• A wave of chaotic unrest broke out in Malmo, Sweden after anti-Islam activists filmed a public Koran burning, sparking protests that soon descended into riots, with unruly demonstrators setting fires and clashing with police. Some 300 people gathered along a main thoroughfare in Malmo on Friday around 7:30pm local time to protest after members of a far-right political party staged a Koran burning earlier in the day, according to local press reports. As the crowd grew, fires were ignited in the street and several cars were torched, prompting a heavy police response that struggled to bring the situation under control. “We have ongoing and violent riots right now that we have no control over,” police spokesman Rickard Lundqvist told a local news outlet amid the disorder. Clashes erupted between protesters and law enforcement in Malmo’s Rosengard district, seeing stones, paving bricks and fireworks hurled at officers and emergency response vehicles.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned against politicizing the Russian-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, saying that construction of it should be finished, despite US attempts to derail the energy project. “Our opinion is that Nord Stream 2 should be completed,” Merkel said on Friday. She added that the project is of a purely economic nature and should not be linked to the situation with Russian anti-corruption activist leader Alexey Navalny, who is currently undergoing treatment in Germany after an alleged poisoning. The pipeline, designed to boost gas supplies to Germany and other European states by 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year, is currently nearing completion in the Baltic Sea. Russia had to dispatch its own vessels to lay the final kilometers of the route, after the Swiss-Dutch company Allseas withdrew its ships over the threat of US sanctions. “We are also against the extraterritorial sanctions that the United States of America has imposed,” the German chancellor told reporters. The Trump administration has threatened to expand its measures against Nord Stream 2. US lawmakers want to target its investors, insurance companies, as well as Germany’s Mukran Port on the Baltic Sea, where the construction vessels are stationed.
• Raging wildfires in forests and grasslands are spreading in northern and central Argentina, with outbreaks in at least a dozen provinces. The Paraná Delta is experiencing its worst week since the beginning of the year, with fires stretching over hundreds of kilometres of grassland and wetland. Fires have also been seen in the north and centre of the country, with officials in Córdoba Province on Monday reporting evacuations and an “extreme risk” of further outbreaks in the coming days thanks to dry and windy weather. According to Reuters, at least 14,321 hectares (55 square miles) of grasslands and mountainous territory have so far been burned, mainly in the northern areas of Punilla and Ischilín.
• Long months of a pandemic lockdown and economic crisis have revived a scourge that Chileans thought they had beaten forever: hunger. So the number of neighborhood soup kitchens has exploded in Santiago, and restaurants –– some of them gourmet establishments –– have lit up their stoves to whip up meals in solidarity. In Lo Hermida, a poor area in the east of the capital, nine women have formed a group known as “Las Guerreras” (Woman Warriors) to launch a soup kitchen that delivers 175 meals a day to the virus-stricken barrio’s most needy. “I never thought it would be so necessary here,” Ruth Lagos told AFP, adding that she was surprised by the shortages laid bare by the pandemic. Families in the gritty neighbourhood that lifted themselves out of poverty have lost jobs and been thrown back on the breadline under the lockdown. The women organised a supply network of ingredients and then set up a kitchen in the courtyard of a house. With no experience of cooking professionally, the women found inspiration in the history of the neighbourhood, when during the acute economic crisis of the 1980s in the midst of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, the community found solace in a similar burst of soup kitchen solidarity.
• The United States, Europe and China have laid claim to billions of Covid vaccine doses that are nearing the finish line. That’s sparked worries that poorer countries will be left behind and shots will be slow to reach many of the world’s 7.8 billion people. After Covid-19’s emergence in Buenos Aires led to a strict lockdown in March, Juliana Cassataro and her fellow vaccine researchers grew concerned. “We did not want to stay in our homes,” said Cassataro, a scientist at the National University of San Martin in the nation’s capital. “We wanted to use our knowledge to help in this pandemic.” Determined to give Latin America its own protection from the fast-spreading virus, Juliana Cassataro’s team – 10 women and two men – quickly got to work. A government grant of US$100,000 in May paid for initial studies, and human trials could start in about six months. The US and other superpowers have laid claim to billions of Covid vaccine doses that are nearing the finish line. That’s sparked worries that poorer countries will be left behind and shots will be slow to reach many of the world’s 7.8 billion people. Dozens of laboratories, researchers and companies from Thailand to Nigeria are bootstrapping their own work on inoculations.
• Elon Musk has unveiled a working prototype for the Neuralink, a skull implant that can communicate with brain cells, seen as a breakthrough cure for an array of ailments for some, and a prelude to a nightmare dystopia for others. Musk’s Neuralink progress update on Friday showed off a functional device implanted into a pig, which he says could someday cure a range of “important brain and spine problems,” including memory loss, blindness, seizures, strokes and even drug addiction. “I’m really excited to show you what we’ve got. I think it’s going to blow your mind,” Musk said at the start of the presentation, comparing the device to “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.” After coaxing a skittish sow named Gertrude to leave her pen, Musk introduced what he called the “three little pigs demo,” showing the Neuralink picking up the animal’s brain activity in real time, represented by audible beeps. A second pig had a previously installed device removed, which Musk said illustrated how one could live a “healthy and happy” life after taking out the implant. The third animal had no device, presumably as a control.
• Herbalife Nutrition will pay $123.1 million to settle criminal and civil charges it bribed Chinese officials in government agencies and media outlets to boost its business in China, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday. The multi-level marketing company, whose products include dietary supplements, entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement in which it admitted to conspiring to violate the books and records provision of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-bribery law. Authorities said Herbalife schemed from 2007 to 2016 to bribe Chinese officials with cash, entertainment, meals and travel to obtain direct selling licenses, reduce government scrutiny and suppress negative coverage by state-controlled media. China accounted for 19% of Herbalife’s $4.49 billion of net sales in 2016, up from 7% in 2006, regulatory filings show. Herbalife approved “extensive and systematic corrupt payments” to Chinese officials, while falsifying records to make the bribes appear as legitimate business expenses, Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in Manhattan said in a statement. Last November, U.S. prosecutors filed related corruption charges against Yanliang Li, who led Herbalife’s Chinese unit, and Hongwei Yang, who led its external affairs department. Both are Chinese citizens and remain at large.
• Afghans pushed out of work by the coronavirus pandemic after businesses and schools were shuttered have turned to opium cultivation for cash during this year’s poppy harvest. Afghanistan has long been the world’s top grower of opium, producing more than 80 percent of the global supply and providing hundreds of thousands of jobs in the perennially cash-strapped economy. A coronavirus lockdown and travel restrictions saw trade grind to a halt and many businesses were forced to lay off staff, in a conflict-riven country where stable jobs are already rare. “Because of the coronavirus I lost my job. I have no other way but to work in poppy fields to make some money” a farmers said. Despite myriad eradication programs over the years, Afghan farmers continue to grow poppies with near impunity, as both government officials and the Taliban often profit from the lucrative trade.
• Facebook says it has shared data with United Nations investigators probing international crimes in Myanmar, after the lead investigator said the company was withholding evidence. A Facebook representative told Reuters it had given the Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar (IIMM) data from pages and accounts associated with the Myanmar military that it had removed in 2018 to stop hate speech against Rohingya but declined to describe the content. Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya that forced 730,000 people to flee into Bangladesh. Myanmar denies genocide and says its forces were conducting legitimate operations against militants who attacked police posts. The UN Human Rights Council investigators said Facebook had played a key role in spreading hate speech that fuelled the violence. In 2018, the company said it had removed 18 accounts and 52 pages associated with the Myanmar military, including the page of its commander-in-chief, but preserved the data.
• The Trump Administration announced awards of more than $1 billion Wednesday for the establishment of 12 new artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science (QIS) research & development institutes across the United States.
• Some of same Liberal and Progressive voices that tried to warn Democrats ahead of Trump’s “shock” 2016 victory are at it again, starting with filmmaker Michael Moore, who warned in a Facebook post on Friday using all caps that enthusiasm among Trump’s base is “OFF THE CHARTS!” Moore begged Biden-supporters and never-Trumpers to “ACT NOW!” Crucially, Moore had in the lead-up to the 2016 election been an almost lone voice on the left predicting a Trump victory, but was dismissed, laughed at and ignored at the time.

​Altai Territory

The “Pechatnoe” salt lake (Printed) near the Ozero Malinovoye (Raspberry Lake) workers’ village in the Altai Territory, Russia. Phytoplankton gives the water a special colour.

There are mountainous and lowland, salty and fresh, deep and shallow lakes, and some which are populated with aquatic inhabitants and others that are completely devoid of life. The lakes differ in origin, nutrition, colour, and composition of water.

​Tunnel at the Yamal Peninsula

The recently-formed new hole or funnel is the latest to be seen in northern Siberia since the phenomenon was first registered in 2014. A group of scientists then made an expedition to examine the large cylindrical crater which has a depth of up to 50 meters. Such funnels are believed to be caused by the build up of methane gas in pockets of thawing permafrost under the surface. Scientist Dr Evgeny Chuvilin, a leading researcher at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, said: ‘What we saw today is striking in its size and grandeur.
‘These are the colossal forces of nature that create such objects.’
The ‘crater’ – these holes are called hydrolaccoliths or bulgunnyakhs by scientists – is given the number 17, and is seen as the most impressive of the large holes to suddenly appear in recent years as the permafrost thaws.
Professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky, of the Russian Oil and Gas Research Institute in Moscow, told Vesti Yamal: ‘This object is unique. It carries a lot of additional scientific information, which I am not yet ready to disclose.

Sunspot number: 0

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 8 days
2020 total: 164 days (68%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)

29 August 2020

Europe – M4.5 Greece

Antartica – M4.9 South Shetland Islands

Africa – M4.4 Algeria

North America – M3.3 California

Central America – M4.4 Puerto Rico

South America – M3.7 Equador

Asia – M5.0 North Philippines

Pacific – M5.2 Wallis and Futuna

Deepest EQ – M4.5 552 km Fiji

Eurasia

The series of earthquakes, from Aug. 27 to today, shown in the image illustrate the transit of the seismic wave from the east Asia towards the Atlantic, the majority of the movements took place in southern Europe and on the African coast with movements on the M4.