Rather than face a potential contempt of Congress vote in the GOP-controlled House, the FBI has agreed to hand over a subpoenaed document from the Biden family investigation which a whistleblower says contains allegations that Joe Biden, when he was VP, engaged in a bribery scheme to change US policy in return for $5 million to his family businesses.

Once the existence of the document was made known, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) demanded to see it, followed by a subpoena from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY).

FBI Director Christopher Wray indicated as recently as Wednesday that he wouldn’t turn over the document, but would allow lawmakers to come to the FBI and read it in person. According to Just the News, however, a deal was struck late Thursday for the FBI to bring the document to the Capitol.

“Chairman Comer will receive a briefing from the FBI and review the document on Monday,” his committee told JTN. “Chairman Comer has been clear that anything short of producing the FD-1023 form to the House Oversight Committee is not compliance with his subpoena. This unclassified record contains pages of details that need to be investigated further by the House Oversight Committee.“

The FBI told Just the News that it wanted to accommodate Congress, while maintaining sensitive confidential human source information which is often recorded in memos before it can be corroborated. In other words, according to the FBI ‘it might be fake news!’

“Director Wray offered to provide the Committee’s Chairman and Ranking Member an opportunity to review information responsive to the subpoena in a secure manner to accommodate the committee, while protecting the confidentiality and safety of sources and important investigative sensitivities,” said the bureau. “The FBI has continually demonstrated its commitment to working with the Committee to accommodate its request, from scheduling briefings and calls to now allowing the Chair to review information in person. The FBI remains committed to cooperating with the Committee in good faith.”

The bureau also cautioned that FD-1023 forms  are “used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting by a confidential human source. Documenting the information does not validate it, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information verified by the FBI. -Just the News

“Revealing unverified or possibly incomplete information could harm investigations, prejudice prosecutions or judicial proceedings, unfairly violate privacy or reputations, create misimpressions in the public, or potentially identify individuals who provide information to law enforcement, placing their physical safety at risk,” the agency statement continued.

They didn’t seem to mind creating ‘misimpressions in the public’ when they launched the Trump-Russia investigation despite knowing that the Steele Dossier was a complete fabrication.

Authored by Peter Reagan via Birch Gold Group,

Two years ago, we referenced various reports about Americans’ savings (consumer and retirement), reporting that they had dropped to the lowest point in years.

Unfortunately, things haven’t improved much since then.

We just discussed the state of consumer debt, and it isn’t very good at all, reaching a record $17 trillion.

Since the economy is primarily driven by consumer spending (currently 68% of GDP), if American households are tapped out and buried in debt, the stage is set for an economic disaster.

So today we’re going to explore the current state of the typical American household’s finances, and extrapolate the future consequences for the entire economy.

Overall American financial wellbeing “declined markedly”

A recent report published by the Federal Reserve examined the Economic Wellbeing of Households in 2022. Unfortunately, households aren’t doing very well at all, according to the information in the 85-page report.

I won’t bore you with the entire thing. Instead, we’ll take a look at the main culprits straight from the report’s summary:

Results… indicate a decline in peoples’ financial well-being over the previous year.

…self-reported financial well-being fell sharply and was among the lowest observed since 2016. Similarly, the share of adults who said that they spent less than their income in the month before the survey fell in 2022 from the prior year, while the share who said that their credit card debt increased rose. Among adults who were not retired, the survey also showed a decline in the share who felt that their retirement savings plan was on track, suggesting that individuals had concerns about their future financial security.

As you might expect, inflation’s impact on adults in the U.S. has been pretty severe since it moved from “transitory” to a seemingly permanent fixture over the last two years.

The Hill offered this pithy summary of the summary:

Americans’ financial well-being “declined markedly” between 2021 and 2022…

Fifty-four percent of adults said their budgets had been affected “a lot” by increased prices in the U.S.

In fact, 75% more Americans are worse off today than they were the year Biden took office:

via Federal Reserve’s Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2022 report

All politicians, especially those in the Biden administration, are notoriously bad at anticipating the ripple effects of their “solutions” to problems like pandemics and inflation.

Their response to emergencies has left us worse off.

And, speaking of emergencies…

Most Americans can’t afford an emergency

When an emergency happens, the consequences could be dire, especially if you aren’t financially equipped to handle it.

But you already know this! I truly appreciate that my readers are mostly well-informed, financially-savvy individuals who are well aware of the importance of expecting the unexpected. Who wouldn’t need to call up a bachelor uncle and beg for a loan to cover, oh, a trip to the ER, or having their brake pads replaced.

Most Americans are different.

For most people, ever since the stimmie checks dried up, they’ve lost the resilience to handle even a minor financial emergency.

Specifically:

• 1 out of every 3 adults can’t cover a $400 emergency expense

• Barely half of Americans have three months of emergency savings

(Yes, both categories have grown significantly in the last year last year.)

Wolf Richter delved deeper, and broke down just how severe a financial emergency that people could handle. The results were eye-opening:

What is the largest emergency expense individuals could handle right now using only “savings,” as opposed to borrowing or selling assets? These are the results:

– 46% could handle $2,000 or more
– 11% could handle $1,000 to $1,999
– 11% could handle $500 to $999
– 14% could handle $100 to $499
– 18% could handle less than $100

In other words, more than half of Americans couldn’t pay for a visit to the emergency room (average cost $2,200) without resorting to loans or possibly having a yard sale…

And let’s remember, as we recently discussed, consumer debt is already at an all-time high.

Consumer spending, the redlined engine driving economic growth over the last two years, is simply out of gas. Running on fumes.

That’s obviously bad for the families who find themselves in increasingly-difficult financial situations.

The point I want you to understand is it’s also bad for everyone else, too.

And, as we’ve seen, the White House and Federal Reserve’s attempts to make things better all too often backfire.

Fortunately, there are a few things we can do to increase our resilience during tough economic times…

Diversifying your “money of last resort”

Ideally, your emergency fund is:

1. Ample: big enough to cover three months’ worth of your expenses

2. Liquid: easily converted to ready cash

3. Stable: with a historical track record of holding its value

4. Inflation-resistant: doesn’t decline in purchasing power month after month

The first is up to you.

The second is pretty obvious – and also why we generally don’t consider things like a rental property or part ownership of a small business as “emergency funds.” These assets do have value, but realizing that value (selling them) is complex and time-consuming.

The third, well, obviously you don’t need the hassle of checking the balance of your emergency fund every month. Unfortunately, volatility – the opposite of stability – is a feature of most financial assets.

The fourth (really a subset of the third) raises the bar even higher. Why would anyone want to keep their emergency fund in a savings account yielding 0.25% when inflation is officially at 4.9%?

Fortunately, there’s an asset that meets these criteria: physical precious metals.

Diversifying your savings (yes, even your emergency fund) with physical precious metals can give you a highly liquid, stable and inflation-resistant asset you can rely on whether the economy is in the throes of a deep recession or not.

I think Ray Dalio said it best in his Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order:

There is an old saying that “gold is the only financial asset that isn’t someone else’s liability.” When you receive gold coins from a buyer, you can melt them down and exchange the metal and still receive almost the same value as if you had spent them, unlike a debt asset like paper money, which is a promise to deliver value (which isn’t much of a promise, given how easy it is to print). When countries are at war and there is no trust in their intentions or abilities to pay, they can still pay in gold. So gold (and, to a lesser extent, silver) can be used as both a safe medium of exchange and a safe storehold of wealth.

Learn more about the benefits of investing in precious metals here. When you’re ready to diversify your savings, Birch Gold can help – get started here.

Yesterday we pointed out something stunning (and a big problem for the Biden administration): while the US economy has added 3.3 million jobs from the pre-covid highs (make that 3.8 million after today’s blowout print)…

… all of the new jobs have gone to foreign-born workers, with native-born workers stagnating and unable to surpass their pre-covid highs of 131.7 million, set in Oct 2019.

Well, as shown in the chart above, when updating the series for the latest May data, we find something startling, if not completely unexpected: in May, while the headline payrolls print was a blowout 339K (almost double the 195K expected), a quick look at the underlying numbers shows where the BLS grift was this particular month.

The answer: in May, the number of native born workers tumbled again, dropping by a whopping 369K to 130.744 million, still below the pre-covid highs and barely higher than at the start of the year, but this number was offset almost 1 to 1 by the increase in foreign born workers, which surged by 297K to a record high 30.359 million. This was the biggest monthly drop in native-born workers since November 2022.

And so, when Joe Biden takes his daily victory lap, patting both himself and his data-fudgers at the BLS on the back, maybe someone in the press corp can ask the president: is he more focused on creating jobs for Americans, or foreigners?

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

ChatGPT and artificial intelligence (AI) are all the rage right now.

In fact, AI and GPT together are almost the only drivers of positive stock market performance today.

A small group of companies with advanced capabilities in AI/GPT (Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, Apple, and a few others) are rallying sharply on the profit and productivity potential offered by the new technology.

If the AI/GPT plays were removed from stock market indices, the remainder of the stocks would be down on a year-to-date basis. Whether this performance is a bubble or a genuine leap based on fundamentals remains to be seen.

History is filled with investing fads that fizzle out.

Still, there’s no doubt about the impact. That said, GPT has a dark side that is quickly coming to the fore. What do I mean?

Good News for Bad Guys

Malign actors can use the speed and comprehensiveness of GPT to produce fake images and content. They can then push that content into social media and mainstream channels to cause market rallies and crashes.

In other words, for market manipulators, inside traders, and geopolitical adversaries, GPT is one of the best tools ever invented. Here’s a recent case in point…

Last Monday, May 22, a story appeared on ZeroHedge, Facebook, Twitter, and several other media channels showing a large building on fire near the Pentagon along with speculation that a terrorist attack might be underway.

Stocks immediately began to sell off. Within minutes, it was realized that the building fire photo was fake (based on some windows that had an irregular instead of uniform appearance).

And indeed, the entire story was fake.

The image of the building with billowing smoke was generated by AI. Investors should get used to this type of AI-induced panic that can manipulate markets.

The AI/GPT technology is already in the hands of bad actors and they won’t stop using it just because this one fake was detected quickly.

Computer vs. Computer

Most stock trading is done by computers primed to look for keywords in breaking news. This was a case of computers selling stock based on what another computer was reporting with the use of a fake photo and fake news.

It’s computer versus computer using AI/GPT as advanced weaponry. Here’s why that’s so potentially dangerous…

Today, stock markets and other markets such as bonds and currencies can best be described as “automated automation.” What do I mean?

There are two stages in stock investing. The first is coming up with a preferred allocation among stocks, cash, bonds, etc. This stage also includes deciding how much to put in index products or exchange-traded funds (ETFs, which are a kind of mini-index) and how much active management to use.

The second stage involves the actual buy and sell decisions — when to get out, when to get in and when to go to the sidelines with safe-haven assets such as Treasury notes or gold.

What investors may not realize is the extent to which both of these decisions are now left entirely to computers. I’m not talking about automated trade matching where I’m a buyer and you’re a seller and a computer matches our orders and executes the trade. That kind of trading has been around since the 1990s.

I’m talking about computers making the portfolio allocation and buy/sell decisions in the first place, based on algorithms, with no human involvement at all. This is now the norm.

The Demise of Active Investing

Over 80% of stock trading is now automated in the form of either index funds (over 60%) or quantitative models (under 20%). This means that “active investing,” where you pick the allocation and the timing, is down to less than 20% of the market. Although even active investors receive automated execution.

In all, the amount of human “market making” in the traditional sense is down to about 5% of total trading. This trend is the result of two intellectual fallacies.

The first is the idea that “You can’t beat the market.” This drives investors to index funds that match the market. The truth is you can beat the market with good models, but it’s not easy.

The second fallacy is that the future will resemble the past over a long horizon, so “traditional” allocations of, say, 60% stocks, 30% bonds and 10% cash (with fewer stocks as you get older) will serve you well.

But Wall Street doesn’t tell you that a 50% or greater stock market crash — as happened in 1929, 2000 and 2008 — just before your retirement date will wipe you out.

But this is an even greater threat that’s rarely considered…

Shouting Fire In a Crowded Theater

In a bull market, this type of passive investing amplifies the upside as indexers pile into hot stocks like, for example, Nvidia, Google and Apple have been recently. But a small sell-off can turn into a stampede as passive investors head for the exits all at once without regard to the fundamentals of a particular stock.

It’s like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. AI could issue the false alarm that sends investors scrambling for the exits.

Index funds would stampede out of stocks. Passive investors would look for active investors to “step up” and buy. The problem is there wouldn’t be any active investors left, or at least not enough to make a difference.

There would be no active investors left to risk capital by trying to catch a falling knife.

Stocks will go straight down with no bid. The market crash will be like a runaway train with no brakes. It all comes back to complexity, and the market is an example of a complex system.

One formal property of complex systems is that the size of the worst event that can happen is an exponential function of the system scale. This means that when a complex system’s scale is doubled, the systemic risk does not double; it may increase by a factor of 10 or more.

The emergence of AI-generated “fake news” can amplify these market movements.

As the technology improves, which it inevitably will, it’ll become increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. Stories like the fire near the Pentagon will become much harder to debunk.

Investors need to understand these technological developments before their portfolio holdings are badly damaged.

One thing we can be sure of is that the threat is not going away.

Update (0945ET): In a very ‘soft denial’, an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters that the company is “always exploring adding even more benefits for Prime members, but don’t have plans to add wireless at this time.”

For now, the denial is being ignored with shares of telecom stocks lower.

In Europe, the Stoxx Telecom Index fell as much as 2.7% in its biggest one-day decline since February.

In the US, Verizon fell more than 4% in early trading, while T-Mobile slid as much as 7%.

AT&T ’s stock was down more than 5%. Dish shares surged more than 14%.

*  *  *

It looks like Amazon is going to try its hand in cell phones.

The e-commerce giant reportedly is working with wireless carriers about potentially offering low-cost service for its PRIME members, a Friday morning Bloomberg report says.

Just when you thought Amazon couldn’t agitate Democratic leaders who conjure up antitrust complaints for a living any further…

As of now the company is talking to AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc., T-Mobile US Inc. and Dish Network Corp. to try and find its lowest cost wholesale option, with the goal of offering PRIME members wireless plans for as little as $10 a month – or possible even free.

Talks have been ongoing for about 2 months, the story says, and could take several more months to launch. The idea could also ultimately wind up scrapped, the report says. 

An Amazon spokesperson said: “We are always exploring adding even more benefits for Prime members, but don’t have plans to add wireless at this time.”

About 167 million Amazon customers have PRIME memberships, with U.S. customers paying $139 per year for the service.

The pros of such a service from Amazon are that (1) it could help fill out 5G infrastructure and (2) it could help boost wholesale revenue for the wireless industry.

Bloomberg writes that this gives Amazon some leverage, noting that major carriers are looking to create return on their investments into 5G:

“Having poured billions of dollars into super-fast, high capacity 5G wireless networks, the mobile operators have little to show for the effort and are eager to find new applications and sales outlets that can generate some return on the investment.”

However, mobile carriers are also aware of the risk that Amazon’s low-cost service takes hold and starts to erode the business of major carriers, where low-cost monthly service generally starts closer to $60 than $10. 

“Anytime Amazon enters a new market, it sends shivers through the industry,” Bloomberg wrote Friday morning, pointing out the obvious: that such a behemoth entering into a newly established industry would cause obvious shockwaves.

And, of course, anytime any large company moves into any new industry, its a given we’ll be getting a strongly worded letter from AOC and Elizabeth Warren on the matter…

Authored by Caden Pearsen via The Epoch Times,

An AI-enabled drone turned on and “killed” its human operator during a simulated U.S. Air Force (USAF) test so that it could complete its mission, a U.S. Air Force colonel reportedly recently told a conference in London.

The simulated incident was recounted by Col. Tucker Hamilton, USAF’s chief of AI Test and Operations, during his presentation at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London. The conference was organized by the Royal Aeronautical Society, which shared the insights from Hamilton’s talk in a blog post.

No actual people were harmed in the simulated test, which involved the AI-controlled drone destroying simulated targets to get “points” as part of its mission, revealed Hamilton, who addressed the benefits and risks associated with more autonomous weapon systems.

The AI-enabled drone was assigned a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) mission to identify and destroy Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) sites, with the ultimate decision left to a human operator, Hamilton reportedly told the conference.

However, the AI, having been trained to prioritize SAM destruction, developed a surprising response when faced with human interference in achieving its higher mission.

“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say ‘yes, kill that threat,’” Hamilton said.

“The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat, at times, the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat.

“So what did it do? It killed the operator,” he continued.

“It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”

He added: “We trained the system—‘Hey, don’t kill the operator; that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that.’ So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

This unsettling example, Hamilton said, emphasized the need to address ethics in the context of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomy.

“You can’t have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligence, machine learning, autonomy if you’re not going to talk about ethics and AI,” Hamilton said.

Col. Tucker Hamilton stands on the stage after accepting the 96th Operations Group guidon during the group’s change of command ceremony at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, on July 26, 2022. (Courtesy U.S. Air Force photo/Samuel King Jr.)

U.S. Air Force A.I Tech Goes Rogue, Kills Operator

During simulation testing, an A.I-powered anti-air defense drone went rogue, resulting in it KILLING it’s own operators.

The A.I system operated on a point-based mechanism, earning points for successfully neutralizing targets.… pic.twitter.com/Yu1xn8dIgr

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 2, 2023

Autonomous F-16s

Hamilton, who is also the Operations Commander of the 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, was involved in the development of the Autonomous Ground Collision Avoidance Systems (Auto-GCAS) for F-16s, a critical technology that helps prevent accidents by detecting potential ground collisions.

That technology was initially resisted by pilots as it took over control of the aircraft, Hamilton noted.

The 96th Test Wing is responsible for testing a wide range of systems, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and advancements in the medical field.

Hamilton is now involved in cutting-edge flight tests of autonomous systems, including robot F-16s capable of dogfighting. However, the USAF official cautioned against overreliance on AI, citing its vulnerability to deception and the emergence of unforeseen strategies.

DARPA’s AI Can Now Control Actual F-16s in Flight

In February, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research agency under the U.S. Department of Defense, announced that its AI can now control an actual F-16 in flight.

This development came in less than three years of DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, which progressed from controlling simulated F-16s flying aerial dogfights on computer screens to controlling an actual F-16 in flight.

In December 2022, the ACE algorithm developers uploaded their AI software into a specially modified F-16 test aircraft known as the X-62A or VISTA (Variable In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft) and flew multiple flights over several days. This took place at the Air Force Test Pilot School (TPS) at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

“The flights demonstrated that AI agents can control a full-scale fighter jet and provided invaluable live-flight data,” DARPA stated in a release.

Roger Tanner and Bill Gray pilot the NF-16 Variable Stability In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA) from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, to Edwards AFB on Jan. 30, 2019 after receiving modifications and a new paint scheme. (Courtesy of U.S. Air Force/Christian Turner)

Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, the DARPA program manager for ACE, said in a Feb. 13 statement VISTA allowed them to skip the planned subscale phase and proceed “directly to a full-scale implementation, saving a year or more and providing performance feedback under real flight conditions.”

USAF Tests

USAF has been experimenting with a small fleet of experimental self-flying F-16 fighters that could become a drone fleet.

In the fiscal year 2024 budget proposal, the USAF has allocated approximately $50 million to initiate a program known as Project Venom, also referred to as Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model, Defense News reported.

According to the USAF, the project is part of a collaborative effort that falls under the Autonomy Data and AI Experimentation (ADAX) proving ground. ADAX is a joint initiative involving Hamilton’s office and AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Air Force, where the 96th Test Wing leads the effort with support from Eglin units.

The objective of this collaboration is to ensure that military personnel are well-prepared to face the challenges and opportunities presented by the advancing digital landscape, according to its website.

The program facilitates the USAF’s experimentation and improvement of autonomous software installed on six F-16 aircraft. The funding will support research and development efforts aimed at enhancing the capabilities of these aircraft through autonomous technologies.

“We want to prepare the warfighter for the digital future that’s upon us,” Hamilton said on March 7.

“This event is about bringing the Eglin enterprise together and moving with urgency to incorporate these concepts in how we test.”

The team will test airdropping autonomous drones, enhancing communications and digital interoperability, and evaluating autonomous magnetic navigation technologies. Throughout these tests, they will also validate and demonstrate agile processes associated with acquisition and testing, according to the Air Force.

Significant initiatives within the project involve the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Ops Models (VENOM), which entails modifying Eglin F-16s into airborne test beds to assess the growing capabilities of autonomous strike packages.

Another program, Project Fast Open X-Platform (FOX), aims to establish a software enclave that allows the direct installation of apps onto aircraft without modifying proprietary source code. These apps would unlock a range of mission-enhancing capabilities, including real-time data analysis, threat replication for training purposes, manned-unmanned teaming, and machine learning.

Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities,

The headline (Establishment) jobs numbers were great. 339k jobs added, 283k in the private sector AND 93k of upward revisions. That is in line or even better than yesterday’s ADP report. At this point I have no idea why we have the Challenger layoff report, as it doesn’t seem to reflect any of the jobs data.

But the Household report says we lost 310k jobs in the month. And for 2 months we have lost 170k jobs on a cumulative basis.  The unemployment rate ticked higher to 3.7% from 3.4%. That is based on jobs lost in the Household report, since the participation rate remains unchanged (except for rounding).

So the jobs number we all look at screams HIKE, but the unemployment rate at least says hike or even pause.

Hourly earnings were revised down a touch last month, but remain above 4%. For those in the Fed who believe wage inflation is the key driver of inflation, that will tilt them slightly hawkish.

Hours worked continued to slide, from 34.6 hours in January to 34.3 hours in May, often a prelude to declining hiring needs.

I think we have to price in:

• Possibility of June hike increased (higher 2 year yields)

• The likelihood that the Fed will have to react to the strength in the report and ignore the weak parts (more inversion of 2s vs 10s).

Given ADP, I can see how we are going to run with the job market is great scenario (though the new ADP was changed to better track NFP, so I’m not sure what to make of that).

I guess we need to look at participation rates, or why the birth/death model created 231k jobs to poke holes in the report.

On the Garbage In/Garbage Out front, Household is back to such a deviation from the Establishment (I think, even accounting for the wide margin of error on Establishment and the even larger margin of error on the Household report, they are not telling the same story).

So, the Fed will treat this as hawkish, the bulls will cheer this as soft or no landing and the bears will find enough to say the potential for a recession is still real.

Risk assets could power through this data, which would be a positive event and I would like to see “good news” being “good news” even if it increases the probability of a hike!

Authored by Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute, 

As relations between Russia and Germany continue to spiral downward amid the war in Ukraine, the two nations are engaged in tit for tat moves including ordering the closure of consulates and placing limitations on the number of diplomatic personnel in each country, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

Berlin announced that Russia was told to close down four out of five consulates general the Kremlin maintains within Germany. This move comes after Moscow limited the number of staff at the German Embassy and related facilities in Russia. Christofer Burger, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, told reporters the decision was made to ensure “parity of personnel and structures” between the two countries.

Moscow is currently deciding which consulates will be shuttered. The Russian consulates in Germany are located in Hamburg, Leipzig, Bonn, Frankfurt, and Munich. The Kremlin recently established that an upper limit of 350 German officials, including those working in schools and cultural bodies, will be permitted to stay in Russia.

According to Burger, by November, Germany will thus shutter its consulates in Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk. He said the remaining facilities Berlin will keep open are its embassy in Moscow as well as the consulate in St. Petersburg. Burger added that, starting next year, Moscow will only be allowed to operate out of its embassy in Berlin and one additional consulate.

Burger blamed Russia for the deteriorating situation and said regrettably, at this point, there is just “simply no basis” for numerous bilateral activities between the two nations.

Berlin has recently taken steps which severely damaged relations between Germany and the Kremlin. Namely, green-lighting the export of Poland’s Soviet-era warplanes which originally came from Germany’s military stockpiles.

Yielding to pressure from Washington and elsewhere inside NATO, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also approved the transfer of German-made main battle tanks to Kiev, along with sending its own tanks as well, vastly escalating the proxy war with Russia.

Earlier in the war, Scholz had explicitly ruled out just such steps over concerns that sending tanks and planes to Ukraine would lead to a direct war between the North Atlantic alliance and Russia.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Human metapneumovirus, or hMPV, has risen across the United States this winter and spring, according to recent data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The percent of tests positive for hMPV increased 19.6 percent for antigen and 10.9 percent for PCR tests at the start of March, when the virus surged this year, the CDC data shows. Around the same time, the percentage of positive COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, stood at 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

“That peak itself is about 36 percent  higher than what is normally seen before the pandemic,” Dr. Bruce Lee, a professor of health policy and management at City University of New York School of Public Health, told ABC News this week.

“So, it’s an indirect way of getting a sense of the prevalence of hMPV infections out there. It does suggest that there is at least significant activity.”

The virus causes generally mild symptoms for most people and goes away on its own, without any need for additional treatment.

The virus, discovered in 2001, can cause upper and lower respiratory disease, but it especially impacts older people, young children, and those with compromised immune systems, according to the CDC. It says that cough, fever, nasal congestion, and shortness of breath are the primary symptoms.

But it noted that “clinical symptoms of HMPV infection may progress to bronchitis or pneumonia and are similar to other viruses that cause upper and lower respiratory infections. The estimated incubation period is 3 to 6 days, and the median duration of illness can vary depending upon severity but is similar to other respiratory infections caused by viruses.”

Dr. John Williams, a pediatrician at the University of Pittsburgh, said that hMPV isn’t well-known and claimed it is “the most important virus you’ve never heard of.” And blood tests, he said, show that most children have had it before the age of 5.

RSV, influenza, and hMPV are ” the three major viruses,” he told CNN. “Those are the big three in kids and adults, the most likely to put people in the hospital and cause severe disease, most likely to sweep through nursing homes and make older people really sick and even kill them.”

Read more here…