THECOCONUTWHISPERER

Saturday, 18 January 2020

Meghan & Harry Bankrupting Dear Old Dad :)

The bank of Dad is draining Charles: RICHARD KAY on how the Prince of Wales has had to dip into his own private reserves and give Harry and William around £2.5 million each

By RICHARD KAY FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 17:17 EST, 17 January 2020 | UPDATED: 20:41 EST, 17 January 2020

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As fireworks arced across the night sky over Windsor Great Park, Prince Charles oozed with paternal pride.

‘My darling old Harry, I’m so happy for you,’ he had declared in his father-of-the-groom speech as the lavish celebrations for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding moved to its extravagant finale.

Fast forward 12 months and the Prince of Wales was in a rather less benign mood as he leafed through pages of accounts relating to his son’s expenditure.

The bills for the wedding, the bills relating to the considerable sums spent on fixtures and fittings at the Sussexes’ home Frogmore Cottage — quite distinct from the taxpayer-funded structural renovations — and the ongoing bills for Harry and Meghan’s allowance that he also provides, were adding up.

Prince Charles is pictured above walking Meghan Markle down the aisle on the day of her wedding to his son Prince Harry

Sources now say the money Charles pays to his sons is 'draining him' Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, Savannah Phillips and Prince George of Cambridge

Royal wedding: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle exchange rings

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Beyond a frown, he gave little away. ‘His attitude is always just pay what needs to be paid and move on,’ says a former aide. ‘It’s usually the path of least resistance when it’s to do with the boys.’

But those familiar with some of the eye-watering numbers which have crossed the royal desk at Clarence House say there is another side to the story.

One figure went so far as to say that the money he spends, not just on Harry and Meghan but also on financing William and Kate, was ‘draining him’.

Officially, the brothers and their households are funded out of Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall estate, but, in fact, the Prince has at times had to dip into his own private reserves.

Insiders speak of the ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ the Prince made available to furnish the couple’s Windsor home (Frogmore Cottage above) after their decision to abandon Kensington Palace

It is thought the last time he had to do that on a significant level was in meeting Princess Diana’s £17.5 million divorce settlement in 1996, for which he also had to borrow from the Queen.

Within a year following Diana’s death, that money, minus inheritance tax handed over to the Treasury, had ironically been transferred into trusts for his sons.

Against this backdrop it is no wonder that the Prince has been so dismayed by Harry’s decision to turn his back on life within the Royal Family for an increasingly uncertain future outside it.

One of his central worries is just how — or rather who — is going to finance their new lives.

Money may not be the root of this crisis, but it is contingent to it. In announcing their decision to stand down as senior royals, the couple said it was their intention to be financially independent.

While this certainly represents a headache for the monarchy with its thinly disguised inference that Harry and Meghan may become royals for sale, Prince Charles’s money-men may be privately relieved.

At one stage he was paying the Sussexes more than William and his family. That figure is now understood to be around the same, with Harry and William each receiving approximately £2.5 million.

However, the Prince has let it be known that his funds are not inexhaustible and that there is a limit to how far and how much he can pay.

Insiders speak of the ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ the Prince made available to furnish the couple’s Windsor home after their decision to abandon Kensington Palace.

This was in addition to the £2.4 million of public money used to convert the 19th century property from five staff flats into a single home.

‘As for the wedding, it cost him a small fortune,’ a source said. ‘They were not small sums.’

From the Michelin-starred caterers who provided the evening’s black-tie dinner for 200, and the glass marquee, to the festival-themed food stalls and bars and cars and coaches to ferry the guests around, it was all paid for by the Prince.

According to a source, the figures involved in providing for both boys have in recent times been flagged up to the Prince by his accounting staff on more than one occasion.

‘There’s usually a raised eyebrow, but the Prince always just signs them off,’ says the source.

All the same, he has made it clear that while he will continue to fund his sons, there can be, as one courtier put it, ‘no blank cheque’.

US court slashes $8 bn Johnson & Johnson damages over drug side effect

JANUARY 18, 2020

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-court-slashes-bn-johnson-drug.html

Added by CiC

A Pennsylvania court on Friday slashed an $8 billion ruling against

US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, imposed by a jury because the company failed to warn that a psychiatric drug could cause breast growth in men.

The court said the company now only is liable for punitive damages of $6.8 million, although the company still intends to appeal the decision.

The jury in October ordered Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals to pay damages after plaintiff Nicholas Murray told the Philadelphia court that the drug Risperdal, prescribed to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, had made him grow breasts.

The company said that although the court "appropriately reduced the excessive punitive damages award, we will continue to move ahead with an appeal of this verdict."

It said it was unable to present the jury with "vital evidence" showing how the drug label "appropriately outlined the benefits and risks associated with the medicine."

The company is facing a series of complaints in state courts for failing to properly warn of Risperdal's side effects, including in Pennsylvania, California and Missouri.

The US Food and Drug Administration approved Risperdal for treatment of adults in 1993, and the drug brought in some $737 million (672 million euros) in sales in 2018.

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Ilhan Omar is finally getting the scrutiny she deserves for possible illegal acts

January 17, 2020 By Andrea Widburg

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/ilhan_omar_is_finally_getting_the_scrutiny_she_deserves_for_possible_illegal_acts.html

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) exploded on the national political scene in 2018, when she ran for and won a seat in the House of Representatives.  Born in Somalia, she and her family had escaped that war-torn country when she was a small child and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya.  Omar came to America in 1992, when she was 10.

Omar was a perfect candidate to take over the seat that Keith Ellison vacated when he moved on to become deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee.  As was Ellison, Omar is a Muslim representing Minnesota's 5th congressional district — that is, Minneapolis and some suburbs — an area that is politically Progressive and that has a large Muslim population.

Beautiful, poised, articulate, and with impeccable Progressive credentials, Omar was a shoo-in.  She also entered Congress at the same time as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.  All young, all leftist, all arrogant, the four women were dubbed "the Squad" and proceeded to act as if they owned Congress.

While Ocasio-Cortez burbled Leftist nonsense, Tlaib and Omar got down to the business of denigrating America, Israel, and Jews.  They disliked the American military and mourned Soleimani's death.  Despite their puritanical faith, they pushed on America every possible Progressive policy.

The mainstream media were in love with the Squad, especially the exotic Omar.  Conservatives had problems, serious problems, with her politics.  And a small cadre of dogged conservative journalists, most notably at PJ Media and Power Line, found particularly dismaying Omar's probable marital and immigration fraud.

If you search for Omar's name at either of those sites, you'll find article after article meticulously documenting her marriage to a man almost certainly her brother, which gained him entry into the American education system, while she was simultaneously in a "faith-based" marriage to another man with whom she had children and filed taxes.  Other research revealed that her entire extended family may have been switching out identities to gain entry to America.  Many of those articles reflected meticulous investigation by David Steinberg.  (See here, for example.)

The unsavoriness of Omar's conduct escalated when she dumped her husband and went to live with another man who apparently left his wife for Omar.  It turns out that beneath the modest headgear she wears, Omar is a Jezebel.
In October 2019, the Department of Justice finally assigned an FBI special agent in charge to look at Omar's conduct over an eight-year period.  Steinberg has now written another detailed article explaining that these investigations are starting to bear fruit.

The Department of Education inspector general is examining whether her 2009 marriage to a U.K. citizen (who may well have been her brother) was meant to defraud the federal student loan system:

Shortly after Omar's 2009 marriage, the new couple moved to Fargo, North Dakota. Omar enrolled at North Dakota State University in August 2009. Her husband enrolled the following year.

Omar received a degree in June 2011. According to Omar herself, she and her husband then permanently separated in June 2011. The marriage's start and end coincide with the start and end dates of Omar's NDSU enrollment.

Incredibly — according to address records, and a statement from Omar herself — she was also still living with her first husband, and their two kids, throughout this second marriage.

This investigation will encompass the fact that, when Omar filed for divorce from that 2009 marriage, she perjured herself eight times in nine questions by claiming she had no contact with her husband, despite evidence strewn across social media that this was a lie.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is also examining myriad immigration felonies Omar might have committed.  No wonder that Omar has been in the forefront of those Progressive politicians demanding that ICE be abolished.

Many criminals fear getting caught and do their best to stay out of the limelight.  There is, however, a class of criminal that functions on arrogance.  These people believe that, like Yogi Bear, they're "smarter than the average bear."  Their egos are so big that they cannot imagine that they'll ever be caught.

Jeffrey Epstein was one such person.  Michael Avenatti is another.  Both would have done well to stay in the shadows rather than to flaunt themselves and their crimes.  And now it's beginning to look as if Ilhan Omar falls into the same category: people whose failed moral compasses allow them to commit crimes, and whose overweening egos compel them to seek the public spotlight.

A mysterious virus in China is a reminder that the world isn't ready for a pandemic. Bill Gates says we should prepare for a deadly outbreak as we do for war.

Aria Bendix 3 hours ago

www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-spreads-japan-thailand-2020-1

Pedestrians wear protective masks as they walk through a shopping district in Tokyo on January 16, 2020.

Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo

It started with a few cases of what seemed like pneumonia.

Chinese authorities reported on December 31 that 41 people in Wuhan, the most populous city in central China, were afflicted with a pneumonia-like illness. The likely source of the outbreak was the local Huanan seafood market, which sells live animals. The market closed a day after the outbreak was reported.

By January 7, Chinese authorities had determined that the illness was a new type of coronavirus: a large family of viruses that typically affect the respiratory tract.

The first death was reported a few days later; local officials announced the second on Thursday.
The virus has now spread to Thailand and Japan. A 61-year-old female tourist in Thailand was diagnosed on Tuesday. She'd recently spent time in Wuhan but said she did not visited the now-shuttered seafood market. The woman did visit another local market with live animals, though.

Japan's health ministry reported Wednesday that a man in his 30s has the virus as well. That patient recently came back from a trip to China, where he did not visit any seafood markets, according to the ministry.

"It is possible that the patient had close contact with an unknown patient with lung inflammation while in China," the ministry said in a statement.

The World Health Organization has said there's no clear evidence that the virus can be transmitted between humans — most likely it just passes from animals to people. But the two cases outside of China have called that into question.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that three US airports — New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, and Los Angeles International Airport — will begin screening passengers for the virus.

If the virus were to somehow morph into a pandemic (a far cry from the situation right now), the world wouldn't be remotely prepared, according to Bill Gates.

"In the case of biological threats, that sense of urgency is lacking," Gates said in a 2018 presentation hosted by the New England Journal of Medicine. "The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war."

The virus belongs to the same family as SARS, the source of a fatal epidemic in China

Some of the patients who contracted the new virus reported symptoms such fever, chills, headaches, and sore throat. A few had difficulty breathing.

Coronaviruses can lead to illnesses like the common cold, pneumonia, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a potentially fatal illness that hasn't been reported anywhere since 2004.

Hong Kong airport — A health surveillance officer monitors passengers arriving at the Hong Kong International Airport on January 4, 2020.

A viral outbreak of SARS that started in China in November 2002 resulted in 8,000 cases and 774 deaths by July 2003. The outbreak spread to dozens of countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent research suggests that it may have spread to humans from horseshoe bats.
Though Chinese officials don't expect the new coronavirus to spread from human to human, they have quarantined patients and closely observed anyone who has been in close contact with them.
Airports in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and South Korea are also closely screening passengers for fever. Hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel throughout China later this month for the Lunar New Year.

Gates thinks a pandemic could kill 30 million people in less than a year

Gates considers a deadly pandemic to be one of the world's three biggest threats, next to climate change and nuclear war.

He has repeatedly warned about what might happen if the world were struck by a pandemic virus like the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed 50 million people. A similar scenario today might kill more than 30 million people in less than a year, Gates said in his presentation.

The statistic comes from the Institute for Disease Modeling, which predicts that the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years. One possible source of the virus could be animals such as birds, chicken, or pigs.

bill gates — Gates at a New York Times event in 2019.

"More than 60% of human disease, particularly related to infections, are coming from animals," Victor Dzau, the president of the National Academy of Medicine, told Insider. "The fact that animals are not living in the forest but we are domesticating them ... putting them in crowded conditions close to humans, that's really a very big factor."

Animal-borne diseases can morph to jump to humans and spread between people, especially among travelers or in dense urban areas. Rising global temperatures also heighten the risk of mosquito-borne diseases.

Gates thinks more vaccines could help us prepare

bird flu china.JPG — People participate in an emergency exercise on prevention and control of H7N9 bird flu virus organized by the local government in Hebi, Henan province, China, June 17, 2017.

Though the world is armed with antiviral drugs and antibiotics, Gates has said, new vaccines would likely be necessary to address and prevent future epidemics. That's because strange pathogens emerge all the time, finding new ways to mutate or jump from their host to other species.

In a 2017 op-ed for Business Insider, Gates wrote that the process of creating a vaccine takes too long — about 10 years for development and licensing. He estimated that = process would need to be reduced to 90 days or less to prevent deaths from an airborne pathogen.

Gates also said countries should routinely monitor their populations for signs of an outbreak. Once a new virus strikes, the countries could then share that information with the rest of the world, in addition to coordinating with military and medical professionals to control the spread of the virus.
"The irony is that the cost of ensuring adequate pandemic preparedness worldwide is estimated at $3.4 billion a year — yet the projected annual loss from a pandemic could run as high as $570 billion," Gates wrote. "Even if the next pandemic isn't on the scale of the 1918 flu, we would be wise to consider the social and economic turmoil."

Avocados hit sweet spot in China, while sucking Chile dry

CNA Insider
By Derrick A Paulo, Low Minmin and Wei Du.
18 Jan 2020 06:15AM (Updated: 18 Jan 2020 07:06AM)
www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/avocados-hit-sweet-spot-china-sucking-petorca-chile-dry-water-12277350

Chinese consumers have embraced the craze for the fruit only in recent years, but that is making life ever more difficult in one of its source countries, the programme China’s Growing Appetite finds out.

Spaghetti topped with avocado slices being served at Kiss Avocado, a restaurant in Shanghai.

Spaghetti topped with avocado slices being served at an avocado restaurant in Shanghai.

As China's middle class grows, more of them are eating trendy foods like avocado.

As China's middle class grows, more of them are eating trendy foods like avocado.

PETORCA, Chile: It is a superfood, packed with vitamins, minerals and fibre. And in China, avocado has also become a social media superstar since a fitness craze took the country by storm about six years ago.

More and more people are working out, toning up and showing off on social media, including what they eat to help burn fat and gain muscles.

In Shanghai, one avocado restaurant is taking to social media at a whole new level, with its marketing done entirely through word of mouth online.

Kiss Avocado even has a pink decor to attract girls who would “take selfies and post on social media”, said co-owner Lynn Yin. And as the Chinese middle class grows, more of them are eating such trendy foods.

Avocado-related content on Chinese social media.

A decade ago, China’s volume of avocado imports was low: 31.8 tonnes in 2011. But it has increased by more than 1,300 times, to 43,000 tonnes in 2018.

Previously, an avocado from Mexico retailed domestically at about 50 yuan (S$10), in no small measure because of a 40 per cent total tax rate for the fruit.

But in 2014, Beijing granted market access to Chile. And under a bilateral free trade agreement, Chilean avocados have since entered with zero export tariffs. By 2017, half of China’s avocados came from the South American country.

The fruit now costs about 10 to 15 yuan, whereas in Chile, the price has tripled to 3,200 pesos (S$6) per kilogramme, observed FoodyChile tour guide Colin Bennett.

“When I first moved here (12 years ago), it was 1,000 pesos a kilo,” said the American, who settled in Santiago, the capital.

Locally produced avocados in Chile.

The price increase, however, is not the only concern in the world’s third-largest producer of avocados. As its exports increase, so too have its environmental problems.

And the programme China’s Growing Appetite questions whether Chinese consumers should wake up to how their “food-print” affects other countries. (Watch the episode here.)

WATER SHORTAGE

Chilean activist Rodrigo Mundaca knows all about his country’s problems with big avocado plantations, especially in Petorca, a major avocado-producing region in central Chile.

It has the kind of warm climate and stable temperatures for the fruit to thrive, except that a lot of water is needed.

Petorca, a three-hour drive north of Santiago.

The amount of water it takes to produce one avocado is enough to grow three oranges or 14 tomatoes. And plantations have been extracting “more water than authorised”, said Mundaca, who is fighting to protect local communities’ access to water.

A 2011 investigation by Chile’s water authority showed at least 65 illegal underground channels bringing water from the rivers to private plantations.

The investigation led to criminal convictions of some agribusinesses, but that was not enough to stop them from trying again.

They still dug riverside wells to irrigate their fields, Mundaca pointed out at one such site that was fenced off to keep it out of sight.

“This is a river. It’s a national good for public use,” he said. “You can’t simply install underground water (systems). This is fully illegal.”

One of many water diversion installations in Petorca, said the activist

One of the province’s rivers, the Ligua River, was declared depleted as far back as 2004 — “overexploited” by avocado producers, he added.

In the past 10 years, however, central Chile has also been living with a mega-drought. So nearly half of the country’s rural homes — some one million people — do not have regular access to drinking water nowadays.

As the groundwater level continues to drop, the local government has resorted to trucking water to Petorca’s rural residents. They are among 380,000 people in Chile receiving water from tankers as part of emergency measures declared last year.

Asked if the plantations can be stopped from drawing too much water, Petorca municipal government’s water affairs manager Carolina Vilches replied that the municipality “doesn’t have the power to evaluate the environmental impact of agriculture”.

“The ministry that has that power doesn’t consider agriculture as something that could impact the environment. Therefore the impact isn’t assessed,” she said.

WATCH: Avocado madness in China is sucking Chile dry (3:47)

VILLAGERS VS FARMS

It is obvious, however, that families are struggling with the lack of water. “(The most difficult thing) is seeing how everything dies — it’s terrible to see our little plants die — (and) washing up with so little water,” said Zoila Quiroz.

Her family, who have lived in the Petorca valley for generations, used to get water from a stream four kilometres away. But it dried up, and they do not own rights to dig a well to get water.

That is not the case for the avocado farms surrounding the family on all sides. “The avocado trees have more rights than us, the human beings,” added Quiroz, wishing that the farms could all go.

“I think this is the only part of the world where water is sold like candy.”

Zoila Quiroz (right) talks to CNA.

It turns out that in Chile, water rights are treated like property and granted in perpetuity by the government. With the drought, and plantations sometimes drawing more water than they have rights to, there are no more rights to allocate.

While villagers are losing out in this way, Allent Vega Diaz disagrees that the criticisms are fair. The farm manager from Cabilfrut, the biggest avocado exporter in Petorca, pointed out that Chilean law “doesn’t discriminate between the uses of water”.

Nor does he think the government should change the law. “The government needs to invest to secure water for the population. People without water need water; they don’t need laws,” he said.

“This area needs agriculture. Agriculture is the main activity in this area.”

Chile's green cash crop.

He added that Cabilfrut has about 3,000 hectares of orchards but is using only about 200 hectares “because we don’t have water for all the areas”.

He is waiting for the next rainy season so that plantations can be irrigated and production restarted — even as Chile’s worst drought in 60 years spiked last year, with rainfall hitting new lows.

A BETTER WAY?

Seeing as Petorca’s water problems began before China became a market, CNA correspondent and Chongqing native Wei Du noted that “in a way, it’s really not our fault”.

“But now we’re part of the problem … it does make you wonder, isn’t there a better way?” she questioned.

.

Wei Du and Rodrigo Mundaca heading to a riverbed.

There is, according to Mundaca, the leader of water rights movement Modatima. “Nowadays there are some markets such as Denmark’s that have restricted the purchase of avocados from Petorca … because these companies have left our communities without water,” he cited.

The fruit has also been removed from menus elsewhere in Europe. But he pointed out that the agribusinesses have “signalled publicly that if the European market ceases to import Chilean avocados, they’d move on to China”.

Some top producers in the region are already selling up to a third of their crop to China. That is a disproportionate share, given that China accounts for about 10 per cent of Chile’s avocado exports.

Having seen how China’s changing eating habits can affect other countries, Wei said: “We’ve been told for decades now that eating extravagantly is what the good life is about. So I wonder, is it time to set new ideals?”

Source: CNA/dp