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The first confirmed case of the new coronavirus was detected in Egypt on Friday, a joint statement by the country's health ministry and the World Health Organization said, adding that the ill person was a foreigner, without giving further details. The person tested positive for the quick-spreading virus but had no symptoms so far, health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said, adding that he had been quarantined in a hospital. The health ministry said in a statement that it is taking all necessary preventative measures and had informed WHO upon the detection of the case. The spokesman said the case was...

Apple said Monday that it would not meet its quarterly revenue forecast because of lower iPhone supply globally and lower Chinese demand as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The company initially said that it expected to report net sales between $63 billion to $67 billion in its fiscal second quarter. Apple did not provide a new forecast for its second-quarter revenue on Monday.

Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler's profits slumped by almost two-thirds in 2019 as the legal costs of the "dieselgate" scandal and heavy investments in electric technology took their toll. The German carmaker's net profit fell to €2.7bn (£2.3bn) for 2019, it announced on Tuesday, almost €5bn worse than the previous year's performance. It also slashed its dividend from €3.25 per share to only 90 cents to help preserve cash to plough into electric vehicle technology. Daimler is carrying out swingeing cuts to its global workforce as it tries to save more than €1bn in costs. In November it said it would cut...

Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market. A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province. 'The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,' penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats. It also mentions that bats - which are linked to coronavirus - once attacked a researcher and 'blood of bat was on his skin.'

Japanese and Chinese at highest risk for Coronavirus What is your risk to get infected coronavirus? East Asians, Japanese, and Han Chinese are the most likely people to become severely sick by the coronavirus with a chance of more than 90% when exposed. Europeans only rank in the 50%, Africans in the 60% range, and considered low to medium. It also makes a difference if one is a smoker or non-smoker. The Travel and Tourism industry is in turmoil. Tourism leaders don’t want anyone to panic, but the story doesn’t yet have an end to it. At the same time,...

A threat from President Trump for any countries that choose to deal with China's Huawei tech firm but first.... Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will convene a crisis meeting of the "Incident Response Group" tomorrow.... In northwestern Syria humanitarian corridors are to be opened so that civilians can flee the areas where fighting has occurred or may occur in the future.... Syrian forces claiming a major victory clearing areas west of Aleppo city..... "I consider unacceptable to transfer the territory of these countries into the theater of geopolitical competition and point-scoring. Likewise, to use terrorists for achievement of lucrative geopolitical...

The annual 2019 trade figures for the United States came out last week, heralding some encouraging news. America’s enormous international trade deficit actually declined slightly from 2018. This was the first decrease in six years, with the deficit in goods and services dropping 1.7%, to $616.8 billion. Better yet, America’s bilateral trade deficit with China fell for the first time in four years, dropping a hefty 17.6%, to $345.6 billion. These are promising numbers and they show that tariffs on Chinese products are successfully moving the needle on U.S. trade flows. In fact, America’s 2019 imports from China actually fell...

China’s novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has killed and infected more people than officially reported. In one day, total reported infections and deaths increased 44% and 23%, respectively...merely because “the government changed the criteria by which it tracks confirmed cases.” The official tally has been an underestimate and is still catching up to reality. About 99% of the cases have been reported in China. ...before the adjustment, circumstances suggested weeks ago that “the outbreak is spreading far beyond the official count of cases.” Many causes contribute to this undercounting. the diagnostic test for COVID-19 may be only 30-40% accurate.the diagnostic test is...

Washington (AFP) – A senior US health official said Sunday that more than 40 Americans on a quarantined cruise ship in Japan have been infected with the deadly coronavirus. “Forty of them have gotten infected,” Anthony Fauci, a senior official at the National Insitutes for Health said on CBS’ Face the Nation show. (snip)

Nothing groundbreaking but some might find this informative. 10 min video. "China's propaganda machine is using the Coronavirus to promote its leadership. Here's why this is dangerous."Coronavirus - A Warning To Us All (10 mins) 2nd 15 min video. "A Danish citizen, and his Chinese wife, along with an American, and his Chinese wife, and son managed to get home. Here is their story."From China to California, to Texas, to Nebraska (Camp Ashland).Coronavirus - How They Barely Escaped Wuhan

Boris Johnson cancelled a planned visit to the White House after a row over China in which President Trump slammed the phone down on him, according to reports. Prime Minister Johnson was originally due to visit the White House last month following his election win, before postponing the meeting until February. However, following a heated phone call with the American leader, the Prime Minister has cancelled his trip for fear causing a deeper rift, according to Business Insider. Donald Trump was said to have been “apoplectic” in his phone call with Johnson while discussing the Briton’s decision to allow Chinese...

<p>Given the rapid advance of medical science and globalisation of recent decades, the scale, spread and economic costs of human epidemics are rocketing up, even if fatality rates are starting to fall.</p> <p>Never before has China paid such an economic price for an epidemic as it has done already with the coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan and causes the disease now officially known as Covid-19. And the damage is spreading.</p>

<p>After years of threatening to abandon the Philippines’ military alliance with the United States, President Rodrigo Duterte last week confirmed plans to terminate the agreement governing the presence of American troops, a key part of one of Southeast Asia’s major security partnerships.</p>

The U.S. Justice Department has accused Huawei Technologies of helping Iran track protesters in its latest indictment against the Chinese tech giant as Washington steps up pressure on the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker. In a new indictment unsealed on February 13, Huawei was also charged with conspiring to steal trade secrets from six U.S. technology companies and to violate a racketeering law typically used in the fight against organized crime. The indictment supersedes one unsealed last year in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. According to prosecutors, Huawei provided surveillance equipment to Iran that enabled the monitoring of protesters...

The central Chinese province of Hubei escalated its restrictions to contain a coronavirus epidemic on the weekend, ordering the province’s residents - including 24 million people in rural areas - to stay home until further notice. The orders came as the death toll from the outbreak neared 1,700, including reports of the first death in Europe and Taiwan on the weekend. Hubei, a province of 58 million, accounts for over 80 per cent of the confirmed cases and 96 per cent of the deaths in China. On Saturday, Hubei reported 1,843 new cases out of a nationwide total of 2,009...

China’s use of foreign media, Franco’s amateurish and heavy-handed attempts notwithstanding, are becoming increasingly sophisticated and the CCP is recruiting foreign faces for those platforms as well, especially on YouTube. Even in China, where YouTube is illegal, China’s government is using westerners to push the party line and suppress contradicting information. Westerners on those platforms outside of China, like J.J., and even inside China itself, have reported attempts by individuals to sponsor their platforms and secure them massive audiences on Chinese platforms in exchange for editorial control over a new, pro-CCP message.

The flag of the People’s Republic of China will still be permitted to fly outside City Hall in one of Ontario’s fastest-growing municipalities after a proposal to ban the hoisting of foreign flags on special occasions was defeated. Markham city council voted 5-8 Tuesday evening to reject a motion to end the practice of temporarily raising foreign flags after six hours of debate featuring submissions from more than 70 speakers. The proposal arose from a backlash last October after the red-and-yellow Chinese flag was raised to celebrate National Day in China and the 70th anniversary of the founding of the...

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper framed the Chinese regime as “Pentagon’s top concern” on Feb. 15, saying that Beijing’s aggressive commercial and military postures have posed a challenge to the world. “The Communist Party and its associated organs … are increasingly operating in theaters 'outside its borders', including Europe, and seeking advantage 'by any means', and at any cost,” he told the world’s leading policy makers at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. Esper said that it is essential for the international community to “wake up to the challenges” as Chinese Communist Party heads “even faster and further in the...

"Hello Goodbye" by the Beatles, a number one song from early 1968 here in the USA. That's around the time my father left the factory to higher paying and longer lasting government employment as inflation kicked in here in the USA. Lyndon Johnson was ramping up government with Medicare and Medicaid and the cost of medical care was beginning to skyrocket, debt was beginning to accumulate and wow here we are 23 trillion dollars plus later. The 2021 federal budget proposed by President Trump adds another 966 billion to that. Well the currency is devalued and its easy to tell...

We already learned that a majority of Americans find Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal with Ukranian energy giant Burisma to be problematic at best. Despite nearly all of the mainstream media providing as much cover for the Bidens as possible, you have to wonder how everyone is feeling about the unfolding story of a very similar series of deals that the younger Biden landed in China. The closer you look at Hunter’s incredibly “fortunate” affairs in that nation, the worse it smells. And it also raises questions about Joe Biden’s very friendly attitude toward an increasingly aggressive country that’s rife...