Xi'an residents start bartering amid dwindling lockdown food supplies

The authorities deploy tens of thousands of police officers to 'maintain stability' as public anger grows.

Residents queue to undergo nucleic acid tests for COVID-19 in Xi'an in China's northern Shaanxi province, Dec. 29, 2021.

Xi'an's 13 million residents were left bargaining and bartering for essential foodstuffs amid ongoing food shortages, as the city entered its 11th day of lockdown amid a wave of COVID-19 cases.

As some people took to social media to appeal for assistance as their food supplies ran low, or they were unable to access medical care, others started local trading networks in residential compounds to try to meet each other's needs through bartering.

"Everything is getting bartered in Xi'an," a resident of the city surnamed Wang told RFA. "People are swapping stuff with others in the same building, because they no longer have enough food to eat."

Another resident said in a video clip that some people were trading cigarettes and iPhones for bags of rice. "We now have a barter system in our residential compound," the man says in the clip. "We had a bag of rice, and the neighbor wanted to trade ... a smartphone and a tablet."

"We have six bags of rice in our home but no vegetables."

Authorities in the northern Chinese city of Xi'an have called for calm, as many in Xi'an are taking to social media complaining that they were unable to get sufficient food supplies after being ordered to stay in their homes.

The city authorities have deployed around 29,000 police officers to enforce the lockdown, while countless local security guards are preventing people from entering or leaving areas designated high or medium risk.

One video clip that made the rounds on social media showed security guards beating a teenager in the lobby of a building because he went out to buy steamed buns.

"I was hungry, so I came out to get some mantou," the youngster is heard telling the guards, who beat and kick him, knocking his food to the ground. City authorities later said the guards had been punished.

Residents were initially told they would be allowed to send a designated person to buy groceries every other day, but many have since told RFA that the security guards in many areas aren't allowing anyone to leave.

Those who can make it out to buy supplies are finding that prices have skyrocketed, especially of fresh fruit and vegetables, despite a well publicized effort by the government and volunteers to bring fresh produce into the city in large quantities to hand out to beleaguered residents.

One video clip posted to social media showed a man who said he had paid around 40 yuan for 10 capsicum peppers, the same amount for six tomatoes and 40 yuan for two cabbages.

"The vegetable vendor must be making a fortune," the man complains, while showing his haul to friends.

'Spoiled for choice'

State media, which is tightly controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), reported on a line of trucks hauling a selection of vegetables, fresh fruit and pork belly into residential households in one part of the city on Dec. 29, delivering fresh food to around 180 households.

But the address given in the news report was tracked down by social media users, who discovered it was a residential compound for employees of the Shaanxi Provincial People's Congress and the Xi'an municipal government, prompting a public outcry on social media.

A Xi'an resident surnamed Song said the food given to the families of officials looked luxurious compared with what regular people are getting.

"They were spoiled for choice when it comes vegetables," Song said. "Where can regular people find stuff like that?"

"I managed to get one head of Chinese leaves, a zucchini, four bell peppers, three heads of garlic, a piece of ginger, two scallions and three potatoes," she said.

According to the Shaanxi provincial government, a total of 41,000 police officers have been dispatched to Xi'an to maintain public order, with 29,000 of those deployed to Xi'an, 20,352 of whom are working in residential compounds.

Some 4,000 are operating traffic roadblocks, while others are guarding hotels or COVID-19 testing sites.

Read more:  https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/food-01032022132444.html  

Moon Covered in Rust Despite Lack of Water and Oxygen (Mar 3) 

Puzzling astronomers, the moon appears to have rusty patches on its surface—despite lacking two essential, rust-inducing ingredients: water and oxygen.

According to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances, scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa made the discovery after reviewing data collected from Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument (also known as M3), an instrument built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California State University that was onboard during a Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) mission.

University of Hawaiʻi geologist Shuai Li, the paper’s lead author, says he had been studying imagery captured during the mission and noticed spectra, or light being reflected off of the moon’s surface, present at the lunar poles, revealing that these areas are comprised of compositions that are different from other expanses of the moon.

In a news release published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the team, “homed in on these polar spectra.” While it’s not uncommon for the moon to be covered in iron-rich rocks, what surprised them the most was how closely the material resembled the mineral hematite.

Hematite—which is a form of iron oxide, a reddish-brown substance we know as rust—occurs when iron becomes exposed to oxygen and water, which prompts the original question: Without ample supplies of water and oxygen, how did it get there?

“It’s very puzzling,” Li said in a statement to NASA. “The moon is a terrible environment for hematite to form in.”

The team’s research is part of a larger study that began in 2018, resulting in the discovery of water-ice on the moon’s polar regions, according to a University of Hawaiʻi press release.

To confirm that hematite was in fact present, the team recruited Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers Abigail Fraeman and Vivian Sun to give their findings a second look.

“At first, I totally didn’t believe it,” Fraeman says in a NASA release. “It shouldn’t exist based on the conditions present on the moon. But since we discovered water on the moon, people have been speculating that there could be a greater variety of minerals than we realize if that water had reacted with rocks.”

Source

https://strangesounds.org/2022/03/why-is-the-moon-covered-in-rust-w...

Homeowners in Louisiana are in 'crisis' as more than 20 insurance companies go under or flee the state after string of devastating storms - forcing hundreds of thousands to pay higher premiums or go without coverage

• More than 20 insurance companies have left Louisiana in the past two years
• State has suffered a series of hurricanes and flooding in recent years
• Homeowners are faced with higher premiums or forced to go without coverage 

Homeowners in Louisiana are struggling to find affordable property insurance after the virtual collapse of the state's insurance industry following a series of devastating storms.

It's a problem on the rise in many southern states, but nowhere is it worse than Louisiana, where in the past two years more than 20 insurance companies have gone under or left the state, according to Fox Business. 

Louisiana's Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon told the outlet: 'We are certainly in a crisis.' 

In the past several years, Louisiana has been hammered by hurricanes and flooding, including areas that were once deemed to be at lower risk.

n August 2020, Hurricane Laura caused catastrophic damage and flooding in Lake Charles and inflicted widespread damage across southwestern Louisiana.

It was followed by two more hurricanes in October of that year, Delta and Zeta, which inflicted further damage and hindered recovery efforts from Laura.

Then in August of 2021, Hurricane Ida made landfall as a Category 4, killing 33 people in Louisiana and inflicting $18billion in insured damage across the state.

Last year was a relatively quiet hurricane season, and Louisiana was spared any major coastal storms. However, the state was struck by a tornado outbreak last month, with 21 tornadoes touching down shortly before Christmas. 

Many insurers have buckled under the weight of the claims, and are either unable or unwilling to insure homes in Louisiana anymore. 

The average annual insurance premium in Louisiana is more than $2,000 for a home worth $250,000, among the highest in the nation and 46 percent higher than the national average, according to Bankrate. 

Homeowners who can't find coverage in the private market are forced to use the state's 'insurer of last resort,' the state-backed Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance.

But by state law, Citizens charges above-market premiums, so that the state does not compete with private insurance companies. Citizens premiums average more than $5,000 annually in at least seven parishes.

Insurance Commissioner Donelon told Fox Business that the crisis in Louisiana has been exacerbated by the strain on the international reinsurance market, which essentially offers insurance to insurance companies. 

'Our regional industry is backed up by the international reinsurance market and that market has been impacted not just by our horrible hurricane seasons, but also hurricane Ian in south Florida this past year, record wildfires in California and Australia, and record flooding in Germany,' Donelon said. 

'All of those challenges are making insurance much more difficult to come by and more expensive for policyholders in the coastal parts of our state,' he said. 

Last week, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said it was likely a special session of the state legislature would be held in February to address the homeowners' insurance crisis.

Donelon is asking state lawmakers to put at least $45million in a special fund to attract property insurance providers to the Pelican State, according to the Louisiana Illuminator. 

The proposal would offer public grants to insurance companies willing to write policies for higher-risk homes in Louisiana. 

Florida, another state that has struggled to keep premiums in check and prevent insurers from leaving, last month passed its own sweeping new law on the issue. 

That will create a $1billion reinsurance fund, put disincentives in place to prevent frivolous lawsuits and force some customers to leave Citizens Property insurance for a private insurer, even if the policy costs more. 

It will also set more stringent deadlines throughout the claims process to try to ensure homeowners don't face coverage delays. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11644495/Homeowners-Louisi... 

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ZetaTalk about how insurance companies will fail due to weather

http://www.zetatalk.com/transfor/t59.htm

The world banks are justified in their constant fretting about the health of their industry during the panic that will occur going into the cataclysms. The worth of paper money is a fragile thing, based more on confidence than anything, paper money can plunge in value overnight, and often does in unstable countries where printing more paper money is seen as the solution to underfunding of government ambitions. History has shown that banks and the value of the dollar fall during economic depressions, and the years preceding the coming cataclysms will see crop failures in the face of atypical weather and intractable droughts, insurance company failure due to weather and earthquake severity, and a general lack of confidence.