Saturday, May 4, 2024
More
    Home Blog

    Israel-Hamas War and Gaza News: Live Updates

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Israel-Hamas War and Gaza News: Live Updates

    Turkey’s decision to suspend trade with Israel underscores the rising global pressure to wind down the war in Gaza, even as Israel’s leaders insist that they will not end the campaign until Hamas’s rule in the enclave has been eradicated.

    Israel’s international isolation has mounted as its devastating military offensive in Gaza continues, with little end in sight. Some countries have downgraded or cut ties with Israel. Close partners like the United States, Britain and Germany, while remaining strongly supportive of Israel, have become more openly critical of its conduct and of restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza.

    Colombia this week became the second South American nation to break off ties with Israel, after Bolivia. On the day that Bolivia made its announcement, Colombia and Chile both said that they were recalling their ambassadors to Israel, and Honduras followed suit within days. Belize also cut diplomatic ties with Israel that month.

    Arab states like Jordan and Bahrain, with whom Israel cooperates closely on security, have also recalled their ambassadors amid public outcry over the rising death toll in Gaza. The Israeli offensive has also hampered U.S.-led efforts to forge an agreement to normalize diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel hoped would be a major part of his legacy.

    The Biden administration, Israel’s most important ally, has shown no sign of pulling back military support, even as it warns against an Israeli invasion of Rafah, in southern Gaza, where more than a million people are sheltering. And Israel won a reprieve this week when a United Nations court declined to order Germany, Israel’s second-biggest supplier of weapons, after the United States, to suspend those arms sales.

    Still, the moves by Turkey and others highlight how the war in Gaza, now nearly seven months old, is exacting a growing toll on Israel’s global standing.

    Israel and Turkey had enjoyed a rapprochement in recent years. In 2022, the two countries announced that they would restore full diplomatic ties. They already were close trading partners, with Turkey sending roughly $4.6 billion in exports to Israel in 2023, according to Israeli government statistics.

    Just a few weeks before Hamas’s attack against Israel on Oct. 7, Mr. Netanyahu and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met for the first time, in New York during the United Nations General Assembly meeting. The two leaders agreed to visit each other’s countries, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said at the time.

    Now, however, hopes for warmer relations appear to have been dashed. After the Hamas-led assault on Israel, Mr. Erdogan quickly took a strong rhetorical tack in favor of the Palestinian armed group, which he called “an organization of liberation”; he met with Hamas leaders in late April, drawing further Israeli ire.

    On Friday, Mr. Erdogan said the decision to suspend trade was an attempt to pressure Israel into reaching a cease-fire with Hamas. Both Israel and mediators like Qatar, Egypt and the United States are still awaiting Hamas’s response to a truce proposal presented this week. U.S. officials, including William J. Burns, the C.I.A. chief, who was in Cairo on Friday for talks, have blamed Hamas for the failure to reach a deal.

    “We have one single goal, to force the Netanyahu administration which got out of control with the West’s unconditional military and diplomatic support, to a cease-fire,” Mr. Erdogan said in an address in Ankara on Friday. “Once the cease-fire is announced and adequate humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza, that goal would be reached.”

    The decision to shut down imports and exports with Israel is highly unusual for Mr. Erdogan, who has generally allowed close economic ties to flourish in the shadow of high political tension, said Gallia Lindenstrauss, an expert on Turkey’s foreign policy at the Institute for National Security Studies think tank in Tel Aviv.

    Mr. Erdogan likely hoped to leverage the issue to stave off growing domestic frustration with his two-decade-long rule, as opposition leaders won a string of municipalities during local elections earlier this year, Ms. Lindenstrauss said. But there was also an attempt “to exploit Israel’s weakness, and specifically Netanyahu’s weakness, to continue to weaken Israel and gain regional influence,” she added.

    Many of Israel’s closer allies are now calling for a cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. In March, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

    The war has also prompted renewed calls by some countries to recognize a Palestinian state, a move that is largely symbolic but strongly opposed by Mr. Netanyahu. Spain and Ireland, among other European nations, have said that they are working toward recognizing a state of Palestine.

    Washington has long said that while it backs the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state, any recognition should come after negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

    The shifting tone reflects the war’s tremendous cost for Palestinians. Over the past seven months, the war has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to local health officials. Israel’s offensive followed the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 that left about 1,200 dead and another 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.

    — Aaron Boxerman and Gulsin Harman

    What ‘Starfield’ Needs To Launch Alongside Its ‘Shattered Space’ Expansion

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    What ‘Starfield’ Needs To Launch Alongside Its ‘Shattered Space’ Expansion

    Starfield has just launched a new patch into its beta that adds some legitimately useful quality of life elements, difficulty toggling, ship decoration, inventory tabs, actual city and surface maps. Later, it will add vehicles. But I’m most excited about this new update, which they’re calling Starfield: Visions:

    • Discover a more varied, more diverse universe in the Visions update. Introducing new planetary biomes, more colorful worlds, new fauna and flora, archaeology, salvaging, and much more…
    • New anomalous planet biomes create a weirder, more diverse universe to explore.
    • Bizarre creatures have evolved on anomalous planets, bringing new life and movement to these eerie landscapes.
    • The universe has become more alien, vibrant and exciting to explore. New shades of sky and grass enable more unique worlds and a more diverse set of science fiction aesthetics.
    • New types of water create stranger worlds to be discovered both above and below the surface.
    • Atmospherics and skies have been improved and stormy weather conditions can now produce rainbows in planetary atmospheres.
    • Exotic planets can be searched to discover mysterious artifacts which can be claimed as trophies. These otherworldly objects can be rehoused in habitable bases to create a showcase of your voyages across the universe.
    • With more varied planets come more reasons to explore. Unleash your inner archeologist and search the galaxy for planets containing the ancient bones of alien lifeforms. Complete, intact skeletons are particularly rare and especially valuable.

    Oh I’m sorry, that was a typo. I mean to say that was the No Man’s Sky Visions update, back from November 2018. But the point I’m trying to make is well, yeah, other than new missions and an expansion storyline, I think something like this is what Starfield needs the most.

    No Man’s Sky has done update after update building out the game, but this is one that was attempting to get it back to the original missions of exploring cool planets that at launch, were pretty barren and often not very cool at all.

    Starfield is at least ahead of where No Man’s Sky was at launch in this department as I think it often does have beautiful landscapes, but I think it would benefit from significant overhauls to its procedural generation systems to make these planets more interesting to explore, and give players a reason to go places they wouldn’t otherwise to find things they can’t predict, rather than landing anywhere and finding the same eight types of civilian or pirate bases spaced 500 meters apart.

    The ultimate goal of Starfield, both conceptually from Bethesda and in-game when you join Constellation, is exploring the universe. But in doing so, you will find that probably 950 of Starfield’s promised 1,000 planets contain nothing of note, or at least nothing you haven’t seen before a dozen times already by the endgame. Every so often I’d find one thing maybe I didn’t see previously, but those instances became few and far between over time.

    Starfield needs more interesting planets, both in terms of the visuals and biomes, but weather, flora, fauna and of course, POIs that need to be well beyond what it has now rather than as repetitive as they can be. I also like the NMS idea of rare trophies or relics to find as you explore, as the game doesn’t have anything crazily “rare” like that, and it would fit with base/ship decoration well.

    I think at least in this specific area following No Man’s Sky, with a budget 10x higher at least, is a good plan. I mean hell, they’re already doing the No Man’s Sky land vehicle update, right?

    Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.

    Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.

    New Sexual Assault Allegations in Doc ‘Spacey Unmasked’

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    New Sexual Assault Allegations in Doc ‘Spacey Unmasked’
    Kevin Spacey in July 2023 after being cleared of all sexual assault charges brought by men during his time as artistic director of The Old Vic Theatre in London.

    Kevin Spacey


    Courtesy of Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

    “I felt like I was staring at a soulless monster,” Daniel, an actor, says of his alleged sexual assault by Kevin Spacey in a new Channel 4 documentary promising a “forensic look” at the Oscar winner’s rise to stardom and his alleged sexual misconduct.

    Spacey Unmasked features 10 men, Daniel among them, to tell their stories of alleged abuse at the hands of Spacey. None of them were involved in the London trial that saw the actor acquitted of nine charges in July 2023, and all but one have never spoken out before. The charges stemmed from alleged acts that occurred from 2001 to 2013; Spacey was artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre from 2004 until 2015.

    In between clips of prolific award wins and talk-show wisecracks, Spacey Unmasked features the testimonies of a group of men — identified by their first names only — that span five decades, ranging from a teenage Spacey at high school to the height of his House of Cards fame, as well as his time at the Old Vic.

    Many of the victims claim to have been starstruck by Spacey, bowled over by his promise to aid them in their careers, only to soon realize it was at the cost of exchanging alleged “sexual favors,” often while on set as they claim he “kidnapped” crewmembers to “run lines.”

    The two-part doc, directed and produced by Katherine Haywood and executive produced by Dorothy Byrne and Mike Lerner, is set to premiere in the U.K. on May 6 and 7. Its U.S. air dates on Max and Investigation Discovery will be announced next week. Roast Beef Productions produced in association with All3Media International, which is handling international sales of the documentary.

    On Thursday, the actor pushed back against the doc, taking to X, formerly Twitter, to deny the allegations put forward in the documentary and on the British broadcaster’s program. “I will not sit back and be attacked by a dying network’s one-sided ‘documentary’ about me in their desperate attempt for ratings,” he wrote in a long thread. “There’s a proper channel to handle allegations against me and it’s not Channel 4. Each time I have been given the time and a proper forum to defend myself, the allegations have failed under scrutiny and I have been exonerated.”

    The Oscar winner accused the channel of giving him too short a window to respond to the statements made in the program.

    “Over the last week, I have repeatedly requested that @Channel4 afford me more than 7 days to respond to allegations made against me dating back 48 years and provide me with sufficient details to investigate these matters. Channel 4 has refused on the basis that they feel that asking for a response in 7 days to new, anonymized and non-specific allegations is a ‘fair opportunity’ for me to refute any allegations made against me,” he continued, before promising a fuller response to the documentary from his X account this weekend. “Channel 4 and @RoastBeef TV may find themselves ‘speechless,’ but I no longer will be.”

    A Channel 4 statement given to The Hollywood Reporter in response to Spacey’s post reads: “Kevin Spacey has been given sufficient opportunity to respond.”

    In Spacey Unmasked, one actor, Scott, tells viewers: “If you don’t pay the toll in sexual favors, you’ll have a decent career, but you won’t see your name in lights.”

    Spacey’s brother, Randy, is also interviewed. He says in the doc that he was sexually abused by their father, who held “Nazi meetings” at their family home as a teenager. His brother Kevin was not abused to his knowledge — though that doesn’t mean there wasn’t “psychological trauma,” Randy adds.

    The allegations in Spacey Unmasked also include that the star pushed his groin into the face of an Old Vic worker while serving as the venue’s director and that he masturbated in front of an aspiring actor as they watched Saving Private Ryan in a public theater, before trying to move the victim’s hand to join in.

    “I felt his whole groin in my face… I could smell him,” Danny, an Old Vic staff member from 2007 until 2008, says. “I could feel him getting pleasure (from) it… It was all about, ‘I can do this, I can do this to you. I’m Kevin Spacey.’”

    An ex-marine said that Spacey forced himself onto him while at a party of Bruce Willis’, while many of those interviewed suggested that the star allegedly enjoyed preying on straight men, “enjoying the chase” of trying to “flip” them. “Everybody knows: if you don’t want to go home with Kevin, don’t be the last guy in the bar with him,” Jesse, an ex-colleague of Spacey’s, says in the doc.

    The documentary attempts to highlight the push-and-pull of the victims’ testimonies and their guilt for not uncovering Spacey’s alleged behavior sooner. Many of them say they felt as though reporting Spacey, who notably declined to talk about his sexuality in the press before the accusations against him surfaced, would be tantamount to outing him. (Upon a 2017 allegation made by fellow actor Anthony Rapp in 2017 that Spacey molested Rapp after a party in 1986, Spacey came out as gay.)

    The documentary contributors voice concern over the impact it would have on their own careers as Spacey continually pledged to help budding actors and crew members with making it big. “He just rips out his d*** and shoves his tongue in my mouth,” Jesse, a crew member on the 1999 film The Big Kahuna, recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘Okay, so that’s how Hollywood is?’”

    The men in the doc also comment on Spacey’s tenacity and boldness. Ruiari, an actor at the Old Vic in 2013, says that he was assaulted by the actor who turned him away from photographers at an afterparty in the British capital. Spacey, like a “shark”, then “moved into press mode” for the cameras, he claims.

    Spacey Unmasked airs on Channel 4 May 6 and 7 at 9 p.m. local time.

    Missouri Breaks homestead monument to harsh lifestyle

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Missouri Breaks homestead monument to harsh lifestyle

    With seven children in tow, Pearl and Josie Gilmore filed for a 624-acre homestead in a remote section of the Missouri Breaks, south of Havre, in 1934.

    Testaments to their tenacity to settle on the dry sagebrush uplands can still be found in the remains of an old corral, simple log home, reservoir that filled a cistern and an old root cellar that served as their home until the log structure was built.

    The Gilmore cabin, also called Gilmore cow camp, will be more easily accessible to the public because the Bureau of Land Management has decided to open a half-mile route into the Bullwhacker region in the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.

    “The Bullwhacker area of the monument contains some of the wildest country of all the Great Plains, as well as important wildlife habitat,” according to the 2001 presidential proclamation that established the area. “During the stress-inducing winter months, mule deer and elk move up the area from the river, and antelope and sage grouse move down to the area from the benchlands. The heads of coulees and breaks also contain archeological and historical sites, from teepee rings and remnants of historic trails to abandoned homesteads and lookout sites used by Meriwether Lewis.”

    People are also reading…

    The cabin is located about 4.5 miles north of the Missouri River and 2 miles west of Cow Creek.

    “The Missouri Breaks is a zone of steeply dissected canyons, coulees, ridges and ridge spurs between the river and upland plains,” the BLM noted.

    “The site lies on the main road to Gist Bottom, on the Missouri. You will need a good map to find it.”







    The Gilmore cabin was finished in the 1940s, just after the end of the homesteading era in Montana. It is located in the Missouri Breaks, north of the river and west of Cow Creek.




    Family history

    Pearl Sanford Gilmore was born in Missouri, moving to Helena with his family at age 17. His wife, Josie May Good, was born in 1896 in Rosalia, Washington. That same year her family moved to central Montana. The couple were married in Lewistown in 1907.

    The Gilmores sought land in the Missouri Breaks under the 1916 Stock-Raising Homestead Act. The act granted settlers a full section of nonirrigable land, or its equivalent, for ranching on lands deemed of no value except for livestock grazing.

    The Gilmores ran about 20 head of cattle and raised a garden while the older sons worked at surrounding homesteads, according to a history compiled by the BLM. It took until 1941 for the cabin, which still stands, to be finished. It was built with hand tools.

    “Surprisingly, few nails were used to construct the buildings and structures,” the BLM noted, although some were built “slapdash,” others were carefully crafted with tenon and tongue-in-grove joints.

    The lifestyle on such parcels was sparse. According to the BLM, “The only running water that the house has ever had was when it rained.” Between the reservoir that fed the cistern there were “several screens in the trough to catch the mice and other critters that would float down from the reservoir.”

    Locals referred to the area as the Bad Lands. Details of the settlers can be unearthed in articles from The Chinook Opinion, under the heading Bad Land Briefs. In a Dec. 17, 1942, column, the writer of the briefs talked about decorating the log Gist school with “fur (sic) boughs” and food from the Welfare Office arriving to provide “added vitamins” to increase the schoolchildren’s pep.

    It also noted that Pearl had visited Chinook to pay his taxes and “make Christmas purchases.” It took his neighbor three days to make the trip back from Chinook, due to the deep snow drifts that made the route nearly impassable.

    Growing up on a homestead in Saskatchewan, Canada, author Wallace Stegner wrote about the sparse lifestyle of these late-arriving pioneers, the often bleak environment and weather conditions that would have applied to northern Montana as well.

    “You don’t get out of the wind, but learn to lean and squint against it,” he wrote in the book “Wolf Willow.” “You don’t escape sky and sun, but wear them in your eyeballs and on your back. You become acutely aware of yourself. The world is very large, the sky even larger, and you are very small.”







    Zane Fulbright

    Zane Fulbright, manager of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, gives BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning a tour of the visitor center in Fort Benton in 2023.



    Brett French



    Exchanging hands

    In 1941, the Gilmore’s daughter, Thelma, was granted the patent to the land. Five years earlier, in 1936, she had married Arthur Campbell whose family had homesteaded in the nearby Bears Paw Mountains.

    Campbell enlisted in the Army during World War II, serving in the Pacific. His marriage to Thelma didn’t survive the war and she sold the property to her brother, Kenneth Gilmore, in 1946 for $500. Two years later, Kenneth sold out to his neighbor, Leo Gist. The Gist family lived in the log house for two years. Afterward, it was used seasonally as a cow camp and to house hunters.

    In an account provided to the BLM by Jack Gist, he said, “People in this area lived the frontier life much later than the rest of the country,” surviving with no running water or electricity.

    After passing through a few more hands, the land was deeded to the BLM in 1983 as part of a land exchange.

    Historic relevance

    The Gilmores moved to Chinook in 1947 where Pearl bought an apartment building. He died in 1977 at the age of 92. Josie May oversaw the apartments until 1979. She died in 1986 at the age of 94. By then, her obituary listed 22 grandchildren, 44 great-grandchildren and 12 great-great-grandchildren.

    In 2012, the BLM did some restoration work to the cabin with an eye to possibly renting it out. That never came to fruition, but the cabin continues to be used by campers and hunters who should marvel at the tough people who attempted to carve out a life on the harsh landscape.

    “The homesteads tell the story of isolation — it often could take three days or more to get to a community (with a post office or store) — and weather could trap people in their homes,” said Zane Fulbright, in a 2012 “The River Press” article.

    “Having the homesteads on the ground tells what life was like back then,” added Fulbright, who now manages the monument and signed off on the decision to allow public motorized access into the region.

    The BLM has classified the Gilmore cabin as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places due to its association with the settlement of Montana during the homestead era – 1900 to 1937.

    The building is “sufficiently intact to clearly convey the notion that this is a hardscrabble Missouri Breaks homestead associated with raising livestock,” the agency noted.

    Lakers fire coach Darvin Ham after 2 seasons, early playoff exit: Sources

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Lakers fire coach Darvin Ham after 2 seasons, early playoff exit: Sources

    By Shams Charania, Jovan Buha and Jenna West

    The Los Angeles Lakers fired coach Darvin Ham after his second season with the team, which ended Monday in a first-round playoff exit with a loss to the Denver Nuggets, the organization announced on Friday. Sources briefed on the matter say that an extensive search will commence soon, with candidates such as Mike Budenholzer, Kenny Atkinson, JJ Redick and, if he becomes available, Ty Lue among others.

    Rumors over Ham’s potential firing intensified deep into the Lakers’ season and seemed inevitable when they only won one game in their best-of-seven playoff series against the Nuggets. The lowest moment came for the Lakers when they blew a 20-point second-half lead in Game 2 of the series.

    After a successful first year as coach in which he showed signs as a leader, the tide turned for Ham this season. There was tremendous respect for Ham as a person, and players appreciated his pro career and time as an assistant coach in Atlanta and Milwaukee. But, players struggled with a perceived absence of effective direction from the coaching staff.

    After Game 2 against the Nuggets, Lakers forward Anthony Davis said, “We have stretches where we don’t know what we’re doing on both ends of the floor.”

    GO DEEPER

    Lakers at a crossroads: What went wrong, what’s next with LeBron James, Darvin Ham

    Ham responded at practice two days later and defended his coaching decisions and staff.

    “I don’t think this was (about) not being organized,” Ham said. “I think I have incredible knowledge and focus all along my staff. We pride ourselves — whether it’s practice, shootarounds, film sessions, games, everything — we pride ourselves on being highly efficient and organized.

    “I just chalk that up to being frustrated. It’s an emotional game, with the way it ended and all of that. But I would agree to disagree on that one.”

    During Ham’s two-year tenure, the Lakers went 90-74 in the regular season and 9-12 in the postseason. The Nuggets also ended the Lakers’ 2022-23 season with a four-game sweep in the Western Conference finals.

    The Lakers hired Ham in May 2022 after he started his NBA coaching career with the franchise as an assistant from 2011 to 2013. Ham signed a four-year deal in the range of $5 million per season, so the team will assume the remainder of his contract after firing him.

    Ham also worked as an assistant coach with the Atlanta Hawks (2013-18) and Milwaukee Bucks (2018-22) after playing in the NBA from 1996 to 2005. He won an NBA championship coming off the bench for the Detroit Pistons in 2004 and as an assistant coach with the Bucks in 2021.

    This story will be updated.

    Required reading

    (Photo: Ron Chenoy / USA Today)

    Did the James Webb Space Telescope really find life beyond Earth? Scientists aren’t so sure

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Did the James Webb Space Telescope really find life beyond Earth? Scientists aren’t so sure

    Recent reports of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detecting signs of life of a distant planet outside the solar system are, unfortunately, somewhat premature. That’s the conclusion of research conducted by scientists from the University of California Riverside (UCR). 

    While likely to disappoint all of us eager for the confirmation of extraterrestrial life, however, it doesn’t mean the JWST won’t find traces of life in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet,” in the future.

    Colorectal Cancer Screening Interval Could Be Extended

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Colorectal Cancer Screening Interval Could Be Extended
    Credit: luismmolina/Getty Images

    Colonoscopy screening intervals could be extended for people without a family history of colorectal cancer (CRC), research suggests, allowing them to avoid unnecessary invasive examinations.

    The decade-long interval between screenings could potentially be extended to 15 years for those whose first colonoscopy is negative for the cancer, without resulting in major adverse consequences.

    The study, published in JAMA Oncology, adds to an evolving body of evidence that supports extending the historical 10-year screening interval for individuals at average CRC risk.

    ‘This study provides evidence for recommending a longer colonoscopy screening interval than what is currently recommended in most guidelines for populations with no familial risk of CRC,” report Mahdi Fallah, PhD, from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, and colleagues.

    CRC is the third most common cancer and second most common cause of cancer deaths in the world.

    Most colorectal cancer screening guidelines currently endorse a 10-year interval a colonoscopy with no abnormal findings, based on a consensus on the time frame for a benign tumor to transform into carcinoma.

    Noting that emerging evidence suggests this could be extended, the researchers studied the world’s largest complete nationwide family cancer dataset.

    Specifically, the team studied information on more than 110,000 people in Sweden with no family history of CRC and negative results on their first colonoscopy at age 45 to 69 years.

    A negative finding was defined as a first colonoscopy without a diagnosis of colorectal polyp, adenoma, carcinoma in situ, or colorectal cancer before or within 6 months after screening.

    These participants were compared with nearly two million matched control individuals who either did not have a colonoscopy during the follow-up or underwent colonoscopy that resulted in a CRC diagnosis.

    During a maximum of 29 years of follow-up, there were 484 incident cases of CRC and 112 CRC deaths among the group with negative colonoscopy findings, compared with figures of 21,778 CRC cases and 552 CRC deaths in the control group.

    Up to 15 years after a first colonoscopy that had negative results, the risks of CRC and CRC death remained lower than among control individuals.

    The 10-year cumulative risk of CRC by year 15 among participants with a first negative colonoscopy was 72% that of control individuals. For death from CRC, the 10-year cumulative risk was 55% that of the control group.

    Extending the screening interval from 10 to 15 years would miss only an estimated 2.4 additional CRC cases and 1.4 additional CRC deaths per 1000 individuals would occur, while potentially avoiding one colonoscopy per lifetime for each individual.

    Increasing the screening interval from 15 to 16 years, or even 20 years, did not avoid colonoscopies. In addition, it had the potential to increase harm, with missed invasive CRC cases rising from 2 to 4–12 cases per 1000 individuals, and CRC-specific deaths rising from 1 to 2–4 deaths per 1000 individuals.

    In an accompanying Comment article, Rashid Lui and Andrew Chan, PhD, both from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, say the findings question the “magic number” of 10 years.

    “Taken together, these data suggest that 15 years may be the optimal screening interval after a colonoscopy with negative results,” they write.

    However, Lui and Chan note that the study based on data collected in European populations.

    “Validation of these results in other settings is critical to generalize these findings globally, including parts of the world, such as Asia, in which widespread CRC screening has begun more recently,” they maintain.

    “Not only is it possible that the timing of the adenoma-carcinoma sequence may differ in non-European populations, but variation in the background incidence of CRC will significantly impact the number of incident CRCs prevented associated with a given screening interval.”

    Coinbase revenue soars by 72% to $1.6 billion, smashing analysts’ predictions

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Coinbase revenue soars by 72% to $1.6 billion, smashing analysts’ predictions

    The largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange posted first-quarter revenue of $1.6 billion, a 72% increase quarter on quarter. Reported net income for Coinbase was $1.18 billion (or $4.40 per share) and was fueled by a boost in transactions, thanks to the wider crypto market’s upswing, and by a favorable change to crypto accounting rules.

    Consumer transaction revenue doubled from the previous quarter, reaching $935.2 million, and volume was up over 93%, to $56 billion. Meanwhile, institutional trading saw even greater increases, with revenue up 133% from the previous quarter, to $85.4 million, and more than doubling in volume to $256 billion. Bitcoin made up a third of both consumer and institutional transactions.

    The figures, according to MSNBC, wildly beat analysts’ predictions of $1.34 billion in revenue and net income of $1.09 per share. Shares were down slightly in after-hours trading after gaining almost 9% to nearly $229 earlier on Thursday. A year ago, they traded for barely $51.

    To put the earnings into greater perspective, during the first quarter of last year, the company reported losses of $78.9 million (or 34 cents a share). Moreover, this Q1, Coinbase’s EBITDA(earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) was $1 billion—a number greater than all of last year. While the overall quarterly results were very strong, the outsize revenue figures was boosted by a one-time $737 million paper gain that came about because new accounting rules let crypto firms record increases in crypto prices to their balance sheet.

    “We made meaningful progress against our 2024 priorities of driving revenue, utility, and regulatory clarity,” the company wrote in a letter to shareholders that accompanied the quarterly report. “Our market share in U.S. spot and derivatives increased, we reached all-time highs on Coinbase Prime, and USDC market capitalization increased.”

    Following its launch in August, Base, the company’s Ethereum layer-2 chain from which Coinbase collects fees, brought in $56.1 million. It also saw twice as many transactions as Ethereum, and developer activity on the network was up by 800%. That same month, Coinbase also announced it was getting a minority stake in Circle, the issuer of stablecoin USDC, which grew by 30% in market capitalization in Q1. As a result, Coinbase’s subscriptions and services revenue were up by a third, which included a 15% increase in stablecoin revenue.

    While Coinbase may have diversified its revenue streams with Base and USDC, most of the recent gains are the result of favorable market conditions. For instance, during this quarter, the price of Bitcoin increased by 57%, reaching an all-time high of $73,000, owing to more than $50 billion entering 10 spot exchange-traded funds that were approved on Jan. 11 by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    However, the company’s transaction expenses grew by 73%, to $217 million. Looking forward to Q2, the company estimates its overall expenses to be as high as $890 million, driven primarily by the elevated expenses associated with higher trading volumes, such as customer support and infrastructure costs, the company said in the report.

    Former Conservative chair blasts ‘gutter politics’ of Tory London mayoral candidate Susan Hall

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Former Conservative chair blasts ‘gutter politics’ of Tory London mayoral candidate Susan Hall

    A former Tory cabinet minister has accused the Conservative mayoral candidate for London of “gutter politics” following her controversial campaign.

    Former Conservative party chair and peer Sayeeda Warsi criticised mayoral candidate Susan Hall, who has been acccused of divisive politics and Islamophobia.

    Baroness Warsi – who served as Tory chair between 2010 and 2012 – said on X/Twitter: “Why is it that with every London Mayoral election we manage to find a candidate worse than the last and manage to sink that little bit more into gutter politics.

    “Look @andy4wm [Tory West Midlands mayor Andy Street] and learn @Conservatives – how inclusive and decent politics can be done. Be more #Street and less #Susan.”

    Mr Street’s mayorality is on a knife-edge as voters in the West Midlands went to the polls on Thursday.

    With the results of key mayoral contests yet to be declared, one Tory MP told The Independent that a move against Mr Sunak is “likely” if either Mr Street or Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen lose their jobs.

    Speaking on his Political Currency podcast, former chancellor George Osborne said: “If Andy Street loses in the West Midlands, that’s pretty bad …[but] If Ben Houchen loses it will be armageddon – because at that point, people will say, ‘We are absolutely headed now for a massive landslide defeat’.”

    Baroness Warsi has slammed the Tory candidate for London mayor (PA Archive)

    Though it is widely expected that incumbent Labour mayor for London Sadiq Khan will keep his seat, some are anticipating the vote to be tighter than previously thought.

    Conservative officials think Ms Hall has a chance of beating Mr Khan, despite a controversial campaign filled with blunders and accusations of islamophobia and racism.

    Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting provoked ire when he said that a win for Susan Hall and the Conservatives is “a win for racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes the world over.”

    Mr Streeting was referencing a Ms Hall, joining a Facebook group which contained Islamophobic hate speech and abusive comments about her opponent.

    Baroness Warsi has been a outspoken critic of the Conservative’s party’s approach to tackling Islamophobia, having previously compared it to being in an “abusive relationship”.

    Her comments come as Rishi Sunak refused to say whether or not he would vote for Susan Hall in the mayoral election.

    A Conservative Party spokesman insisted the prime minister “has voted”, but declined to say where he voted, at what time, or if he had done so in person or by post. A Labour source said told the Mirror: “Is the Conservative candidate so toxic that even their own leader doesn’t want to admit he voted for her?”

    Fed Balance Sheet QT: -$1.60 Trillion from Peak, to $7.36 Trillion, Lowest since December 2020

    Peter Watson
    -
    0
    Fed Balance Sheet QT: -$1.60 Trillion from Peak, to $7.36 Trillion, Lowest since December 2020

    Quantitative Tightening has removed 38% of Treasury securities and 27% of MBS that pandemic QE had added.

    By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

    Total assets on the Fed’s balance sheet fell by $77 billion in April, to $7.36 trillion, the lowest since December 2020, according to the Fed’s weekly balance sheet today. Since the end of QE in April 2022, the Fed has shed $1.60 trillion.

    After months of talking about it, the Fed has now clarified officially when, how, and by how much it will slow QT. They’re trying to get the balance sheet down as far as possible without blowing anything up, and easy will do it, that’s the hope.

    • Starts in June
    • Cap for Treasury runoff reduced to $25 billion from $60 billion
    • Cap for MBS runoff unchanged at $35 billion
    • If MBS run off faster than $35 billion a month, then the excess will be replaced with Treasury securities, and not MBS.
    • MBS to essentially vanish from the balance sheet over the “longer term.”

    QT by category.

    Treasury securities: -$57 billion in April, -$1.25 trillion from peak in June 2022, to $4.52 trillion, the lowest since October 2020.

    The Fed has now shed 38% of the $3.27 trillion in Treasury securities that it had added during pandemic QE.

    Treasury notes (2- to 10-year securities) and Treasury bonds (20- & 30-year securities) “roll off” the balance sheet mid-month and at the end of the month when they mature and the Fed gets paid face value. The roll-off is capped at $60 billion per month, and about that much has been rolling off, minus the inflation protection the Fed earns on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) which is added to the principal of the TIPS.

    Treasury bills. Unchanged in April at $195 billion. These securities with terms of up to 1 year are included in the $4.52 trillion of Treasury securities on the Fed’s balance sheet. But they play a special role in QT.

    The Fed lets them roll off (doesn’t replace them when they mature) only if not enough longer-term Treasury securities mature to get to the $60-billion monthly cap. This allowed the Fed shed about $60 billion in Treasury securities every month.

    From March 2020 through the ramp-up of QT, the Fed held $326 billion in T-bills that it constantly replaced as they matured (flat line in the chart below).

    The slower QT starting in June will follow the same principle with T-bills. But the first month with a Treasury roll-off below the new cap of $25 billion is September 2025 ($17 billion). So T-bills will stay on the balance sheet unchanged at $195 billion until then, even as notes and bonds come off:

    Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS): -$16 billion in April, -$368 billion from the peak, to $2.37 trillion, the lowest since July 2021. The Fed has shed 27% of the MBS it had added during pandemic QE.

    MBS come off the balance sheet primarily via pass-through principal payments that holders receive when mortgages are paid off (mortgaged homes are sold, mortgages are refinanced) and when mortgage payments are made.

    But sales of existing homes have plunged, and mortgage refinancing has collapsed, and so fewer mortgages got paid off, and passthrough principal payments to MBS holders, such as the Fed, have been reduced to a trickle, and the MBS are coming off the balance sheet at a pace that’s far below the $35-billion cap.

    Under the slower QT starting in June, the MBS cap remains at $35 billion. When the housing market unfreezes, and sales volume rises to more normal-ish levels, mortgage payoffs will increase, and therefore passthrough principal payments to MBS holders will increase, and the MBS roll-off will increase from current levels, and the curve in the chart below will steepen.

    If pass-through principal payments exceed $35 billion – during the pandemic housing boom, they exceeded $110 billion in many months – the overage will be replaced with Treasury securities, not MBS, as the Fed wants to phase out the MBS on its balance sheet.

    Bank liquidity facilities.

    Discount Window: +$1.3 billion in April, to $6.8 billion. During the bank panic in March 2023, loans had briefly spiked to $153 billion.

    The Discount Window is the Fed’s classic liquidity supply to banks. The Fed currently charges banks 5.5% in interest on these loans – one of its five policy rates – and demands collateral at market value, which is expensive money for banks, and there’s a stigma attached to borrowing at the Discount Window, and so banks don’t use this facility unless they need to, though the Fed has been exhorting them to make more regular use of this facility.

    Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP): -$6.4 billion in April, to $124 billion.

    Cobbled together over a panicky weekend in March 2023 after SVB had failed, the BTFP had a fatal flaw: Its rate was based on a market rate. When Rate-Cut Mania kicked off in November 2023, market rates plunged even as the Fed held its policy rates steady, including the 5.4% it pays banks on reserves. Some smaller banks then used the BTFP for arbitrage profits, borrowing at the BTFP at a lower market rate and then leaving the cash in their reserve account at the Fed to earn 5.4%. This arbitrage caused the BTFP balances to spike to $168 billion.

    Frustrated by seeing the BTFP abused for profits, the Fed shut down the arbitrage opportunity in January by changing the rate. It also let the BTFP expire on March 11. Loans that were taken out before March 11 can still be carried for a year. By March 11, 2025, the BTFP will be zero.

    The balance sheet after 12 months of slower QT.

    In May, the Fed will shed another $75 billion or so in assets, which will bring the balance sheet down to roughly $7.28 trillion. In June, the slower QT sets in. After the first 12 months of slower QT, so by the end of May 2025, total assets might be lower by these amounts:

    • If MBS passthrough principal payments continue at $15 billion a month, instead of speeding up, it would remove $180 billion by the end of May 2025.
    • The $25 billion in Treasury roll-off would remove $300 billion by the end of May 2025.
    • The BTFP will go to zero by March 2025, which will mop up $124 billion.
    • Unamortized premiums are taking off $2.2 billion a month, or $26 billion in 12 months.
    • Total: minus $630 billion by end of May 2025.

    So without acceleration of the MBS roll-off, the balance sheet would be down to about $6.63 trillion by the end of May 2025.

    Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer and iced-tea mug to find out how:

    Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here.

    123...1,509Page 1 of 1,509

    ABOUT US

    Fast Reliable and Original. News that brings you unparalleled access to the people and events shaping our world today. We tell stories in a range of formats to fit your life and amplify your experience.

    Contact us: contact@worldnewz247.com

    FOLLOW US

    © Newspaper WordPress Theme by TagDiv