California has experienced water shortages in recent years due to a combination of factors, including drought and increased demand. A parade of storms has eased a historic water crisis, replenishing reservoirs and increasing snowpack. 

The latest data from the official website of the State of California shows 97% of major reservoir levels are at normal levels for this time of year. This is great news following last summer when reservoir levels were dangerously low. 

Here’s a map of the major reservoirs. Most are at average levels, except for a few. 

Nearly a month of storms has also boosted the state’s vital snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. State data shows statewide snowpack levels are 126% above average levels for this time of year. We recently pointed out snowpack levels were at their highest in four decades. 

Only a small portion of California remained in extreme drought. The heavy rains and snow have eased drought conditions. 

The storms were part of a moisture conveyor belt over the Pacific Ocean called atmospheric rivers. This resulted in one of the wettest California winters on record. 

Much of California’s water comes from reservoirs and snowpacks. The deluge of storms has prevented the price of water trading on the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index from topping new highs. The contract currently trades at $1,020 an acre-foot, about 20% lower from the top of $1,282 recorded in September of last year. 

The rain and snow have been “very exciting,” Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, told CNN, though he remained “cautiously optimistic” for this summer. 

By Marcel Kasumovich, Head of Research for One River Asset Management

It’s normal, sort of. Digital asset markets are following a commodity boom, bust, recovery cycle. Investors are focused on the bust. The decline in inflation, bond yields, and the US dollar makes the downturn shallower. And inflation assets are leading the recovery. That’s not normal. 

Inflation Assets Leading the Not-Normal

“If you want two cups of coffee, save money and order both at the same time,” a student at the University of Freiburg famously quipped during Germany’s hyperinflation. That’s the inflation we worry about – pernicious, invisible tax. The recent surge in inflation is an inconvenience by historical standards. Periods of inflation lead people to shed currency for almost any real asset – even pianos were a hedge for Germans in the 1920s. That’s not now. But it’s also not never.

The pandemic brought a warning shot, a reminder that the saying “too much money chasing too few goods” still applies. Global inflation surged to 9% last year as bottlenecks emerged in all supply chains. Assets believed to hedge inflation performed dismally. Real assets – bitcoin, gold, lumber, land – crashed as inflation rose. Those assets didn’t “fail” in their roles. Real interest rates shot higher. And that’s the real driving force behind inflation assets.  

The evidence is obvious in investor behavior. There was a dash for cash as inflation rose, not real assets. Last quarter, Global Fund Managers reported the highest cash holding since 2001! The inflation tax was an afterthought. All other assets were rapidly deflating in response to the surge in rates. That is not an inflationary mindset. It’s conviction that policy will kill inflation, leaving real rates higher for a stretch of time. And it’s self-reinforcing.

Market expectations call for a cratering of inflation this year, to 2.33%. It’s also expected to stay there for a very long time, 2.19% in 2024 and an average of 2.29% in the next ten years. The consensus is centered on the idea that a recession will bring everything back to “normal.” And it is exactly how investors are positioned – long bonds, short equities, and long US dollar (Figure 1). Our own Macro Pulse confirms the consensus – it’s in recessionary territory.

But change is afoot. Downturns don’t last long, even brutal ones. They are usually fast, severe fractures. This one is slow and shallow. Our Macro Pulse has been in recessionary territory three of the past four months; the longest recessionary signal was nine months in the Great Financial Crisis. Market stabilizers are also emerging. Declines in inflation, bond yields and the US dollar are cushioning the downturn with mortgage and business surveys bottoming.  

Commodity markets provide the simplest connection to the cyclicality of digital assets. Doug Wilson, One River Digital PM, likens the downturn in digital infrastructure to a boom, bust, recovery cycle of energy markets. It’s a terrific benchmark. Bitcoin is a unit of energy. The boom saw Bitcoin trade miles above its marginal cost of production. That boom led to excess investment. The bust that followed is like an over-supplied commodity cycle.  

What does the recovery look like? Let’s benchmark the boom-bust-recovery cycle through the macro lens of recessions. Figure 2 shows median oil prices in the past 4 economic cycles. The most interesting observation – oil prices aren’t anywhere close to the downturns of the past. This is the “too few goods” side of the inflation equation. A long period of commodity underinvestment means that inflation assets don’t decline to the same degree in recession.  

It also means inflationary assets can lead in the recovery, counter to the consensus of a return to “normal.” But inflation assets are supposed to lag, not lead. It takes an extended period of strong demand to absorb excess capacity built in this expansion. Those are the assets soonest to bump up against capacity constraints and be demonstrated as short in supply. Cyclical forces are pulling down inflation, structural pressures may be less benign.

Digital asset markets are recoupling to macro forces. Inflation assets are leading this year and digital assets are rising with that tide. The differentiation within the digital ecosystem is telling. Base layers and scaling solutions are leading – Bitcoin and Ethereum are back to pre-FTX levels, Optimism scaling protocol has risen well above pre-FTX highs. DeFi protocols are lagging, most notably MakerDAO, as it wrestles with its strategic future pathway.

Market leadership is in the boring basics. We should pay attention. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Lightning, Optimism – base layers with scaling solutions for usable applications. We know that digital asset valuations are all about network effects. But investing in railways is pointless with no demand to ride them. Tokenization has been wildly successful in bridging traditional and digital worlds. That’s one trajectory of turning the boring into beautiful.

The major exodus by U.S. corporations out of U.S. cities continues. 

The latest example is now Amazon, who is – for only the second time in Seattle – allowing one of its major office leases to expire, according to the Seattle Times. The e-commerce giant is set to move workers out of its offices in Port 99 on Eight Avenue, the report says.

The lease expires in April, according to a company spokesperson. Amazon will move “about 2,000” of its employees to office space across from its Puget Sound headquarters, the report noted.

Amazon had just announced layoffs that would affect 18,000 employees companywide and, specifically, 2,300 employees near Puget Sound.

But the company says that the lease expiration decision had little to do with the layoffs and more to do with “the ongoing shift to remote and hybrid work after the COVID-19 pandemic”. As the Seattle Times notes, the number of office workers in downtown Seattle is down 42% from prior to the pandemic. 

This marks only the second time Amazon has taken such action. Back in 2020, the company dropped its lease at 2201 Westlake, where it made up about half of the building’s 318,000 square feet of office space, the report said. They had to relocate 1,000 employees as a result. 

And it isn’t just Amazon that is rethinking its use of office space in Seattle. Facebook is also planning on subleasing two locations and Microsoft reportedly will not renew its lease at the 26-story City Center Plaza in Bellevue when it expires in Summer of 2024. 

John Schoettler, vice president of Global Real Estate and Facilities at Amazon, said: “Our offices are long-term investments, and we want to make sure that we design them in a way that meets our employees’ needs in the future.”

“This is the first domino,” a local Seattle area real estate insider told the Times.

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

New Abnormal

“After recession, everything will return to normal – that’s how investors are positioned,” said Marcel Kasumovich, the two of us discussing this increasingly unique time in market history. “The fastest Fed tightening in four decades is supposed to bring a deep recession and a lot of broken glass in global markets. Things are playing out differently. Global housing markets cracked. But job markets are holding up. Asset deflation was rampant during the rapid Fed tightening. But emerging markets didn’t crack; UK pensions did and were saved. Regions like Turkey and India led USD equity gains. It isn’t normal.”

“On QT, we’ve communicated really clearly to the markets about what we’re going to do there,” said Powell. “Markets seem to be okay with it. We’re phasing in.” That was the guidance on June 15, 2022. Only, liquidity conditions are beating to a different drum. Excess reserves in the banking system were $3.189trn at the time of the guidance, having tightened more than $1trn in six months. Liquidity metrics have been stable since then despite QT. Market-based factors are dominating liquidity, not QT. This wasn’t the case in the past.

“It’s not just US policy,” continued Marcel. “December’s surprise tightening from the Bank of Japan led to an unprecedent expansion of its balance sheet to guard against unwanted increases in bond yields. “This is definitely not a step toward an exit,” Kuroda declared to a market that rushed to the exit signs. The yen surged and held its gains (despite record central bank bond buying). The BOJ now holds more than 50% of government coupon bonds. Maturing bonds more than double this year. No Governor can exit this QE labyrinth.”

“Under tremendous international pressure, the US dollar depreciated 53% against the Japanese yen from 1985-1987, leading to low yen rates and an unparalleled property bubble,” said Marcel. “Japan was 11% of world GDP and rising in 1985. It is 4% now and falling. China resisted rapid currency strength having studied these pitfalls. Yet, they mirror Japan in one key area – demographics. China’s population fell by 850K last year, the first since 1960; the working-age population is projected to shrink 216 million through 2050 – unprecedented.”

“Cyclical gyrations will confound structural megatrends,” said Marcel. “A pragmatist emerged after China’s Party Congress with President Xi ending COVID lockdowns. Global trade will be instantly impacted. Just bringing China oil demand to pre-COVID trends would take 2% of world production at a time when supplies are tight – commercial inventories are at historic lows.” In the past four cycles, the median oil price was $40 at the end of recession. It’s double that now when the global economy is bottoming. “The past isn’t the present.”

“This comes at a time when markets are convinced US inflation is dead,” said Marcel. “Markets are pricing inflation of 2.3% this year, and close to 2% for the next decade – just like normal. The Fed won. But is it a battle or a war? Oil prices and inflation assets are never leading indicators in market recoveries – they are now. The US dollar has stayed strong-for-long in recession – it’s been trending lower for four months.” The pandemic exposed weak links in the global economy – strained supply chains. Inflation is retreating. “Inflation assets indicate it’s a war.”

“Generational imbalances are pressing, the root of lasting geopolitical and social conflict,” said Marcel. “Rich countries are accustomed to external conflict, but the economic war is building from within. Since 1990, a period of extraordinary prosperity, US student debt for households under the age of 35 has increased nearly 10-times. The older generation promised an extrapolation of good times; they charged the younger ones a handsome peacetime premium for that privilege. It’s an invisible generational default.”

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley has taken a flamethrower to vaccine makers over their “deceptive” campaign for bivalent Covid boosters, and slams several federal agencies for taking “the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.“

You might have heard a radio advertisement warning that if you’ve had Covid, you could get it again and experience even worse symptoms. The message, sponsored by the Health and Human Services Department, claims that updated bivalent vaccines will improve your protection.

This is deceptive advertising. But the public-health establishment’s praise for the bivalent shots shouldn’t come as a surprise. -WSJ

The narrative behind the campaign was simple; mRNA Covid shots could simply be ‘tweaked’ to to target new variants – in this case, the jabs were claimed to confer protection against BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants, along with the original Wuhan strain.

To call this wishful thinking would be extremely generous.

As Finley writes, three scientific problems have arisen.

1. The virus is mutating much faster than vaccines can be updated.
2. Vaccines have ‘hard wired’ our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, “so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines.”
3. Antibody protection wanes after just a few months.

Finley has brought receipts too…

Two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine this month showed that bivalent boosters increase neutralizing antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but not significantly more than the original boosters. In one study, antibody levels after the bivalent boosters were 11 times as high against the Wuhan variant as BA.5.

The authors posit that immune imprinting “may pose a greater challenge than is currently appreciated for inducing robust immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants.” This isn’t unique to Covid or mRNA vaccines, though boosters may amplify the effect. Our first exposure as children to the flu—whether by infection or vaccination—affects our future response to different strains. -WSJ

Here’s what happened

For those who took (or were forced to take) the original vaccine, our memory B-cells were trained to produce antibodies against the original Wuhan strain. And as a New England Journal of Medicine article notes, people who have taken said original vaccine were “primed” to respond to the Wuhan strain, and ‘mounted an inferior antibody response to other variants.’

The studies directly contradict marketing information from Pfizer and Moderna, which asserted that the bivalent boosters produced a response to the new strains (BA.4 and BA.5) that’s 4-6x that of the original boosters – which the WSJ says is “misleading.”

For starters, neither Pfizer or Moderna conducted a randomized trial.

They tested the original boosters last winter, long before the BA.5 surge and 4½ to months after trial participants had received their third shots. The bivalents, by contrast, were tested after BA.5 began to surge, 9½ to 11 months after recipients had received their third shots. -WSJ

Here’s the moneyshot: “The vaccine makers designed their studies to get the results they wanted. Public-health authorities didn’t raise an eyebrow, but why would they? They have a vested interest in promoting the bivalents.”

In June, the FDA ordered vaccine makers to update the boosters against BA.4 and BA.5, and rushed the companies to push them out before clinical data was available. Meanwhile, Biden’s CDC recommended the bivalents for all adults without evidence that they were effective or necessary.

Finley further notes that vaccine makers could have performed small, randomized trials last summer and early fall on the bivalents – with results available by the end of September. But the Biden administration didn’t want to wait (and now we know why).

The CDC published a study in November that estimated the bivalents were only 22% to 43% effective against infection during the BA.5 wave—their peak efficacy. As antibodies waned and new variants took over later in the fall, their protection against infection probably dropped to zero.

Another CDC study, in December, reported that seniors who received bivalents were 84% less likely to be hospitalized than the unvaccinated, and 73% less likely than those who had received two or more doses of the original vaccine. But neither study controlled for important confounding factors—for one, that the small minority who got bivalents were probably also more likely than those who hadn’t to follow other Covid precautions or seek out treatments such as Paxlovid. -WSJ

We’re amazed the Journal even put this out there… Kudos to them.

Fortunately for big pharma and the Biden administration, information overload is the new Soma, and Rachel Maddow et al. have everything under control.

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

“How long to dispose of a body before it smells,” Brian Walshe asked Google. “What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods,” was another query that law enforcement retrieved from some faceless server, a virtual witness to his horrific crime.

He did not ask, but should have, “Are Google queries retrievable by the FBI.” Instead, he typed 20 questions you definitely should not Google if you want to get away with murder [see here].

On China’s Baidu, queries for baby strollers fell 17% last year and are -41% since 2018. Searches for baby bottles are down by one-third since 2018. But queries for elderly care homes surged 800% last year, faceless servers bearing witness to China’s profound demographic challenge.

China’s population surged from 540mm in 1949 to 969mm in 1980 when the One Child policy was introduced. And still, the population climbed inexorably to over 1.41bln in 2021. But in 2022, deaths exceeded births by 850k. UN demographers see China’s population contracting by 100mm by 2050.

You could imagine Xi secretly typing, “What is the rate of decline of a nation that shrinks and ages before becoming wealthy.”

Japan hit “peak people” in 2011 at 127.4mm. Demographers see it shrinking to 97mm by 2050. Russia is in utter demographic collapse. And you could imagine Putin secretly typing, “How long can a nation remain intact without enough young men to fight.”

Europe is on the ageing, shrinking path too, but unlike China, Russia and Japan, immigration still tempers its demographic decline. It’s easy to imagine countless European leaders typing, “How to assimilate the waves of refugees needed to sustain the economy while retaining your culture.”

Such demographic decline has never happened across the major global economies. How this impacts geopolitics, economies, and markets remains uncertain.

There is no back-test for this. The US continues to be the outlier, growing, albeit slowly. And let’s hope Biden is typing, “How to reverse the opioid/fentanyl/diabetes public health catastrophe that has lowered US life expectancy.”

And in India, Google searches for baby bottles jumped 22% last year, while queries for cribs surged 500%.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

At least two Democratic senators have called for a full investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials after several batches of documents were found at an office and his home in Delaware.

“The reports about President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents are extremely irresponsible and disturbing,” Manchin (D-W. Va.) told Fox News on Jan. 20.

“These allegations should be investigated fully.”

The development “raises serious questions, and the appointment of an unbiased special prosecutor to investigate the matter is the right step,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Fox.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who recently confirmed she wouldn’t be running for re-election in 2024, told NBC News last week that the reports of handling classified documents is a bad look for the White House.

“Well, it’s certainly embarrassing. Right?” Stabenow stated.

“I mean, it’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose. They don’t think it’s the right thing and they’ve been moving to correct it, working with the Department of Justice, working with everyone involved, with the [National] Archives, and so from my perspective, you know, it’s one of those moments that obviously they wish hadn’t happened.”

Their comments came just hours before Biden’s lawyer confirmed the Department of Justice (DOJ) searched his home, while an FBI spokesperson confirmed the search to Fox News on Saturday. The search of his Delaware residence reportedly lasted hours, the FBI said.

“DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President,” Bob Bauer, his attorney, said.

“DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) speaks to reporters in the Hart Senate Office building in Washington, on Aug. 1, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick confirmed Saturday that the FBI had executed “a planned, consensual search” of the president’s residence in Wilmington. The president and first lady Jill Biden were not at the home when it was searched. They were spending the weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Speaking to reporters during a trip to California on Thursday, Biden said he was “fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”

“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden said.

“We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.”

The Biden investigation has also complicated the Justice Department’s probe into Trump’s retention of classified documents and official records after he left office. The Justice Department says former President Donald Trump took hundreds of records marked classified with him upon leaving the White House in early 2021, and that it had to obtain a search warrant to retrieve them.

After the initial discovery of Biden’s documents, Trump has asserted that the DOJ is treating the president differently.

“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?” Trump asked in a social media post earlier in January.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed former Maryland U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigate any potential wrongdoing surrounding the Biden documents. Hur is set to take over from the Trump-appointed Illinois U.S. Attorney John Lausch in overseeing the probe.

“Since the beginning, the President has been committed to handling this responsibly because he takes this seriously,” White House lawyer Richard Sauber said Saturday. “The President’s lawyers and White House Counsel’s Office will continue to cooperate with DOJ and the Special Counsel to help ensure this process is conducted swiftly and efficiently.”

The Federal Aviation Administration recently widened the acceptable range for heart rhythms for commercial pilots based on “new scientific evidence” which they won’t disclose, according to Just the News, which reached out to the agency for comment.

Specifically, the agency raised the maximum “PR” interval for first-degree atrioventricular block to 300 milliseconds for pilots of all ages. For intervals longer than 300 ms, the FAA will decide on pilot fitness on a case-by-case basis. Previously, the maximum PR interval was 210 milliseconds, though only for pilots under the age of 51.

If you’re not up to speed watch below:

Tucker Carlson:

“The FAA made a major change in the health requirement for pilots with heart damage… The change allows people with injured hearts to fly. The FAA made this change just after the Vaccines were rolled out and made mandatory. Why?”pic.twitter.com/NLDxkH5eqN

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 19, 2023

Did we mention that airlines have been lobbying Congress to let just one pilot fly a commercial aircraft?

As Just the News reports,

FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor provided a modified version of the statement the agency released last spring after American Airlines pilot Robert Snow blamed his in-flight cardiac arrest on coerced vaccination.

Federal Air Surgeon Susan Northrup has deemed all U.S.-authorized COVID vaccines safe for pilots, the FAA said, claiming it had “seen no evidence” of vaccine-related complications that caused “aircraft accidents or pilot incapacitations.” 

The agency followed “standard processes based on data and science” to determine it could “safely raise the tolerance used to screen for a certain heart condition” and notified AMEs of the change.

Except, “Gregor didn’t respond to queries for the specific evidence.“

According to the Associated Press, “the FAA explained that this change was made in response to new scientific evidence about the condition from its cardiology consultants, not adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines,” yet AP can’t say what prompted the change.

“When making changes to medical requirements and guidance, the FAA follows standard processes based on data and science,” the agency told AP in an emailed statement. “Our cardiology consultants provided information that anything under 300ms requires no additional testing and is not a risk for sudden or subtle incapacitation.”

According to Joshua Yoder, who heads US Freedom Flyers – a group which collects and analyzes adverse event reports from pilots, said that he’s been contacted by wealthy businessmen to find unvaccinated pilots.

My charter company has also received requests specifically for unvaccinated pilots

— Sheumas McGonnegal (@SheumasM) January 18, 2023

“I’ve spoken to 30 plus individuals myself and have also heard from an aircraft broker recently who told me he’s receiving similar requests,” Yoder told Just the News.

According to cardiologist Thomas Levy, the FAA’s rule change is “arguably a shocking one, as many pilots are in the age range when heart attacks occur without any early symptoms but with a normal ECG, the ECG being the only mandatory heart-related test,” adding “A fatal heart attack from very advanced coronary artery disease could occur 10 minutes after the normal ECG was recorded.”

Read more here…

Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

An organization that says it is a coalition of “climate and anti-disinformation organisations” says Twitter under CEO Elon Musk is allowing more dissenting views on climate change.

Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), released a Jan. 19 study (pdf), accusing Musk of allowing misinformation about the climate crisis to spread on the social media platform.

The study accused Twitter of boosting the hashtag “#ClimateScam” to users when searching the word “climate,” as its top search result.

The hashtag has suddenly spiked on Twitter search results since July 2022, with its appearance increasing ever since, according to CAAD.

The report said that “in 2022, denialist content made a stark comeback on Twitter in particular.”

Twitter Search

CAAD alleged that at least 91,000 Twitter users reported the #ClimateScam hashtag more than 362,000 times by December.

“The source of its virality is entirely unclear, and re-emphasises the need for transparency on how and why platforms surface content to users,” said the study’s authors.

They said that term appeared to be trending despite “data that shows more activity and engagement on other hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency.”

The research team claimed that the rise of the term in search results could not be explained by user personalization, the volume of content, or popularity.

“A basic search for ‘climate’ on Facebook did not autofill with overtly sceptic or denialist terms; searching explicitly for #ClimateScam only showed 1.5k users mentioning the term, versus 72k for #ClimateEmergency and 160k for #ClimateCrisis.”

CAAD complained that the source of the #ClimateScam hashtag was unclear and that there was a need for transparency on how the search result came up.

“Equally, TikTok returned no search results for #ClimateScam, but instead suggested the phrase ‘may be associated with behaviour or content that violates our guidelines.’”

Interest Groups

The authors said that not enough of the content was labeled as misinformation by Twitter’s new management and claimed that it could not find a comparable trend or uptick in “#ClimateScam” on other platforms.

CAAD is partially funded by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank, which is heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The ISD said it is working with social media platforms to explore radicalization online, to minimize the impact of extremist recruitment by groups in Europe and North America.

Since buying Twitter in October, Elon Musk has reduced the social media team’s staff by 50 percent and cut down its content moderation team to protect freedom of expression.

Musk has been a critic of Twitter’s past relationship with federal authorities and the intelligence services, and has released several batches of the so-called “Twitter Files” since late last year.

Protests in Peru are growing more violent and engulfing much of the country beyond the region of the south, where they first started and were concentrated last month following the impeachment and imprisonment of then-President Pedro Castillo.

Castillo, still detained on charges of seeking to lead a rebellion after trying to dissolve Congress, was replaced by now President Boluarte, who had served as vice president until being sworn in under emergency conditions on Dec.7.

Demonstrators are seeking Boluarte’s ouster and for new elections to be held immediately. Things have escalated over the weekend with the closure of tourist sites, most notably the famed ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.

The Culture Ministry said the closure of the site was necessary in order “to protect the safety of tourists and the population in general” as more and more protesters flood the area from the countryside.

Government officials said that 417 visitors were stuck at Machu Picchu amid riots, with 300 of them being foreigners. Fox News described that they had to be evacuated after the closest city which serves as a base for visitors touring the site was plunged into an emergency situation amid protester clashes with police:

The city of Cusco, the former capital of the Incan empire and an about a 70-mile train ride from the town of Machu Picchu has been the site of some of the most intense clashes since the South American nation first became engulfed in unrest after then-President Pedro Castillo, Peru’s first leader with a rural Andean background was impeached and imprisoned for trying to dissolve Congress last month. 

Train service to and from the town of Machu Picchu, at the base of the hill where the ancient Inca citadel with the same name sits, had been closed since Thursday due to damage to the tracks leading back to Cusco. Hundreds of tourists reportedly lined up to sign a petition to be evacuated in a “humanitarian train.” 

BREAKING VIDEO: Anti Government protests that have continued for over a month in Peru have just closed Machu Picchu leaving hundreds of tourists stranded. pic.twitter.com/Vu8xlxbPqO

— Trending 911 🌐 (@911NewsBreaks) January 22, 2023

Six weeks of unrest and massive protest clashes with police have resulted in 60 dead, and some 600 injured.

Below is the scene from days ago, which has been something seen daily for weeks:

FORTE RÉPRESSION DANS LE CENTRE DE LIMA 🔴

Dans le reste du pays, le massacre continue ! On compte 2 morts pic.twitter.com/6kGbSfoyv2

— Romain Migus (@RomainMigus) January 20, 2023

Intervention by security forces continued Saturday with a police raid on San Marcos University in Lima. It ranks as the oldest university in the Americas.

The Guardian described the chaotic scene as follows: 

Scores of police raided a Lima university on Saturday, smashing down the gates with an armored vehicle, firing teargas and detaining more than 200 people who had come to the Peruvian capital to take part in anti-government protests.

Images showed dozens of people lying face down on the ground at San Marcos University after the surprise police operation. Students said they were pushed, kicked and hit with truncheons as they were forced out of their dormitories.

Police could be seen ramming the gate to the historic university with a tank…

Workers across various sectors have initiated nationwide strikes, leading in many places public transport and other services to come to a standstill. 

Protesters have also charged that United States is seeking to prop up a ‘right-wing coup regime’ as opposed to Peru’s first leader with a rural Andean background, Castillo.