Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in most of the US but in Alabama and Mississippi it’s King/Lee Day. After all, Robert E. Lee’s birth date is 19 January 1870, so he naturally is honored together with MLK. (That’s sarcasm, BTW.)
Including the mlk holiday with a celebration of Coretta Scott King would be more rational
Just sayin’
Calls are growing louder for President Trump to end the trade war and government shutdown as fresh evidence pours in that businesses and consumers are losing faith in the global expansion.
On Monday, the International Monetary Fund cut its global growth predictions for this year and next, saying “the balance of risks remains skewed to the downside” and momentum is “past its peak.”
Chief executives ranked a global recession as their number one concern for 2019, according to a survey of nearly 800 top business leaders around the world released Thursday by The Conference Board. Global trade threats came in second. Even consumers, who power the U.S. economy, are on edge. Consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level of Trump’s presidency, according to the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey out Friday.
One of 20 undeclared ballistic missile operating bases in North Korea serves as a missile headquarters, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published on Monday.
“The Sino-ri missile operating base and the Nodong missiles deployed at this location fit into North Korea’s presumed nuclear military strategy by providing an operational-level nuclear or conventional first strike capability,” the report said. [...]
CSIS, which last reported on the 20 undeclared bases in November, said the Sino-ri base has never been declared by North Korea and as a result “does not appear to be the subject of denuclearization negotiations.”
- The military said the targets included munition storage facilities, an intelligence site and a military training camp.
- The strikes were in response to a surface-to-surface rocket that Iranian forces fired toward Israel on Sunday that was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system over a ski resort in the Golan Heights.
- The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday's strikes lasted for nearly an hour and were the most intense Israeli attacks since May. It said 11 were killed in the strikes.
European shares fell on Monday from six-week highs as a slowdown in China's economy stalled a global equity rally, but sterling rallied to the day's highs after Prime Minister Theresa May promised to be more "flexible" with lawmakers over Brexit.
Trade in general was subdued with U.S. markets closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day but equity prices were hit after data showed the Chinese economy, the world's second biggest, grew 6.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, matching levels last seen in early 2009 during the global financial crisis.
The number was in line with forecasts, while factory output picked up stronger-than-expected in December and stronger services sector were some bright spots. That, along with expectations of more stimulus from Beijing, pushed Asian markets to the highest since early-December
Greenland’s enormous ice sheet is melting at such an accelerated rate that it may have reached a “tipping point,” and could become a major factor in sea-level rise around the world within two decades, scientists said in a study published on Monday.
The Arctic is warming at twice the average rate of the rest of the planet, and the new research adds to the evidence that the ice loss in Greenland, which lies mainly above the Arctic Circle, is speeding up as the warming increases. The authors found that ice loss in 2012 was nearly four times the rate in 2003, and after a lull in 2013-14, it has resumed.
The study is the latest in a series of papers published this month suggesting that scientific estimates of the effects of a warming planet have been, if anything, too conservative. Just a week ago, a separate study of ice loss in Antarctica found that the continent is contributing more to rising sea levels than previously thought.
I added bold so you don’t miss the essential take-home point.
Most people cannot tickle themselves, but some patients with schizophrenia can, suggesting that their brain interprets sensory perceptions from their own body differently.
Scientists at Linköping University in Sweden have examined what happens in various parts of the nervous system when a person is touched by another person, and compared this with corresponding self-touch. They have shown that the brain reduces the processing of the sensory perception when it comes from self-touch.
Diego Pena Linares arrived at a cultural center here Sunday to post a picture of his 21-year-old brother Cesar on a list of “disappeared” — those still missing two days after a gas pipeline explosion that killed at least 85 people.
“I can’t find my brother in the hospital or anyplace else,” said a distraught Pena outside the center, which has become an information hub for relatives of blast victims in this sunbaked agricultural town about 50 miles north of Mexico City.
Most of the dead had not been identified, and local authorities were at a loss to explain where victims had been taken. In their search for answers, desperate families bounced from hospitals to funeral homes, police stations to morgues.
Success seemed to come down to luck or persistence. Pena and his mother visited hospitals in Mexico City — two hours by public bus from their home here in rural Hidalgo state — until they found another brother, 20-year-old Oscar, unconscious and in critical condition with burns over 80% of his body.
Paleontologists at the University of Chicago have discovered the first detailed fossil of a hagfish, the slimy, eel-like carrion feeders of the ocean. The 100-million-year-old fossil helps answer questions about when these ancient, jawless fish branched off the evolutionary tree from the lineage that gave rise to modern-day jawed vertebrates, including bony fish and humans.
The fossil, named Tethymyxine tapirostrum,is a 12-inch long fish embedded in a slab of Cretaceous period limestone from Lebanon. It fills a 100-million-year gap in the fossil record and shows that hagfish are more closely related to the blood-sucking lamprey than to other fishes. This means that both hagfish and lampreys evolved their eel-like body shape and strange feeding systems after they branched off from the rest of the vertebrate line of ancestry about 500 million years ago.
"This is a major reorganization of the family tree of all fish and their descendants. This allows us to put an evolutionary date on unique traits that set hagfish apart from all other animals,”
Twenty-seven members of Venezuela's National Guard have been arrested after they allegedly revolted against the government of President Nicolás Maduro, the defence ministry said.
Videos posted on social media showed the officers calling for the removal from office of President Maduro.
The men reportedly seized weapons from a National Guard command post in the Cotiza area of the capital, Caracas.
Footage also shows residents and security forces clashing in the area.
Moving to more uplifting news
even though it’s not at all uplifting that this kindness is needed
ending with weather weirdness — snow waves
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