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Tuesday 03rd of November 2020
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Word of the day is ‘latibulate’ (17th century): to hide in a corner in an attempt to escape reality. @susie_dent
Misc.
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The Way We Live Now
Misc.
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Sunrise in the Tsavo. Photo by Taru Carr-Hartley @kenyapics
Africa
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Political Reflections
Law & Politics
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"This isn’t about - yeah, it is about me, I guess, when you think about it.” - Donald J. Trump @JonLemire
Law & Politics
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Doesn't look like the betting markets and the polling models are going to converge then. @LadPolitics
Law & Politics
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4-NOV-2019 :: ‘’At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing’’
Misc.
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‘’At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing’’. The moment of Vision’’ is in essence a non-linear thing, its a moment of deep insight.
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President Trump has told confidants he'll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he's "ahead," according to three sources familiar with his private comments. @jonathanvswan
Law & Politics
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Trump crowd in Butler PA @JackPosobiec
Law & Politics
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"Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World''
Law & Politics
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the Russian "political algorithm" had long predicted the volatility now seen in western democracies.
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Walter Lippmann "Men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities [and] in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond."
Law & Politics
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And it all left me wondering Who exactly is controlling the Console?
Law & Politics
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Political decision-making is now driven by often weaponized babble. @FukuyamaFrancis
Law & Politics
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Cognitive hierarchies along with other hierarchies, and political decision-making is now driven by often weaponized babble.
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Four years of Trump @TheEconomist covers #Election2020 @AgatheDemarais
Law & Politics
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward The scene at The White House
Law & Politics
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Will COVID-19 mortality rise in November? COVID-19 mortality rates track closely with incidence When adjusted for the time lag, there is little variance @euromaestro
Misc.
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19-OCT-2020 :: Now Is The Winter Of Our Discontent
World Of Finance
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GERMANY'S MERKEL SAYS AT LOWER TEMPERATURES CORONAVIRUS REACTS DIFFERENTLY, MORE AGGRESSIVELY @DeItaone
Law & Politics
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Malcolm Gladwell „‟Tipping Point‟‟ moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It‟s the boiling point. It‟s the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards. #nCoV2019
Misc.
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27-JUL-2020 :: Drinking the Kool-Aid The exponential moment is still in front of us. #COVID19
World Of Finance
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Whether a metric is growing exponentially becomes visible when you plot it on a logarithmic axis: it follows a straight line. @MaxCRoser
Misc.
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• Cases in France grew exponentially over the last 2 months.
• Cases in Belarus, Ukraine, & Sweden are on a lower level, but also grow exponentially.
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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
Misc.
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The World in the c21st exhibits viral, wildfire and exponential characteristics and feedback loops which only become obvious in hindsight.
Misc.
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16-FEB-2020 :: ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics' #COVID19
Misc.
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A virulent plague that “travelled through the air as if on wings, it burned through cities like fire”.
Misc.
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19-OCT-2020 :: Whether it is in the First, second, third or fourth wave is an academic Question.
Misc.
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The virus may be the most dangerous adversary America has ever faced. It's like the US was invaded. Tweeted @balajis #COVID19
Misc.
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NEW: In Hunt for Virus Source, @WHO Let China Take Charge - Nine months and more than 1.1 million deaths later, there is still no transparent, independent investigation into the source of the virus @nytimes @selamgkidan @mattapuzzo @HernandezJavier
Misc.
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As it praised Beijing, the World Health Organization concealed concessions to China and may have sacrificed the best chance to unravel the virus’s origins. Now it’s a favorite Trump attack line.
GENEVA — On a cold weekend in mid-February, when the world still harbored false hope that the new coronavirus could be contained, a World Health Organization team arrived in Beijing to study the outbreak and investigate a critical question: How did the virus jump from animals to humans?
At that point, there were only three confirmed deaths from Covid-19 outside China and scientists hoped that finding an animal source for the coronavirus would unlock clues about how to stop it, treat it and prevent similar outbreaks.
“If we don’t know the source then we’re equally vulnerable in the future to a similar outbreak,” Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergency director, had said that week in Geneva. “Understanding that source is a very important next step.”
What the team members did not know was that they would not be allowed to investigate the source at all.
Despite Dr. Ryan’s pronouncements, and over the advice of its emergency committee, the organization’s leadership had quietly negotiated terms that sidelined its own experts.
They would not question China’s initial response or even visit the live-animal market in the city of Wuhan where the outbreak seemed to have originated.
Nine months and more than 1.1 million deaths later, there is still no transparent, independent investigation into the source of the virus.
Notoriously allergic to outside scrutiny, China has impeded the effort, while leaders of the World Health Organization, if privately frustrated, have largely ceded control, even as the Trump administration has fumed.
From the earliest days of the outbreak, the World Health Organization — the only public health body with a global remit — has been both indispensable and impotent.
The Geneva-based agency has delivered key information about testing, treatment and vaccine science. When the Trump administration decided to develop its own test kits, rather than rely on the W.H.O. blueprint, the botched result led to delays.
At the same time, the health organization pushed misleading and contradictory information about the risk of spread from symptomless carriers.
Its experts were slow to accept that the virus could be airborne. Top health officials encouraged travel as usual, advice that was based on politics and economics, not science.
The W.H.O.’s staunchest defenders note that, by the nature of its constitution, it is beholden to the countries that finance it.
And it is hardly the only international body bending to China’s might. But even many of its supporters have been frustrated by the organization’s secrecy, its public praise for China and its quiet concessions.
Those decisions have indirectly helped Beijing to whitewash its early failures in handling the outbreak.
Now, as a new Covid-19 wave engulfs Europe and the United States, the organization is in the middle of a geopolitical standoff.
China’s authoritarian leaders want to constrain the organization; President Trump, who formally withdrew the United States from the body in July, now seems intent on destroying it; and European leaders are scrambling to reform and empower it.
The search for the virus’s origins is a study in the compromises the W.H.O. has made.
On the surface, an investigation into the virus’s origin is progressing. Beijing recently approved a list of outside investigators. But in return, the health organization has agreed that key parts of the inquiry — about the first patients in China and the market’s role in the outbreak — will be led by Chinese scientists, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.
The documents, which have never been made public, show that W.H.O. experts will review and “augment, rather than duplicate,” studies undertaken by China.
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Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan on Jan. 11, after it shut down.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse —
China
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A Red Cross hospital in Wuhan in January.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
China
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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., met with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Jan. 28.Credit...Naohiko Hatta/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
China
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The sign at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, with the group’s Chinese name under its symbol.Credit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
China
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24-FEB-2020 :: @WHO is captured. And millions of lives will have been trifled with #COVID19 the Game is Up.
Law & Politics
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The Infodemic as per the preeminent Exponent
Misc.
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01-MAR-2020 :: The Origin of the #CoronaVirus #COVID19
Misc.
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It is impossible to ignore the introduction of a PRRA insert between S1 and S2: it sticks out like a splinter. This insert creates the furin cleavage site
Misc.
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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
Misc.
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‘’Zoonotic’’ origin was one that was accelerated in the Laboratory.
Misc.
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There is also a non negligible possibility that #COVID19 was deliberately released
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They now turn to rule over the people by means of what could be dubbed “big data totalitarianism” and “WeChat terror.” @ChinaFile #COVID19 Xu Zhangrun
Law & Politics
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To put it another way, a breakthrough originating from the periphery may augur once more [as it did in the 1890s, the 1910s, the 1940s and again in the 1980s] a moment that favors a push towards meaningful constitutional and legal rule in China.
That‘s right, we, We the People, for [as I have previously said] how can we let ourselves ―survive no better than swine; fawn upon the power-holders like curs; and live in vile filth like maggots‖?!
As I write these words I reflect on my own situation which also dramatically changed in 2018 [when the author published his famous anti-Xi Jeremiad]. For having raised my voice then, I was punished for ―speech crimes.‖
Thereafter, I was suspended from my job as a university lecturer and cashiered as a professor, reduced to a minor academic rank. I was placed under investigation by my employer, Tsinghua University; my freedoms have been curtailed ever since.
Writing as I do herein, I can now all too easily predict that I will be subjected to new punishments; indeed, this may well even be the last piece I write. But that is not for me to say.
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.@WHO experts will travel to #China this weekend to work together with their Chinese counterparts to prepare scientific plans for identifying the zoonotic source of #COVID19. @DrTedros
Law & Politics
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However, after sequencing the full genome for RaTG13 the lab’s sample of the virus disintegrated, he said. “I think they tried to culture it but they were unable to, so that sample, I think, has gone.”
Misc.
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According to Daszak, the mine sample had been stored in Wuhan for six years. Its scientists “went back to that sample in 2020,
in early January or maybe even at the end of last year, I don’t know. They tried to get full genome sequencing, which is important to find out the whole diversity of the viral genome.”
However, after sequencing the full genome for RaTG13 the lab’s sample of the virus disintegrated, he said. “I think they tried to culture it but they were unable to, so that sample, I think, has gone.”
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Magnifique animation du SARS-COV-2 ... de l’entrée dans la cellule à l’atteinte des différents organes. @Dr_moji
Misc.
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If a person coughs or sneezes, those 200,000,000 viral particles go everywhere. #COVID19 @ErinBromage
Misc.
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It is estimated that as few as 1000 SARS-CoV2 viral particles are needed for an infection to take hold.
Misc.
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International Markets
World Of Finance
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Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ
World Currencies
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Euro 1.165325
Dollar Index 93.992
Japan Yen 104.730
Swiss Franc 0.918395
Pound 1.292145
Aussie 0.7044
India Rupee 74.2867
South Korea Won 1135.08
Brazil Real 5.7433000
Egypt Pound 15.7290
South Africa Rand 16.2154
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Dollar Index 3 Month Chart INO 93.992
World Currencies
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$EURUSD 15min Chart: See Chart. Price is breaking outside the descending channel, here too imo price is signaling to look long @FXPIPTITAN 1.1656
World Currencies
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My Target remains 27-JUL-2020 :: Drinking the Kool-Aid Conclusions Euro 1.25
World Currencies
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Australia hugs the zero bound closer w/ a 15bps cut to 0.1% & targeting the 3-yr at 0.1% & also plans to purchase AUD100bn of bonds over 6months. @Trinhnomics
World Of Finance
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First wave of lockdowns had a major impact on summer-tourism countries in the Med region with Croatia, Greece and Turkey as 60-80% of revenues generated in the 2Q and 3Q. @akcakmak
Tourism, Travel & Transport
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First wave of lockdowns had a major impact on summer-tourism countries in the Med region with Croatia, Greece and Turkey as 60-80% of revenues generated in the 2Q and 3Q.
Second wave to have much less impact on Med, but more on Asian destinations such as Thailand and Sri Lanka.
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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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Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ
Commodities
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The commodity price recovery from the pandemic has been uneven, with the largest impact seen on energy prices. Oil prices are expected stay below pre-pandemic benchmarks into next year. @WorldBankKenya
Commodities
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06-APR-2020 : Regime implosion is coming to the Oil Producers
Commodities
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The price of Crude #oil (WTI) is down almost 20% in less than 10 trading days! @jsblokland 37.03 Last
Commodities
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Gold 6 month INO 1892.00
Commodities
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Consolidation precedes major moves and this month of rangebound action in $GOLD won't last as it sets up a run in the coming weeks. Given underlying pattern is a bull wedge, my bias remains up to $1990/$2100. @AdamMancini4/
Commodities
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Must break $1930 resistance to confirm though, until then its chop
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US Dollar vs Turkish Lira (#TRY) > 8.40! The dollar is up more than 40% against the Lira this year. @jsblokland
World Currencies
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August 13, 2018 And then ‘’Even if they got dollars, we got ‘our people, our God’’’ [In the markets that is called a ‘’Hail Mary’’ pass]
Emerging Markets
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As a hedge against financial uncertainty, real estate prices in Turkey are surging. @SoberLook @adam_tooze
Emerging Markets
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04.09.2018 no-one except die-hard Erdogan-supporting Turkish nationalists is prepared to throw good money after money gone bad on the basis of Erdogan's hocus pocus monetary policy Mr. Satchu told Sputnik.
Emerging Markets
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Chichico Alkmim Diamantina city Brazilian photographer @parabolico_bh
Misc.
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Remittance flows to low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are projected to fall by 7 percent, to $508 billion in 2020, followed by a further decline of 7.5 percent, to $470 billion in 2021 @WorldBank
Emerging Markets
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The importance of remittances as a source of external financing for LMICs is expected to amplify in 2020, even with the expected decline.
Remittance flows to LMICs touched a record high of $548 billion in 2019, larger than foreign direct investment flows ($534 billion) and overseas development assistance (about $166 billion).
The gap between remittance flows and FDI is expected to widen further as FDI is expected to decline more sharply.
For the first time in recent history, the stock of international migrants is likely to decline as new migration has slowed and return migration has increased.
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22-MAR-2020 :: How much do we need to haircut FY SSA 2020 Remittances? 10%? 20% >25%
Africa
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Remittances to Sub-Saharan #Africa are expected to decline by around 9% in 2020 to $44 billion. @WorldBankKenya
Africa
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Kenya is the only country in the Sub‐Saharan Africa region where remittance inflows have so far been countercyclical to the crisis, though flows are likely to eventually decline in 2021 @WorldBankKenya
Africa
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Tanzania police arrest main opposition party leader ahead of protests @Reuters.
Law & Politics
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Tanzanian police have arrested Freeman Mbowe, the leader of the main opposition party Chadema, according to Tundu Lissu, the party’s candidate in last week’s presidential election.
The opposition has demanded a repeat election, citing widespread irregularities, and called for protests against the outcome, which returned President John Magufuli to office with 84% of the vote.
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“I’ve been released after a short interrogation at the police station.” -from Tundu Lissu @zittokabwe
Law & Politics
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#Tanzania police and the DPP have decided to charge Mbowe and other members of Chadema with terrorism offences. These offences are not subject to bail. @fatma_karume
Law & Politics
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They will remain remanded in prison indefinitely whilst real terrorists are running riot in Southern Tanzania.
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21 OCT 19 :: “The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street''
Law & Politics
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10 NOV 14 : African youth demographic {many characterise this as a 'demographic dividend"} - which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic terminator
Africa
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Martin Aglo, a law student from Benin, told Reuters: “After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring”.
We need to ask ourselves; how many people can incumbent shoot stone cold dead in such a situation – 100, 1,000, 10,000?
This is another point: there is a threshold beyond which the incumbent can’t go. Where that threshold lies will be discovered in the throes of the event.
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Hugh Masakela said ''I want to be there when the People start to turn it around''
Africa
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THREAD: 1/There are now daily reports of killings all across #Ethiopia either against Amharas & other minority groups by civilians or unknown armed actors or by security forces during abusive ops against Oromos & other communities @LaetitiaBader
Africa
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The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Africa
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Esayas Afewerki is intensifying his effort to #instigate full-fledged #war against Tigray. His dream is destruction of everything- lose-lose,no more no less. @tklebrhanw
Africa
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His intent stems from the #wicked and #humiliated mentality.Since the cause is on our side Tigray will #prevail.
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Election observers cite low turnout in Ivory Coast poll @AP
Law & Politics
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Election observers in Ivory Coast said Monday that voter turnout was “extremely low” in parts of the country after leading opposition candidates called for a boycott to protest President Alassane Ouattara’s bid for a controversial third term.
Tensions surrounding the vote have raised fears of post-election violence in the West African country, where more than 3,000 people died in 2010-2011 when then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat to Ouattara.
The opposition says more than 30 people died over the weekend.
The Independent Election Commission so far has only released results from Saturday’s presidential election in 26 of the country’s 108 departments, all Ouattara strongholds that were won by the president as expected.
The opposition coalition, however, has asserted that only 10% of Ivorians cast ballots, without citing its source.
Election officials have yet to release a nationwide voter turnout rate though more provisional results were expected later Monday.
“A significant portion of the population did not vote,” an observer mission from The Carter Center and Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa said Monday.
“These problems threaten public acceptance of the results and the country’s cohesion,” the Carter Center’s mission said in a statement.
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WATCH: After three decades of unsuccessful runs at the presidency, former Anglican priest Wavel Ramkalawan defeated President Danny Faure with 54.9% of the vote in the Seychelles election @Reuters
Law & Politics
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South Africa risk still remains and #COVID19 is still here! Number of confirmed cases has not continued to decrease but levelled off. Test positivity rate, while decreasing slowly, still relatively high. @rid1tweets
Africa
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16-FEB-2020 :: ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics' #COVID19
Africa
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South Africa All Share Bloomberg
Africa
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Dollar versus Rand Chart INO 16.2051
World Currencies
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Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 15.738
World Currencies
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IMF’s Selassie: #Nigeria’s economy is projected to contract by 4.3% because of low oil prices, reduced production under OPEC+ agreement and declining domestic demand from COVID-19 containment measures. @IMFNews
Africa
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09-DEC-2019 :: Time to Big Up the Dosage of Quaaludes
Africa
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02-MAR-2020 :: #COVID19 and SSA and the R Word
Africa
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Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg
Africa
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Mohammed Melehi Casa 1970 @Tate
Africa
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The title of the painting Casa is a common shortening for the city of Casablanca in the artist’s native Morocco. It can be read as an abstracted cityscape, informed by Melehi’s nomadic lifestyle which saw him travelling from Marrakech to Rome, Paris and New York. In the 1960s, during his stay in New York, he had already worked on a series of paintings with titles like New York, Above Manhattan and Sleeping Manhattan that set up a dialogue with the work of American painters such as Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Nolan and Jules Olitski (whom Melehi met in the early 1960s when the American artist exhibited in Rome at Topazia Alliata Gallery, run by the mother of Melehi’s then wife, Toni Maraini).
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Escalier d’honneur du palais national de Cotonou en République du Dahomey, aujourd’hui Bénin (archives des BEHC). © Pierre Chomette.
Africa
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Kenya has for the second time in less than 6 months reached out to the IMF for budget support. @moneyacademyKE
Kenyan Economy
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The facility is a quick-disbursing facility where money flows straight to the budget and is used at the discretion of the govt. — Business Daily
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22-MAR-2020 :: COVID-19 and a Rolling Sudden Stop
Africa
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The @Reuters archive holds a set of clips from the 1963 election in Kenya. @Unseen_Archive
Africa
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Positivity of samples tested in the last week have EXPLODED to a NEW RECORD of 15.52%! @MihrThakar
Africa
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East African Portland Cement Company
N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied
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Par Value: 5/-
Closing Price: 16.00
Total Shares Issued: 90000000.00
Market Capitalization: 1,440,000,000
EPS: -30.77
PE:
A key provider of Cement and Cement products in Kenya for over 70 years.
Full Year Results through 30th June 2020
Full Year Revenue 2.474902b versus 2.847273b
Full Year Cost of Sales [3.300350b] versus [4.052555b]
Full Year Gross Profit [Loss] [825.448m] versus [1.205282b]
Full Year Other Operating Income 198.864m versus 1.691487b
Full Year Administration and Selling Expenses [2.501957b] versus [2.548586b]
Full Year Loss from Operating Activities [3.128541b] versus [2.062381b]
Fair Value Gain/[Loss] on Investment Property 1.114779b versus [233.204m]
FY Finance Costs [786.304m] versus [691.588m]
FY Loss Before Tax [2.798610b] versus [2.961898b]
FY Loss After tax [2.769610b] versus [3.361868b]
FY EPS [30.77] versus [37.35]
Conclusions
The Balance Sheet needs to be restructured
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E.A Portland Cement Plc - Audited Results for the Year Ended 30-Jun-2020. @tradingroomke
N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied
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Kenya Shilling versus The Dollar Live ForexPros 108.85
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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