- With Le Pen Closing Gap In French Election Polls, Macron Smears Opponent As Russian Sympathizer
With Le Pen Closing Gap In French Election Polls, Macron Smears Opponent As Russian Sympathizer
As France’s right-wing nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen closes the gap with French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the second round of the country’s presidential election, Macron has has started ramping up a smear campaign focusing on Le Pen’s links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The narrative was delivered by Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who framed the election as a choice between an “ally of Vladimir Putin” and a president who has France’s best interests at heart.
“Another battle is commencing with two visions of France,” he said in a Monday interview with RTL radio, suggesting that a Le Pen victory would mean France turning its back on the country’s EU partners, leaving working people (who have been protesting Macron by the millions) poorer.
The nationalist leader finished 4.7 percentage points behind Macron in the first round of the French election on Sunday and the two will face each other in a runoff vote on April 24. While polls give 44-year-old president an advantage heading into the final phase of the campaign, Le Pen has been gaining momentum and she’s already added more than 10 points to her showing in the 2017 election. –Bloomberg
While Le Pen has dropped a push for France to ditch the Euro, she opposes Macron’s globalization plans for further EU integration.
That said, markets are clearly favoring a Macron win – with French 10-year yields jumping to a seven-year high last week after polls showed Macron’s lead over Le Pen narrowing.
“A Macron victory would be welcomed by the markets as markets would price in diminishing political uncertainty and continued business-friendly administration,” said Lale Akoner, a senior market strategist at BNY Mellon Investment Management to Bloomberg via email. “
Le Pen’s ties to Russia consist of securing a loan from a Russian company in 2014, and visiting Putin in 2017. However, she distanced herself from the Russian leader following his invasion of Ukraine – while Macron has been in regular communication with the Kremlin to try and end the crisis.
Macron suffered a huge blow this week after a poll by Ipsos-Sopra Steria found that the French President is losing ground with every age group below 60, while Le Pen took around twice as much of the blue collar vote.
Turnout, meanwhile, is expected to be at a record low according to an OpinionWay-Kea Partners poll published by Les Echos and Radio Classique – which also showed Le Pen narrowing the gap by one point.
Now the battle may be for France’s liberals – after veteran leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who fell short of making it into the final phase of France’s presidential election – told his supporters that they shouldn’t give a “single vote” to Le Pen.
Mélenchon’s strong showing in Sunday’s first round, when he won 22 per cent of the vote, has put him and his voters in the position of kingmakers as incumbent president Emmanuel Macron battles Le Pen during the final days of campaigning. Macron, in particular, needs as many Mélenchon supporters as possible to back him to win on April 24.
Mélenchon’s message of rejection for Le Pen would seem to favour the president. But Mélenchon stopped short of prompting supporters to vote for Macron, and his party is due to consult members on whether to do so. The president faces a fight to win over far-left supporters who are far less inclined to help him than in 2017, when he coasted to victory against Le Pen, and stop them from abstaining. -FT
Either way, as FT notes, Mélenchon’s strong showing alongside Le Pen’s shows that French Politics is undergoing an upheaval that may end in a Trump-like upset.
The second round of French elections will be held on Sunday, April 24.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/13/2022 – 02:45 - Slovakia In Talks With NATO Allies To Send MiG-29 Jets To Ukraine
Slovakia In Talks With NATO Allies To Send MiG-29 Jets To Ukraine
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger said Monday that Slovakia is in talks with its allies about an arrangement to send Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine as NATO is working to send heavier equipment to be used in the war against Russia.
Last week, Slovakia announced that it sent a Soviet-designed S-300 missile defense system to Ukraine. In exchange, the US is deploying a Patriot missile system to Slovakia. The Slovak government is looking for a similar deal when it comes to the MiGs, and Heger said Slovakia wants to phase out the Soviet weapons.
MiG-29 file image Heger said Slovakia “cannot sustain” Soviet equipment without a “relationship” with Moscow. “This is equipment that we want to finish anyway because we’re waiting for the F-16s,” he said. In 2018, Slovakia signed a deal to purchase US-made F-16 fighter jets, but they aren’t expected to be delivered until 2024.
The Slovak prime minister said he wants guarantees from allies about the protection of Slovak airspace if the country gives up its MiG-29s. “After that, we can consider speaking about this equipment in regard with Ukraine as well,” Heger said. He said Ukraine is also seeking Zuzana self-propelled howitzers, which are made by Slovakia.
As part of the NATO effort to send more heavy equipment to Ukraine, the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall is prepared to send Ukraine 50 used Leopard 1 battle tanks. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said the company could deliver the tanks through its subsidiary Rheinmetall Italia if the German government gives permission.
Ukrainian forces are only trained to use Soviet-designed tanks, but Papperger said they could be trained to use the Leopard 1s in just a few days.
NEW: U.S. “does not object” to the provision of fixed-wing fighters to Ukraine, such as Soviet-era MiG-29 jets after Slovakia floated a transfer: senior U.S. defense official
The U.S. nixed a Polish deal to give MiGs to Ukraine through American military base in Germany in March
— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) April 12, 2022
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British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss recently said that NATO allies agreed that they should work towards Ukraine being able to use NATO equipment. On Sunday, Lithuania announced that it was starting a training program for Ukrainian troops.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/13/2022 – 02:00 - Taibbi: Straight Out Of Dr. Strangelove
Taibbi: Straight Out Of Dr. Strangelove
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,
More and more, we’re told outright war isn’t just necessary and right, but the thing that will solve America’s existential problems…
Robert Kagan Robert Kagan, neoconservative writer and husband to Deputy Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, wrote a piece called “The Price of Hegemony” in Foreign Affairs last week that was fascinating. If I’d written his opening, people would denounce me as a Putin-concubine:
Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.
Just as Pearl Harbor was the consequence of U.S. efforts to blunt Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland, and just as the 9/11 attacks were partly a response to the United States’ dominant presence in the Middle East after the first Gulf War, so Russian decisions have been a response to the expanding post–Cold War hegemony of the United States and its allies in Europe.
Kagan went on to make an argument straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Instead of doing what some critics want and focusing on “improving the well-being of Americans,” the U.S. government is instead properly recognizing the responsibility that comes with being a superpower. So, while Russia’s invasion may indeed have been a foreseeable consequence of a decision to expand our hegemonic reach, now that we’re here, there’s only one option left. Total commitment:
It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent powers when they are in the early stages of ambition and expansion, not after they have already consolidated substantial gains. Russia may possess a fearful nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is not higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014, if the West had intervened then. And it has always been extraordinarily small…
A month after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, blood seems to be rushing to all the wrong places across the Commentariat, which has begun in earnest the predictable process of asking the public to dismiss fears of nuclear combat. Headlines of the “We’ll take those odds” variety are springing up everywhere, from the Seattle Times (“Atrocities change the nuclear weapons calculus”) to Radio Free Europe (“Former NATO Commander Says Western Fears Of Nuclear War Are Preventing A Proper Response To Putin”) to Fox (which had on Sean Penn, of all people, to say to Sean Hannity, “Countries that have nuclear weapons can remain intimidated to use them, and we’re seeing that now with our own country”). This is fast becoming a bipartisan consensus. Check out Republican Adam Kinzinger’s recent comment:
If we let nukes prevent us from action then expect literally every country to try to get nukes in next few years
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) April 12, 2022
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Most of us look back at 9/11 and wish we’d tried to narrow the scope of the problem, not expand it in grandiose ways and make it the central fact of the lives of every person on the planet. We were told right away that 9/11 meant so much more than a policing problem, that instead of a few nut-jobs slipping through the net, bin Laden’s Twin Tower attacks heralded an inevitable, and desirable, Final Battle between new and old worlds. We’re going through something similar now. The pundit excitement over the final clash between “Democracy and Autocracy” perhaps being at hand reminds me exactly of the open praying for signs of the Apocalypse I once heard among the Rapture-ready flock of pastor John Hagee in San Antonio.
We saw a ton of this thinking after 9/11. World-domination advocates who’d been laughed out of meetings for years were taken seriously overnight. Rigid with jingoistic fervor, they were suddenly in print and on air everywhere, bursting with “plans for everyone,” as Iggy Pop put it. Such people always rush to the front of the debate in these moments and they’re always listened to, until about ten years later, when it quietly becomes okay to reflect on a question we probably should have pondered in the moment, i.e. “Hey, are these people crazy?”
TK News subscribers can click here to read the rest.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 04/13/2022 – 00:05 - A $1 Trillion Reason Why The Yuan Won’t Collapse
A $1 Trillion Reason Why The Yuan Won’t Collapse
By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and commentator
The talk about a Chinese recession gets louder by the day. Foreign capital is leaving in droves. The yield premium that the nation’s bonds have been enjoying for over a decade is disappearing.
Yes, there are no shortage of reasons to be bearish on the yuan. But the massive dollar holdings accumulated by China Inc. suggest large currency depreciation is unlikely.
About 373 million people in 45 cities including Shanghai are now under full or partial lockdown, making up 40% of China’s GDP, according to Nomura. In less than a week, Premier Li Keqiang issued a third warning about economic growth risks, adding a sense of urgency to Beijing’s push to counter the slowdown via infrastructure spending and monetary easing.
The resulting policy divergence with the U.S. is undermining the support for the yuan. U.S. 10-year yields have risen above the Chinese counterpart for the first time in more than a decade, dimming the allure of the nation’s assets. But that’s not necessarily a game changer, as Macquarie Capital economists Larry Hu and Xinyu Ji point out. After all, the persistent narrowing of the yield differential last year didn’t stop the yuan rally, thanks to hefty exports.
That said, it does look like there is a tight correlation between foreign bond flows and the nominal yield differential. This chart shows the spread versus the six-month change in foreign bond flows. It is perhaps not just a coincidence that foreign investors sold their holdings of Chinese government bonds by the most on record in March, even though the nation’s real yields remain comfortably higher than U.S. peers.
In addition to weakening capital flows, the other pillar that has been supporting the yuan is also becoming less robust. Exports are expected to rise 13% in the year through March, rebounding from a holiday-impacted February. While still decent, the growth rate is slowing from a clip of more than 20% last year. The shutdown in Shanghai, the world’s largest port, since late March won’t help the April figure.
But before one gets too bearish on the yuan, it’s worth pointing out that Chinese exporters haven’t converted all their dollar receipts into local currency since the pandemic started two years ago. Far from it. Foreign-currency deposits have swelled to $1 trillion — a whopping 39% increase from the end of 2019. These extra dollar savings may come in handy if the yuan starts to depreciate.
Exporters have exhibited a counter-cyclical pattern when converting their overseas dollar receipts. When the yuan weakens, they sell more of their dollar revenues for the yuan at a cheaper exchange rate. And vice versa. This chart shows that the level of exporters’ currency-conversion ratio tends to move in tandem with three-month changes in the dollar-yuan exchange rate. Effectively, China Inc. behaves as an stabilizer in smoothing out the currency volatility.
All told, the peak of the yuan is probably behind us. That’s not to say that betting on yuan depreciation is a no-brainer. China Inc. has enough firepower to take the other side of the trade.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 23:45 - D'Souza: Covering For The Big Guy
D’Souza: Covering For The Big Guy
Commentary authored by Dinesh D’Souza via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The mainstream media continues to cover for the Big Guy. The big guy is, of course, Joe Biden. And the Hunter Biden scandal has always been about Joe Biden. Why? Because it’s a family racket. Just as the Corleone family operated as a single unit, with Don Corleone in charge of the corrupt operation, so the Biden family operates as a unit, with Joe Biden as its chairman and ultimate authority.
Hunter Biden attends his father Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th President of the United States on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool/Reuters) Of course, the Biden family knows that Joe’s name cannot be freely used. That’s why Hunter Biden and his associates are emphatic in their email and other communications to leave Joe’s name out of their transactions. Hunter associate James Gilliar at one point texted Tony Bobulinski, then a Biden family business partner, “Don’t mention Joe being involved.” Emails appear to typically refer to Joe Biden with code names like “Celtic” or the “Big Guy.”
Yet it seems the big guy was always in on the deals. One of Hunter’s emails specifically references a 10 percent cut for Joe Biden. Moreover, Bobulinski said he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss Hunter’s business dealings. This is important because Joe Biden has consistently denied he knew anything about his son’s commercial activities.
This is the same Joe Biden who took his son on board Air Force Two to China, where Hunter Biden struck an arrangement with business entities connected with the Chinese Communist Party. These arrangements gave him a stake in joint ventures with the Chinese worth tens of millions of dollars. Not since the Clinton Foundation has a high American official allegedly sold access on the international market—and quite likely the Biden family racket was modeled on the Clinton Foundation.
Joe Biden even apparently shared offices with Hunter Biden. In 2017, Hunter emailed his office manager to “have keys made available for new office mates,” and one of them was Joe Biden. Yet when Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this recently, she put on her customary deadpan expression and merely said that Joe Biden was “not office mates” with Hunter Biden. Nothing further. End of story.
Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer has documented Biden family deals with foreign entities in Ukraine, China, Costa Rica, and elsewhere. It’s a worldwide operation, and all the trails lead back to one man, Joe Biden. Without his name and at least some level of active participation, there would be no racket to carry out.
Despite the evidence closely tying the Bidens together in these deals, the media has for ideological reasons been highly protective of their man in the White House. At first, the media treated the Hunter Biden laptop and its incriminating contents as Russian disinformation. In this, the press was assisted by 50 former intelligence officials who were apparently willing to lie to the American people to shield Joe Biden from his own corruption.
Now the laptop has been confirmed both by the New York Times and the Washington Post to be legitimate. Tellingly, not one of the 50 intelligence officials has recanted or expressed any contrition about being part of a public deception scheme. Neither has the media. Instead, the new narrative is: True, Hunter Biden sold access in his family’s name, but Joe Biden had nothing to do with it.
This has all the persuasive power of saying that Don Corleone knew nothing about his family’s activities and played no part in them whatever. It makes no sense. And Joe Biden’s direct involvement in his son’s activities has now been confirmed with a new email that has emerged. The email involves a college recommendation that Joe Biden wrote for a Chinese businessman who was partners with Hunter Biden.
Jonathan Li is the CEO of a company BHR that entered into a joint venture with Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca. Hunter also held a 10 percent stake in BHR. In 2017, Li sent an email to Hunter Biden and his business associates Devon Archer and Jim Bulger. “Gentlemen,” he wrote, “Please find the attached resume of my son, Chris Li. He is applying [to] the following colleges for this year.”
Li listed Brown University, Cornell University, and New York University. He also attached an “updated version” of his son’s resume. So then what happened? Let’s follow the email trail. “Let’s see how we can be helpful here to Chris,” Bulger responded to Hunter and the gang.
A few weeks later, on Feb. 18, 2017, Eric Schwerin, president of Rosemont Seneca, replied to Li. “Jonathan,” he wrote, “Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown University.” In other words, Joe Biden wrote the letter.
Is it reasonable, at this point, to continue to say Joe Biden told the truth when he said he had nothing to do with his son’s business? Is it believable that he was never in on the deals, or stood to benefit from them? No, it’s not. On the contrary, it seems that Hunter Biden was Joe Biden’s frontman. This is a Joe Biden scandal, not a Hunter Biden scandal. If the circuitous family racket can be likened to the coils of a snake, Joe Biden is the head of the snake.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 23:25 - NASA Spots Massive Comet Heading Toward Earth
NASA Spots Massive Comet Heading Toward Earth
A massive icy comet emanating from the trans-Plutonian depths of our solar system is on a course to travel closer to earth than any comet of similar size – at least, so far as scientists have been able to tell.
The comet, known as C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), has a frozen nucleus that measures 80 miles across and is 50x bigger than the core of most comets that travel toward the inner area of our solar system.
It’s believed to have a mass of about 500 trillion tons, making it 100,000x more massive than the typical comet found toward the inner solar system.
The comet is traveling at about 22,000 miles per hour, moving from the edge of the solar system towards its the center.
Fortunately, the comet isn’t expected to get closer than 1 billion miles from the Sun, which is further away even than Saturn. And it’s not expected to get even that close until 2031.
American scientists have been aware of the comet since about 2010, at which point it was 3 billion miles from the Sun (about the same distance between Earth and Neptune. Since then, scientists have used telescopes both on Earth and in space to try and understand more about the comet).
Scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to examine the comet and estimate its huge size. Right now, scientists can only estimate the comet’s size, since it’s difficult to distinguish the core from the vaporous aura. Scientists used a computer model to try and differentiate the aura from the comet’s core.
It’s believed that the comet is billions of years old – meaning it formed during the early days of our universe – and also that it came from the Oort Cloud, the icy enclosure of comets, asteroids and material that forms a spherical shield around our solar system. The Oort Cloud is a theoretical concept – scientists don’t have visual proof of its existence. But it’s believed this comet could help scientists learn more about the Oort Cloud, which is believed to be 5,000x further from the Sun as the Earth is.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 23:05 - With Lithium Prices Up Ninefold, Report Underscores US Dependence On Foreign Minerals
With Lithium Prices Up Ninefold, Report Underscores US Dependence On Foreign Minerals
Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A recent white paper has laid out some of the challenges in supplying minerals for any energy transition from fossil fuels, offering a timely warning for policymakers as the increased demand for electric vehicles (EVs) drives up the costs of materials used in such products.
Brine pools from a lithium mine, that belongs to U.S.-based Albemarle Corp, is seen on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert, Chile, on Aug. 16, 2018. (Ivan Alvarado/Reuters) Notably, the benchmark prices of lithium, lithium carbonate, and lithium hydroxide have rapidly increased in recent months, as detailed at Benchmark Minerals.
Hovering at just $115.80 per ton in September 2020, the benchmark price of lithium has surged to $1045.90 a ton in March 2022. That’s more than a ninefold increase.
Zach Schumacher, a North American metals price expert with Argus Media, told The Epoch Times that the costs of EVs will likely increase as a result. The estimated average transaction price for a new electric vehicle was $56,437 in November 2021, according to Kelley Blue Book.
The prices of other key minerals—including the rare-earth metal neodymium that goes into wind turbines—have also trended sharply upward in recent months and years.
“Lithium is not the only raw material directly correlated to the EV market witnessing higher costs, so parsing out precisely how much of the increased costs for vehicles in the coming months originates from lithium alone could prove fairly difficult. Nickel, stainless steel, semiconductor and labor costs are among other costs that have all also risen compared to levels from recent years,” said Schumacher, who added that the prices of consumer electronics could also rise.
“Increasingly, scholars are questioning the mineral requirements that would be needed to reach either 100 [percent] renewable or clean energy targets,” states the March report, which was authored by Phil Rossetti and George David Banks for the Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) Forum.
The document notes that EVs are six times as mineral intensive as vehicles that use conventional internal combustion engines, citing a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Renewable energy sources are also more mineral intensive than their hydrocarbon-based alternatives. Wind turbines, for example, need roughly nine times as many minerals as natural gas plants, according to the IEA report.
“China is the dominant supplier for multiple critical minerals and is likely to remain so. In the case of minerals it does not supply—such as cobalt—China has near-monopolistic control of refining capacity through its state-owned enterprises,” the CRES Forum’s analysis states.
“Policymakers should also understand the energy security implications of policies that lean heavily on mineral-intensive products for abating greenhouse gas emissions, as scarcity of materials could raise prices as well as create dependency on foreign suppliers that could have an interest in manipulating the market.”
In addition to creating national security risks, the current situation also makes the United States culpable in using forced, or otherwise ethically questionable, labor.
One crucial solar panel input, polysilicon, is largely produced in China’s Xinjiang region, likely through the slave labor of the region’s Uyghur ethnic minority.
Likewise, much of the cobalt in lithium-ion batteries is obtained through child labor from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The CRES Forum report argues that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) impedes domestic mining of minerals for renewable energy, even more than it impedes hydrocarbon production.
“Forty-two percent of DOE NEPA environmental assessments and environmental impact statements [are] for clean energy, transmission, or conservation efforts compared with 15 percent for fossil fuel,” it states, referencing an R Street analysis from one of the report’s co-authors, Phillip Rossetti.
A major proposed project along these lines, the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine in Humboldt County, Nevada, received its Record of Decision under NEPA in January 2021. Nevada’s Division of Environmental Protection issued mining, water, and air permits to it earlier this year.
Yet, the mine has continued to generate controversy, with Shoshone Paiute Gary McKinney writing in the Reno Gazette Journal that “our ancestors’ burial site is no place for a mine.”
The Canadian developer of Thacker Pass, Lithium Americas, has made major deals with the Chinese firm Ganfeng Lithium, including through joint ownership of the Cauchari-Olaroz brine lithium carbonate project in Argentina.
Lithium Americas’ website indicates that Ganfeng owns 46.7 percent of the project while Lithium Americas owns 44.8 percent. The remaining 8.5 percent is owned by Argentina’s state-run Jujuy Energía y Minería Sociedad del Estado (JEMSE).
Even if new domestic mines such as Thacker Pass go online, CRES Forum’s meta-analysis of three studies on the energy transition suggests that demand could outpace proven reserves of multiple key minerals, including cobalt, lithium, nickel, chromium, and zinc.
“In short, the potential mining requirements for a complete clean energy transition with existing technology is so large that it is not clear if it is economically viable to extract enough minerals to meet the needs modeled in those studies,” the report states.
In February, President Joe Biden drew attention to a range of new investments aimed at reducing the United States’ reliance on China for lithium, rare earths, cobalt, and other critical minerals.
This includes $35 million from the Department of Defense for a heavy rare earth element separation facility operated by MP Materials, owner of the country’s only rare-earth mine in Mountain Pass, California.
MP Materials is partly owned by a Chinese firm, Shenghe Resources.
“As proposed by Chinese government, and characteristic in Chinese rare earth industry, Shenghe Resources designed its equity structure on mixed ownership,” the website for the firm states, indicating that the company is partly owned by the state.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Shenghe Resources for comment.
Reuters reported in late March that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has described herself as “worried” about the Chinese stake in MP Materials.
The investments announced in February also include a $140 million Department of Energy (DoE) project to obtain critical minerals from mine waste, coal ash, and similar resources.
The CRES Forum report suggests that the challenges it describes could be mitigated by technological breakthroughs, including better approaches to carbon capture and the development of low-carbon fuels for conventional, non-electric vehicles.
It also urges the United States to sanction companies or countries that use unethical labor, arguing that such moves must be made quickly, before the country is too reliant on such minerals.
“As a major consuming market, the United States is best positioned to effect change by refusing market access to unethical suppliers,” it states.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 22:45 - Did CPI Just Peak?
Did CPI Just Peak?
A lot has been said about today’s “extraordinary“, scorching CPI print which we discussed on at least two occasions (here and here), but the biggest outstanding question is whether today’s blowout print was the top (despite Jeff Gundlach predicting on his latest DoubleLine call that inflation may hit 10%). Well, as we noted earlier, according to a number of Wall Street banks, today’s scorching number was indeed the peak of the inflation wave, and over the past few hours many more have joined them including Goldman…
… Deutsche Bank…
… and JPMorgan.
So what’s behind these bold declarations? After all, the past year is littered with one after another wrong conclusion by Wall Street (and Fed) bankers that inflation was either transitory or couldn’t rise any higher. Is this time any different.
Let’s take a look at the facts:
First, there is the base effect, and indeed after March things tend to normalize due to the two-year anniversary of the post-covid collapse which troughed in March 2020 and has been ‘renormalizing’ ever since.
Second, at 0.3% M/M, core CPI not only missed expectations of 0.5%, but rose at the lowest level since September 2022.
Third, there is the modest slowdown in the all important OER, shelter and rent space: in March, OER and rents of primary residence both came in at 0.43% mom, cooling slightly from February. And even if on a Y/Y basis, shelter inflation printed at the highest level since 1991, it is likely that we have hit the peak for the sequential rate, although we will surely have elevated readings going forward for quite some time.
Fourth, car prices: last Friday we asked “Are Used Car Prices About To Peak For Real This Time?” and today the BLS came close to giving us the answer, when the index for used cars and trucks fell 3.8% in March, its second consecutive monthly decline after a series of large increases, and singlehandedly was responsible for subtracting 20bps from the core print (core would have risen 0.5%, in line with expectations otherwise).
One can argue that the drop is only just starting, and Pantheon Macro does just that, repeating what we said this morning and writing that “plunging used vehicle prices explains the undershoot in the March core CPI; they have much further to fall. .. the potential for it to be a huge drag on core inflation over the remainder of this year is very real.”
Picking up on this, Deutsche Bank writes that with vehicle inventories being rebuilt and wholesale used car inflation trending down, automobile prices should cease being a major contributor to inflation, at least in the near term, and the bank expects used cars to be another meaningful drag on the April core CPI print.
That said, there is a big footnote here, and as “the big short” Michael Burry pointed out, it is likely that the BLS may have figured out that in order to push inflation down it has to hammer car prices and that’s precisely what it plans to do next month when in addition to manipulating the artificially low OER series, the BLS is now taking aim the vehicle prices too.
CPI says housing costs rose 5.0% last 12mos. Wrong. CPI would be 12.0% using real-world NAR housing data. BLS has smoothed out housing numbers forever because home prices have been a problem forever. So next month they will start smoothing out vehicle prices. #problemsolved pic.twitter.com/KDdwADZgZi
— Cassandra B.C. (@michaeljburry) April 12, 2022
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Fifth, while banks are always wrong, one voice which still carries some credibility is that of Jeffrey Gundlach and speaking to CNBC today, he said that “we are near peak inflation“, then again exactly one month ago he also predicted that inflation would hit 10% (and one year ago, he also said that inflation would peak in July 2021), so perhaps he isn’t the best authority on the matter either.
To be sure, there are various reasons to be skeptical that peak inflation is here. First, food and energy added significantly to the headline print, with the former growing 1% month-over-month for the second month in a row and the latter notching the second highest monthly gain in the series’ sixty-five year history (+11.0% vs. 13.5% in September 2005). While it is difficult to predict which way energy prices will head next, with the Biden admin making them the primary target of Democrat pre-midterm agenda even as the raging Ukraine war assures that commodities will remain very high for a long time, one thing is clear: food has yet to feel the impact given lagged pass-through and as Bank of America siad, is likely to remain hot throughout the year. In other words, while much of the covid-linked supply chain inflationary spike is fading, we are about to face an even bigger, Ukraine-war food inflation spike. Granted, this won’t hit core inflation as much, but try telling American households that high double-digit food inflation doesn’t count.
Another reason to be skeptical of calls for peak inflation is that as noted above, most of the impact from the downside outliers was a function of used cars and trucks. As such, alternative measures of trend inflation like the trimmed mean (+0.55%) and median (+0.48%) CPI came in significantly stronger than core. On a twelve month basis, both of these measures of underlying inflation continued to push higher. This is a continuation of the previous trend, which has seen a variety of measures of underlying inflation rising.
Add to this that while used cares have finally dropped (and they also dropped last summer only to surge right after), household furnishing and supplies (+1.0%) and apparel (+0.6%) both posted outsized gains indicating that supply chains remain snarled. Given recent geopolitical developments, Deutsche Bank warns that a major risk is that further deterioration in supply chains could eventually begin to impact vehicle prices again, precisely what we warned about last week.
With both sides of the argument laid out, where do the banks stand? Well, as noted above, for better or worse they have decided to call peak inflation right here, right now, with DB writing that “our longer run view on core CPI remains steady, with inflation beginning to decline in the April data to end this year at 5.0% (Q4/Q4), 2023 at 3.4%, and 2024 at 2.7%. Food and energy inflation should serve to keep headline inflation above core, with the corresponding values for headline at 6.2%, 3.6%, and 3.0%, respectively.”
And with both Goldman and JPM also jumping on the “peak inflation” bandwagon, all we now need is for central bankers to climb on board and to conclude that this time inflation – no longer transitory mind you – has finally peaked. That will be the clearest signal yet that a lengthy period of brutal stagflation is now inevitable.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 22:25 - Buchanan: The Message From Ukraine – Nukes Do Deter
Buchanan: The Message From Ukraine – Nukes Do Deter
When he arrived at Christ the Savior Cathedral to pay his respects to the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who had died of COVID-19, Russian President Vladimir Putin carried a clutch of red roses.
The man beside him was carrying a briefcase.
That briefcase appeared to be Russia’s version of the “football” that is carried by a military aide to U.S. presidents and contains the codes for launching strategic nuclear weapons.
French King Louis XIV had stamped upon his cannon the inscription, “Ultima Ratio Regum” — The Last Argument of Kings.
In our era, nuclear weapons are the ultima ratio of nation-states. And what Putin was saying with his briefcase-carrying aide beside him was that, rather than accept defeat and humiliation in the Ukraine war, he may resort to the use of tactical atomic weapons.
And Putin is not the only one reminding us of the utility of having nuclear weapons and the folly of giving them up.
In 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 nations, a newly independent Ukraine controlled its own large arsenal of nuclear weapons.
At the behest of the United States and in return for U.S. security guarantees, Kyiv gave them up and sent them all back to Russia.
Ukraine is living today with the consequences of that decision.
It is a victim of aggression by Russia, while the U.S. is inhibited in what it will do to assist Kyiv by an awareness that Russia has hundreds of tactical nuclear weapons, which Putin has signaled that, in the event of a true “existential” crisis, he may use.
Ukraine is in its present crisis because Moscow has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, while Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s.
The world is surely taking note of this fact.
South Korea relies on U.S. nuclear weapons to deter a nuclear-armed North Korea. Seoul also relies on the U.S. to retaliate against the North for any first use of nukes against the South.
And the issue is not an academic one.
Last week, Pyongyang warned that in the event of a clash with the South, its nuclear weapons would be used “at the outset of war.”
Seoul must today be observing Ukraine with some intensity. For there the U.S. is carefully calibrating whether the weapons they send to help Ukraine fight for its national existence violate a Moscow red line.
Could South Korea expect similar U.S. caution as to what weapons it would use in defending the country from a nuclear-armed North?
According to one U.S. poll, 71% of all South Koreans support the acquisition of their own arsenal of nuclear weapons.
China, too, has been observing how the United States has been inhibited by Russia’s nuclear arsenal in deciding which weapons to send, and which not to send, to Ukraine.
In Beijing, this question is surely being debated:
If the Americans, who have no treaty commitment to defend Ukraine, are inhibited by the threat of war with a nuclear-armed Russia into limiting their military aid to Ukraine, will the Americans be similarly intimidated by a nuclear-armed China — from going to war for Taiwan?
China may soon be testing U.S. resolve in the Taiwan Strait. For, like Ukraine, Taiwan has no treaty alliance obligating the United States to defend it.
In East Asia, the nations most hostile to us and our allies — Russia, China, North Korea — all have nuclear weapons. But none of our friends and allies in East Asia — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Australia — have nuclear weapons. All rely on us for nuclear deterrence.
Observing the restrictions we have put on military aid to Ukraine, what must they be thinking now?
Consider the Middle East.
Iran is currently renegotiating a return to the nuclear arms deal of 2015. Under that agreement, Iran was granted relief from sanctions and a return to the world economy. In return, Tehran pledged not to test or acquire nuclear weapons and to open its nuclear facilities to inspection to show it was complying with the treaty.
Why has Iran, which has the ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade but has never done so, forgone the testing and the building of nuclear weapons?
Iran appears to have concluded that its security would be more imperiled than enhanced if it sought to test a nuclear device preparatory to building a bomb.
A nuclear weapons test, if successful, would bring to Iran the possibility of war with a nuclear-armed Israel, as well as the potential destruction of all of its nuclear sites by the United States.
If Iran built a bomb, the Turks and Saudis might soon follow, and the ayatollah’s Iran would be less secure than it is today. Iran’s Persians, after all, are a minority in an Arab-dominated Middle East, and Iran’s Shia are but a fraction of the numbers of the Sunni Arab population.
What the Ukraine war has demonstrated is the vulnerability of not having nukes.
Taiwan and South Korea, especially, should take note.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 22:05 - CarMax Confirms Demand Destruction As Used-Car Prices Tumble
CarMax Confirms Demand Destruction As Used-Car Prices Tumble
Demand destruction is when prices get so high that consumers are hit with an affordability crisis. That is precisely what is happening with the used car market.
New earnings data from CarMax, the nation’s largest retailer of used cars, showed the number of used vehicles sold for the quarter ending Feb. 28 declined 6.5% while prices were at record highs. Average car prices rose 40% during the quarter, or $8,300, compared with a year ago.
A substantial increase in used car prices over the last year and the recent surge in interest rates could be the catalyst for what has recently sparked demand destruction as buyers go on strike, thus cooling red-hot prices.
“From an affordability standpoint, you’ve got interest rates going up, inflation, you’ve got the Ukraine-Russia war. There just a lot weighing on the consumer right now.
For “the lower credit spectrum customer, certainly, we feel affordability has maybe often priced them out of the market,” Bill Nash, Carmax’s CEO, told investors on a conference call.
Last week, the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, a wholesale tracker of used car prices, dropped 3.8% in March from February, the largest monthly decline since April 2020 (only Feb 2007 and two prints in the fall of 2008 were worse before that).
Slumping prices may reveal stressed-out consumers are taking a step back from the market as interest rates rise.
Demand destruction is happening at a critical inflection point for the used car market. We’ve pointed out the emergence of this economic phenomenon since early February (read: here & here). Last Friday, we asked: “Are Used Car Prices About To Peak For Real This Time?”
We also noted that Manheim tends to lead used auto CPI. On Tuesday morning, government inflation data showed that used cars and trucks fell 3.8% in March. Meanwhile, headline CPI was up a shocking 8.5% YoY.
Given that used vehicle price significantly contributes to the overall headline inflation rates, this could also be a sign of peak inflation. Today, Goldman Sach’s Jan Hatzius told clients that March core CPI has “likely peaked.”
Also, DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach told CNBC that inflation has peaked, but pressures will remain persistent as he believes the Federal Reserve is behind the curve.
So what does this mean for readers? If you have a used vehicle you were probably thinking about selling, now is the time to do so. Consumers looking to purchase a used car may want to wait for prices to move lower.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 21:45 - Biden's Ghost Gun Rule Is Dead On Arrival Thanks To 0% Receiver
Biden’s Ghost Gun Rule Is Dead On Arrival Thanks To 0% Receiver
Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,
Yesterday, President Biden, the Department of Justice, and the ATF announced the details of their new 364-page rule for the redefinition of “frame or receiver.” In doing so, they have decided to attempt an illegal rewrite of the 1968 Gun Control Act.
If you’ve been paying close attention to headlines the past few weeks, you may have noticed a surge in articles pertaining to “ghost guns.”
The corporate media has been setting up Biden for an easy “win” on guns with this new rule. Likely because of Biden’s low poll numbers headed into the midterms.
Initially announced in April of 2021, almost a full year later, we’re finally able to see what sort of egregious gun control has been put together for the law-abiding gun owner.
The rule stems from the gun control lobby’s obsession with home-built firearms. The problem here, though, is that to regulate privately made firearms, or “PMFs” as they’re defined in the new rule, the ATF had to cast an extremely wide legal net.
In the 364-page rule, we can see that the Biden admin intends to ban “ghost guns” by creating a new class of highly regulated items by redefining the term “firearm” to include parts and collections of parts that the ATF now considers to be “readily” convertible into functional firearms.
The example used in the press conference was a Polymer80 kit, which quickly sold out of all available models after the announcement of the rule change.
It’s important to note that from what we can tell from the rule change and the opinion of others in the know, this rule does not ban possession of firearms made from 80% kits. It also does not mandate the serialization of those already made firearms or 3D printed items for personal use. What it does do is require the serialization of 80% kits that are in possession of Federal Firearms Licensees (also known as FFLs) and manufacturers. It’s interesting because the expected outcome of this rule, as Biden pitched, was the complete and absolute ban of “ghost guns” altogether.
The rule also changes and complicates the definition of “frame or receiver.” What was once a simple short definition has changed to include multiple pages of diagrams, new terms and more. In addition, the ATF has added new definitions for “unfinished frame or receiver,” which ATF now considers to be firearms themselves, but only under certain, unclear conditions.
In addition, ATF has commanded Federal Firearms Licensees to hold 4473 records on-site indefinitely. This small change may go unnoticed by many, but this is a significant step towards a legitimate registry. This action shouldn’t surprise many gun owners, who already know that these rule changes are not about saving lives; they’re only about the consolidation of power.
Many in the anti-gun lobby and corporate media class say that these actions are justified because privately made firearms are “untraceable.” This idea that a trace is some magical crime-solving tool is a misconception dreamed up by those who have little understanding of the difference between how legal and illegal firearms sales occur.
It’s not to find the gun when an agent “runs a trace,” despite what images the misleading name might conjure up. Instead, it’s to find who originally bought the firearm and from what dealer. This gun trace often leads to the fact that many guns are stolen or reported stolen and then used in crimes. Because of this, the trace ends with the original buyer who had their firearm stolen. Criminals aren’t filling out 4473 forms and submitting to NICS checks. It’s important to note here that many stolen firearms used in crimes may have their serial number removed completely, resulting in an “untraceable” gun, even though those guns wouldn’t fall into the “ghost gun” category.
Firearms Policy Coalition had this to say:
“Far from “clarifying” anything, the rulemaking tortures simple terms from law into multi-part definitions, with newly injected sub-terms like “readily” having their own lengthy definitions. This is clearly an attempt to sidestep Congress, as Biden even indicated in his remarks today.”
Here’s the irony of the situation, though. Regardless of how overly complex it is or how wide a legal net the ATF decides to cast, this rule change will have little to no effect.
That’s because of the 0% Receiver.
In response to the announcement of the Biden Admin’s proposed rule change, Defense Distributed decided to shift its focus to the creation of 0% receivers.
Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed had this to say about the new rule:
“The receiver rule is an illegal attempt to rewrite the GCA outside of Congress. Nevertheless, Ghost Gunner anticipated this maneuver and is now shipping Zero Percent receivers which perfectly defeat the rule from day one. Americans will always be able to build firearms in the privacy of their homes.”
This rule change has caused a surge in demand for Defense Distributed’s Ghost Gunner 3. The Ghost Gunner is a small CNC Machine that users can insert a bar of aluminum, press a button, and after the machine mills out the metal, have a completely legal, privately made, non-serialized firearm frame ready to go.
Because all the Ghost Gunner 3 needs is a block of aluminum to produce the firearm frame, the Biden Admin & ATF would need to regulate blocks of aluminum to stop people from producing privately made firearms. While the DOJ may be able to convince a judge that an 80% lower is likely to be made into a gun, a block of aluminum is a much harder sell.
The same can be said for 3D printing. Are we to assume that PLA plastic is to be regulated as a firearm?
Because gun control has a hard time passing in the legislative branch (even with all three branches of government controlled by democrats currently), the Biden admin has resorted to governing by executive fiat, using the executive branch to pass new “regulations” using existing law.
As of right now, the rule change has 120 days to take effect after it hits the federal register. Many groups such as Gun Owners of America & Firearms Policy Coalition have already announced their intent to sue the Federal Government over these new rule changes.
TMGN’s Steph and her team analyzed hundreds of pages of the new ghost gun rule and determined uppers won’t be serialized and more…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 21:25 - Apple Assembler Pegatron Halts iPhone Production As China Combats COVID Outbreak
Apple Assembler Pegatron Halts iPhone Production As China Combats COVID Outbreak
Supply chains in Shanghai are becoming congested again amid Beijing’s zero-COVID policy that has shuttered factories and placed millions of people in lockdown.
iPhone assembler Pegatron Corp. is the latest company to suspend production at factories in Shanghai and nearby Kunshan, adhering to local government health requirements to mitigate the worst virus outbreak in two years., according to Bloomberg.
Taiwan-based Pegatron announced in a securities filing that the resumption of work at both iPhone plants would require authorization by the government. It said it would “actively cooperate” with local health officials to resume work as fast as possible but gave no timeline.
Pegatron said it has contacted customers and suppliers and has evaluated the impact of both plants shutting down without elaborating on details.
What’s important about Pegatron is that it’s the second-largest assembler of iPhones after Foxconn Technology Group. Pegatron kept production online for weeks after Foxconn was forced to shutter operations last month. Since Shanghai and neighboring Kunshan are now both under tight lockdowns, iPhone assembly in China could be reduced since top producers have shuttered operations.
Bloomberg supply chain analysis shows Foxconn and Pegatron are the two largest producers of iPhones and other Apple products. There are no reports (yet) of supply disruptions of finished electronics.
On a seasonal basis, US companies generally begin to increase Chinese imports for the summer season. With factories shuttered and logistical networks and ports clogged, this has likely impeded shipments to the US.
Supply chains are breaking again, which could lead to empty shelves in US stores by summer. Consultancy Trendforce warns Pegatron is down to just a few weeks of stocks.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 21:05 - Canadian MPs Urge Passage Of Organ Trafficking Bill In Honor Of Late Rights Champion David Kilgour
Canadian MPs Urge Passage Of Organ Trafficking Bill In Honor Of Late Rights Champion David Kilgour
Authored by Isaac Teo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
MPs rose in the House of Commons this week to table a petition requesting the passage of a bill combating organ trafficking in honour of David Kilgour, a former cabinet minister and renowned human rights advocate.
Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour presents a revised report about forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in China, as report co-author and human rights lawyer David Matas listens looks on, on Jan. 31, 2007. (The Epoch Times) Kilgour, who had a long career in politics, passed away on April 5 from a rare lung disease. He was 81.
“This horrific practice was first brought to light by former member of Parliament David Kilgour,” said Conservative MP Pat Kelly. “It is a shame that he did not live to see its passage, but I certainly hope that this bill will pass.”
Bill S-223 is a Senate bill that seeks to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking by making it a criminal offence for an individual to go abroad to receive an organ from someone who did not give informed consent to the removal of the organ. It would also amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to render a permanent resident or foreign national inadmissible to Canada if they engaged in activities relating to trafficking in human organs.
In 2006, Kilgour and Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas co-authored the ground-breaking report “Bloody Harvest”—later followed by a book of the same name—which investigated the Chinese regime’s forced organ harvesting from living Falun Dafa prisoners of conscience. The two said that based on their findings, they were able to confirm that the regime engaged in the heinous practice.
Following the publication of the report, Kilgour and Matas travelled to numerous countries around the world, holding panels and talking to lawmakers to inform them about Beijing’s persecution campaign and organ harvesting of Falun Dafa adherents.
David Kilgour speaks as Falun Gong practitioners demonstrate outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, against forced organ harvesting in China, on Nov. 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Rod McGuirk) -
‘Incredible Legacy’
While testifying before a Senate committee last year about Bill S-204, Bill S-223’s predecessor, Kilgour noted that many countries already have laws in place to combat organ trafficking, and said it’s “embarrassing” that Canada doesn’t yet have such legislation.
In the last Parliament, S-204 got the unanimous support of the Senate, but before it had a chance to be fully voted in in the House of Commons, an election was called and Parliament was dissolved.
There were several previous attempts to pass similar bills as private member’s bills, but they all died when Parliament was dissolved due to an election being called.
Introduced by Sen. Salma Ataullahjan, Bill S-223 passed in the Senate on Dec. 9, 2021, and had its first reading in the House of Commons on Dec. 16, 2021.
On April 6 and 7, 13 Conservative members tabled the petition and encouraged the passage of the bill.
MP Garnett Genuis, who has introduced Senate bills on organ trafficking to the House in previous parliaments, took the opportunity to recognize Kilgour’s work.
“I join colleagues on all sides of the House in recognizing the incredible legacy of David Kilgour, who passed away this week,” Genuis said.
“David brought this issue to my attention and to many people’s attention. He, along with David Matas, wrote the initial report on this issue. He has been a tireless champion on it and on so many other human rights issues as well.”
MP Damien Kurek said: “This bill has passed the Senate unanimously three times, and MPs from multiple parties have put forward a form of this bill over the past 13 years. The petitioners are hoping that it can be this Parliament that gets it done.”
In urging the passage of the bill, MP Stephen Ellis said that as a former family physician, the legislation strikes “the heart of the matter for me,” and said Kilgour was “a great champion not only of this issue but of other human rights issues.”
MP Tom Kmiec said it was Kilgour “who blew the doors open on this practice overseas and made this [legislation] possible. … God bless him for his work and God bless him for everything he did for this Parliament.”
‘Maverick With a Cause’
On April 7, Liberal MP John McKay also paid tribute Kilgour in the House, noting to his former colleague’s passion for human rights, unyielding independence, and strong faith.
“Everything in David’s life was animated by his deep Christian faith. The anti-politician’s politician, David ran for the Conservatives and won. He ran for the Liberals and won, and ultimately sat as an independent,” McKay said.
“He had little or no time for the compromises of politics, or prime ministers or party leaders. If a government hung in the balance over Darfur, so what? If he was banned by the government of China for advocating on behalf of the Falun Gong or the Uyghurs, so what?”
Kilgour was first elected as an MP for the Progressive Conservative Party in 1979, but was removed from caucus in 1990 after disagreeing with then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on bringing in the Goods and Services Tax.
He joined the Liberals in 1992 and served as secretary of state to Latin America and Africa from 1997 to 2002, and as secretary of state to the Asia-Pacific region from 2002 to 2003 during the government of Jean Chrétien.
In 2005, Kilgour left the Liberal Party over disagreements on principle and sat as an independent MP. He retired from politics in 2006.
In an article on his website titled “Why I Left the Party,” Kilgour cited the unwillingness of Canada to join the international effort to stop the Rwanda genocide and rights atrocities in Sudan as a reason for his departure.
“Nowhere is our foreign policy vacuum more evident than in Sudan, where more than 300,000 civilians have already perished in a disaster Romeo Dallaire has described as ‘Rwanda in slow motion,’” he wrote.
Dallaire was the former force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide.
Months after Kilgour’s call for action, the government of Paul Martin sent humanitarian aid to Sudan.
McKay said Kilgour’s dedication to human rights causes was backed by such courage and conviction that it spurred others to follow suit.
“David’s passion was so strong and his advocacy so effective that it was ultimately taken up by many others,” he said.
He said while Kilgour can be described as a “a maverick with a cause,” he also knew how to bring people together to “move agendas.”
“David lived by Matthew 22: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind,’ and ‘love your neighbour as yourself,’” he said.
“David had a diverse set of neighbours, and he loved them all.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 20:45 -
- "Sh*t Show": Triggered Twitter Employees Melt Down Over Elon Musk's Uncertain Intentions
“Sh*t Show”: Triggered Twitter Employees Melt Down Over Elon Musk’s Uncertain Intentions
The staff at Twitter are apparently so triggered by Elon Musk’s involvement in the company that they were even stressed on their monthly “day of rest” they get off.
It remains to be seen now that Musk has declined a board seat with the company whether his goals are to be an active or passive investor.
Twitter was so confident that Musk was going to join its Board of Directors, it had listed his name on the company’s IR page, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
But now the lack of clarity surrounding Musk’s involvement has “signaled chaos” for some employees. A Q&A that was set up with Musk after it was expected that he would join the board of directors has been cancelled.
Now, instead of having to act in the best interest of the company, Musk can Tweet whatever he’d like to his 80 million followers, whenever he wants.
Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal has warned employees of “distractions ahead”.
Employees have said they are “super stressed” and “working together to help each other get through the week”.
Meanwhlie, not much has changed but for Musk spending the last couple days tweeting out ideas for the company’s subscription service and trolling the company over whether or not its San Francisco headquarters should be turned into a homeless shelter.
One Twitter employee told Bloomberg they were concerned that Musk was “just getting started, which is unfortunate.” Other employees described the situation as a “shit show”.
Rumman Chowdhury, a director on Twitter’s AI research team, said: “Musk’s immediate chilling effect was something that bothered me significantly.”
“Twitter has a beautiful culture of hilarious constructive criticism, and I saw that go silent because of his minions attacking employees,” he continued.
Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, told Bloomberg: “This decision by Elon does not bode well for Twitter. Titter thought having Trump on the platform was tough. Elon Musk is going to be a corporate nightmare.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 20:25 - California Looks To Reduce Weekly Work Hours To 32
California Looks To Reduce Weekly Work Hours To 32
Authored by Alice Sun via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
California legislators proposed a new bill that would allow employees of bigger companies to work fewer hours in a week without losing any income, which critics said would become a “job killer.”
The California State flag flies outside City Hall, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2017. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images) Assembly Bill 2932, introduced by Assembly Members Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) and Evan Low (D-San Jose) in February, would require companies with more than 500 employees to reduce their weekly work hours from 40 to 32 hours—from the regular 5 to 4 workdays a week—and those who work more than 32 hours a week would be considered as working overtime and should be compensated at a rate of 1.5 times the regular pay rate for the extra hours.
If signed into law, California will become the first state in the United States to reduce regular weekly workdays to 4 days.
“There have been so many societal advances in the last 100 years,” Garcia said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times. “It doesn’t make sense that we are still holding onto a work schedule that served the industrial revolution. It’s long overdue that this progress is shared with our workforce which deserves an improved quality of life.”
Garcia said working fewer hours could improve employees’ productivity and wellbeing, and “the pandemic and the Great Resignation have made it crystal clear the time [for this change] is now.”
The bill also requires “the compensation rate of pay at 32 hours to reflect the previous compensation rate of pay at 40 hours” and “prohibits an employer from reducing an employee’s regular rate of pay as a result of this reduced hourly workweek requirement.”
It is unclear whether the “regular rate of pay” in the bill’s original language is referring to an employee’s original hourly wage or the total compensation.
“This language may be interpreted as requiring the employer to pay the employee the same total compensation that they are presently earning at 40 hours for 32 hours of work,” Ashley Hoffman, policy advocate at the California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber), wrote in an April 6 letter to Low.
If this is the case, Hoffman explained, an employee originally making $20 per hour would be making $400 a week for 32 hours worked, equaling $25 an hour (25 percent increase) and leading to an overtime pay rate of $37.5 an hour (87.5 percent increase).
Calling the bill a “job killer,” CalChamber stated that businesses are still recovering from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many companies have already been cutting down their current work hours and job openings.
“Instead of imposing new costs on employers, the Legislature should reform California’s unnecessarily rigid wage and hour laws to allow employees flexibility in their weekly schedules that would better align with the modern workplace,” the chamber’s letter read.
June Cutter, an attorney and small business owner who is running for California State Assembly District 76, also opposed the bill, saying the change would have an adverse effect on both employees and employers.
“Legislators who have never operated a business (or perhaps never even held a private sector job) have no idea what the real implications of this bill will be,” Cutter wrote on Twitter. “People will lose wages, people will lose jobs, small businesses will fold.”
The bill is currently under review by the Labor and Employment Committee.
Low did not respond to a request for comment by press deadline.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 20:05 - Taiwan Holds Preparedness Drills Simulating Chinese Attack On Nuclear Power Plant
Taiwan Holds Preparedness Drills Simulating Chinese Attack On Nuclear Power Plant
With an eye on what’s been unfolding around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, Taiwan has conducted drills that simulated an emergency response following an imagined attack on nuclear power plants in order to enhance readiness for potential Chinese military invasion.
“About 500 people, including police, firefighters, power utility workers and private volunteers, took part in the exercise held in the southern Taiwanese county of Pingtung” – which took place late last week.
Regional media reporting indicated the simulation was based on military facilities and civilian buildings being hit by Chinese missiles, resulting in large fires. Crucially the drill was held in Pingtung County, which hosts two nuclear power plants.
Taiwan’s Maanshan nuclear power plant. Image: CEphoto According to Japan’s international public media service NHK World, “After Russian forces attacked nuclear power facilities in Ukraine, Taiwan’s defense ministry instructed local authorities to include a response to possible military attacks in their disaster drills this year.”
The report underscored further, “Other cities and counties are also preparing to hold drills that can help improve their capabilities to respond to a contingency.”
Recently US Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Samuel J Paparo warned the Beijing is closely studying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “and learning from it” to see what lessons could be applied to a future theoretical Taiwan invasion.
“China is undoubtedly watching what’s happened in Ukraine, taking notes, and learning from it,” Adm. Paparo said earlier this month, as quoted in regional journal Taiwan Focus.
“And there will be learning and there will be adjustments to the extent that they’re able to learn from it. And they will improve their capabilities based on what they learn at this time,” he added.
Further, he described that he’d be “loath to say or to do anything that would relieve the urgency to prepare, to uphold the international rules-based order and to uphold the U.S.’ commitment for the defence of Taiwan, if there were an effort to unify Taiwan by force.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 19:45 - Taibbi: The Great Billionaire Space Caper
Taibbi: The Great Billionaire Space Caper
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,
Let’s fly the first black woman to the moon, but send the checks to Jeff Bezos! On the congressional hustle that perfectly captures 2022 America…
In a story that shows how hard it is to deter a billionaire ravenous for public money, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post fame appears to have prevailed upon buddies in the Senate to keep alive a childhood dream of not only going to the moon, but getting the public to pay for it. A Bezos company officially lost this moon contract three times in less than a year, but the fourth time’s a charm: thanks to congress, his Jason Voorhees-like determination may be rewarded with a contract worth $6 billion or more.
On March 28th, Joe Biden released his fiscal year 2023 budget, which despite eyebrow-raising changes — in particular, a 10% increase in defense spending — generated few headlines. One of the few items the press did cover was this passage:
The Budget provides $7.5 billion, $1.1 billion above the 2021 enacted level, for Artemis lunar exploration. Artemis would return American astronauts to the Moon as early as 2025, land the first woman and person of color on the Moon…
It was unclear if the budget language was describing one person, or two, or more (headline writers seemed confused on that front as well). Still, the FY 2023 budget merely put into writing what NASA announced last year, and what’s been the buzz on the Hill for a while: that the space agency’s next big goal is to put a black woman on the moon. “The Apollo generation,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in March, “has passed the torch.”
A lofty enough goal, but then there was the fine print. Much as the military once replaced cheap army cafeteria food with Cinnabon franchises and high-cost meals prepared by firms like KBR, and the NIH basically exists to provide free R&D to pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, NASA no longer builds much for itself. Instead, it’s lately become little more than a vehicle for funding the phallic moon race between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos-owned Blue Origin.
The feud between the two billionaires began years ago, when congress funded the solicitation of three private commercial proposals for the next moon landing, including one from SpaceX, one from Blue Origin, and a third from a company called Dynetics located in Senator Richard Shelby’s home state of Alabama. Last April, Musk and SpaceX appeared to come out on top after NASA declared SpaceX the winner of a $2.9 billion contract to build the spacecraft that would deliver the next NASA astronauts to the lunar surface. Bezos’s Blue Origin had submitted a bid roughly twice that size.
When NASA rejected his $5.9 billion bid, Bezos went ape. He fought back in multiple ways. Among the first moves was he and Blue Origin filing a 175-page complaint with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), asserting that NASA had “moved the goalposts at the last minute” by picking just one company’s lunar landing plan. It was expected that NASA would pick two firms, but decided on SpaceX only because of “short funding.” Essentially, Bezos was complaining that he’d submitted a higher bid than he needed to because he expected that NASA would be spending more money. Now that he knew he actually needed to watch costs, he sought a chance to submit a more taxpayer-friendly proposal.
Lest anyone think I’m joking about the phallic aspect of this competition, check out the Twitter response from Musk to Bezos’s GAO complaint:
Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2021
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For years now, Musk and Bezos have provided ample material for America’s fading late-night TV comedy scene with their private space-dong race. When glimpses of Musk’s “Big Fucking Rocket” (BFR) space-tourism vehicle reached the public, Twitter exploded with cheering comments from Musk fans like “It looks like a dick with fins!” and “Chief, that looks like a $500 dildo.”
When Bezos soon after went to the heavens in a private vessel, he did so in a rocket that was 18 meters tall, but somehow looked exactly five and one quarter inches high and appeared to have a metal glans. This prompted an onslaught of abusive tweets, Dr. Evil jokes, and chuckling headlines. (Click on Mashable’s “A small replica of Jeff Bezos’ penis-shaped rocket can be yours for $69” for a very amusing photo.) It was difficult to find TV coverage of the Bezos space jaunt that didn’t involve uncontrolled laughter.
All this was funny, so long as the premise was “Rich guys spending their own money shooting themselves into space in huge overcompensating cylinders.” However, the Artemis project turned the SpaceX-Blue Origin battle on its head. This was not just a war to see who could build the bigger jockstrap, but to see who could get U the Taxpayer to pay for it.
Musk appeared to win, and when Bezos’s GAO complaint failed, he moved on to filing a federal suit to “to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” i.e. to give Bezos the effing contract. However, federal judge Richard Hertling quickly called BS on that and ruled against Bezos last November, seemingly checkmating the diminutive money-devourer.
Bezos went on Twitter to say it wasn’t the ruling he wanted, but that Blue Origin “respects the court’s judgment” and wished “full success” for SpaceX. Of course it later turned out that Bezos had no intention at all of respecting the court’s judgment, which makes it a tad funnier that Musk decided at that point not to meet Bezos on the field of faux-graciousness. He tweeted the following about Hertling’s ruling:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2021
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Having struck out with the GAO and the federal courts, Bezos moved back to the Senate. Washington’s Maria Cantwell, Bezos’s home senator, had by then already introduced an amendment to the bill funding Artemis, essentially asking for a re-think of the decision to go with Musk only. The Amendment may be a museum-worthy effort in the history of woke-washing. Two key passages:
Commercial entities in the United States have made significant investment and progress toward the development of human-class lunar landers…
Maintaining multiple technically-credible providers within NASA commercial programs is a best practice that reduces programmatic risk.
Translation: Bezos has already spent a lot of money trying to get taxpayers to send him to the moon, but since he already lost, let’s fund two moon programs!
An additional subtext: “How will we ever get a black woman to the moon, if we don’t give Bezos billions?”
Saying that “in carrying out the Artemis program, the Administrator should ensure that the entire Artemis program is inclusive and representative of all people of the United States, including women and minorities,” the Amendment language would authorize not just the $5.9 billion Bezos originally bid, but as much as $10 billion in new money for a second moon plan.
Only Bernie Sanders seemed to think it odd that a man who bears a net worth of over $180 billion is working this hard to get the taxpayer to fulfill his childhood space fantasy (Bezos called watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon a “seminal” moment in his life). At the end of last week, Sanders introduced a counter-amendment to remove the “$10 billion bailout” for Bezos’s “space hobby” from the moon bill.
“Bezos has enough money to buy a $500 million yacht,” Sanders said on the Senate floor, showing pictures as he noted that neither Bezos nor Amazon pays much of any federal taxes. He then showed photos of Bezos’s $23 million, 25-bathroom mansion. “Not quite sure you need 25 bathrooms, but that’s not my business,” Sanders quipped.
Sanders is skilled at billionaire-trolling, but the problem is, he’s had too much practice. The effort to snatch back money from Bezos seems a longshot to be successful. The question of whether or not the funds ultimately get appropriated will be resolved behind closed doors, after the current recess in congress, when the bill goes to committee. Anyone want to lay odds on how much House and Senate members end up doling out in private?
Whoring out of NASA to billionaires is serious business. Back in 2015, a bill called the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, passed by unanimous consent, gave private commercial enterprises the ownership rights to celestial bodies discovered through space travel. “A U.S. citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained,” the bill read, “including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell it according to applicable law.”
For this reason, congress appropriating NASA funds to the likes of Musk and Bezos to build long-distance rocketry and landers is not just about symbolic missions, but the space version of the NIH: giving space hobbyists free R&D to become mega-oligarchs via the limitless potential offered by space prospecting. “The first trillionaire there will ever be is the person who exploits the natural resources on asteroids,” is how Neil deGrasse Tyson put it, around the time of the passage of the 2015 act.
The bards of Washington have rarely looked at this angle. Even Bloomberg highlighted “first Moon Trips for women, people of color” and “climate change research” in its recent coverage. Most reports have buried the lede on the Musk-Bezos badger-fight for taxpayer cash under NASA’s new rallying cry, which is essentially to make sure the next glories-of-space movie like First Man doesn’t have to include another “Whitey on the Moon” scene. Whoever comes out of the Artemis capsule first, a primary winner of the mission will be a billionaire with his teeth in your wallet. Maybe two, if congress gets its way.
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Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 19:25 - President Biden Accuses Putin Of "Genocide", Says "Evidence Is Mounting"
President Biden Accuses Putin Of “Genocide”, Says “Evidence Is Mounting”
Following Russian President Putin’s comments that peace talks with Ukraine are at a “dead end,” and denied accusations being responsible for attacks in Mariupol and Bucha, US President Biden took to the stage this afternoon – to explain how he will fix the problem of “Putin’s Price Hike” (which is still not trending). However, it appears the 79 year old veered off script once again with the following comment…
“Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide half a world away.”
President Biden calls the war in Ukraine “genocide.”
“Your ability to fill up your tank, none of it, should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.” pic.twitter.com/lYW7B0xKMB
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 12, 2022
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Last month, Biden accused Putin of being a “war criminal,” but this is the first time he has described the situation as a “genocide” – a term Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has used to describe the situation.
He previously called Putin a “butcher” and called for his removal, saying that “he cannot remain in power,” implicitly calling for regime change.
Biden on Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” pic.twitter.com/atNZtCPvAM
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2022
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But that was immediately walked back by his handlers…
White House official: “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” https://t.co/SGy7zJLydD
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) March 26, 2022
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But unlike that slip, he is not walking it back, but doubling down, telling reporters this evening that:
“Yes, I called it genocide. Because it has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of being able to be Ukrainian.”
He went to say that “the evidence is mounting, it’s no different than it was last week, the more evidence that is coming out of, literally the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine and we’re gonna only learn more and more about the devastation.”
Of course, words matter – just like they did when he called for Putin’s removal – but this time he appears to want to do things legally:
“And we’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies but it sure seems that way to me.”
Biden: I called it genocide because it has become clear that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian pic.twitter.com/h4SBfDQuFW
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 12, 2022
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Not exactly ‘diplomatic’.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 19:06 - Brooklyn Subway Shooter Still At Large, NYPD Identifies Suspect From Credit Card At Scene
Brooklyn Subway Shooter Still At Large, NYPD Identifies Suspect From Credit Card At Scene
Update (1821ET): NYPD is searching for Frank James in connection to Tuesday’s Brooklyn subway shooting.
NYPD News tweeted a picture of the suspect.
This is Frank James. He is a person of interest in the shooting that took place on the N train in Brooklyn Tuesday morning. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call @NYPDTips at 1-800-577-TIPS. pic.twitter.com/vSYb5UIu2k
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 12, 2022
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Police said, “Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call 1-800-577-TIPS.”
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Update (1753ET): CNN’s Pervaiz Shallwani said law enforcement officials have identified “the suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting after finding a credit card at the scene.” He also said the credit card was tied to a rental U-Haul cargo van found this evening.
NEW: Police were able to identify the suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting after finding a credit card at the scene, a credit card that was used to the rent the U-Haul cargo van, two law enforcement sources tell me & @ShimonPro: https://t.co/XCkVRpbrRA
— Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) April 12, 2022
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NYPD found the U-Haul cargo van tied to the suspect.
Here’s chopper video of the @uhaul suspected to be connected to the Brooklyn shooter.
On the side of the van you can see “Allegheny West Moving & Storage.”
More at @NBCPhiladelphia–>https://t.co/8yBphxinNe pic.twitter.com/R8n4TuewzJ
— Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) April 12, 2022
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Here’s a summary of today’s chaotic events at a subway station in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn that began around 0830 ET (courtesy of The Guardian):
*The gunman in today’s attack remains at large, with New York mayor Eric Adams noting that police will likely release a suspect ID during another press briefing later today.
*Joe Biden commented on the Brooklyn subway shooting, saying “we’re not letting up until we find the perpetrator,” and shouting out first responders and civilians who helped the injured this morning.
*More than 20 people were injured during today’s attack, including 10 who were shot and five who are in critical, but stable, condition. Earlier today, the total was reported as 13 people injured with no numbers on how many had sustained gun shot wounds.
*The weapon the suspect used to shoot multiple people on a subway train and platform earlier on Tuesday in Brooklyn may have been recovered at the scene by law enforcement, CNN is reporting.
*New York Police Department police commissioner Keechant Sewell described the suspect as a 5ft 5in-tall Black man with a heavy build, wearing a green construction-type vest and a hooded sweatshirt.
* * *
Update (1528ET): AP News reports NYPD is “scouring the city for the shooter and a U-Haul truck with Arizona license plates.”
“Police sources tell CBS2 the NYPD is searching for a U-Haul van with Arizona plates #AL31408 in connection with the shooting.”
@WCBSTV https://t.co/Ha76gj2wz3
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) April 12, 2022
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The suspect (a Black male) remains at large.
We need the public’s help apprehending the individual responsible for shooting multiple people today on the subway in #Brooklyn. The suspect is a Black male, who was wearing a green construction vest & a gray hooded sweatshirt. Call @NYPDTips at #800577TIPS with any information. pic.twitter.com/d2wTfNbMDD
— Commissioner Sewell (@NYPDPC) April 12, 2022
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Update (1241ET): Updates from the press conference on the Brooklyn subway shooting:
- 16 people were treated for injuries
- 10 have gunshot wounds
- 5 people are in critical condition
The suspect is a 5’5″ tall Black male with a heavy build, wearing a green construction-type vest and a gray hooded sweatshirt.
NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said the incident occurred around 0830 ET on the Manhattan-bound N-train when “an individual on that train donned what appeared to be a gas mask. He then took a canister out of his bag and opened it. The train at that time began to fill with smoke.”
Sewell said the suspect then “opened fire, striking multiple people on the subway and in the platform.”
NYPD says the suspect is still on the run. Police aren’t investigating the incident as an act of terrorism at this time.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “this is an active-shooter situation right now.”
* * *
Update (1054ET): White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted President Biden has been briefed on the latest developments in Brooklyn’s shooting incident.
@POTUS has been briefed on the latest developments regarding the New York City subway shooting. White House senior staff are in touch with Mayor Adams and Police Commissioner Sewell to offer any assistance as needed.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) April 12, 2022
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has also been briefed on the incident.
@SecMayorkas has been briefed on the current situation in Brooklyn and is closely following ongoing developments. @DHSgov will continue to support @NYPDnews, other local and state officials, and the people of New York in any way needed.
— Marsha (Catron) Espinosa (@MCatronDHS) April 12, 2022
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Update (1004ET): The ATF has arrived on the scene of the shooting incident in Brooklyn. The agency will be reviewing shell casings to determine what type of weapon was used.
.@ATFNewYork is on scene of the shooting incident in Brooklyn assisting @NYPDnews. pic.twitter.com/GoMXdKspIK
— ATF HQ (@ATFHQ) April 12, 2022
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Here’s the location of the incident.
* * *
Update (0958ET): NBC News reports the suspect is a Black male, 5-foot-5 and 175 to 180 pounds wearing an orange construction vest and gas mask. A massive manhunt is on the way.
* * *
Update (0953ET): NBC News reports at least 13 were injured in the Brooklyn subway shooting incident. The media outlet said surrounding schools are on lockdown as NYPD searches for the suspect.
NBC said the suspect used a “smoke gernade” then started shooting.
* * *
At least six people have been shot, and multiple explosives were found at a Brooklyn subway station during the Tuesday morning rush hour.
NBC New York reports the incident occurred around 0830 ET as police received reports of shots fired in Sunset Park, near Fourth Avenue and 36th Street.
Several law enforcement sources told NBC New York that the suspect was “dressed in clothing that resembles those worn by MTA workers threw some device and opened fire.”
Twitter users posted scenes of the gruesome incident.
Multiple people shot at 36 street station by two people in #sunsetpark. All are currently being transported to the hospital #NewYork #Brooklyn pic.twitter.com/3Va2iXf0JQ
— Derek French Photo (@derekcfrench) April 12, 2022
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⚡️⚡️According to eyewitnesses, two people could have arranged shooting in the subway, one was dressed in the uniform of a subway employee. According to the American media, many non-detonating explosive devices were found at the scene. 👉 Ax Live #Ukraine #UkraineWar #Russia pic.twitter.com/P6dtoOrrqM
— Ukraine War SitRep 🇺🇦 (@UKRWarSitRep) April 12, 2022
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🚨 Breaking 🚨 #Brooklyn subway shooting pic.twitter.com/0J2kcy0rXP
— Malcom Boyce (@MeetMalcom) April 12, 2022
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People escape the carriage with gasmask-wearing gunman in NY subway pic.twitter.com/H0uUB1g6az
— RT (@RT_com) April 12, 2022
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New York City Fire Department said they found “several undetonated devices.”
New York City Fire Department says they found “several undetonated devices” as well as multiple shooting victims at this scene: https://t.co/poGYkU6Z4I
— Anders Hagstrom (@Hagstrom_Anders) April 12, 2022
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Some said they survived a “mass shooting incident.”
ABC7 New York said a manhunt is underway for a “gunman described as wearing a gas mask and an orange construction vest.”
*Developing
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/12/2022 – 18:53
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