Our state of the U.S. segment tonight, a stock market update. Yesterday, the Dow plunged almost 1,600 points, the biggest single-day point drop in history. The sell-off eased somewhat today, but investors are beginning to become concerned about the state of the stock market. President Trump has touted stock market growth throughout his term, crediting his own economic policies for the strong numbers. So what does this mean for the economy as a whole? And what does it mean for your pocketbook? Here's me now, founder of the stock swoosh, Melissa Armo. Melissa, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me today. All right, Melissa, talk to me about this and talk to our viewers who may not know the ins and outs of how the stock market works, what causes it to fluctuate, and what a drop of this magnitude means, 1,600 points. What does this mean? Well, we actually had a really nice rally into the close today. So although we did drop Friday and we had a really hard drop on Monday and all the market indices, we recovered big time today. So that's a positive sign. But even yesterday into the close, I don't think there was any reason for anyone to panic. Investors for the long term, which is most people in their 401Ks, are doing fine. If you look at from the time Trump was elected in November 2016, up until the end of January or even last Thursday, we made so many records, so many new highs. People are up a lot of money. There is no reason to panic from two down days. I know it was a steep drop in a short time, but that was really why people were getting excited. It just happened so quickly. If that correction had taken like seven to 10 days, nobody would be jumping up and down about it. Right. So talk to me a little bit about the cause. And I agree with you largely on the overreaction of many in the media in regards to this drop.  The media loves to ignore when President Trump touts the 99 records that have been set in the stock market since he began his presidency. They don't cover that at all, but they do like to cover it when it drops and blame it on Trump here. What does cause it to drop to this extent if it's only able to recover, like you said, or begin to recover very shortly thereafter? Well, part of the reason why I think that we sold off on Monday is because last week there was some disappointing earnings that happened and some big tech stocks that are important in the market. Apple was one that missed earnings and dropped Thursday night. Google was another one, dropped Thursday night. And so they didn't meet expectations. Friday morning, the market gapped down with those big movers and stocks fell. And then the continuation happened on Monday. Bond rates are rising. So there was some profit taking in the market and people are repositioning money a little bit out of the market in stocks and putting them into bonds because bonds are the U.S. Treasury bonds are safer investment than the market, which involves risk. But the market is still a great risk right now. You mentioned Trump and his policies, they've just begun. It's February. February of 2018, they just passed tax reform. You got to give it time to work. I do believe it will work. I do believe the same means that these corporations are going to have for taxes going forward are going to be huge. And I think the impact is going to be positive for everyone. Technically and fundamentally, there's nothing but good signs on the horizon for the market unless there was some horrible catalyst, which would be something maybe with North Korea. But there was no catalyst to the market move on Monday. And so I think it was just profit taking. Right. And something like that has the ability then to recover relatively quickly. Melissa talked to me about the hysteria here. I know people on Wall Street, their stereotype is being very high strung. The media, as we know, love to cry wolf on these things. But if you look at the fundamentals, if you look at the numbers here, while there was a 1600 point drop, the percentage that it fell was 4.6%. If I'm not mistaken, this isn't even close to reaching that list of highest percentage drops in the history of our stock market. Right. And you were talking about panic. So let's talk about panic for a little bit. I'll tell you when to panic. Panic when you're down. People are up. So it wasn't a panicky selling action. And that's one of the reasons why we flipped around so quickly today. Today was a confirmation that there's no panic. Panic continues. Panic would be if we got up in the morning and the market gapped down huge in the pre-market. That didn't happen. We fell on the live day. So panic is when people are down or when the trend changes in the overall market. Stock market is still bullish. We're still in an uptrend. And people are up money. Now they were up more money last Thursday than they were by the close of Monday. But they're still up because, like I said, we've been rallying ever since the election. Although we did rally all of the eight years during Obama's term, we were in a bullish market. But the policies of Trump have really made the market do something very unique which is called power trending. So the market said all of these records and continued to make new highs, it almost went straight up. It wasn't going to continue forever. There was no way it was going to continue forever that it's not realistic. And so people took some money off the table. And like I said, I think part of it was because some of these companies, the reports didn't pan out. And so there were some profits taken off the table. But look for more records to be said, I think, if the market flips around again. And it is because of Trump's policies. I think that they're going to work for the economy. And I think that's one of the reasons why if you're in the market long term, just stay with it. Ride the trend. The trend is your friend. It's a good saying. All right. That's very interesting. We're almost out of time, Alyssa. But I have to ask you one more question because you're answering these so brilliantly. President Trump's response to the sell-off, this point drop, he said that he's focused on long-term economic fundamentals. Now, you believe that his economic policies thus far have contributed to these high stock market numbers, at least up until the last day or two. Looking forward, what do you look for from him policy-wise that you believe will be a positive impact on the stock market? Well, going forward, he's going to try to bring more jobs back to the U.S. So you're going to have companies that are going to be coming to the U.S. and wanting to do business here. And I think that's very positive for employment rates in the U.S. And another thing is there's companies that are bringing money back to the U.S. that they have outside of the U.S. Apple's a good example. That company has funds outside of the U.S. And he's doing that one-time repatriation tax to bring money back to the United States. And again, that's going to be taxed, but it's a one-time tax that happens that tax money is going to come back into the government, which is going to help the debt. And also those companies are going to spend the money in the U.S. And that's going to help the corporations. Apple's just won, but there's a lot of them. So the repatriation one-time tax rate, I think, is positive. And Trump's going to continue to try to change regulations. Some of the things are just too tight. I think it's going to overall help the job market significantly in the country. Well, there you have it. Melissa Armo, thank you so much for joining me today. It was wonderful to talk to you.


Well, let's take you now to other parts of the country where the paramount ruler of the Bachama Kingdom, Adama State, Daniel Shagai, Smiler says peace can be achieved through sports. The traditional ruler seated this in Numan during the opening ceremony of Numan Federation Volleyball Unity Cup tournament for both men and women. Details here. The Hama Bachama says that all over the world, sports does not only provide opportunity for youths to engage themselves in activities that abuse them mentally and physically but it is also a unifying factor. According to him, the volleyball tournament has again brought together people from all parts of the Numan Federation to play and also discuss ways to revamp the last glory of sports. He also said that the last time such event took place was about seven years ago. We all have different objectives in life and we all have different pursuits but what we need in this country most today is peace and we have to work for it and the only way to work for peace is to begin to bring people together. People that don't talk to one another, they can't have peace. People that stay away from one another, they cannot have peace.  The young people are idle, they are just like pellets in the hands of enemies. So we have so many people that are idle, then the leaders are not talking, every small thing ignites problems and we are hoping that peace will come. We have to work for peace. The chairman of the state volleyball association said the need to revamp the game became imperative because the stars are aging and if nothing is done there will not be players to represent the Federation. He added that sports development should not be left in the hands of government alone. Honestly, this game is very difficult to host a human federation as a team because we are bringing our youth together, we are bringing the whole local government together. One of the players thanked the organizers for bringing youths together because such an event will go a long way in creating peaceful co-existence within the Newman Federation. Yes, actually we really appreciate the sponsors, though it may have been too hectic for us. We've been training for long weeks with no friendlies or tournament ahead of us. So we really appreciate, we are hoping for such kind of sponsors to come over so that they may pick players from grass roots. We have many players on ground. In the opening march, Newman volleyball team defeated Shelling by three straight sets to zero, same as Demsa against Yuku team. All the five local government areas in the Federation are taking part in the tournament.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with 2020, 2021, Panini Contender Draft Hicks Basketball, one box, random pack, break number 16. You can see that I marked all, no, I think it was Sean. Sean marked all these RPs so you know that it's all from the same case. Big thanks to Darren Porter. He got all six packs. He initially bought four and then he was like, wait a second, I'm buying four. I may as well just buy the last two. So he did. So good call, Darren. I hope this is the right box right here. Good luck. He gave me a number, the number eight. And I went to the stack of boxes in the inventory room and just counted out one, two, three, four, five, eight and then got to this box. So let's see what we got. All right, this makes life easy for me too. I don't do any randomizers, no label, no labels to print out. The next, the next box is up if you want to get into it ladies and gentlemen. And if you're feeling as spicy and as bold as Darren, then you can definitely get six packs for yourself too. All right, good luck Darren. Obviously we'll send all these to you including these foil, JJ Euretics and Bradley Beals. There's Marcus Howard, prospect ticket autograph and that chrome design and the optic design. I like that. I think that's the first one I've seen. I don't know who this guy, I don't know if he's any good or not. I hope he is. I hope he gets drafted in the first round. I hope he becomes a superstar Darren. I've got Devin Booker right here and behind Kevin Durant foil is Christian Doolittle from Oklahoma. Oh, he's a beast, all right. Who? Marcus Howard or Christian Doolittle is Anthony Davis, champion, Carmelo. And behind mellow is Steven Enoch, tournament ticket autograph, 49. Howard, all right, well let's hope he gets drafted in top five, top 10 draft pick. There you go, Steven Enoch going your way, Darren. There's Hatchimura, some Zion right here too, RJ Barrett. Chris Paul is numbered to 49, that's pretty cool. He's what, wake forest gear and back here is Zeke Najee. 54 out of 75, conference finals ticket autograph. He kind of has an older face on there. I feel like he looks older. All right, Darren's happy so far. He's saying great box. Good, I like the sound of that. There's a jammer in as well. All right, but wait, there's more. Two boxes to go. Jimmy Butler, Kevin Love and Dwayne Sutton. Prospect ticket autograph. Derek Rose and Demarda Rosen. One more box to go, one more autograph to go, Darren. Thanks again for grabbing all the packs in this random pack break, number 16. Next one is in the store, Lays and John.  And we've got this guy, it's Malik Fitz. I think he has a good Fitbit sponsorship lined up. The Malik Fitzbit. Hi, I'm Malik Fitz and this is the Malik Fitz Fitzbit. Fitzbit, Fitbit. That's how I stay fit during the off season. When I'm getting ready for the draft, I make sure I use my Malik Fitzbits. And now you can too. This break brought to you by Fitzbits. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com. Great boxes, Darren. So if he's happy, I'm happy. Fitzbits in the tantrums in there as well. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us, everybody. More boxes in the store. Check it out on jaspyscasebreaks.com. Bye-bye.


Good evening. Welcome to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. I'm Don Savage, Public Affairs Officer for NASA's Office of Space Science. This evening, we're pleased to announce the start of a week-long campaign of observations of the impact of periodic comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter. The impact of the first fragment occurred earlier this afternoon at about 3.54, and scientists around the world participating in the NASA National Science Foundation observing campaign, as well as virtually every other telescope and observatory around the world have been watching. That included, of course, a Hubble Space Telescope, which is where we are located here at the Institute, an image of the area of Jupiter, which the fragment hit, will be ready by about 10 o'clock tonight, and at that time Dr. Heidi Hamill will provide the image and will discuss what she can tell from the early analysis of the data. Now I'd like to introduce our panel the discoverers and, of course, the namesake of the comet from my left, Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, Lowell Observatory. He's a research professor at North Arizona University and Flagstaff and scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey. To his left, Dr. Carolyn Shoemaker, his wife, also a staff member of Lowell Observatory and research professor at North Arizona University, and a volunteer scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. And on the far left, David Levy, amateur astronomer and author, and he's discovered 21 comets and in 1984, eight in his own backyard, and 13 with working with Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker and Mount Polymar. Dr. Shoemaker? Thanks, Don. Well, it's a great, great pleasure to be with you this evening. We're here to start the reporting on a campaign that's been 16 months in preparation. Since the discovery of the comet, we were very fortunate to be able to discover this comet far enough ahead of time that astronomers around the world could actually plan carefully an observing campaign, get their observing requests into observatories, and, of course, a campaign has been carried out, is being carried out with a Hubble Space Telescope, which is guided from here. As the staff, the planning is done from here. And the Hubble has been very important actually in obtaining some of our best images of the comet over the course of the past year, actually starting July a year ago. And I think we're very lucky, of course, to have the new improved optics on Hubble, which are going to prove their worth tonight and through the rest of this week. Not only have observers been preparing, but there have been several teams of theorists around the world, mostly in the U.S., who worked very hard to try to predict what the effects of the impacts of the comet fragments would be. And what I want to show you very briefly is what I regard as the latest and best prediction for the eruptive plume that will be formed by an individual comet nucleus of a kilometer diameter plunging into the atmosphere of Jupiter at 45 degrees. The work I'm going to show you actually has just been completed. It's a team effort primarily carried out by Paul Hasseg, the Titan Research Corporation, who's a close colleague of ours, my colleague David Levy, David Roddy. I have two Davids in my life. David Roddy was my first graduate student and is a colleague of mine at the USGS. And Andrew Ingersoll is a professor at Caltech. And I think that we have probably the best simulation on the computer of a plume that will erupt from beneath the cloud tops. If we can now roll the images, we're starting and we're going to go, this is one and a half minutes. If we can keep rolling, this is two minutes and the plume is growing. This is now three minutes. It's rising to a total height of about 700 kilometers. This is at four minutes. The color, it's getting cold at the top. Oops. What happened there? All right, let's continue with the next one. Is that the last one? I don't know where a light signal came in there. All right, I guess that's as far as he can take the, there we go. The plume gets very cold and then finally falls back down. You may not be able to see the dimensions in that block diagram, but the plume spreads out more than 2,000 kilometers across and it rises to a height of nearly 1,000 kilometers at its greatest extent. It reaches that greatest height in about five minutes. Now, having done those calculations, it gives me great satisfaction to be able to tell you that there have been two reports received at the University of Maryland, one from an observing team in Colorado and Granada in Spain, headed by Tom Herbst and six other astronomers, observing with a 3.5 meter telescope and observing in the 2.3 micron band. That's an absorption band of methane so that Jupiter becomes very dark in that band. That's the best band to observe at if you want to see something bright that's rising above the cloud tops. And they did in fact detect the plume at 218 universal time, which is 18 minutes essentially after the predicted time by Paul Chotos and Don Yeomans at JPL for the impact. Now, remember it took about five minutes for the plume to reach its full height, and at about that time the plume actually would be rotated fairly close to the limb. So I expect that the prediction is, the actual impact probably was about 13 minutes after the predicted impact, but that's very good because the standard deviation of prediction is eight minutes. And so it's about one and a half standard deviations off the prediction. That's a very good prediction from the astronomical observations. So it looks as though it was seen on the limb of the planet. And in fact, it was reported, the plume is reported to be brighter than the satellite EO in the 2.3 micron band. Now we should all take these reports very carefully and cautiously at this time. They need to be confirmed by other observers, but I'm very happy to tell you the plume is also reported to be observed in the 10 micron band by observers, again with a 3.6 meter telescope at this site. And this is a 10 micron observation, which is also deep in the infrared and also spectral region in which Jupiter is not too bright to begin with. So it's easier to see the plume there. So the plume independently has been seen in Chile as well as in Spain. So this is the moment of truth. We have all speculated and tried to estimate the sizes of the nuclei. And we've worried if the nuclei were at the smaller limit, which is set actually by the dynamics that parent body could not have been much smaller than about two kilometers. So the biggest fragments, if they're our single fragments, would likely have been only a few hundred meters across versus the other possibility the upper limit was set by observations with the space telescope last July and then later this year, allowing the individual largest fragments being about three or maybe the largest four kilometers across. We've assumed that maybe the best bet somewhere in the middle at one kilometer, but now remember we're observing fragment A, which is one of the small fragments. So I think there's very good news tonight. If these reports are correct, then you can expect a good show for every telescopically observed nucleus. We're going to see things and we're going to learn a lot. That's the good news tonight. Let me now turn the podium over to my wife Carolyn. We'll talk a little bit about the discovery. The discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was terrifically exciting in March of 1993. At that time, to discover something like this was completely unbelievable to any of us. It was a dark and stormy night. To quote a famous phrase, but it was a dark and stormy night on which this comet was discovered by us and by a young Frenchman, Philippe Benjoya, from Nice, France. This was discovered in the course of our normal work as part of our routine survey. Happily, it was a field that we were able to take in spite of the fact that a storm was moving in. We took the films for this two nights before discovery and at that time, we were very grateful that we were able to take anything. We had had a bad two months of winter during which we took very few films. When we had the chance to take any films that night and took this particular pair, we were uncommonly lucky. I searched these films two days later in my usual way, but maybe I should back up a little and tell you, how does this team work? First of all, there's the telescope in the 18-inch dome, which is the oldest telescope on Palomar Mountain. It is Palomar Mountain, not Mount Palomar. This is an 18-inch Schmidt. It's a camera, and we take pairs of films of one field. By taking pairs of films of one field, I can look at them under a stereo microscope and detect images that appear to float in a 3D effect. The stars lie down nice and flat. The galaxies lie down nice and flat. Asteroids and comets appear to float. It's a wonderful technique. During our night of observing, David and Jean are usually up on the observing floor. One of them is guiding this telescope, which is open to the sky. It's a very old-fashioned technique that isn't used much anymore. We actually do see the sky as we observe. One of them is on the telescope guiding. The other one is busy putting the person on the telescope on the right field, changing the film, going up and downstairs, and then setting up, helping set up the telescope for the next observation. Every four fields, they take their own turn in one changes and gets on the telescope, and the other one does the running up and down the stairs. After about eight fields, I usually develop the films, and after I finish developing the films, I scan any of those that are dry. So that's our general procedure. But on that dark and stormy night, we were not able to do that sort of thing. I was scanning fields, trying to catch up with what we had already taken, and the others were doing their usual thing. David writes books. Jean was busy with office work of some sort, and Philippe was also there, and I was trying to be careful. If I clear my throat or cough a little, they all snap to attention and say, what are you found? Well, that night I had just finished my usual litany when I'm beginning to feel desperate. I was at the end of the, coming close to the end of the films that we had taken, and I turned to David and said, I used to be a person who found comments, and then that usually helps a little bit, and I started to scan the field that had Jupiter on it. For me, that's been a lucky field. I found another comment on a Jupiter field once when I was busy confirming a comment for another observer on that same field. So I was hopeful that maybe just maybe something would turn up. And sure enough, halfway down, after I'd come across Jupiter, and after I'd seen Jupiter's ghost image on the film, there was a strange looking object. I almost went past, and then I said, whoops, I should go back to that. And I moved the film back and looked harder and decided that's not an edge on galaxy, because we see galaxy's face on, turned a little cock-eyed edge on. But this was not an edge on galaxy. It had coma and tail, and most importantly to me, it floated. It had to float, or I wouldn't have seen it in three dimensions. And so I knew that was a comment. I always have this deep inner feeling when I find a comment. If I have to wonder, it isn't. In this case, I knew I had a comment, but it was strange looking. It looked like a bar. Instead of the usual round halo with an atmosphere or coma and a tail, it was a bar with coma and tail. And I thought that that's not natural. I turned to the others because I always bring them in on any discovery as soon as I can. It takes all of us working very hard all of the time to make these discoveries. And it's their discovery as much as mine. I'm just lucky enough to have seen it first. But I wanted them to see it right away. And furthermore, I wanted them to tell me why it looked like a bar. I turned and said, I don't know what I've got, but it looks like a squashed comet. And they really snapped too that time. And Jean rushed over and looked at it and looked very puzzled. And then David took his turn and was equally confused. And Philippe took his turn. He was interested in part because he had been studying for his PhD in France, not so much the breakup, but families of asteroids, which would be caused by breakup. And we were very, very bemused by all this. We couldn't imagine what it was. As David often says, our brains sort of turn off for a minute. We get a rush of adrenaline. And we were excited. And we found something unusual. So that was the beginning of this wonderful event that has led to a culmination tonight. During this time that has ensued, we had a vast amount of surprise and excitement when we first of all discovered that the comet was in orbit about Jupiter. That was the first ever. And then a couple of months later, when we discovered that this was a comet that was going to actually impact Jupiter, a first ever comet seen impacting a planet. That was really exciting. I was a little dismayed, I'll have to admit. I thought I would never lose a comet in such a fashion. I was actually going to lose one of my comets. And that was a momentary bit of sadness. And then I thought, oh, but how exciting. Everyone will get to see a comet hit Jupiter. But at that time, I had no conception of all that was going to ensue. I had no conception of how much all of us did to learn about comets about a planet in our solar system, just from the discovery of this particular comet. And that to me has been one of the more exciting things to see people from many different areas and disciplines of planetary science and astronomy bring together, come together with their knowledge work together to get the most out of this. So that that has been a wonderful thing. And then this afternoon, about the time that I knew that comet was going to hit Jupiter, fragment a I suddenly discovered I had a real emotional attachment to this comet. During all this time, it's been a thing of great beauty to me out there. The first images I saw after Jim Scotty showed us his and after I saw Dave Jewett and Jane Lou's images from Hawaii, just captured my imagination and that image has been there ever since. And yet here it was fragment a was going to hit Jupiter. And I'll have to admit, I had a momentary tear at the very prospect when I knew that moment had happened. Well, that's gone. But just a few hours later than the sudden news of actually seeing something from Spain and from Chile. That's that's terrifically exciting. All I could say was right. And so that is one of the phases of this whole cometary experience, I think that has been wonderful for all of us. Now, I'd like to turn the meeting over to David Levy, who is a well known writer, particularly about astronomical things, a lecture and a very close colleague. Thanks, Carolyn. That is a tough act to follow. You just said congratulations. I think the exciting thing about tonight is that once in a generation, we get one of those if we're lucky, if we're lucky, we get one of those rare moments when science stops for a moment, turns on its ear and gives us something really, really special. In the early 1950s, the discovery of DNA did so much to, it was a discovery. And we learned an awful lot. But the real thing that that discovery did was that everyone who was young at that time, looked at all the news about the discovery, studied it. And they said, science is fabulous, you can, you can uncover the mysteries of life. When you get discoveries like this. In 1969, there was the Apollo 11 moon landing almost exactly 25 years ago, that another generation paused for a moment. I remember at a summer camp in Lake Placid, we had about 160 people watching a television set about this big watching the watching that first small step take place. And the youngest people in that audience were, were, couldn't have been seven years old. And the entire camp was there for four hours. And nobody said anything. Everybody was absolutely quiet because this was we knew that this was one of those moments. There have been other moments as well. But I'm really beginning to think that the impact of a comet on Jupiter can be one such moment a moment with the power to to, to have science say to the world, it's fun to study science nature every now and then throws us a real ball that we can shoot out of the park. And I think this is what's happening here. Cometary impacts have had enormous influence on our past. It is very likely that they provided cometary impacts provided the water that is on the earth right now. It is likely that they provided the building blocks of life, the simple alphabet of life, C-H-O-N carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. A comet hitting the earth, maybe an asteroid hitting the earth 65 million years ago probably led to the demise of more than 70% of the species of life on earth, including the dinosaurs. We have seen the results of comet impacts. I think we being here is one of those results. We have seen if you go outside and look at the moon on any clear night with a pair of binoculars, you'll see enough craters, impact craters, the treatment studied in this life, that you will be able to see that the earth and the moon have been hit by craters throughout their history. We've seen all this. We understand a little bit about it. What we haven't seen as an actual impact take place. I'll never forget, May 22nd, it was my birthday. We were all at Palomar Mountain. Carolyn is scanning for comets. It is actually a scan that would prove successful in the next few hours when she found our next comet. Jean was in the dark room getting ready for our observing that night and I was checking the mail to see if there were any interesting objects that we would have to observe that night to follow up new discoveries, things like that. I logged into the email. There were two circulars from the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. I read the first one and my jaw fell on the floor. It announced that there was a good possibility that comets should make her leave E9 would be hitting Jupiter in July of 1994. I said that. I said, our comet is going to hit Jupiter. Jean has spent his entire life studying impacts from his Ph.D. thesis to prove that meteor crater was the result of an impact from the work he did on the Apollo program from the work he's done for the last 25, the last 15 years studying not the craters so much as the objects that sometimes make the craters, the comets and the asteroids. And here he is in the dark room and I just told him that we're going to see an impact on Jupiter. And I heard this slamming of doors and closing of lids as he's trying to save the film before he throws the dark room door open, pushes me out of my computer chair and sits down, looks at my screen and says, I don't believe it. We are going to see an impact. And since May 22nd of last year, it has been just one excitement after another. This is not a comet just for the professional scientists. This is everybody's comet. We've heard a lot that you're not going to see anything with the small telescope that you buy at a store or that you build yourself. That's true. You're not going to see Jupiter show major changes from this impact, but you don't have to. That's why we have a fabulous Hubble Space Telescope. That's why we have the large telescopes on the ground. And that's why we have television to transmit those pictures to everybody. What we do have to do is to go outside with small telescopes, binoculars, and just look up at Jupiter. With a pair of binoculars, you can mount it well against the wall of a building. You're going to see the moons of Jupiter revolve around that planet, not in one night. But if you look every night, you'll see them in different positions, just like Galileo did in 1610.  The bigger the telescope is, the more of those details you'll get. The important thing is, if you make those simple observations, even if you have no pair of binoculars, just go out and look at Jupiter each night. You'll see it move slightly relative to the stars. These are observations anybody can make without any telescope, anything to just look at Jupiter. It's high in the southwestern sky these evenings, very bright, the brightest star in that area, star, the brightest planet in that area, the brightest object in the sky, in that part of the sky. And this way, everybody can be a part of this event. You'll be able to look up at Jupiter and say, I saw Jupiter the week the comet hit. And then you come inside, see the results on Hubble Space Telescope, later on the Galileo spacecraft. We are so extremely lucky that the impact, which might take place once a century, it might take place once in a thousand years. It's rare. But with something taking place that infrequently, it could have happened last year. It could have happened 15 months ago. If it had happened last year, Galileo was far too, was not in the right position to observe it. We would have seen nothing. If it had happened two years ago, if it had happened just maybe last November, we wouldn't have seen as much as we're getting now. It's happening tonight. We have a fully repaired and healthy Hubble Space Telescope, which has been performing like a jewel in the last few months. The Galileo spacecraft, despite the antenna, is producing fabulous discoveries. The moon on the asteroid Ida, the moon circling Ida, is one of them. This is a time when we can really look back and say the 25th anniversary of the moon landing is a real time to celebrate, because we have such good instruments to observe the most fantastic event that we've had in a long time. This is an event, I think, that has the power to generate a whole lot of interest in science among people, especially young people. People have asked me more than any other question, what will this event do to us on Earth? And I start by saying absolutely no effect on Earth. Jupiter is 500 million miles from here. Don't worry about it. And then I think about it for a minute. I hope this event has a powerful effect on Earth. I hope this event will make people think that the sky is a wonderful, user-friendly place to watch and that science is not just done by professional scientists. Science is fun. It is alive. It is telling us things that are important in the here and now. If SL9's crash into Jupiter does that, I think it would really have made the best contribution of all. And now, Don? Thank you. I'd like to open up now to question and audience, question and answers from the audience here, and then we'll take Q&A from the NASA Centers. I would like for reporters to please wait for the microphone to get to you and then state your name and affiliation. Take one in the front row. Hi, I'm Shin Yoshikai of NHK. I think it is a little too early to ask you about this, but how deep was the collision and what was the how the energy looked like? And from this to result, what does this comet look like? Does it look like an asteroid or it looks like a snowball? Can I ask your estimate? I guess you asked me several questions. The first question was how deep did the comet penetrate into the atmosphere of Jupiter? Well, of course, we don't know that yet for nucleus A. For the simulation that I showed you, this was for a one kilometer diameter body with the density of ice, and it was essentially decided using what knowledge we have of the fragility of the comet when it broke up that we would have it come apart at 31 kilometers below the cloud tops. That's a somewhat arbitrary decision, but we think it's fairly representative. But we did let the comet go right through and stay intact, punching a tunnel into the atmosphere on the computer, of course, and then it comes apart and dumps its energy and creates a very hot fireball that expands and then rises buoyantly. You were to watch the evolution of the plume. Part of it does shoot back out along the tunnel, but most of it just rises buoyantly and just bursts right out of above the cloud tops. So I think that's the answer to the first question. Now, the second question was, is this more like an asteroid or... Or maybe you're asking, is it a single solid object or is it a accumulation of many smaller pieces? Is that your question? That's still the $64 question. There are two very important reports. One has just been published in Nature and a second one has been submitted by an author who's here in this room, I think. I don't seem just this moment. Both showing that you can explain the number of objects that we see in the string of pearls. If the original parent body was simply a loose agglomeration of many, many smaller bodies, and theoretically it turns out you should get just about 20 pieces when it breaks up, and then 20 individual clumps. But each clump itself is made of many smaller pieces. This looks like a very reasonable proposition. And in fact, is Reddick here? I don't see him at the moment. He's here at the Space Telescope Science Institute. And the other authors are Ashfog and Bents, who've published in Nature. I think it's a very, very persuading argument. In fact, I would venture to say that a general view of comets is in the process of shift. I think we're going to see a paradigm shift from the point of view where people have been thinking of comets as sort of one big dirty snowball to really just a collection of finer debris just loosely held by gravity. I think a lot of people are now starting to think very much in that direction, and the evidence is coming, of course, from the break-up of periodic comets you make, or leave it at.  If you have, what were you looking for and what did you see? Have you seen anything from Hubble yet? If you haven't, when are you going to see it? Well, let me answer for the team. Stick around till 10. We've not seen the images yet. They're coming down, and Heidi Hammer will report on that in about two hours. One quick follow-up. What will you be looking for when you see these images? I know you have that model that you showed us, but what are you going to be looking most assiduously for when you see those images from Hubble? A new spot on Jupiter. In fact, I don't know if I mentioned it. The intensity of the brightness of the spot as reported from Calar Alto in Granada was greater than the brightness of EO in the 2.3 micron bang, where I hope very much that the Hubble images that are going to be seen later tonight will actually define the dimensions and the brightness of that spot in various wavelengths very well, so this is very exciting. Stay tuned. None of us up here have seen those images yet. Can you put your mic down a little bit? Okay, question in the back. Mayor from Sky and Telescope. Brian Marsden recently mentioned that he thought that such impacts probably happened the order of decades. Given the recent observation of this small fragment, do you think that's possible that such a feature would go unnoticed? Do you want to answer, David? It's hard to say. I haven't seen, based on our previous question, I haven't seen the pictures yet. Based on the descriptions that we've read, it's looking really like fragment A. Fragment A is one of the smaller fragments, one of the smallest ones, and its importance is only in that it's the first one, and if it has really produced so far based on ground based images, what it seems to have produced, it's looking like the original comet would have been closer to the larger size, the larger end, closer to that 10 kilometer diameter for the original body. It's still too early to say that for sure, but if that's the case, then I would suggest that this would be a much rarer event than that, maybe once every several hundred, maybe a thousand years, what do you think? My best guess is if the precursor were 10 kilometers across, and the fact that we're seeing such a bright spot, if these reports are correct, I ask to be a caveat there, we have to get proof. That's a big guess. These reports are correct, and I think the 10 kilometer size, as David says, looks reasonable, and my guess is that you don't get a hit by a 10 kilometer object more frequently than about what's a thousand years. I think we may be privileged to witness one of those very rare events of astronomy. And there's something else though. This is the second act of the two-act play, well it's the second act of this play that is at least two acts so far. This is the number, this is the frequency for just an impact. What is the frequency for the comet to do this weird celestial dance around Jupiter, breaking up two years before impact, brightening up so that it could be discovered, and we could plan for this thing. How do we factor that into the equation? That makes it still more rare. I think there's one other factor, and that is that you could have an event like that on Jupiter, but if no one is looking, you're not going to see it. Jupiter is not always the center of attention, and on what last one looks at the right time, you might, you might, you saw the simulation. That dies down fairly quickly. You might not notice another point spot very soon. But this is, this is a little premature. We haven't, we haven't seen the data from Hubble Space Telescope. We're basing this on two initial reports, and they're reliable reports, but it's, it's, there's that big caveat. We want to see more, we all want to see more, but it's looking pretty good right now that we're seeing a rare, rare event. I just make one other comment, Steve, and that is that, you know, I think Marsha was arguing simply from a probabilistic standpoint, you know, what are the odds that we would be lucky enough like Tycho to see the once per millennium supernova? The odds, a priori odds are this, that we're, we're going to see something at all that's much more frequent, and, and that would be consistent with the impact of, say, something like a one or two kilometer body or a parent body rather than a 10 kilometer size. Since Jupiter... Name and affiliation. Oh, sorry. Linda, how Chancellor Communications, Philadelphia, since Jupiter is a planet that is largely made of hydrogen gas, what prevents the large plume explosions from spreading planet wide? Do you want to try that? I can try that. Hydrogen, as, as we know, is very flammable, but you need oxygen to, to keep the combustion going. And Jupiter, the hydrogen is just there all by itself, just sitting there very cold, and it says inert as stale bread. As, so I don't think so. As far as another question related to yours, because so many people watch 2010 these days, these comets are far too small by many orders of magnitude to start any nuclear fusion from taking place inside Jupiter. That's not what this is about at all. So Jupiter's not going to catch on fire, there's no oxygen to support that. Did I do okay? I'm not sure. Was that the sense of your question? Well, any kind of explode could be either way. I wasn't thinking necessarily of a nuclear explosion like a Sun, but just what would keep the hydrogen from continuing to explode and explode if they are going to be massive. As you've demonstrated here, why wouldn't it just keep exploding with more and more hydrogen? Bear in mind what's happening is not that the hydrogen is burning that sort of thing. It's just that a tremendous amount of energy is dumped into the atmosphere of Jupiter by a very strong shock wave, which heats the atmosphere up to several tens of thousands of degrees Kelvin. So it's exceedingly hot in a very small region. That's simply because you have a body coming in at 60 kilometers per second and in a very short distance releases all of its kinetic energy. So all you're really doing is just you're point heating almost the atmosphere and what causes the eruption of the plume is that that just expands and becomes a buoyant bubble that blows out the top. Second up. Gene Chumaker, Glenda Chu from the San Jose Mercury News. I wonder if you could repeat the bit of news that you had this evening about the two observatories that actually think they have spotted plumes. Where are those and what are the names of them and if you could spell them it'd be all to the better and the names of the scientists who are in charge there. I could give those to you guys. The first report that was received was from Calar Alto, which is in Granada, Spain, C-A-L-A-R, second word ALTO. The observers were Tom Herbst, H-E-R-B-S-T, Doug Hamilton, Jose Ortiz, Herman Buhart, I have it down as B-O-E-H-H-A-B-O, yes B-O-E-H-H-A-R-D-T. I hope I transcribed it correctly. Carl Heinz Mandel, C-I-R-L-H-E-I-N-Z, Mandel M-A-N-D-E-L, and Alex Fiedler. And that's, they are observing at Calar Alto, Spain. The second report, this is from a 3.5 meter telescope, it's a big telescope. The second report is from the Nordic Optical Telescope at La Silla, Chile. The report was relayed on by Richard West of the European Southern Observatory, but I do not have information on who the actual observers were. I'm sure that that will become public very soon. Two words LA and S-I-L-L-A-S. Pardon me. The time reported from Calar Alto, the plume was observed at 20 hours, 18 minutes universal time versus a predicted impact time of 20 hours even by the JPL team of Paul Chotis and Don Yeomans. That means that the predictions from Chotis and Yeomans were really very, very good. Extremely good. Well, I'll take one more question from here. Go to one of the centers and then come back. This is an HK. At 10 o'clock we're expecting images in the visible light range from Hubble, and we're curious about some of the other areas that have been explored in terms of the spectrum. Have you heard of reports from in the infrared range ultraviolet, even perhaps in the radio telescope areas as well? There has been a report that's come over the news wires from Japan. Let's see. Is Miles here? Don't see it. This is a report by a Japanese observer not familiar to me in the radio region reporting and it's not specified as to the wavelength region that the radio emission from Jupiter, this is already before the impact of Fragment A. It's about a day ago. It increased by a factor between 10 and 100. I've not seen any details on that, so that's the only thing I know of in the radio region. I expect we're going to see a lot of reports coming in in the next 24 hours from radio observers. I'll be very surprised if we don't see discrete pulses from these impact events. That's all I know of at the present time. So actually we only knew of these things a couple of hours ago, so it's all very fresh. I'd like to go to excuse me, please. We're going to have to take a question from the Johnson Space Center now and we will come back to four more questions here in a moment. Johnson, are you online? Name an affiliation, please. This is Dan Feldstein from the Houston Post and I was wondering, you've heard the two reports that they have seen of Bloom. I was wondering, have you heard from people who were looking and did not see anything and have you gotten many of those or could you characterize how many folks called in and said I didn't see anything? I've only heard about fourth hand that people have tried to observe in the visible region of spectrum without success but I have no real reason to believe that that's strongly based. I just don't know. Yeah, we just checked the email just before coming here and there didn't seem, the only two reports we got were those two positive ones. We did not get any negative any negative ones. I know that some of the sites did report that they were cloudy but I haven't received any other reports. We'll take one question from Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Go ahead, please. Name an affiliation. This is Robert Lee host of The Los Angeles Times. I wonder if you could tell us based on the sketchy preliminary observations that you've had reports on whether the plumes that were observed bear any resemblance to that interesting simulation you just ran for us? Well, my interpretation and this is really, you have to be very careful now because we're working with very little information but in order for the plume to be seen at all it has to be, in fact at the time given it would be very near the limb and I think it would it would be very consistent with the simulation that I showed to have a plume rising up to about a thousand kilometers above the limb to be visible and to be as bright as it was reported but we've got to see lots more. No follow-up at JPL then we'll come back here to this telescope institute. Question back there. Go ahead. Yeah, this is Alan Merson of National Geographic Magazine. Dr. Schumacher, you mentioned that article by Willie Benz and Nature and the article said that that the comet wasn't supposed to be one solid body but many fragments and I just wonder whether or not the fact that there have been two confirmations of the plume is consistent with that theory that is to say that I thought the fact that if the comet were made up of many smaller parts that it would have just dissipated in the atmosphere and not created a plume like that. Well, that was a conclusion drawn by Paul Weissman in a commentary on the article by Asfog and Benz predicting the great fizzle. And if the reports that we've received from Spain and Chile are correct it's not a great fizzle. So you have to remember that the work by Asfog and Benz does not say whether the small pieces are successfully all re-aggregated into sort of essentially one clump for each nucleus or whether they're spread out. But I think that the plume as reported is certainly consistent with these smaller pieces re-aggregating into one clump that's what effectively hits the top of the atmosphere. One thing I would say is if we should see these things at all that it probably indicates we're dealing with larger objects than was concluded by Asfog and Benz. And I think we may have some up-to-date information from Heidi Hamel. Let's talk to introduce Dr. Heidi Hamel. Eugene Schumacher said he would be personally astonished if we saw nothing. Well, if we didn't see something well, he's not going to be astonished. We actually saw some amazing things. We just downloaded the first two orbits. In the first orbit we were able to see a plume on the edge of the planet. In the second orbit, which I have a raw laser printer output this is as raw as it gets we can actually see the impact site itself. And I'll remind you this is for A, the first one not the brightest one. So we're going to have a really exciting week. So more details to come. We just got this data down. We haven't had a chance to do anything with it. And I'll be talking with you at 10 o'clock about what we have actually seen in the larger dataset. What's the wavelength, Heidi? This is a methane filter at 889. Do you have a pencil or a pen or something? Yes. I don't even have a piece of cardboard to have this mounted on. Okay we just blew up the section of the planet. This is the southern pole here.  See that bright streak? And around the edge of the street there's some other stuff. Stuff. Tell you more about the stuff tonight. I think we may have some more questions here. Would you like to comment? Well I think you can all lay your worries to rest. Those reports from Spain and Chile are right. And I think that we I'll personally bet another case of champagne with Brian Mars and that we've got big objects. Those are not puny. Not to show the to see the effects that we're seeing you have to put a lot of energy into the atmosphere. So I think we're very very privileged tonight to see an event that's not once in a lifetime. It's once in a millennium. I think though that Brian's Brian Marsden's efforts to to come out on the smaller size were great because we have had experiences where there's been a lot of hype for something and then it turns out to be not what we're expecting. We have never seen this before. This is totally new ground. This is a totally new kind of thing in science that we're witnessing tonight. And Brian Brian's argument made a lot of sense. It certainly made a lot of sense to me. We didn't buy it but it made a lot of sense. And I imagine right now that Brian's as excited as the rest of us as what is happening. This is this is a wonderful time for everybody. I'd like to second that David. I think Brian wanted to be on the air on the cautious side not to build up expectations too high. And I think that that was a wise course of action on his part and his role as the director of the CBAT the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. That was the right course of action for him. And of course he was betting on statistics and we beat the statistics. Yeah we hear you. We beat the odds. Estimate of the minimum diameter. Estimate of the minimum diameter of Fragmenet yet. Could you of the single object or of the whole original object. Fragmenet the one that Hubble just took that impact the image of. I would guess just from the relative brightness and the limits that were placed earlier by the very careful work of Hal Weaver that we're looking at an object that is of the order of a kilometer in diameter that's its real diameter. And the bigger objects are really bigger. And the original object was really about 10 kilometers. By the way 10 kilometer object is not quite as large maybe what about two thirds the size of Halley's comet so. No that is the size of Halley's I mean diameter Halley's comet is 10 kilometers. All right so we're talking about an object about the size of Halley's comet. This object we're near the earth it would be big and not anymore. But it would be big and bright with a with a tail and everything. This is a big looks like this is a big object. Can you just explain a bit why the why the radio wave would have increased as it report from Japan yesterday why why would that happen with this. Frankly I don't think anyone made that prediction. We don't have a model. I I maybe some people are inventing them right now. I'll bet Alex Destler is working on three or four models. But you know what we were going to see in the radio wave region was a grab bag. People are going to be looking but really not knowing how to predict it theoretically. Good time for just one or two more questions down here. Glenn DeChu from the San Jose Mercury News. I wonder if the fact that these impacts seem to be occurring maybe 13 minutes later than predicted is also good news in the sense that they they must be occurring closer to where you all can see them. And do you know how if they are 13 minutes later than than thought how far away from from the rotating into our view. Are they then it doesn't change the actual impact point relative to our line of sight by very much. It just it just means the comet's coming a little bit later on its trajectory but it won't shift it by very much. Yeah. All the other thing about the size is if this if it turns out that we're that everyone's right and that this is close to a 10 kilometer object I really want to mention is Denik Sekanina Paul Chotis and Don Yeomans at JPL that have been saying all along that their models show a large a large a large comet before a breakup a lot two years ago. So if this turns out to be true this is a real mathematical victory. Question on the back. Miles O'Brien with CNN. I know from over here I know from speaking to you all this past week that you had a fair amount of anxiety about what might happen tonight. Give us a sense of how much relief this just recent announcement gives you. Miles would you like to have some campaign here with us. You probably can't tell that we're very happy. It's a champagne experience. We I'm absolutely thrilled to pieces. It's a it's it's it's such a rare night when nature calls you on the phone and says I'm going to drop 20 comments into Jupiter at 138 miles an hour. All I want you to do is watch and I'm not going to tell you what's going to happen in advance just watch. We are watching with everything we've got tonight and nature winked at us. It's exciting. You can imagine that we've all worried about the Kahootek effect and wondering whether we would all whether we'd have to slink off and hide under a flat rock somewhere. I think the answer is we're not going to have to hide under a flat rock. See did your your wildest expectations. Yes but not our wildest hopes. We have two more minutes to go we'll take a question up here in front now here we go right. Name and affiliation. You know Paul Reiser they be if this is one of the smallest what is the largest and when you expect it to hit. Some of the largest fragments are G H and K.  In the press kit and G and H will be coming down a couple of days. And K. Thank you. Thanks. There's Hal Weaver. The one I'm personally excited about is Q. That's the the president of the Gang of Four the former Gang of Four one of them kind of faded out. And another one split so we still have a Gang of Four. That happens on July 20th which is the 25th anniversary of the moon landing. It's a very complex group of fragments and they're all going to be hitting within a very short time. I think we ought to recognize Hal Weaver who's standing right back there and spoke up. Hal is the one that made the estimates are from the Hubble images a year ago in July and came out with these estimates of the largest nine being about three kilometers maybe the very biggest four and I think he ought to be feeling pretty high tonight. I hope he's got a whole bottomless champagne. I'm Fred Burke we've run out of time right now for question and answer and the shoemakers have another engagement they have to we're going to run down and watch the impact of fragment B at the Naval Observatory right now. We will have we will have our panel again tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock at the Goddard Space Center and also we'll have some updates later this evening at 10 p.m. with Heidi Hamel and the other science team members if you would care to join us for that 10 o'clock tonight Eastern thank you very much.


As the plane began to lift from the ground, I heard a hoot and a giggle as only two young children can do as they're experiencing the wonder of flight. As quickly as their joy boiled up and out, their parent was quick to quiet them down. As we age, there's a temptation to lose and bottle our sense of wonder. We long for the naivety of adolescence but scoff at its actual practice. What would it look like for us to practice wonder? What would it be like to giggle at the simple miracles we experience happening every day? What might we then open ourselves up to discover?


The Government of India has released the draft Indian Marine Fisheries Bill 2021, causing a stir among the fishing community. The fishermen in Tamil Nadu held massive protests and strikes across the strait against the bill on August 9. The Government of Tamil Nadu has also spoken against the bill and the centre's infringement on its strikes. So we are here, came here for protesting the Indian Marine Fisheries Bill 2021. So this bill is completely against all fishermen, especially we can see a lot of things against the fishermen community and the traditional fishing and the act is saying that this bill is exemption from the traditional fishermen only when they are using the non-traditional I mean non-moderate boat. So non-moderate boat, now nobody is using. It is already out there, rest all are using from the small engine to bigger engine. But this bill is saying only this bill exemption for non-moderate boat, this is completely wrong assumption and they have to come to the seashore area and to check what we are using first. And secondly what they are saying in this bill and from the small engine to bigger engine and all size of all variety of fishing boats are come under only one word it's called fishing vessel. It is completely wrong assumption because fishing vessel means it has lot of extra equipment, navigational equipment, communication equipment but you can see the normal fishing boats are nothing. We don't have anything and we are having very minimum equipment on this boat. Then how we can come into the only one line called fishing vessel. It is completely wrong assumption from the central government and this has to be taken back and this bill, Indian Marine Fisheries Bill 2021 should be completely taken back. It is completely against the fisherman and third thing and all the fishing vessel they are saying that notation Indian fishing vessel should register under MS Act 2021, Machin Shipping Act. Machin Shipping Act 1958 is comes for only the fishing vessels and bigger vessels. So they have lot of rules and regulation under classification society. If one boat, if any fishing vessel they should have this kind of engine and this kind of safety equipment and you should have such a naval architecture designed oriented but how can we go for naval architecture design oriented boats. It is completely wrong assumption, first assumption, non-motorized boat assumption and second is all comes under only one name fishing vessel and third and registered under MS Shipping Act 1958. The bill has classified all the traditional fiber and mechanized boats on par with high end fishing vessels. Moreover, the bill has mandated the obtaining of licenses and licensing fee for fishing for the traditional fisherman. The fisherman have raised fears over the threat of being driven away from the seas. When we go for fishing, we have to go to the authorized license agency to get the license for fishing and first we have to go for registration of fishing boats. It is completely not possible. This law has come and they will they have such a certain kind of committee that committee will decide when to fish and when to not fish and they have no fishing zone. No fishing zone means you cannot go for fishing and when they give the license, when this authorized license officer when they give the license and they will say that this area from north point to south point, this latitude, this longitude, you cannot go for fishing. How can we go? How can we do fishing with this kind of attitude, this kind of law? So, it is completely wrong and there are many other things are there in the 16 pages law. I mean this must have the bill and around 14 pages are against the traditional fisherman. Only few points here and there that foreign fishing vessels cannot come for fishing in AEZ, Exclusive Economic Zone. It is okay, but another 14 pages are completely against the fisherman, especially only 12 nautical miles is come under the State Government Fissuring Act and above the 12 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles plus high seas. High seas are 200 nautical miles plus it is comes under the Indian Marine Fisheries Bill and we have to take two separate license, one license for 12 nautical miles and another license for above 12 nautical miles. It is absolutely wrong. How can we traditional fisherman go for two license? If we take local license, 12 nautical mile license, if we cross the 12 nautical mile border, how can we know the 12 nautical mile? We cannot go and measure each and every point. If we go above the 12 nautical mile and we have to go for jail and this guy will say, you came, you come to the central government point and you will be under arrest. This is completely wrong and they don't have any sense. They have to come to the beach or seashore area to check each and every point and they should discuss with fishermen and we should give the good suggestion that present situation, what is the condition and what is the against this bill? We are requesting central government and fisheries department to taking care of this and this bill has to be withdrawn completely because from the point one to point last, this Masoda, this bill is against the traditional fisherman and we are Meenavangopa Makal Yakam and plus Tamil Nadu Pudicherry Meenavarkuta Meenavarkuta. We are kindly requesting central government and state government to withdraw the bill as soon as possible to save and to protect the fishermen community.


Okay, happy Friday 16th of April. Hope you're doing well. And before I begin the normal briefing Don't forget to check out the weekly Amplify live market watch podcast if you just go on to Apple spotify any of the major Podcast platforms and search for market watch. You'll be able to find the latest episode that I'll be joined this week Instead of the head of training peers I'll be joined by Eddie don mess who you might have seen on the Amplify training YouTube channel a number of times So an episode will be going out a bit later on this morning So do check that out today or over the weekend But otherwise, let's go straight into things and have a quick review of the charts before I talk about the actual news from overnight and then the calendar for the day ahead and I guess we got to start with a bit of a wrap-up of yesterday and the really strong US economic data and the slightly unusual move that we saw at the time which was equities and Bonds moving higher Irrespective of the fact that we had pretty strong data. So just looking at the numbers first and retail sales in the US jumped 9.8% month-to-month in March of 2021. It was the biggest increase since May of 2020 again a couple things going on there, of course more businesses reopening Stimulus checks in pain mid-March the weather improvements as well Following the kind of bounce back from that the press figure we had in February in addition to the retail sales report We also had initial jobless claims came out at 576,000 below the expectation of 700,000 and it was the lowest level since the negative effects of the coronavirus really have begun going back to March of 2020 again vaccination rollouts Pandemic restrictions being eased as certain states reopen The 1.9 trillion Biden's COVID relief stimulus package just helping employers confidence tick up a little bit And that is something as well We're looking to translate into the University of Michigan preliminary number that we'll get later on this afternoon So employers getting a little bit more confident under those conditions the ongoing federal support in the form of fiscal stimulus and that Helping then to employ more people to facilitate the growing demand Expecting as the economy starts to grow in the months ahead And then finally it was kind of a trifecta of good data yesterday all at the same time Of course, you have the Philly Fed manufacturing index and that came in at 50 spot to was above expectations Actually, it was the strongest growth in factory activity in Philadelphia in nearly 50 years General activity shipments employment. They all rose So I guess just quickly summarizing what's the rationale then behind why yields actually fell yesterday Which was slightly Contradictory to a classical move that you would expect very good data Across the board uniform or exceed expectations by a clear margin You would probably expect the opposite that to maybe fire up yields and the conversation to begin about the Fed tightening And so on but not the case and I do think that's because we've had kind of ongoing repetition from Fed officials Every day this week Including drone power that they are anticipating economies to pick up and improve Going forward, but at this point that does not constitute any type of form of change in in their approach In terms of keeping this a cognitive stance for the time being so at the moment retail sales sounds pretty fantastic at 9.8% it was within the top end of the range also as well given the One-time effects of what I've discussed of the the weather anomaly in Q1 the stimulus checks. I Think that the Fed are willing to just look through some of that kind of noise in the data sets at the moment So I don't think it's really cause for concern to get overly excited at this point in time So if anything, it's almost like the data is hitting the sweet spot It's showing these signs of an economic growth narrative Without then influencing the policy making to impede the fiscal and monetary stimulus That's coming into the system still on the fiscal side as well to come in the infrastructure package from Biden, of course Says keeping equities up And equities again record high closes still consolidating up to these higher levels And yields actually if anything backing off and and we've seen a bit of a reversal of that move a little bit this morning As you can see here the 10 years just printing session lows with down 11 ticks So you're seeing a bit of a fade of that move of sorts this morning, but a quick look elsewhere currency markets currency markets were probably the least Reactive to that scenario yesterday that I've just described and actually we're trading a pretty clear range at the moment in both The major pairs in euro dollar and cable. So I wouldn't really be looking at those pairs anything other than range plays at the moment You can see here euro dollars pretty much bang in the middle of that at the pivot level Which does encapsulate around yesterday afternoons high in the US session Cable at around the lower bound of that range that's been in play really since the last two sessions So 137 53 in the futures was that low that we had back on Wednesday Gold a little bit more interesting. So a bit of a breakout in price yesterday I do think that that was predominantly technically led but obviously then Coming after the data as well That that kind of move that we saw more broadly across the across the market We broke out over the highs that were seen back on the 7 8th of April We pushed up that's actually providing a quite a nice floor for price at the moment Again, just like tea notes. We kind of faded the move a little bit But even though we're fading it, I'd still think it's enough. I think the directional trend pattern will continue It's just a bit of short-term profit-taking that's explaining this this downtick We've seen in Asia pack session and you can see that buyers have come back in at the previous point of resistance here at around 1760 mark and markets have trended back higher on the daily chart quite an interesting Area now for gold and you can see from this rectangle This was a key area of where pro price broke down at the end of February And now we're right back up testing this and you can see it was an area of support back on the 19th of February And on the 30th of November as well So definitely it'd be interesting to see the daily close here for gold Whether or not I can get back above that level and at the moment you can see it's a little bit resistant to doing So so want to watch for the close today the other market, of course that continues to be fired up and is Really oil and I mean looking at the headlines this morning this morning oil is set for his best week since early March on Better demand outlook and we've had the Chinese GDP overnight and I'll talk about that That's a little bit of a balancing act going on at the moment because some of the kind of emerging market space like India Covid situation is still deteriorating at this point But generally speaking a more constructive growth outlook in the majority of areas like in the US predominantly But also what we've had in the Chinese data overnight. So demands Narrative is looking quite quite strong going forward. You've got OPEC still controlling the supply side And you've got it's a little bit of ongoing Kind of slow ratcheting up of the geopolitical risk at the moment as well Whether that's US in Iran, whether that's US and Russia whether that's US and China So there's a couple of other things there as well to give a supportive nature to price and obviously we saw that flare up in both Russian New US sanctions on Russia last night, but also that tension we've seen with the Yemen-Houthi militants continue to take action in in Saudi Ramco in Saudi Arabia Otherwise then just looking at this technically on oil. So a bit of a breakout in price this morning as Europe has come in Just snapping above the high that we saw yesterday evening London times are going to land apart of the US session so now just briefly running up towards a 64 handle in front month futures and Just having a look at this on a daily chart quite interesting levels here Just gonna broaden out the chart a little bit here to encapsulate two areas for one more near term This is again on the daily close and the weekly close It'd be quite interesting to see because you've got that resistance area from the 26th of Feb And you can see from a resistance support point going through Feb March This was quite a key area actually so sixty to eighty two were there at the moment where we closed today I think would be will be interesting that area as well was around the initial year today peak that we had if you remember when all of the Iranian Action was kicking off at the beginning of 2020 pre-pandemic This was around that area of which we were trading at that point in time as well. So technically it's quite interesting One to watch going forward given the acceleration in price that we've had obviously this week Okay, quick look at the Headlines then from overnight and I guess we've got to kick it off with bit of a review of the Chinese data GDP came in year-in-year 0.3% that was against expected 19% so again just to clarify 18.3% sounds like a crazy figure but again remember these are year-on-year numbers and if you Go back in your memory to the beginning of 2020 Obviously it took some time for COVID to then break out and become a full-blown global pandemic it was quite early in Q1 of 2020 when China was experiencing that that issue went into lockdown So on a year-on-year comparison, that's why that number is so inflated again. It was it was actually slightly below expectations There was a little bit of movement overnight in the Chinese indices But nothing a great deal to speak of and certainly nothing I feel that will pollute or dilute any of the market kind of movement that we're seeing UK and Europe this morning Which I think is generally More based on overall trends and where we're at market positioning than it is anything to do with the Chinese data Industrial production was 14.1% so quite interesting here on the on the mix of the data Industrial production was was weakened and expected 14.1% year-on-year against 17.2% but retail sales was higher than expected at 34.2% Above the expected 28 so GDP rebounds being led by strong industrial output Rebust exports pandemic fuel demand for Chinese made medical goods and electronic devices Consumer spending though has been lagging. You can see this. This is the blue line here. It was kind of the worst hit It's been the slowest to recover But obviously this is a really strong Increase that we've just had here And it had to be that they've been lagging generally the amount of factoring activity that had been ticking up beforehand So actually despite the software GDP, I think it's a relatively healthy combination of figures there Otherwise the other thing I just wanted to mention was on the geopolitical side of things I did briefly mention the US has imposed a broad array of new sanctions on Russia Including curbs on its sovereign debt market to punish it for interfering in last year's US election cyber hacking bullying Ukraine and other alleged malign actions, so The Russian RuPaul has seen a touch of weakness on the back of that But I guess like I said, it's just more that broad geopolitical risk Just stepping up a tiny bit at the moment that I think just warrants a degree of monitoring at this point in time Don't get me wrong. I don't think that's gonna spill out and impede this theme of Recon hives in global equities or US equities at the moment But it definitely does help that oil move get supported and underpinned I think So you kind of got the best of both wells for oil traders. That's more of a Kind of risk on the potential supply side But then you've got demand increases with what we're seeing likes the Chinese and and US growth story at the moment The other thing I wanted to mention then was was this was COVID what's going on here? Which is couples different things before I talk about the UK. Just wanted to mention the US CDC panel that tentatively Set a meeting date for toward the end of next week Thursday Friday For reviewing discussing Jane Jay's vaccine safety the CDC advisory panel head Set a hold on the use of Jane Jay's vaccine the US could stretch out for several weeks So just reiterating really some of the news and the timeline that we had and we covered yesterday So going from days to weeks obviously carries the longer it goes More problematic for the rollout for those countries highly geared towards the supply from Jane Jay Somewhat offset as a week as a whole of course as we know Pfizer have really been Committing to ramping things up. I think it was a 10% increase for the US 25% for the EU And actually just while I'm on the point of the EU vaccines, you know We've always been quite critical of how slow the EU have been really to to pick up They're cooked their their vaccination rollout But I was looking at the numbers earlier this week and actually across the EU average daily doses are up 34% week on week Germany and Spain leading the way and Spain now Vaccinating at a pace faster per head of population rate than the UK is Because obviously we tend to look at eurozone let numbers but Spain doing a good job at the moment So, yeah, just something to be aware of But what's going on with this UK COVID situation? Well, the COVID variant as the headline suggests first detected in India has been found in the UK and This has created quite a big push for an increase in testing in four specific boroughs in London at the moment In total 77 cases of a new variant known as B1617 Has been recorded in the UK Up till Wednesday of this week It has worried experts as it contains two Mutations in the spike protein that's been suggested and may boost its ability to then escape the body's immune system and comparatively One of the reasons that made say the South African the Brazilian The UK Kent variation of the virus so problematic was this particular mutation that meant that it's more transmissible and so on and so forth And this latest identification of this particular variant Has actually two mutations rather than just one So definitely this is something to to keep an eye out for obviously the the UK's on its way To full inoculation in the coming weeks and months until we get to that point There's obviously still a degree of kind of tail risk to this So not moving markets now, but something I'd be looking at just keeping half an eye on And then elsewhere just noting four more Japanese prefectures are set to impose a new heightened level status of of covid restrictions At the moment and that is putting into jeopardy the The summer Olympic Games again is being questioned at this point in time. So Couple of hotspots geographically around the world that are seeing Some fairly worrying developments on the covid case side at the moment That's worth just being aware of that So but again not enough to impede the short-term intraday sentiment. I would say as far as today's sessions concerned Finally quick look at the calendar then going through the morning. It's pretty quiet You've got the HICP figures for Eurozone, but these are final numbers. So not expecting any market reaction to that US 130's housing starts building permits And then you've got University of Michigan, which as I said earlier is expecting an improvement up to 89.6 from 84.9 For all those those reasons mentioned earlier Bank of New York has come lift A notable member of the npc, but is speaking on reg tech So you're not expecting much there and cat plans a non-voting member and then for the earnings Morgan Stanley Bank of New York Mellon State Street pre-market probably going to move the individual stock share price But not going to be something of the broader market on the index perspective will be too bothered about given We've already seen a number of those large financial institutions report This week already. All right, that is it. I'm going to leave you to it as you can hear my voice is struggling slightly So hopefully it'll be okay for the podcast. Do you remember to check that out? Stay safe and have a great weekend. Thanks guys