China Coal Production Hits New All-Time High For July
China’s coal output rose 2.8% in July from a year earlier as mines ramped up production to ensure steady supply amid record-breaking heat, China’s statistics bureau data showed, even though thermal power output fell while hydropower generation surged.
As Reuters reports, the world’s biggest polluter and largest coal producer mined 390.37 million metric tons of the fuel last month, according to the National Bureau of Statistics data on Thursday, which while down from June’s 405.38 million tons, which was the highest level since December 2023, was the highest ever for the month of July, surpassing the previous record set in 2023 at 378 million tons.
Average daily coal output in July stood at 12.59 million tons, down from 13.5 million tons a day in June but up from 12.18 million daily tons a year earlier.
China’s national energy regulator said late in July it was coordinating power plant coal inventories to keep them at a minimum of 200 million tons because of continuing hot weather.
Thermal power output disappointed the coal industry in July, however, falling for a third straight month as more electricity was generated by hydropower because of heavy rains in July. China’s thermal power generation fell 4.9% to 574.9 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) even as total power generation rose 2.5% to 883.1 billion kWh, the statistics showed.
Production was lower particularly in China’s coking coal hub of Shanxi province, which produced 29% of China’s coal last year. Output was limited there after the local government told miners to curb excess production and announced stepped-up safety checks over the March-May period.
But other provinces were more than happy to pick up the slack. Most of the extra output came from the country’s second-largest producing region Inner Mongolia, a record 104 million tonnes up from 97 million a year ago…
… and fourth-largest producer Xinjiang, which added a record 41 million tonnes up from 33 million.
Hydropower generation for the month rose 36.2% on the year to 166.4 billion kWh.
China’s growing coal-to-chemicals industry is offsetting some of the slowing demand for coal-fired power, with coal consumption in the chemicals industry growing 21% in the first half of the year, wrote Lauri Myllyvirta, senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“China’s energy security drive and falling coal prices relative to oil prices have driven a boom in this industry,” Myllyvirta said.
Analysts have said they expect China’s coal output to keep increasing through the third quarter on the hotter weather and as production recovers from a slump earlier in the year due to safety inspections.
Tim Walz Caught in New Acts of Stolen Valor
China to Screen Arrivals for Monkeypox
Chinese authorities have started monitoring people and goods entering the country for mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said on Friday. The new measures will remain in force for six months, according to GAC.
The announcement came two days after the World Health Organization (WHO) designated a recent surge in infections in Africa as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), and called for a vaccination campaign.
People arriving in China from “countries and regions where cases of the disease have been confirmed should declare their conditions to customs upon entry if they have symptoms” including fever, headache, rashes and others, the GAC said, emphasising that “customs officers will implement medical measures and conduct sampling and testing in accordance with the prescribed procedure.”
Vehicles, containers and goods from areas where mpox cases have been spotted should be sanitised, the statement added.
Mpox can spread through close contact, causing flu-like symptoms, a rash that forms blisters and then crusts over, and swollen lymph nodes. According to WHO, the disease is usually mild and only fatal only in rare cases.
Last year, China’s National Health Commission labelled mpox a Category B infectious disease along with COVID-19, AIDS and SARS. The move enabled national authorities to take emergency measures, including restricting gatherings, suspending work and school, and sealing off areas in case of an outbreak.
Mpox was first identified as a distinct illness in 1958 among laboratory monkeys in Denmark, while the first documented cases in humans were recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Liberia and Sierra Leone. The virus has long been endemic in central Africa, mainly in the DRC. When it first began spreading in late 2022, the WHO declared an emergency and renamed the disease mpox, to avoid “racist and stigmatizing language.”
On Wednesday, the WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for “a coordinated international response” to stop the spread of the disease and save lives across the world. The statement followed a viral outbreak in the DRC that spread to neighbouring countries earlier this month.
Tim Walz Caught in New Acts of Stolen Valor
Kim Dotcom to Be Extradited to US After Losing 12-Year Legal Battle
Kim Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz in Germany, has lost a 12-year fight to have his deportation to the US halted on charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering, a US-based news source reported.
On Friday, New Zealand’s Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said he had decided that Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial. Although, a date for the extradition has not yet been reported.
Dotcom is an internet Mogul who was born in Germany but holds residency in New Zealand. The charges he faces are related to his file-sharing site Megaupload, created in 2005, which was shut down by US authorities in 2012.
Shortly after his site was shut down, the mogul was arrested by New Zealand police following a raid on his mansion that the US authorities had requested. The 50-year-old entrepreneur posted bail and thus began his lengthy legal process to avoid extradition.
Prosecutors have said that Dotcom’s site took in at least $175 million primarily from those who used the site to illegally download songs, televisions shows and movies. Those defending the internet entrepreneur say it was the decision of those who used the site to pirate materials, not its founders.
In response to the judge’s decision, Dotcom wrote on X on Thursday that he “loves New Zealand” and that he is not leaving.
Tim Walz Caught in New Acts of Stolen Valor
Trump Opens Door to Improved Relations With Iran
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he hopes Washington will maintain friendly relations with Tehran if he returns to the White House.
He made the remarks on Thursday while speaking at a press conference in New Jersey about his plan to restore world peace.
“I’m not looking to be bad to Iran, we’re going to be friendly, I hope … maybe, but maybe not,” Trump said, after accusing Tehran of funding the Palestinian militant group Hamas. “But they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump stressed.
The US withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) in 2018 during the first term served by Trump, who at the time dubbed the agreement “the worst deal ever.”
The Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, which in 2015 was signed by Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the US administration of President Barack Obama, envisaged Tehran scaling down its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international restrictions on it.
Then Washington’s denouncement of the landmark agreement prompted Iran to renege on some of its JCPOA commitments and return to enriching uranium.
Earlier this week, Trump’s campaign team claimed that Iranian cybercriminals have stolen internal US documents, their goal being influencing the 2024 election. A previous cyber-intelligence report by Microsoft had warned that hackers and fake-news sites allegedly linked to Iran could be targeting an unidentified official related to a US presidential campaign.
Trump later posted on his Truth Social platform that he believed Iran was behind the attack, writing “We were just informed by Microsoft Corporation that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government – Never a nice thing to do!”
Iran’s permanent mission to the UN has denied the Trump campaign’s allegations, in a statement to Reuters, writing that “the Iranian government neither possesses [the documents alleged] nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States Presidential election.”
Tim Walz Caught in New Acts of Stolen Valor
Tiny Village in Ireland Overrun by Government-Relocated Migrants
The ‘Great Replacement’ comes to Ireland? Public concerns surrounding government supported open immigration plans in the UK have been consistently treated as “xenophobic” and “overblown” by the media and authorities alike.
The typical M.O. of politicians has been to ignore all scrutiny and attack anyone that dares to question the agenda.
Reports that migrant relocation programs were going to flood rural Irish locations with foreign elements raised eyebrows (and raised questions) last month as to the purpose of transplanting the third-world into outlying villages in the UK. These same villages have been demographically unchanged for centuries.
The theory, which holds considerable validity, is that western countries are being destabilized from within by corrupt progressive leaders with the intent to upend traditional western society and replace it with a self-devouring multicultural soup that is easier to convert to globalism. Rural areas of the west are commonly viewed as safe havens away from the corrosive politics of woke socialism, and the targeting of these places seems to verify everyone’s worst fears about open borders.
This brings us to the tiny hamlet of Tipperary in Ireland (population 165), where the Gardaí assisted Department of Integration had used a manor property called the Dundrum House Hotel to bring hundreds of Ukrainian refugees into the country. Locals noted they had few problems with the Ukrainians because they seemed to easily integrate into the already existing community. However, now that the government has their foot in the door of the village, they have decided to move the Ukrainians out and replace them with third-world migrants with non-western value systems.
Because of numerous examples of rampant criminality and violence (from rape gangs to mass stabbings) brought by such migrants to major cities throughout Europe and the UK, locals worry that same ideology of dominance and exploitation will now take over their once quiet corner of Ireland. The fact that around 80% of these migrants are single military age men gives little comfort to the residents.
Protests have erupted in Tipperary after it was revealed that at least 265 migrants would be relocated there, greatly outnumbering the indigenous population.
?Dundrum, Tipperary.
This tiny Irish village of 200 people was forcibly planted this morning. 280 ‘asylum seekers’ are to be housed in this hotel, replacing the local population overnight.
Ireland is ground zero for population replacement. pic.twitter.com/L4x1x7QMbV— MichaeloKeeffe (@Mick_O_Keeffe) August 13, 2024
Other more discreet and suspicious migrant compounds have been cited in rural areas of Ireland, protected by government security and housing only military age males from predominantly third-world and Islamic countries. The presence of these compounds reads more like a covert invasion rather than an attempt at integration.
Something very sinister is happening in Ireland.
— MichaeloKeeffe (@Mick_O_Keeffe) August 13, 2024
Thousands of strange foreign men are being planted all around the country in sites which resemble military camps.
Locals are living in fear as masked foreign men patrol rural Ireland. pic.twitter.com/54zdz6UUkD
Keep in mind that a common argument made by UK officials is that these migrants are “needed” in order to fill gaps in the service sector labor market. Yet, rural regions like these have no demand for such labor because they rely predominantly on tourism. Why are these foreign men being sent to these places?
Locals report that when concerns are raised by the public the government will assert that only women and children and families will be transplanted to these centers, and most of them will be Ukrainians. But when the media cameras are gone and the protests die down, military age males from Africa and the Middle East are quietly dumped into the community by the hundreds (and strangely, many men from Caucusus nation of Georgia).
With a majority of UK citizens (69%) opposed to open immigration according to polls and riots erupting after migrant attacks, UK governments have doubled down on “diversity” and are refusing to take public opposition seriously. When patriot protests are organized, progressive NGOs with extensive resources bus in leftist activists to disrupt or silence them.
The transplantation of young migrant men has also proven to be a buffer for the government, as gangs of foreigners patrol the streets and attempt to intimidate locals into silence. The trade-off is clear: Leftist officials give migrants access to the bounty of the west, and migrants protect those officials from popular uprisings in return.
The last places for western citizens to go to for safety are rural enclaves, and even now those are being taken away.
Tim Walz Caught in New Acts of Stolen Valor
Trump Brings in Tulsi To Prepare for Debate
Donald Trump has brought in Tulsi Gabbard, the woman credited with destroying Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, to help him prepare from his debate with the Vice President next month.
According to The New York Times, the former Democrat Congresswoman was brought in “to help sharpen his attacks in a recent practice session at his private club and home, Mar-a-Lago.” The Times cites “two people with knowledge of Mr Trump’s schedule.”
A spokeswoman for the former president confirmed the appointment, saying that Trump has “proven to be one of the best debaters in political history as evidenced by his knockout blow to Joe Biden. He does not need traditional debate prep but will continue to meet with respected policy advisers and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage in 2020.”
Gabbard is widely credited with ending Harris’s bid for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination during the 2019 CNN debate, when she calmly dissected the Vice President’s record as a public prosecutor in California.
Gabbard said that Harris “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”
She also accused Harris of withholding evidence that could have let an innocent man leave death row, until a court “forced her” to give it up.
Although Harris replied that she was “proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches, or be in a legislative body and give speeches on the floor, but actually doing the work,” she had no real answer to the charges laid before her by Gabbard. She dropped out of the race a month later.
On Friday, ABC revealed that the first debate will take place in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center on 10 September at 9pm EDT. It will be moderated by David Muir, who anchors World News Tonight, and Linsey Davis, a news anchor and correspondent. It will be available to watch on ABC, ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.
The Harris campaign has dismissed calls from Donald Trump to hold more than two presidential debates, issuing a statement on Thursday that the “debate about debates is over.” Kamala Harris has indicated that she is prepared to debate Trump again after the vice-presidential debate, which is now scheduled for 1 October.
Trump has pushed repeatedly for there to be three presidential debates. On 8 August, he said that he had negotiated debates with ABC, NBC and Fox News. One of Trump’s advisors said that Trump will hold town halls if the Vice President rejects the additional debates.
The candidates for vice president, JD Vance and Tim Walz, are now also scheduled to meet. Their debate will take place on 1 October in New York City and will be hosted by CBS.