By Marko Marjanović | Anti-Empire | January 29, 2020

This is now the fourth time this has happened that we know of. US troops in northeastern Syria keep blockading the M4 highway to prevent Russian troops from moving on it.

In fall of 2019, to prevent a Turkish invasion of the Kurdish-held northeastern Syria, the Pentagon hammered out a deal with the Turks for joint US-Turkish patrols on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border.

As soon as that happened however Trump, after a talk with Erdogan, declared and ordered a US military withdrawal from Syria. At this moment Russia jumped in and took over the US role in the formerly US-Turkish agreement. To minimally appease Erdogan and limit his invasion it would now be Russians who patrolled together with the Turks, which was welcomed by the Kurdish leadership.

In separate negotiations with the Kurds the Russians also gained a number of bases in the northeast to make the patrols possible, and thousands of Syrian army troops also poured in to reinforce the Kurds against the Turkish invasion in the limited sector it was taking place in.

At this point Trump reversed himself, saying US forces would stay in Syria, but only in the oil-rich parts. But the withdrawal from the Syrian-Turkish border, where US presence had hampered US-Turkish relations, would be permanent.

Blue is the obvious path, but the Americans insist the Russians must hug the border along the red path

What is happening now is that when the Russians coming from the west want to take the direct and obvious route to their facilities in the city of Qamishli they periodically encounter US troops near the town of Tell Tamr standing in their way.

The Americans block the road with their vehicles and demand the Russians take the longer, indirect way to Qamishli along inferior roads hugging the Syrian-Turkish border.

It is being reported this is Americans keeping the Russians away from oil fields, but that is not the case. The object of the dispute are not oil fields but Russia’s use of the M4 highway. The Russians do not object to Americans (who are there illegally) using the highway, but the Americans do object to Russians (who are there legally) from using it.

It appears that so far the Russians have in every case backed down, and did not try to force their way through. It is not known however if they really used the border paths or if they just went around the Americans and then returned to the highway.

via Americans Keep Putting Up Roadblocks Against Russian Troops on Key Syrian Highway

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 01/29/2020

During the 1990s, Portugal was devastated by a drug crisis where one in every 100 people became addicted to heroin and the rate of HIV infection soared to become the highest in the European Union.

But, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, Portugal’s radical move to put an end to the carnage should prove an example to other countries dealing with similar problems, especially the United States where opioids have killed more people than the totality of American military casualties in Vietnam, both Iraq wars and Afghanistan combined.

That move was decriminalizing the consumption of all drugs and Portugal became the first country to do it.

The policy saw the status of using or possessing drugs for personal use remain illegal. However, offenses were changed from being criminal in nature which involved prison as a possible punishment to being administrative if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day supply. Needle exchange programs have also been in place since 1993 and today, all drug users can exchange syringes at pharmacy counters across Portugal. Drug treatment was also expanded and improved with successful results.

Finding historical data highlighting the severity of the addiction problem during the late 1990s is difficult but some important numbers do exist which help to show just how remarkable Portugal’s recovery has been. The following infographic pulls data together from several sources to illustrate some key developments.

You will find more infographics at Statista

via Then & Now: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization

Sputnik – January 29, 2020

The United States does not currently have a landfill for nuclear waste from the defense industry, which is normally stored inside metal canisters buried underground near the nuclear plants where it was produced.

The United States could face the risk of nuclear contamination due to inadequate nuclear waste storage methods, a new publication in the journal Nature Materials revealed.

According to the lead scientist behind the research, Xiaolei Guo, the existing techniques are insufficient to keep waste stored safely, as the material used in the current storage methods quickly becomes corroded, raising the risk of nuclear waste leaking into the soil, water and air.

The research team carried out an experiment in simulated conditions under Yucca Mountain where the US waste repository is expected to be built. They found that the corrosion level of stainless steel, used in storage canisters, was ‘severe’ due to chemical reactions being accelerated by nuclear waste […]

via US At Risk of Ecological Disaster Due to Improperly Stored Nuclear Waste, New Study Finds

The Smoking Man / 1 day ago

Source – naturalblaze.com

– “…In May of 2019, less than a year before the outbreak began, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a press release that gave an overview of the projects that the new lab was currently working on. The projects included SARS, Ebola, Hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, avian influenza A(H5N1), Rift Valley fever, and others”

Biolab for “Most Dangerous Pathogens on Earth” Opened in Wuhan Before Outbreak – By John Vibes

As of Thursday afternoon, 23 million people in seven Chinese cities have been placed on quarantine due to the sudden outbreak of a deadly SARS-like virus called 2019-nCoV.

The illness is said to have originated in a seafood market in Wuhan and quickly spread to other areas of China, then Japan, Thailand, South Korea, and the United States. Suspected cases have been reported in Australia and Scotland. However, it is possible that there is more to the story as Chinese authorities have been running a censorship campaign to prevent the spread of information about the virus that deviates from official statements.

[…]

One very strange coincidence in the development of this outbreak is the fact that a new biolab, tasked with studying the most dangerous pathogens on earth, recently began operating in Wuhan, where the illness is said to have originated.

Back in 2017, just before experiments at the lab began, the prestigious science journal Nature published an article expressing concerns about pathogens escaping from the new Wuhan lab. The laboratory is a biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) facility, which is the highest level of biocontainment. BSL-4 facilities must meet rigid standards for decontaminating the area as well as workers after every experiment. However, BSL-4 labs remain extremely controversial because critics argue that these measures may not be enough to prevent a virus from escaping.

According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, the SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times.

In May of 2019, less than a year before the outbreak began, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a press release that gave an overview of the projects that the new lab was currently working on. The projects included SARS, Ebola, Hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, avian influenza A(H5N1), Rift Valley fever, and others.

Scientists have examined the genetic code of the new virus and have found that it is more closely related to SARS than any other human coronavirus. In BSL-4 labs, researchers can tweak or combine deadly viruses to create mutated strains of the original illness. A 2013 report in Nature indicated that scientists in China were creating hybrid viruses in labs.

“A team of scientists in China has created hybrid viruses by mixing genes from H5N1 and the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and showed that some of the hybrids can spread through the air between guinea pigs,” the article revealed.

The results of the hybrid virus experiment were published in the journal Science […]

via COVER-UP: Biolab for “Most Dangerous Pathogens on Earth” Opened in Wuhan Before Outbreak – By John Vibes