China set out urgent plans to protect rural communities from COVID-19 on Friday as millions of city-dwellers planned holidays for the first time in years after Beijing abandoned its stringent system of lockdowns and travel curbs.

China’s move last week to start aligning with a world that has largely opened up to live with the virus, followed historic protests against President Xi Jinping’s signature ‘zero-COVID’ policies designed to stamp out COVID.

But the excitement that met this dramatic u-turn has quickly given way to concerns that China is unprepared for the coming wave of infections, and the blow it could deliver to the world’s second-largest economy.

China reported 2,157 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections for Dec. 15 compared with 2,000 a day.

The official figures, however, have become less reliable as testing has dropped, and are increasingly at odds with signs of wider spread on the ground including long queues outside fever clinics and pharmacy shelves emptied of medicines.

There is particular concern about China’s hinterland in the run up to China’s Lunar New Year holiday starting on Jan. 22.

Rural areas are likely to be inundated with travellers returning to their hometowns and villages, which have had little exposure to the virus during the three years since the pandemic erupted.

China’s National Health Commission on Friday said it was ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators, essential drugs, and test kits in rural areas. It also advised travellers to reduce contact with elderly relatives.

Mainland China’s international borders remain largely shut, but recent decisions to abandon testing prior to domestic travel and disable apps that tracked people’s journey history have freed up people to move around the country.

One of China’s most populous provinces Henan cancelled all holidays for healthcare staff until the end of March to ensure “a smooth transition” as COVID restrictions ease, state media reported late Thursday.

Multiple cities across the country of 1.4 billion people also opened new vaccination sites to encourage the public to take booster shots, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.

“Go all out” was the message from China’s state asset regulator in a statement late Thursday that urged government-owned drugmakers to ensure supplies of COVID-related medicines to meet “the rapid increase” in demand.

SF Express (002352.SZ), one of China’s largest courier services, said on its official WeChat account that it sent in workers from across the country to keep deliveries going in Beijing amid staff shortages and soaring demand.

It also said it had started a “fast track” for emergency shipments such as medicines and daily necessities, with demand in the capital 300% above normal levels in recent days.

The COVID scare in China also led people in Hong Kong, Macau and in some neighbourhoods in Australia to go in search for fever medicines and test kits for family and friends on the mainland.

Thanks to the government’s previously uncompromising controls, China got off lightly compared with many other countries during the pandemic over the past three years, but now many Chinese are resigned to catching the virus at some point.

“Everyone will get it, I guess,” a 29-year-old Beijing resident who requested to be identified by her surname Du, told Reuters on the streets of Beijing.

Analysts fear China will pay a price for letting the virus rapidly rip through a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.

That has dented the prospects for near-term growth, even if the opening up should eventually help revive China’s battered economy.

JPMorgan on Friday revised down its expectations for China’s 2022 growth to 2.8%, which is well below China’s official target of 5.5% and would mark one of China’s worst performances in almost half a century.

China is bracing for “a transitional pain period”, analysts at the bank said, adding they expected infections to spike in the months after the Lunar New Year holidays before the economy starts to recover in the middle of 2023.

President Xi, his ruling Politburo and senior government officials are holding their annual Central Economic Work Conference this week, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

China’s top state planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said “arduous efforts” are needed to sustain the recovery in growth due to an adverse external environment and the global economy’s loss of momentum.

Companies that are already suffering from China’s policy shift are the swathes of firms involved in its quarantining, COVID-tracking and movement-monitoring products and services, which had become big employers over the past three years.

China’s yuan firmed on Friday as traders remained optimistic that more measures to support the economy would emerge from the conference.

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Somewhere inside whatever hole they’re hiding in the days, Republican Party leaders are breathing just a tiny bit easier. Donald Trump insisted on Wednesday that he was going to make a “major announcement” on Wednesday, leading to speculation that it could be anything from announcing his 2024 running mate to an end-around attempt at becoming Speaker of the House. Any such move would be terrible news for the GOP, which at this point is just hoping Trump gets tossed in prison sooner rather than later, so he can’t keep screwing up the party’s prospects any longer.

While rattling off some possible options for what Trump’s “major announcement” might be, I quipped that it could end up being something as stupid as a book launch. Little did I know what it would end up being something so stupid, so profoundly stupid, it would make a book launch look like a “major announcement” in comparison.

That’s right, in a development left plenty of us wondering if we were dreaming or had perhaps accidentally ingested hallucinatory mushrooms, Donald Trump’s “major announcement” ended up being trading cards. No really, trading cards. With him depicted as a superhero on them. Digital trading cards, for that matter. That’s right, not only is this a cash grab, he’s too cheap to even have physical cards printed up.

I’ve spent all day pondering what to write about this story, or whether to write about it, or what the story even is. All I can come up with is that Trump isn’t even trying to pretend he’s actually running for President, is he? It’s time the media stops pretending Trump is running as well.

The post Donald Trump’s trading card debacle reveals there really is nothing left of him appeared first on Palmer Report.

Police Commander in Chief, Inspector General of Polish Police, Jaroslaw Szymczyk, during the celebration of the Police Day in Podkarpackie Voivodeship (Subcarpathia Province) held in Rzeszow.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• A Polish police commander suffered minor injuries after a gift he received from Ukraine exploded.
• Polish authorities said the present was from a head of Ukraine’s law enforcement and rescue agencies.
• Poland said on Thursday that it’s asked Ukraine for an explanation.

Poland is seeking answers from Ukraine after a Ukrainian official’s gift to a top Polish police commander exploded near the latter’s office, authorities said on Thursday.

Jarosław Szymczyk, the chief of Poland’s police, suffered minor injuries from the explosion on Wednesday and was admitted to a hospital for observation, the Polish Interior Ministry said in a statement.

“Yesterday at 7:50 a.m., an explosion occurred in a room adjacent to the office of the Police Commander-in-Chief,” the statement read.

“One of the presents the Commandant received during his working visit to Ukraine on December 11 and 12 exploded,” it continued.

According to the statement, the gift was from a head official of the Ukrainian Police and Emergency Situations.

A civilian employee at the Polish headquarters also suffered minor injuries but did not require hospitalization, the ministry said.

The ministry said it asked Ukraine for an explanation and that a case was opened with the prosecutor’s office and corresponding services.

The incident comes a month after a missile strike during a Russian attack on Ukraine killed two people in Poland. Both NATO and Poland later said the missile was likely Ukrainian air defence, though NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said Russia was still to blame for the deaths because it launched the initial attack.

Poland’s Interior Ministry and Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

Asia stocks fell for a second straight day on Friday and were headed for their worst week in two months after a slew of central banks raised interest rates and warned there were more hikes to come next year.

Interest rates went up in Europe, Britain, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Mexico and Taiwan on Thursday, following a U.S. rate hike on Wednesday, and central bankers’ vows to keep on raising rates until inflation is tamed had markets worried about a potential recession.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) fell 0.8% and was down 2.3% on the week. World stocks (.MIWD00000PUS) are down 1.2% this week.

Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) fell 1.9%.

Overnight on Wall Street the S&P 500 (.SPX) had its biggest percentage drop in more than a month as it fell 2.5%. S&P 500 futures were flat and European futures up 0.3%.

Treasuries were steady while the dollar hung on to what were on Thursday its best gains in about two months.

“Central banks are still hawkish, still intent on raising rates,” said Alvin Tan, Asia currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets in Singapore, while markets still price in U.S. rate cuts in the second half of next year.

“So there’s a tension … and that dichotomy has been emphasised over the past 48 hours by both the Fed and the European Central Bank.”

On Thursday the European Central Bank made a 50 basis point hike like the Fed, with both opting for a smaller increase than previously, but it flagged there were more hikes to come than investors had expected.

ECB President Christine Lagarde said current information predicates “another 50 basis point rise at our next meeting and possibly at the one after that, and possibly thereafter,” prompting traders to jack up Europe’s rate expectations.

“This is not a pivot,” she said of the smaller rate rise. “We are not slowing down, we are in for the long game.”

The Bank of England announced a 50 bp hike, too, and forecast more. Even Norges Bank, which began hiking in September last year and has raised rates by 275 basis points since then, hiked 25 bps on Thursday and said it isn’t finished.

In China, where markets are churning around an uncertain reopening, relief at the apparent resolution of a long-running accounting access dispute with the United States was not enough to drive a rally, and the Hang Seng (.HSI) was flat.

The prospect of higher near-term rates also has investors nervous about longer-run growth as there are growing signs that a worldwide slowdown is gathering steam.

Japan’s manufacturing activity shrank at the fastest pace in more than two years in December, a corporate survey showed on Friday. U.S. retail sales fell more than expected in November as some of the consumption momentum ebbs away from the economy.

Ten-year Treasuries rallied a bit on Thursday before steadying in Asia at 2.4736% during Friday. Larger moves were in currencies, where the dollar arrested its recent slide with its sharpest jump in two months.

The dollar index rose 0.9% on Thursday. It gave back 0.1% on Friday to sit at 104.37. The dollar jumped 1.7% and through its 200-day moving average on the yen, where it was a bit softer at 137.29 yen . The Aussie dollar had it worst session in two years and dropped 2.4% on Thursday.

“This time it wasn’t U.S. bond yields driving the move, instead it was just a feeling that if Fed policy remains tighter for longer … it could be tough going for risk assets,” strategists at ANZ bank said in a market note.

“The Fed may not be hiking as fast, but it still has the highest policy rate in the G10 and will be one of the few central banks to take policy (rates) past 5%.”

Gold fell against the rising dollar, dropping 1.7% to sit at $1,777 an ounce in Asia. Oil gave back some recent gains with Brent crude futures down 1.8% overnight and steady on Friday at $80.94 a barrel.

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A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Ankur Banerjee

Investors have hunkered down with their risk-off hat on, after a central bank bonanza this week (that’s seven central banks on Thursday and the Fed on Wednesday, for those counting) made it clear that interest rates will go up in 2023 for most countries as the battle against inflation rages on.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s forceful hawkish rhetoric has played Grinch, with little sign yet of a Santa rally as we head towards Christmas and the New Year. Asian equities (.MIAPJ0000PUS) look set to end the week in the red, snapping their six-week winning streak, while the U.S. dollar straightened its crown as a safe-haven after a recent wobble.

“The market wanted a metaphorical hug that everything will be OK, but central banks have pushed real rates higher,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone.

And so, investors will parse every inch of economic data coming through in the near term to gauge inflationary pressures and recessionary signals, with flash PMI data from the Eurozone and the UK on deck for the day.

China was ramping up vaccinations, especially for the elderly, and building stocks of ventilators, essential drugs and test kits in rural areas as the country braces for a surge in COVID-19 cases, while many city dwellers were planning holidays for the first time since the pandemic began.

The initial exuberant reaction to the dismantling of China’s zero-COVID policy has quickly given way to worries that the world’s second biggest economy may be unprepared for the wave of infections to come.

Nearly 200 Chinese companies, including Alibaba (BABA.N) and Baidu , heaved a sigh of relief after the U.S. accounting watchdog said it has full access to inspect and investigate firms in China, removing the risk that these companies could be booted off U.S. stock exchanges.

Of course, the worry remains on what the audit is likely to reveal, and that has put a lid on gains for these stocks.

Meanwhile, Twitter suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists who recently wrote about its new owner Elon Musk, with the billionaire tweeting that rules banning the publishing of personal information applied to all, including journalists. “Some time away from Twitter is good for the soul,” Musk tweeted.

Key developments that could influence markets on Friday:

Economic events: Nov UK retail sales, Flash PMI data for UK, Eurozone, Sweden’s unemployment rate for November

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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) -Eight Turkish police officers were wounded on Friday when a bomb exploded in a roadside vehicle as their minibus passed on a highway in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, security sources said.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said two people had been detained and were believed to be the perpetrators of the blast.

“There was an explosion in a parked vehicle at 05:10 a.m. (0210 GMT) as a police vehicle was going to work in Diyarbakir,” he said.

The Diyarbakir governor’s office said the bomb had not critically hurt anyone, but nine people who had been in the armoured minibus had been taken to hospital for checkups.

The blast occurred near a livestock market some 10 km (6 miles) south of the centre of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the region, the sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Kurdish, leftist and Islamist militants have all carried out bomb attacks in Turkey in the past.

A bomb killed six people and wounded dozens in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, last month. Dozens of people, including a Syrian woman, were detained as suspects.

Turkey blamed Kurdish militants for that blast, but no group claimed responsibility then, either. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) denied involvement.

The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, largely focused in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

It is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

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As 2022 draws to a close, lawmakers in the Philippines are pushing for the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund to purportedly help the country finance future economic development.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had called for the immediate enactment of the fund’s implementing bill, which was initially proposed on Nov. 28. A revised version of the bill was passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday, just before Congress goes on Christmas holiday break. It now awaits a legislative counterpart from the Senate.

Marcos Jr., who was elected in May, vouches for the fund’s creation, telling reporters on Dec. 12 that it will bring “added investment” to the Southeast Asian nation of 110 million people. His economic team, meanwhile, have cited similar state-owned funds in Singapore and Indonesia as a testament to the potential success the Philippines could reap.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But the proposal to establish the Maharlika Investments Fund (MIF), as it’s been named, is highly controversial. (“Maharlika” is a Filipino word meaning upper-class that was co-opted by Marcos Jr.’s father, the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who falsely claimed it was the name of a World War II guerilla unit he led.) State-owned investment funds in nearby countries have faced mismanagement and corruption, and it’s not clear the proposal for one in the Philippines has the safeguards to be different.

Read More: A Dictator’s Son Rewrites History on TikTok in His Bid to Become the Philippines’ Next President

Over the last few weeks, analysts and critics have raised concerns that the fund may become a hotbed for scandal, like the 1MDB corruption case in 2015 involving the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund that resulted in the country’s former prime minister, Najib Razak, going to prison.

In response to criticism, lawmakers in the Philippines revised their plan for MIF, no longer making the president chair of the fund’s managing board and changing the source of its seed money from pension funds to central bank dividends.

But many still question the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund in the Philippines, given the inherent risks of any public investment venture, especially as a global recession looms and the Marcos family is no stranger to corruption issues and unexplained wealth. Groups of protestors staged rallies in front of the House of Representatives in the past week to denounce the fund’s creation.

Jayson Lamchek, research fellow at Deakin University Law School in Australia, says a sovereign wealth fund in the country could play out like a game of “cat and mouse” between politicians and the public. “If they go through this game, they may very well end up being swallowed up live by the politicians and the elite family,” Lamchek tells TIME.

“But they probably need to play that game because the sovereign wealth fund can benefit them if it’s designed well.”

What is a sovereign wealth fund?

Sovereign wealth funds differ from other government financial entities in that, unlike central banks that hold foreign currency reserves to manage national monetary policy, they’re focused on returns—and thus tend to have a higher risk tolerance.

Such funds vary in size, most of which are financed with revenues from natural resources, particularly energy commodities like oil and coal. The numerous sovereign wealth funds around the world are big enough to affect global markets.

At the beginning of this year, there were 161, managing more than $10 trillion in assets, according to Global SWF’s 2022 report—though many countries have more than one fund. In 2021, at least 70 countries had at least one sovereign wealth fund, according to research from IE University in Spain. China Investment Corporation in Beijing is the largest, according to Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute rankings, holding $1.35 trillion in assets. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global follows closely behind. The U.S. has no federal sovereign wealth fund, but a number of states have funds that operate similarly.

In Southeast Asia, two of the largest funds are in Singapore, where the city-state’s money management allows it to use investment profits to cover up to 20% of the national budget. (One of these, Temasek Holdings, had a write-down of $275 million after cryptocurrency exchange FTX went bankrupt in November.) Indonesia launched its own sovereign wealth fund in 2021.

How will the Philippines finance its wealth fund?

Unlike Norway and neighbor Timor-Leste, the Philippines will not use revenues from natural resource windfalls to finance its proposed sovereign wealth fund. The Southeast Asian nation also does not have a current account surplus like Singapore. Instead, it will reportedly seed MIF with its central bank’s dividends and investible funds from the country’s Land Bank and Development Bank, after the public criticized initial plans to use pension funds that were, in 2018, at risk of bankruptcy. The latest version of the proposal does allow for pension agencies to invest in the fund in the future.

Lamchek says pension funds would be among the “absolute worst choices” to endow MIF, but bonds aren’t much better, he believes, arguing that investing with cash the government cannot afford to lose negates the idea of a sovereign wealth fund. “That’s really liabilities—not wealth,” he tells TIME.

Emerson Sanchez, a research fellow at the Institute for Infrastructure in Society at the Australian National University Crawford School of Public Policy in Canberra, says the Maharlika fund’s current financing strategy is “piling on risk after risk.”

The Philippines is still facing macroeconomic headwinds post-pandemic: despite robust growth, the country has $243 billion in foreign debt and inflation at a 14-year-high.

“There are several safeguards embodied in the MIF to ensure its transparency and accountability,” the chair of the House Committee on Banks and Financial Intermediaries Irwin Tieng told lawmakers earlier this week. The latest revised proposal, he said, ensures that the MIF will comply with the Santiago principles, a voluntary set of guidelines established by the International Monetary Fund and a coalition of sovereign wealth funds to promote standards of transparency and good governance in the management of sovereign wealth funds.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines, had initially expressed concerns about transparency in governing the MIF, but it now backs the fund’s creation. The central bank’s governor Felipe Medalla said his concerns have been “completely addressed,” according to Reuters, adding that he doesn’t think the fund as currently proposed will negatively affect the bank’s ability to maintain price stability in the country.

What are the corruption risks of the Maharlika Investments Fund?

Finance experts have long raised concerns over sovereign wealth funds for their potential for corruption and mismanagement. Malaysia’s Najib was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of criminal breach of trust, abuse of power, and money laundering related to 1MDB. An estimated $4.5 billion was looted from the investment fund, with hundreds of millions of public dollars allegedly transferred to Najib’s personal bank accounts.

Singapore has also previously come under fire for its opaque sovereign wealth funds. The Singapore government has long argued that disclosing the assets under management of GIC, the other fund along with Temasek, is not in the “national interest.”

With the Philippines’ ranking 117th among 180 countries in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index, the public has good reason to fear potential malversation to do with the MIF.

The fund already has the appearance of a family affair. Three of the lawmakers who proposed the MIF were related to President Marcos Jr.—his son Ferdinand “Sandro” Alexander Marcos III, his cousin and House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, and Romualdez’s wife Yedda Marie.

The Marcos family accrued an estimated $10 billion in unexplained wealth while the late Marcos Sr. was in office; only a fraction has been recovered. Marcos Jr.’s mother, Imelda, was convicted of graft by the country’s top court in 2018. Marcos Jr. and Imelda also have a standing U.S. contempt order in relation to human rights violations during the Marcos patriarch’s dictatorship.

Read More: The West Will Work With the Philippines’ Next President, Even If He Is a Dictator’s Son

But not all Marcos relatives seem keen on creating the MIF: earlier this month, the President’s sister Senator Maria Imelda Josefa Remedios “Imee” Marcos expressed reservations about the fund, referring to the 1MDB scandal in Malaysia and the current unfavorable economic climate.

What is the best design for a sovereign wealth fund?

In 2021, Lamchek and Sanchez studied whether a Philippine sovereign fund would help manage the country’s energy resources, using the cases of Singapore, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste as case studies.

The two noted that sovereign welfare funds work best when given political independence, with Sanchez emphasizing the need for a gap between the executive branch of government and the fund’s board of directors. “Political patronage clouds sound investment decisions,” Sanchez warns.

But another way to thwart corruption in these wealth funds is to include direct benefits to the public, says Lamchek. In Alaska, eligible citizens receive dividends from the state’s permanent fund. Giving these sorts of payments would increase citizen engagement in the MIF, Lamchek says.

“It’s not enough, for example, that the sovereign wealth fund is transparent,” Lamchek tells TIME. “We need ordinary people involved.”

Shaquille O’Neal gives a speech during an event at Doolittle Complex basketball courts in Las Vegas, Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021.

Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Getty Images

• Shaquille O’Neal said he was paid to appear in an FTX ad and was never involved in the firm.
• In the ad, he said he was “making crypto accessible to everyone” and that he was “all in.”
• O’Neal was recently named in a lawsuit accusing FTX of using celebrities to trick investors.

NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal said he doesn’t believe in cryptocurrencies and was merely paid to endorse the now-imploded exchange FTX, per a Thursday report by CNBC’s Make It.

“A lot of people think I’m involved, but I was just a paid spokesperson for a commercial,” O’Neal told the outlet.

The former basketball star, who’s now an angel investor and businessman, starred in an FTX commercial released on June 2. In the ad, O’Neal said he was excited to partner with the exchange to “make crypto accessible to everyone.”

“I’m all in. Are you?” O’Neal says in the ad.

—FTX (@FTX_Official) June 1, 2022

O’Neal told CNBC that his friendship with fellow NBA great Stephen Curry was one of the reasons he agreed to appear in the FTX ad. Representatives for Curry did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

“People know I’m very, very honest. I have nothing to hide,” O’Neal said, per CNBC. “If I was heavily involved, I would be at the forefront, saying, ‘Hey.’ But I was just a paid spokesperson.”

When asked by the outlet if he was bullish on crypto, O’Neal said: “No.”

O’Neal is one of several celebrities named in a class-action lawsuit that was filed on November 15 against FTX, its big-name endorsers, and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.

The complaint, filed by investor Edwin Garrison, alleges that FTX used celebrities such as O’Neal, Curry, and fashion model Gisele Bündchen to attract investors to a Ponzi scheme, per court documents seen by Insider.

The crypto world was shaken when FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, and as its new CEO John Ray reported a litany of gross mismanagement practices at the firm.

The SEC has charged Bankman-Fried with fraud and accused him of funneling billions of dollars of customer funds into his own crypto hedge fund.

O’Neal warmed this year to the idea of endorsing crypto

Before appearing in the FTX commercial in June, O’Neal had publicly expressed skepticism toward cryptocurrencies. He told CNBC in September 2021 that he didn’t understand crypto.

“So I will probably stay away from it until I get a full understanding of what it is,” he said, per the outlet.

He also told Front Office Sports in June 2021 that he was wary of crypto endorsement offers.

“I always get these companies that say: ‘Hey, we’ll give you $900,000 in crypto to send out a tweet.’ So I have to say: ‘OK, if you’re going to give me a million dollars worth of crypto, then why do you need me?'” O’Neal told the outlet. “A couple of my friends got caught up in a little scam like that one time.”

However, he started teasing the idea of getting involved in crypto-related content in February, musing on Twitter that he could change his handle to SHAQ.SOL — a reference to a cryptocurrency run by blockchain platform Solana.

The NBA hall of fame member did not disclose how much money he received for appearing in the June FTX commercial.

Representatives for O’Neal did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.