MotMotMot comments

Maybe instead of spending money on dubious infrastructure project Japan is famous for they could make it so childcare is cheap and plentiful?

 In other words, USA has one manned flight left for the next 10 years. Until they develop their own rocket engine.

The US has a warehouse full of Russian Engines to support the remaining Atlas V launches. When things started heating up the Russians rushed shipping them to the US. After that there's three other Rockets, including the SpaceX Falcon 9, that can do a crewed mission.

That ISS only needs to make it to 2031. By that point it's already outlived it's original lifespan by 2X.

I don't think the joke was the reason Smith assaulted Rock. Smith is seating directly in front of the steps. Watching the play back I think what set him off was when Rock said "That was a nice one.” The implication was Rock could make a joke about Jada Smith infidelity/open relationship. I think that pushed him over the edge. That when he jumps up and Rock pauses as he's not sure what's happening.

Hello Ruble, Yuan, Yen and even blockchain.

They aren't going to trade on rubles. SWIFT is just a message format exchange. It's a promise to transfer physical money. Which means you charter a plane or boat to move a pallet of cash at some point. No one wants to do that with rubles.

Russia will already sell crude with crypto. But it's a currency with huge fluctuation second to second. So far no one has wanted to go that route.

Most likely is Yen or Yuan.

This is exactly what Russia did in Chechnya and Syria. They will scare off the population (eventually) with indiscriminate shelling, then send in their military to more or less demolish the cities. We are paying the price for letting them get away with it time after time.

The saving grace is Russia has proven logistically they can't more than 90 miles away from their existing bases because Molotov cocktails are extremely effective against fuel trucks. They will eventually resolve it and things will get much worse.

Every bit helps. Ultimately, Russia wants a redo on the end of the USSR. Ukraine can't negotiate peace because they have no control over the US, NATO or EU. This is about so many things more than the Eastern Russian speaking regions. If it was just that Russia would have rolled in and set a new border.

Hopefully there can be a diplomatic solution.

PS. Did you know there's a region of White Russian speakers in China that's just as big. Funny, don't see Putin making a stink about them being forced to adapt Chinese culture and language...

What, you think his law firm isn't sponsoring his visa? What's wrong with you?

Mildly wealthy people can skip a lot of the red tape with special visa programs. I would also assume they would receive preferential treatment, waivers and assistance by the US state department.

Isn't the whole point of that trade agreement to create a counter balance to China?

Now there are caveats and like Canada only for those having gotten vaccines approved in Canada which means Sputnik, Sinovac, etc... Are a no go.

Given Sputnik was banned in Brazil for being contaminated with active flu virus (poor manufacturing control) and Sinovac appears to have questionable effectiveness. I don't think anyone should be sad about them not being in market.

AZ is not approved in the USA so if a similar rule is implemented those with AZ will not be accepted as vaccinated.

AZ isn't approved in the US because the people they hired to run the study in the USA keep messing it up. It's a lot of self inflicted errors. They likely will get it approved because it helps with sales internationally, but the urgency just isn't there in the US given the levels of vaccine available.

Japan in general is difficult to get approvals in. I know people who travel to Japan and Europe to gain approval from governments and they are not surprised how long it's taking in Japan. There's just so much useless red tape that has nothing to do with patient safety.

Say what you will about Pfizer, but they know how to run drug studies. They have teams all over the world that know local regulations really well. The people I know who are in the industry who listened to their presentations to the approval panels and FDA were extremely impressed with how they packaged the study and how they were able to answer any question that came up with ease.

Kodak had all sorts of investments and patents in digital photography. There were years ahead of the competition but the executives choose to position their digital photography products in way where it wouldn't create competition for the film products. In the end film died off and by slow playing digital they allowed others to take the lead in digital. There's literally classes taught at business schools about Kodak as a cautionary tale.

while you’re at it Suga you can increase cigarette taxes by 30%.

Since the Japanese government is the largest shareholder of Japan Tobacco, it's not in it's interest to have less people smoke. They own the rights to hundreds of cigarette brands including the international rights for Camel, Salem, Winston and Benson & Hedges. They sell them all over the world.

Vaccine passports are already available for 200M people in the US via the Clear app. It takes the records directly from the medical providers and you have an electronically signed chain of trust that can't be forged.

Except if you are one of the 100,000 Olympic related people coming into Japan in the coming couple months.

That might actually bring the vaccination rate up at this point.

These are things they should have figured out 6 months ago.

The supply chain will be extremely unreliable. I had clients try to run factories in Russia in the late 90s and 2000s. You'd open crates to find the contents replaced with rocks. Didn't matter if you personally picked them up from customs. It's not like there aren't good engineers and skilled workers. But the crime and theft is just too rampant.

Make the cars in an eastern country and ship them into Russia like everyone else.

Most of them will be vaccinated. It's far more likely they'll have a sport injury.

There's over 70 million doses of European made vaccines just sitting there according to NHK news. This is entirely a self inflicted problem by the government. They should already have laws expanding who can administer the shots. They should have already been training people to administer vaccines. They should have already passed laws to streamline the vaccine approval process.

Looks like Moderna vaccine will be banned in Japan because the Japanese supply will come from Korea.

Accord to NHK 40% of European vaccine exports go to Japan. That's 74 MILLION doses from Europe already. I think they'll be fine.

There's tens of millions of doses of vaccine sitting in a warehouse just sitting unused. 40% of European vaccine imports go to Japan. Almost 74 million doses. That's the real scandal. This is a distraction.

They should be in front of PDMA's offices protesting the inability to do anything with urgency. There's 70 million doses of vaccine sitting in warehouses waiting for them according to NHK.

he could of bought the cheapest and most effective Sputnik V vaccine 3 months ago and vaccinated 35% of population by now.

You mean like Brazil? Who just banned Sputnik V because Russia's doesn't know what it's doing and sent them Vaccine contaminated with live Flu virus. No thanks.

why everything has to be American in this country?

It's a German vaccine. BioNTech licensed it to Pfizer and China. Feel free to get the Chinese made vaccine. It's the same thing as the Pfizer made one and very popular in China.

PS, how's the weather in Russia today?

According to NHK News Europe Vaccine export reports show 40% of vaccine exports go to Japan. Quoting NHK:

The Commission said Japan has accounted for around 72 million shots, or about 40 percent of the total, followed by the UK at about 18.5 million and Canada at around 18.4 million.

I would guess most of it is Moderna and AstraZeneca (not yet approved in Japan). So in theory they could do 1m/day once approved. BUT Japan is a bit more restrictive on who can administer Vaccines and hasn't moved to allow more people to administer them in an emergency. So we'll see what they hit.

News is coming in that there was no "pre-nup". What a rookie mistake by Gates. Should have gone to a lawyer when married. He will lose half his empire.

His empire is the foundation. Her empire is the foundation as well. They have already have said the kids get an education and some starter money and that's it. Everything else goes to the foundation. Most likely all the money is in trust anyway so we'll never know for sure what happens. The divorce likely means she'll have a lot more autonomy on how the foundation spends half the funds.

 I dont know if the J police have pepper spray or tasers to immobilise people, if they do this might have been a better option.

I'm not sure i would recommend it. The more of that crap you give cops the more they look for reasons to use it. It goes from using them for defense. To using them for compliance. To using them for contempt.

I don't think people understand the reason SpaceX does well is because of SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell. Musk is the idea guy. He's all about his Mars spaceship down in Texas. The reason they get NASA contracts is because Shotwell is an excellent engineer and executive.

I'm suprised no one has mentioned Akihiko Hoshide is not the commander of the ISS. Only the second time JAXA has had a commander of ISS.

Sputnik V is by far the most effective and causes the most mild side-effects if any at all but Russia and Japan don't have much of a trading relationship.

@Paul Why do you keep pushing this poor quality Russian vaccine? Brazil tested it and found it was contaminated with live cold virus. It could kill someone. Russia refused to allow Brazilian officials to inspect their factory.

@Paul

You're so-called "#1 Sputnik V" just got rejected in Brazil because it was contaminated with cold virus. You think you could take a moment to stop spamming the comments about your inferior vaccine?

Health regulators in Brazil say that doses of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine contain a cold-causing virus capable of replicating in human cells.

The unintended presence of the virus in the vaccine can “lead to infections in humans and can cause damage and death, especially in people with low immunity and respiratory problems, among other health problems,” Brazil’s Health Regulatory Agency, Anvisa, said Wednesday in a translated statement.

No wonder Russian citizens don't trust that vaccine.

Why can't the Japanese government approve the Russian and Chinese vaccines along with Moderna and give us a choice of which to take?

You're free to travel to Russia and take the Sputnik V. Lord knows they can't get people in Russian to take it. Plenty of supply. Why aren't you going?

Is there a reason why Japan seems to be behind in the latest tech in plant based meat alternatives? Impossible brand in North America is legit. The plant based synthetic hemoglobin give it the beef taste that previous meat substitutes missed.

@Paul

You honestly think Sputnik and Sinopharm are being given to third world countries at reduced cost or free without any strings attached? That's not the way the world works. I guarantee each one of those deals extracted a pound of flesh from the third world country. A debt is owned and it will be collected.

I will point out there's no such thing as the Pfizer vaccine. It's the german BioNTech vaccine that US Pfizer and Chinese Fosun have licensed. In China it's sold as Comirnaty and colloquially described called the Fosun-BioNTech vaccine. It's extremely popular in China. So if it's good enough for millions of Chinese people why isn't it good enough for everyone else?