🇨🇭 90% of surveyed central banks are exploring CBDCs — Bank for International Settlements.
🇳🇬 The Central Bank of Nigeria has upgraded their CBDC, the eNaira, to keep the public away from using crypto alternatives.
🇨🇱 Chile's central bank governor says, Chile's CBDC would need to accept offline payments.
🇦🇺 Australia - Privacy isn't of concern, central banks are moving ahead with plans for CBDC's.
🇧🇸 IMF recommends the Bahamas ‘accelerate its education campaigns’ on CBDC.
🇮🇳 India's National Council of Applied Economic Research report says India should take caution in introducing CBDC
The Indian government, after imposing a 30% crypto tax and 1% tax-deductible at source (TDS), is now working to bring them under the goods and service tax (GST) ambit.

Ukraine is now pursuing agreements with Lithuania, Latvia, & Poland to help ship wheat using their ports. The country's grain is also loaded onto trucks etc. in the small Danube ports of Reni & Izmail in the southwest, for transport to the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta. Bulgaria said it was willing to help export Ukrainian grain from its Black Sea port of Varna. Trucks stuffed with Ukrainian grain have already been seen heading to the Moldovan port of Giurdulesti on the Danube. (Video)

Biden signed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 to make it easier for the U.S. to lend or lease military aid to Ukraine. Under the measure, Ukraine can request transfers of U.S. weapons and other assistance. The U.S. will get guarantees that the country will replace or reimburse the assets.

Ukraine continues to massively exports grain from the Odessa and Nikolaev regions which can be used to pay for lend-lease agreement with the US, and will create the pretext to accuse Russia of a new Holodomor.

BREAKING- Ukraine turns off Europe-bound Russian gas.

Gas Transit Services of Ukraine (OGTSU) declared force majeure, saying that it was impossible to continue transit of gas through a connection point and compressor station located in the Lugansk area. As OGTSU personnel “cannot carry out operational and technological control” over the Sokhranovka connector point and Novopskov compressor station, the company cannot continue to fulfill its contract obligations.

Russian gas conglomerate Gazprom has received no confirmation of force majeure or any obstacles to continued transit of gas through a junction in Lugansk region, after Ukraine’s operator OGTSU announced it would halt further deliveries starting May 11, due to the presence of “Russian occupiers.”

Gas from this connection will not be accepted into the transit system of Ukraine starting at 7 am on Wednesday, OGTSU said. Sokhrankovka accounts for almost a 3rd of Russian gas transiting through Ukraine to Europe – up to 32.6 mmcm/day.

USA - Fertilizer update:
🚜 Alabama farmers say they're adapting to dramatic increases in fertilizer prices by reconsidering what crops they plant, ordering smaller amounts of fertilizer and raising prices on fruits and vegetables.

🚜 Tennessee farmer: “I guess when I bought in February… of ’21 for that crop so this year, we tripled in nitrogen prices, and we pretty well doubled in potash and phosphate and it’s even higher since then probably another 15%, maybe 20% on certain elements,”

🚜 The US price of ammonia, the primary source of nitrogen fertilizer, has risen by a factor of six in the past two years.

🚜 Michigan state lawmakers to work on a resolution to request Congress to allow farmers to petition the U.S. International Trade Commission to temporarily waive tariffs on imports of fertilizer and fertilizer ingredients imported from Morocco.

📈 Gap between the record gasoline and diesel prices and the far-below-record crude oil prices shows consumer demand forces & currency devaluation at work.

High diesel prices are due to low refining capacity globally; rising demand for jet fuel, which competes with diesel for refining capacity.

📊 Adjusted for CPI inflation, it's still not a record. In July 2008, gasoline at $4.11 would amount to $5.37 a gallon in today's dollars, with diesel prices still not at a record. In July 2008, diesel peaked at $4.76 a gallon, which would be $6.22 in today's dollars.

📊 Adjusted for CPI inflation, that $150 a barrel back in July 2008 would be $196 in today's dollars. So, today's price of $102 is far below the spike of 2008 in "real" terms and doesn't yet amount to any kind of actual oil shock.

🚜 Rising diesel prices latest hurdle for Alberta, Canada farmers.
🚜 High diesel fuel prices hitting Pennsylvania, USA farmers.
🩸Largest diesel distribution hub in the U.S. is sitting on diesel supplies at a 30-year low.

Europe's natural gas/energy markets worsens. Russia imposes sanctions against units of Gazprom Germania. Russia has imposed its own sanctions on EuRoPol Gaz S.A., which owns the Polish portion of the Yamal-Europe natural gas pipeline.
The 2,000+ kilometer Yamal-Europe pipeline runs from Torzhok in Russia to Frankfurt, Germany, with the Polish section accounting for over 680 kilometers and housing five compressor stations. Last month, Germany’s energy network regulator took control of operations at Gazprom Germania.

Poland and Bulgaria, has been able to use the reverse flow on the Yamal pipeline to import gas from Germany. These sanctions coupled with yesterday's Ukraine's gas operator OGTSU shutting down a gas transit point of Russian gas to Europe has resulted in higher prices for Europeans today. German gas storage is around 40% full, that is still low for the time of year and inventories need to be built up over the summer in preparation for winter. Germany's 1year power ahead prices continue to rise.

Clashes between protesters and government supporters across Sri Lanka turns violent as the country's economic crisis worsens. The president's elder brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, quit as prime minister on Monday as violence spiralled and is in hiding in a military base. The central bank said inflation was at 30% in April, with food prices up nearly 50%. Sri Lankan authorities imposed a nationwide curfew and deployed the army on Monday. Sri Lankans are facing food and fuel shortages, power cuts, and inadequate supply of medicines. Sri Lanka was the first country in South Asia to embrace neoliberalism. Yet the opening of its economy to the IMF came with the vilification of minorities and a violent onslaught on trade unions. British MP calls on UK government to apply sanctions on 'senior figures' in Sri Lanka.

Coffee futures in New York jumped this week as new weather forecasts show Brazil (the world's largest producer) has increased frost risks in top growing areas. Brazil's soluble coffee exports fell 4.7% in the first four months of 2022. Russia, was the second main destination for Brazilian soluble coffee, behind only the US. Coffee farmers in Vietnam have resorted to growing avocados and durians due to the high cost of fertiliser. Ghana's Cocoa Board plans to distribute more than 600,000 coffee seeds to farmers; trees will reach maturity in 3-5 years.

Wheat climbed to a two-month high today on the CBOT exchange after India banned exports of the grain as a heat wave crimped its output. But India would still allow exports backed by already issued letters of credit and to countries that request supplies to meet food security needs. The most-active wheat contract rose as much as 6% to $12.47 a bushel. India's government had taken the decision "in order to manage the overall food security of the country. Sources said China is drawing food grains from India after crop loss led to food security concerns there. India mainly exports wheat to neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. India is a major wheat producer, but historically production was consumed domestically and not exported. (Chart).

Hong Kong intervened to prop up its currency for the first time since 2019, putting further upward pressure on interest rates. Hong Kong’s beleaguered economy faces the prospect of soaring borrowing costs, with the city’s de facto central bank expected to drain large amounts of liquidity as it defends a dollar peg.

The Russian ruble took over from Brazil's real as the world’s best performing currency of 2022 as the end looms for Brazil’s monetary tightening. The ruble has strengthened against the US dollar by more than 11% since the beginning of the year.

Market speculators have made a £5bn bet against the British pound after cost of living fears sent the currency sliding to a two-year low.

The IMF has raised the U.S. currency's weighting to 43.38% from 41.73% and the Chinese yuan to 12.28% from 10.92%, in its review of the currencies that make up the valuation of its Special Drawing Rights (SDR), an international reserve asset.

USA -Prices for diesel, have surged 76.5% in the last year to hit a record $5.56 per gallon. Inventories for the most commonly used diesel have dropped 43% since 2020 to the lowest since 2014. In Europe, diesel prices have soared 88%.

The chief driver isn’t high crude prices or even the rebound in demand: It’s simply too few refineries turning oil into usable fuels. Mountains of regulations make it extremely difficult to build and operate a new refineries in the US. Around 75% of all commercial vehicles registered in the U.S. are powered by diesel, making headache for U.S. trucking companies.

China's diesel exports are likely to drop in May from April's 447,000 tonnes, or about 110,000 bpd. While Russia may become bigger crude supplier to Asia's refineries. Likely that Europe's moves to end purchasing of Russian crude will result in European countries seeking to buy more diesel from refiners in Asia and the Middle East.

Major weather changes faced by farmers, update:
🇨🇦 British Columbia, Canada - Drizzly, frigid weather may result in crops reliant on pollination to delay/miss window.
🇺🇸 With dryer temperatures, Iowa farmers make significant planting progress in last week.
🇺🇸 Wet weather is making it hard for Minnesota farmers to start planting their crops.
🇺🇸 Severe drought conditions continue to affect Louisiana & California farmers
🇦🇺 NSW, Australia farmers face floods with a winter outlook that is bleak for livestock owners and crop growers who are struggling with waterlogged pastures, paddocks and plantations. Australians have been warned the price of fresh fruit and vegetables will increase.

Update on African Swine Fever (ASF) affecting pig farming industry.

🇮🇹 Three more cases of ASF have been detected in wild boar in Rome. The EU told Italy to establish an infected zone for ASF.

🇰🇷 Korea will step up quarantine efforts at major airports and harbors to prevent ASF and other contagious animal diseases from entering the country.

🇮🇳 India -ASF outbreak reported in Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya, prompting the authorities to ban sale of pigs in the affected areas.

🇵🇭 Philippines, Zamboanga City – Govt's African ASF task force has placed two villages under lockdown and commenced the depopulation of pigs. Philippine-developed ASF PCR Detection Kit being validated. Country's clinical study on ASF vaccine enters next phase.

ASF doesn’t infect people, but it is readily passed from one pig to another by direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected pig.

Costa Ricans struggled to pay taxes by hand after a ransomware cyberattack took down the country’s online tax collection system. Several Costa Rican government agencies, including its Ministry of Finance, are severely hampered after an international cybercriminal gang called Conti locked them in April and demanded a ransom payment to make them operable again.

Costa Rican President, Rodrigo Chaves, stated that there are people in the country who are collaborating with the Conti cyber-criminal group. a total of 27 institutions affected to date. Nine of them have been extremely affected, including the Ministry of Finance. The attacks have forced the finance ministry to deactivate Costa Rica's tax collection systems, although a substitute platform has allowed some customs transactions to go forward.

🇱🇰 Sri Lanka fell into default for the first time in its history as the government struggles to halt an economic meltdown. Missed grace period payments on bonds worth $78 million.
Sri Lanka appointed nine more ministers today to an "all-party government" tasked with trying to steer the country out of its economic crisis, but the finance minister remains vacant.

Sri Lankan schools were closed and public officials were asked not to come to work in a desperate move to prepare for an acute fuel shortage that is expected to last days. Mohammad Shazly, a part-time chauffeur in a queue for the third day in the hope of procuring cooking gas for his family of five. Hundreds of others were in line, with empty cylinders by their side. "Without gas, without kerosene oil, we can't do anything," Shazly said. "Last option what? Without food we are going to die. That will happen hundred percent."

Nine people were injured and 1 dead in an explosion and a fire on Thursday at a major 580,000-bpd refinery in South Korea. The fire and the possible shutdown of a large refinery come at a time when global refining margins are sky-high amid insufficient refinery capacity worldwide.

Refinery capacity globally is now lower than before the pandemic after some refineries closed permanently after COVID crippled fuel demand in early 2020. South Korea's 2022 Q1 petroleum exports soared 20% as reported 3 weeks ago. The Ulsan refinery has three crude distillation units. Market participants say a full shutdown of the refinery is likely.

🛢 WTI crude price surpasses Brent Crude. Since 2013, Brent has been the more expensive crude blend thanks to its status as the global oil benchmark. WTI has lately been gaining due to Europe's move to impose a formal embargo on oil from Russia.

🇨🇳 🇮🇷 China is scheduled to receive around 2 million barrels of Iranian crude oil this week despite US sanctions.

📉 Slower economic growth will likely slow down global oil demand growth- FED. For oil demand to actually contract, a recession has to be severe.

🚢 Protesters, yesterday, fired shots outside Libya’s Hariga port in a failed attempt to stop the loading of 1 million barrels of crude oil bound for the UK.

⛽️ Low fuel inventories could lead to a crisis this summer in the U.S. Refinery outages could be disastrous during this period of supply tightness.

🚛 Truckers are facing an existential crisis as sky-high fuel prices weigh on their bottom line. Soaring diesel prices have pushed many owner-operator drivers to seek the protection of company driving.

US 🇺🇸 Federal health officials now advises clinicians to watch out for symptoms of monkeypox. They say it “is highly unusual” because it doesn’t appear to have any direct link to any of the countries in Western Central Africa.

🇪🇺 The WHO was holding an emergency meeting yesterday, after over 100 cases were confirmed or suspected in Europe. 🇧🇪 Belgium’s three confirmed cases of monkeypox have been linked to a large-scale fetish festival in Antwerp.

Coincidentally, NTI (non-profit org.- Nuclear Threat Initiative) partnered with the Munich Security Conference last year for a biological pandemic wargame simulating a release of an engineered (gain-of-function) strain of monkeypox. The simulation's date of bioweapon release coincidently happens to be this week in 2022. (Photo) 🤷‍♂️

🦠 Monkeypox is a DNA viral illness that causes fever and a distinctive, bumpy rash. It predominantly spreads via spillover events from infected animals to humans. People can spread it mostly through blood and respiratory droplets.

Russia has halted natural gas deliveries to 🇫🇮 Finland after state energy wholesaler Gasum failed to make a required payment in rubles, the Finnish gas system operator Gasgrid Finland said on Saturday. “Gas imports through Imatra entry point have been stopped”.

🇷🇺 Russia could earn a record $100 billion from gas sales to European countries in 2022 due to the sharp rise in energy prices,

⛽️ Cases of theft of gasoline and diesel fuel have become more frequent in Finland. The reason is high prices. This is with reference to the police of South-Eastern Finland. Most often, fuel is stolen from large construction sites, in agriculture or forestry, there have also been cases of theft from trucks and fuel tanks of refrigeration units.

More western media spew fear propaganda, beginning to create a narrative that Russia launched a bioweapon. While the very same media says US run biolabs in Ukraine is a conspiracy theory amid actual evidence. 🤡

🇳🇱 Netherlands- Up to three weeks of quarantine after contact with monkeypox patients.
🇧🇪 Monkeypox Quarantine: Belgium Becomes 1st Country to Introduce Compulsory Isolation Measures

Two corrupt BigPharma companies, Emergent Biosolutions and SIGA Technologies already cashing in with their share prices climbing. Their main smallpox-focused products are, conveniently, also used to protect against or treat monkeypox as well.

Western media have not reported on NTI (non-profit org.- Nuclear Threat Initiative) partnering with the Munich Security Conference last year for a biological pandemic wargame simulating a release of an engineered (gain-of-function) strain of monkeypox and the simulation date coinciding with reality.

I hope subscribers would excuse me for going off topic on the channel to make a ‘political/religious post’. It is truly disturbing to see the west’s silence about attacks against Russian Orthodox Churches around the world and especially in Ukraine.

As I said in my last article “this ideology of political correctness reminds Orthodox Christians of bolshevism” which becomes more profound with each passing day. The western political creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) so as to undermine the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Russian connected) is bearing it’s true colours as an apostate church.

Recently, the following attacks have been totally ignored by westerners.

❗️Ukraine’s Azov fighters broke into the Mariupol cathedral during the baptism of a child and stole all the cars they had.
❗️A child in western Ukraine at an OCU prays for Putin's death to the approving silence of adult parishioners.

❗️Orthodox priest Father Parfeniy (Parthnenis), the head of the church in Mikhailovka, Donbass, was killed by shelling of the Ukrainian Army.
❗️Olga Shapovalova tells how in Mariupol, Ukrainian tanks shot at residential buildings and churches.

❗️Ukraine Forces Target Russian Orthodox church "Everyday" (Special Report Church Under Fire)
❗️Ukrainian militants abducted a priest and some parishioners of a Russian Orthodox Church in the city of Smila, Cherkasy Oblast.

❗️Ukraine's Rada (Parliament) publishes text of bill to ban Ukrainian Orthodox Church
❗️Ukraine’s Kyiv deputies unanimously decided to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the city and three other villages in the district.

❗️Father Vladimir, priest of the UOC in the city of Stryi, Lviv region, during the service, he had green paint poured over his face by Ukrainian nationalists who were seizing Orthodox churches.
❗️Ukrainian neo-Nazis attacked Orthodox parishioners going to pray in the church.

❗️Russian Orthodox Church has been vandalised in Auckland New Zealand by supporters of Ukraine.
❗️The Russian Orthodox Church of St. Sophia in Victoria, B.C. Canada was vandalized by anti-Russian thugs after attacking another Orthodox Church in Calgary.

❗️Israeli police blocks Christians from attending The Holy Sepulchre
❗️'Tolerant' and 'inclusive' Britons ransacked a Russian Orthodox Church in Oxford, England after hearing calls to violence against Russians.

❗️The infamous hacker group Anonymous announced a cyber war against the Russian Orthodox Church.
❗️When satan worshipper Marina Abramovic is promoted by the church of Lucifer to denounce Putin and Russia, the attack is open and in plain sight.