UAE government unit denies cloud seeding took place before Dubai floods
The NCM denial follows an earlier Bloomberg report, in which Ahmed Habib, a specialist meteorologist, had said that the Tuesday rains had stemmed partly from cloud seeding. Habib later told CNBC that six pilots had flown missions as part of regular protocol, but had not seeded any clouds. CNBC was not able to independently verify the reports.
https://twitter.com/habibi_bros
Taiwan last week, South Korea this week.
The Biden administration has reached an agreement to provide up to $6.4 billion in direct funding for Samsung Electronics to develop a computer chip manufacturing and research cluster in Texas.
The funding announced Monday by the Commerce Department is part of a total investment in the cluster that, with private money, is expected to exceed $40 billion. The government support comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 with the goal of reviving the production of advanced computer chips domestically.
More.
Megan also shifted her diet to improve her fitness. She drinks a gallon of water a day and swapped out cognac for tequila to lower her sugar intake.
More lolz here.
The July 2022 roll call vote is here.
TSMC’s Arizona subsidiary is set to receive up to $6.6 billion in U.S. government funding under a preliminary agreement announced by the Biden administration on Monday.
The funding, under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, will support Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s more than $65 billion investment in three cutting-edge fabrication plants in Phoenix, according to the nonbinding agreement.
More.
Dunderheads Peter Meijer and Fred Upton from Michigan voted for the bill, in addition to other has-beens like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.
The London PM gold fix soared 437% between 1970 and 1978 using average prices.
Gold is up about 60% since Powell became Fed Chair in February 2018. Gold has risen from about $1333 to $2142 on an average basis.
Gold hits fifth record high in March on Fed rate-cut view :
Gold prices on Thursday hit record highs for the fifth time this month after the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled it would press ahead with three rate cuts in 2024 despite elevated inflation.
Spot gold was up 1.1% at $2,209.65 per ounce at after hitting an all-time high of $2,222.39 earlier in the session. U.S. gold futures soared 2.4% to $2,212.40. ...
Despite recent high inflation readings, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank is still likely to reduce interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point by the end of 2024, but that it also depends on further economic data. ...
Lower interest rates decrease the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion . . ..
Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar unexpectedly resigns
Remember all those women who resigned about a year ago?
Jacinda Ardern
Diane Feinstein (announced she wouldn't run again)
Lael Brainard
Christine Wilson
Nicola Sturgeon
This week provided a reminder that inflation isn’t going away anytime soon :
The bad news began Monday when a New York Federal Reserve survey showed the consumer expectations over the longer term had accelerated in February. It continued Tuesday with news that consumer prices rose 3.2% from a year ago, and then culminated Thursday with a release indicating that pipeline pressures at the wholesale level also are heating up. ...
The latest jolt on inflation came Thursday when the Labor Department reported that the producer price index, a forward-looking measure of pipeline inflation at the wholesale level, showed a 0.6% increase in February. That was double the Dow Jones estimate and pushed the 12-month level up 1.6%, the biggest move since September 2023.
Referring to French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to rule out sending western troops to Ukraine this week, Putin said Russia remembered “the fate of those who once sent their contingents to our country. “Now the consequences for possible interveners will be much more tragic,” he added. “We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory.”
CNBC similarly here:
The comments appeared to be a direct response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion earlier this week that European heads of state and Western officials, who had met in Paris on Monday, had talked about the possibility of sending ground troops into Ukraine.
The French leader on Monday said there was no consensus on the idea, but that it had not been “ruled out.”
The comments have since sent NATO countries scrambling to deny they’d send troops into Ukraine, with Russia warning that such a deployment would prompt an “inevitable” Russia-NATO conflict.
