consultancy, “automation is in tailspin.”
The system's sales forecasts that the company relied on to reorder stock no longer matched up with what was actually selling. “It was never trained on a spike like this, so the system was out of whack,” says Sharma.
These are the kinds of mid-price anomalous purchases that fraud-detection algorithms might pick up on. “I think there is certainly more oversight,” says Excell. “The world has changed, and the data has changed.”
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You don't Know what you got until its gone @iFeelings
Misc.
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It certainly feels like a decade of "semiotic arousal" when everything, it seemed, was a sign, a harbinger of some future radical disjuncture or cataclysmic upheaval.
Market Crashes / Panic
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Philly turned into Gotham, Batman pulled up to the scene. @OnlyFans____
Market Crashes / Panic
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I was always a skeptic of contact tracing. @MaxAbrahms
Misc.
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Don DeLillo wrote "Everything is barely weeks. Everything is days. We have minutes to live." The Way we live now #COVID19
Misc.
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We are staring into the abyss of a Zombie Apocalypse #COVID19
Market Crashes / Panic
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Political Reflections
Law & Politics
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Take any view of protests and riots that you want. But Army generals do not belong on American streets under virtually any circumstances. @amconmag
Law & Politics
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Looks like church and state are getting back together. @KarlreMarks
Law & Politics
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"We have gross oscillation here"
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Absolutely baffled who thought this military deployment in the homeland was a good idea. talking like U.S. streets are Baghdad, buzzing citizens w/aircraft, CJCS roaming the streets like it's some bizarre movie @selectedwisdom
Law & Politics
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Absolutely baffled who thought this military deployment in the homeland was a good idea. Destroying trust in another institution, eroding public confidence, talking like U.S. streets are Baghdad, buzzing citizens w/aircraft, CJCS roaming the streets like it's some bizarre movie
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The @WhiteHouse
Law & Politics
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The World in the 21st century exhibits viral,wildfire and exponential characteristics and feedback loops which only become obvious in hindsight.
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Each event creates political aftershocks and trends that we can see clearly only afterward. @TheAtlantic @TomMcTague
Law & Politics
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The scene at The White House. By @j_ernst_DC @TostevinM
Law & Politics
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@realDonaldTrump took shelter in White House bunker as protests raged @AP
Law & Politics
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Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump to a White House bunker on Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.
Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private matters and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The account was confirmed by an administration official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
The abrupt decision by the agents underscored the rattled mood inside the White House, where the chants from protesters in Lafayette Park could be heard all weekend and Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers struggled to contain the crowds.
The president and his family have been shaken by the size and venom of the crowds, according to the Republican.
It was not immediately clear if first lady Melania Trump and the couple’s 14-year-old son, Barron, joined the president in the bunker. Secret Service protocol would have called for all those under the agency’s protection to be in the underground shelter.
Trump has told advisers he worries about his safety, while both privately and publicly praising the work of the Secret Service.
On Sunday, Trump retweeted a message from a conservative commentator encouraging authorities to respond with greater force.
“This isn’t going to stop until the good guys are willing to use overwhelming force against the bad guys,” Buck Sexton wrote in a message amplified by the president.
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@VP [Mike] Pence is probably rehearsing
Law & Politics
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May 29, 2020 Minneapolis USA Photo by @JulioCortez_AP @orensegal
Law & Politics
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There are now 40 million unemployed people in the US who are righly furious mad as hell. As I predicted months ago this crisis will lead to protests, riots & violence. USA is now burning! @Nouriel
U.S. Economy
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The demonstrations and even the violence are not just about George Floyd's murder and BLM. There are now 40 million unemployed people in the US who are righly furious mad as hell. As I predicted months ago this crisis will lead to protests, riots & violence. USA is now burning!
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Paul Virilio "The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production but in the street,where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine''
Market Crashes / Panic
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Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics, “The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words, a producer of speed.’’
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I suspect this is going to become one of the defining images/videos of these protests: a CNN reporter being arrested live on air. @N_Waters89
Law & Politics
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22-JUL-2019 :: Paul Virilio said, "Images contaminate us like a virus."
Market Crashes / Panic
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Trump Tower @JordyCordier
U.S. Economy
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"Senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner is not in favor of a high-profile presidential speech at this time, according to a person close to the White House." what instincts. @dcherring
Law & Politics
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Jared Kushner: "What I would encourage people to do is try to divorce yourself from all of the history that's happened over the years and read this plan."
Law & Politics
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"Kushner went on to suggest that Bolton and other senior former officials, including James Mattis and John Kelly, didn't have the chops to perform their jobs to the level needed." @BillKristol
Law & Politics
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PHOTOS: A gravedigger wearing protective clothing is silhouetted at sunset as he digs a grave for a victim of COVID-19 at the Caju cemetery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. #NTVNews @AFP
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#COVID19 and the Spillover Moment
Market Crashes / Panic
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Global Deaths Due to Various Causes and COVID-19 @f_l_o_u_r_i_s_h By Tony Nickonchuk
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24-FEB-2020 :: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Professor Allen Bartlett
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Coronavirus may have been in Europe in NOVEMBER: Scientists hunting for France's 'patient zero' discover X-rays showing person with Covid symptoms two months before first cases declared @MailOnline #COVID19
Misc.
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The coronavirus may have arrived in Europe as early as November last year, French scientists have revealed.
Dr. Michel Schmitt, from Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Colmar, northeastern France, and his team of researchers examined thousands of chest X-rays from late 2019 and were able to identify two scans that were 'consistent' with the symptoms of Covid-19.
The scans, which were identified between November 16 and November 18, now cast a new light on when the coronavirus crisis first hit Europe as scientists continue their search for 'patient zero'.
The scans, which were obtained by NBC News, were among almost 2,500 X-rays that Mr Schmitt's team analysed and show the virus was in the country before its first reported case on January 24.
He told NBC News: 'We can only manage the future if we understand the past. Today, we clearly do not understand this outbreak.'
Earlier this month Sweden's state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell revealed that the country likely had coronavirus cases as early as November last year.
He told Sweden's TT news agency: 'There wasn't any spread [of infection] outside Wuhan until we saw it in Europe later.
'But I think that you could find individual cases among Wuhan travellers who were there in November to December last year. That doesn't sound at all strange, but rather very natural.'
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The team of scientists found that the first case of the coronavirus dated back to November 16- The chest scan of one of the patient's with coronavirus @MailOnline #COVID19
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London and New York are the two busiest global travel hubs in the world — Heathrow alone had over 20 million passengers pass through it in December, January and February @freddiesayers
Tourism, Travel & Transport
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London and New York are the two busiest global travel hubs in the world — Heathrow alone had over 20 million passengers pass through it in December, January and February — so knowing nothing else you would expect these two places to be among the worst affected
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The odd this pattern happens randomly is 3.9744x10^49/2.1788x10^65 = 1.824x10^-16, or 0.2 parts per quadrillion. @JJ2000426
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Overall there are 7.242x10^5*3.054x10^15*1.797x10^28 = 3.9744x10^49 ways this pattern could occur naturally, vs 2.1788x10^65 ways of random mutations. The odd this pattern happens randomly is 3.9744x10^49/2.1788x10^65 = 1.824x10^-16, or 0.2 parts per quadrillion.
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30 May 2020 ‘At first, we assumed the seafood market might have the virus, but now the market is more like a victim,’ said Gao Fu, director of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. @MailOnline
Market Crashes / Panic
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‘At first, we assumed the seafood market might have the virus, but now the market is more like a victim,’ said Gao Fu, director of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
This was a stunning admission. For the same scientist had unequivocally pointed the finger of blame at Wuhan’s market where wild animals were sold when his country eventually told the world about a deadly new virus in the city.
The market was shut and cleaned up like a crime scene, in the words of another expert, as global attention focused on the ghastly trade in wild animals.
Now Gao has admitted no viruses were detected in animal samples. He said they were found only in environmental samples, including sewage – before adding an intriguing aside that ‘the novel coronavirus had existed long before’.
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Origin of #COVID19
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“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”
“There's always more to it. This is what history consists of. It is the sum total of the things they aren't telling us.”
“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ”
They also predicted based on the S-ACE2 binding structure, that SARS-like CoVs were not able to use this same attack method (ACE2 mediation).
They decided to create a pseudovirus where they essentially put a SARS-like CoV in a HIV envelope.
It worked. Using an HIV envelope, they replaced the RBD (receptor binding domain) of SL-CoV with that of SARS-CoV, and used it to successfully infect bats through ACE2 mediation.
12 years goes by.
A SARS-like CoV begins sweeping the globe that is far more infectious than previous outbreaks.
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The spike glycoprotein of the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV contains a furin-like cleavage site absent in CoV of the same clade
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“The concept that’s emerging is that this is not a respiratory illness alone, this is a respiratory illness to start with, but it is actually a vascular illness that kills people through its involvement of the vasculature,” says Mehra
Misc.
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SARS-CoV-2 is thought to enter the body through ACE2 receptors present on the surface of cells that line the respiratory tract in the nose and throat. Once in the lungs, the virus appears to move from the alveoli, the air sacs in the lung, into the blood vessels, which are also rich in ACE2 receptors.
“[The virus] enters the lung, it destroys the lung tissue, and people start coughing. The destruction of the lung tissue breaks open some blood vessels,” Mehra explains. “Then it starts to infect endothelial cell after endothelial cell, creates a local immune response, and inflames the endothelium.”
A respiratory virus infecting blood cells and circulating through the body is virtually unheard of. Influenza viruses like H1N1 are not known to do this, and the original SARS virus, a sister coronavirus to the current infection, did not spread past the lung.
Other types of viruses, such as Ebola or Dengue, can damage endothelial cells, but they are very different from viruses that typically infect the lungs.
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International Markets
International Trade
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10-MAY-2020 :: For example Tourism – I believe it is stopped out through Q4 2021
Tourism, Travel & Transport
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Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ
World Currencies
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Euro 1.1136
Dollar Index 97.827
Japan Yen 107.70
Swiss Franc 0.9613
Pound 1.2492
Aussie 0.6796
India Rupee 75.56
South Korea Won 1225.48
Brazil Real 5.3669
Egypt Pound 15.91
South Africa Rand 17.389
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Dollar Index 3 Month Chart INO 97.827
World Currencies
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Euro versus the Dollar 3 Month Chart 1.1136
World Currencies
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Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ
Commodities
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Crude Oil 6 Month Chart INO 35.62
Minerals, Oil & Energy
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Month End Global and Floating Crude #Oil Inventories (via @Kpler) @chigrl
Minerals, Oil & Energy
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For cult members, only. "The U.S. has sent two million doses of hydroxychloroquine to Brazil." @hofrench
Emerging Markets
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Sao Paulo is the epicenter of Brazil's coronavirus crisis @QuickTake
Emerging Markets
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10-MAY-2020 :: ―Brazil is the global epicenter of the coronavirus.
Emerging Markets
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In Brazil we have a toxic mix of a „‟Voodoo‟‟ President @jairbolsonaro and a runaway #COVID19
Brazilians aren‘t infected by anything, even when they fall into a sewer
“It‟s tragic surrealism ... I can‟t stop thinking about Gabriel García Márquez when I think about the situation Manaus is facing.” Guardian
Viruses are in essence non linear exponential and multiplicative and COVID19 has „‟escape velocity‟‟ in Brazil.
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O que é isso na frente do STF? @SamPancher
Emerging Markets
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The accelerated growth was "a fantastically crafted fiction," according to Prasad, Blood and Soil in @narendramodi's India @NewYorker
Emerging Markets
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Meet "Apostle" @narendramodi : Harbinger of Prosperity
Law & Politics
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The War on Terror as a Business: Lessons from Kenya and the Somalia Interventions Horace G. Campbell H/T @WMutunga
Africa
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The War on Terror as a Business: Lessons from Kenya and the Somalia Interventions Horace G. Campbell Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse University, 200 Sims Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA
The documented evidence of the Kenyan military collaborating with the so-called forces of terror in Somalia to maintain their accumulation of approximately $400 million every year hardly made the international headlines as the leaders of Kenya have been rehabilitated into the ranks of those allied to US imperialism in waging a war on terror.
There is an examination of the links between the US intelligence forces and the Kenyan cartels in keeping alive the terror threat in Somalia.
Very few scholars have followed up on the revelations of the role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in funding those who matured into what is now called terror groups in Somalia through the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism.
The challenge for scholars for peace will be to penetrate the US Africa Command shibboleths on ‘failed states’ in order to work for a program of peace and reconstruction in Africa.
In the conclusion, the paper will argue that the withdrawal of the Kenyan troops from Somalia and demilitarization of security will be a concrete step to break up the cartels that are in the business of terror.
When the Security Council reports came out with information the role of the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) in busi- ness ventures and working alliance with the regional authority of Jubaland, Somalia and the Al Shabaab, there was confirmation that the Kenyan cartels were operating in a political economy based on counter-terrorism that needed a ‘terror’ group in order to legitimize its access to the western counter terror resources and infrastructures.
Yet, the information on the business ventures of the Kenyan barons remains in the library of the United Nations from the periodic Reports of the Secretary General of the United Nations to the Security Council on African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) because Somalia had become so important in the international framing of the Global War on Terror.
Long before the current war on terror, Edward Herman had written the book, The Terror Industry: The Experts and Institutions that Shape Our View of Terror (Herman and O’Sullivan, 1989). By terming ‘terror’ an industry, Herman was drawing attention to its place within US militarism and the specific mode of accumulation linked to the armaments culture. This was before the US Department of Défense had outlined its strategy of electronic warfare in its Information Operations (IO) Roadmap in 2003. In their outline “IO are described as the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), Psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own” (Porche et al., 2013). Information Operations (IO) are actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one’s own in- formation and information systems.
Eusi Kwayana defined terrorism as follows,
The placing of human beings in a situation in which they are without hope, space, adequate defence, means of escape and survival or means of overcoming actual or threatening danger, menace or oppressive force is the very definition of terror, which has not only a physical but also a men- tal element. Those who have virtually managed the languages in which history is written have not applied this term “terror” to the myriad feats of brutality which their nation states, and often their civil, religious and commercial institutions, executed against target human populations in the course of their rapacious civilizing missions.
It was in the face of the alternative African position on terror why it was necessary to place firms such as Bell Pottinger to ‘manufacture consent’ on terrorism in East Africa. We now turn to how the Bell Pottinger’s role actually reinforced the image of East Africa as a base for terror and terrorism.
The cogent point from this quotation is that the ‘War on Terror’ ensured the justification of a large military budget in the United States. Kenyan capitalists and Ugandan militarists understood and worked hard to be integrated into this counter terror business enterprise.
The Ethiopian motivation was different and more geo-strategic in so far as the Somali population inside the Ethiopian federation comprised more than 13 per cent of the Ethiopian population.
The historical evidence now reveals that the US bureaucracy was deadly afraid that the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) could have brought stability to Somalia.10
The Capture of Kismayo and the Sectors of Somalia Divided among AMISOM
Kismayo is the provincial headquarters of the Lower Juba region of Somalia and has one of the most important seaports in Somalia. As an entry point for goods going into Kenya there had been a brisk trade even with the so called war on terror. The Security Council of the United Nations had noted how Al Shabaab had used the policy of taxation in this port to finance its operations throughout Somalia.
In the letter dated 18 July 2011 from the Chairman of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea addressed to the President of the Security Council The Security Council of the UN had noted in 2011 that,
Al-Shabaab generates millions of dollars of revenues each month through a coordinated trading cycle built upon the export of charcoal, which in turn finances the import of sugar, much of which is subsequently smuggled across as contraband into neighbouring countries, particularly Kenya.
Shipping companies deliver sugar to Kismayo and collect charcoal for the return journeys. Bank accounts in the Gulf States where the profits of this trade are deposited can be used to launder voluntary contributions to Al-Shabaab through fraudulent invoicing, overvaluing of import proceeds and undervaluing of exports.
Security Council Committee, 1992, 2009
After November 2009, this firm with strong links to the Pentagon was given a year-long $7.3m (€5.3m) strategic communications contract to, among other things, open a radio station and supervise a major public information “hearts and minds” campaign to make the mission (AMISOM) more welcome in Somalia.
Because of the insecurity in Somalia, Bell Pottinger operated out of Nairobi instead of Mogadishu or Kismayo. Bell Pottinger was only the more well-known defence contractor to be engaged in the ‘strategic communications’ business of promoting AMISOM and fighting terror.
Paul Williams in his work identified Albany Associates, Okapi Consulting. and Aethos, a specialist communications division of Aegis Defence Services Ltd, as other operations in this information war about terror.
when the value of the smuggled sugar is around $1 million per day, the incentives to keep North Eastern insecure and ungoverned become clear. Further incentives then build upon the foundational ones as those well positioned to profit from the trade at a time of war (for example, the KDF), have little interest in leaving Kismayo and building peace. They also have strong incentives to push public policy in a more militarized direction to increase their control and their opportunities for profit from other spheres such as procurement and international financing for counter-terrorism. Politicians who have become accustomed to a system of patronage and corruption in order to gain power have no incentive to play straight and they consistently corrode the central state in their ef- forts to promote a system that benefits them.
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Angola Renegotiating Debt With Main Lenders After Oil Rout @economics
World Of Finance
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Angola is in talks with key lenders to reschedule debt payments after a prolonged recession triggered by a drop in crude prices raised concerns about the sustainability of the African nation’s finances.
The discussions have resumed after an interruption of about three months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, President Joao Lourenco said in a speech broadcast on state-controlled RNA Radio on Friday.
He didn’t give details about the loans or specify if the talks included Eurobonds.
“The government started the renegotiation of our sovereign and commercial debt with the main credit institutions of Angola,” Lourenco said. “The results will be known in due course.”
Measures to fight the pandemic and a collapse in oil prices are expected to lead to a fifth consecutive annual contraction for the southwest African nation’s economy. Angola is the continent’s second-biggest crude producer and the fuel accounts for almost 90% of its exports.
In addition to Angola’s heavy dependence on oil, other threats to the country’s sustainability include its high level of debt and agreements with some of its major creditors that included crude as collateral for loans, the president said.
Lourenco seems to be reiterating plans to review current debt payment deals with countries like China, in which Angola has been using oil as a means to pay its debt, said Tiago Dionisio, a Lisbon-based analyst at Eaglestone Advisory SA.
“It’s not surprising that Angola will need to restructure its sovereign debt as well as delay the settlement of arrears given its current tight cash situation related to the latest sharp fall in oil prices and Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
The country joins other African states in seeking debt relief as a global downturn and domestic measures to contain the coronavirus hit revenue. Nations are seeking to defer payments and secure funding from multilateral lenders, while others, like Zambia, are looking to restructure borrowing.
Angola’s $1.5 billion bond due 2025 rose 0.3 cents to 67.84 cents on Friday, pushing the yield 13 basis points lower to 19.3%. The country has about $500 million in obligations on international bonds falling due this year.
Angola’s government debt is set to rise more than 22 percentage points to 132% of gross domestic product this year, according to International Monetary Fund forecasts.
“The most important supportive factor for Angola is the recovery in oil prices,” said Simon Quijano-Evans, the chief economist at Gemcorp Capital, which owns Sub-Saharan Africa debt.
“Any relief on the bilateral debt front would provide extra breathing space and clear the way for new IMF funding.”
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How to fight against #COVID19 in #Tanzania? @shen_shiwei
Africa
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There is something Karmic in this #COVID19
Africa
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Over 144,700 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent @WHOAFRO
Africa
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#COVID19 and the Spillover Moment
Africa
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The worrying development is Transmission Hotspots #COVID19 and the Spillover Moment
Africa
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Kano in Nigeria for example
Western Cape growing at an alarming rate @sugan250388
Someone with close knowledge of the medical profession said it was almost impossible to secure a hospital bed in several cities.
The Aga Khan hospital in Dar es Salaam had a well-equipped ward for 80 coronavirus patients, but several were dying each night, he said.
The Question for SSA is whether these Transmission Hot Spots expand and conflate?
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South Africa today. The daily positivity rate is a worrisome record high of 9.5%. (New cases as % of new tests.) @geoffreyyork
Africa
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Congo declares new Ebola epidemic, 1,000 km from eastern outbreak Reuters
Africa
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KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo declared a new Ebola epidemic on Monday in the western city of Mbandaka, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) away from an ongoing outbreak of the same deadly virus in the east.
Health Minister Eteni Longondo said four people who died in Mbandaka were confirmed as positive cases following testing at the national biomedical laboratory in the capital Kinshasa.“We have a new Ebola epidemic in Mbandaka,” Longondo told reporters. “We are going to very quickly send them the vaccine and medicine.”The outbreak was confirmed by World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who tweeted:“This outbreak is a reminder that #COVID19 is not the only health threat people face.”Congo has been struggling to put an end to a nearly two-year-old Ebola outbreak near its eastern borders with Rwanda and Uganda, which has killed more than 2,200 people, the world’s second-deadliest outbreak of the disease on record.
It was days away in April from declaring the end of that outbreak, its tenth since the virus was discovered in 1976, when a new chain of infection was confirmed in the east. However, no new cases have been detected there in over 30 days.
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Ebola Zaire is a slate-wiper in humans. It killed eighty-eight per cent of the people it infected. Crisis in the Hot Zone Lessons from an outbreak of Ebola. By Richard Preston October 19, 1992
Africa
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The first known emergence of Ebola Zaire—the hottest subtype of Ebola virus—happened in September, 1976, when the virus erupted simultaneously in fifty-five villages near the Ebola River.
Ebola Zaire is a slate-wiper in humans. It killed eighty-eight per cent of the people it infected.
Apart from rabies and the human immunodeficiency virus, H.I.V., which causes aids, this was the highest rate of mortality that has been recorded for a human virus.
Ebola was spread mainly among family members, through contact with bodily fluids and blood.
Many of the people in Africa who came down with Ebola had handled Ebola-infected cadavers.
It seems that one of Ebola’s paths wends to the living from the dead.
Ebola is one of a class of viruses known as the filoviruses. That means thread viruses. They look like spaghetti. As of this writing, the class comprises three subtypes of Ebola and a virus known as Marburg.
Ebola virus is named for the Ebola River, a tributary of the Zaire (Congo) River which runs through northern Zaire.
Ebola victims died about a week after the onset of the first symptom, which was a headache. The Ebola patient soon breaks into a relentless fever, and then come the complications. Ebola triggers a paradoxical combination of blood clots and hemorrhages.
The patient’s bloodstream throws clots, and the clots lodge everywhere, especially in the spleen, liver, and brain. This is called D.I.C., or disseminated intravascular coagulation. D.I.C. is a kind of stroke through the whole body.
No one knows how Ebola triggers blood-clotting. As the strokelike condition progresses and capillaries in the internal organs become jammed with clots, the hemorrhaging begins: blood leaks out of the capillaries into the surrounding tissues.
This blood refuses to coagulate. It is grossly hemolyzed, which means that its cells are broken.
You are stuffed with clots, and yet you bleed like a hemophiliac who has been in a fistfight. Your skin develops bruises and goes pulpy, and tears easily, and becomes speckled with purple hemorrhages called petechiae, and erupts in a maculopapular rash that has been likened to tapioca pudding.
Your intestines may fill up completely with blood. Your eyeballs may also fill with blood. Your eyelids bleed. You vomit a black fluid. You may suffer a hemispherical stroke, which paralyzes one whole side of the body and is invariably fatal in a case of Ebola.
In the pre-agonal stage of the disease (the endgame), the patient leaks blood containing huge quantities of virus from the nose, mouth, anus, and eyes, and from rips in the skin. In the agonal stage, death comes from hemorrhage and shock.
People seem unable to develop protective antibodies to Ebola. You can’t fight off an Ebola infection the way you fight off a cold. Ebola seems to crush the immune system. The virus perhaps makes immunosuppressant proteins.
No one knows the nature of such proteins, since there aren’t many virologists who care to study a virus for which there is no vaccine and no cure. (They don’t want the virus to do research on them.)
Immunosuppressive proteins—if, indeed, they exist—would act as molecular bombs that ruin parts of the immune system, enabling the virus to multiply without opposition.
Like all viruses, Ebola and its cousin Marburg are parasites. They can copy themselves only inside a cell. Viruses need to use a cell’s equipment to reproduce.
Ebola and Marburg grow promiscuously in human tissue, sprouting from cells like hair, forming tangled masses and braids and “g”s and “y”s and pigtails. Marburg-virus particles often roll up into tiny Cheerios.
All filoviruses form semi-crystalline blocks inside cells, which are k
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@MagufuliJP #COVID19 was equivalent to “Satan” and that it would naturally be defeated with prayer, since “Satan cannot reside in the body of Christ.”
Africa
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CIC @Julius_S_Malema calls upon the caring leaders of religion not to conive with white capital to kill black people. @EFFSouthAfrica
Africa
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Our people can still pray at home, our leaders can still reach out to our people through different methods.
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South Africa's plan to reanimate its zombie state airline despite Covid-19's obliteration of international aviation, according to a draft business rescue plan that has been published by the opposition DA. @jsphctrl
Africa
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South Africa All Share Bloomberg
Africa
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Dollar versus Rand 6 Month Chart INO 17.36
World Currencies
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Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 15.91
World Currencies
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Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg
Africa
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Here's a Reuters clip of Kenyatta with Mau Mau Gen. Mwariama, 2 weeks before independence. @Unseen_Archive
Law & Politics
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@serenahotels employees to take unpaid leave from Monday @TheStarKenya
N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services
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Monday, June 11, 2012 The Serena @SerenaHotels
N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services
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MY memories of the Serena start in Mombasa years back when the managing director Mahmoud Jan Mohamed was the manager. I was then a teenager and remember losing my heart to a girl, who would beat me at table tennis, in a bikini. That table tennis Table is still there. The Serena brand has always been sprinkled with a fairy dust and reminds me of happy joyful carefree halcyon days of youth.
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May 21, 2017 Good Morning from the sea side @serenahotels Mombasa @MagicalKenya
Africa
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Riding along the Shore Lake Elmentaita @SerenaHotels
Tourism, Travel & Transport
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Sun Rise #Maputo Polana Hotel @SerenaHotels #Mozambique
N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services
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The Polana is a Jewel in the Serena’s Crown. As Jorge Luis Borges said, “the mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.”
N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services
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Lourenço Marques founded a settlement here in 1544 and when Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975, the city was renamed in honour of Maputa, a legendary chief.
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See My Interview with Mahmud Jan Mohamed, MD, Serena Hotels @SerenaHotels @YouTube
N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services
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Kenya Shilling versus The Dollar Live ForexPros
World Currencies
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Nairobi All Share Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Every Listed Share can be interrogated here
N.S.E General
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