UK Chasing Brexit Fantasy. Trump Politely Calls of Kim Jong-Un Meeting. Kilauea Volcano.

Entrance to Norris Museum

Strong words coming out of the EU about the UK's unrealistic expectations in the current negotiations. It said that the UK was "chasing a fantasy" for trying to obtain benefits that were more favourable than those for other EU countries.

The irritation level was raised further with the UK by its threat  to recover more than €1bn of contributions to the Galileo satellite project unless the European commission lifted a block on the participation of  British firms being involved. “The EU doesn’t negotiate under threat,” the senior EU official said. “Such a request for reimbursement would be backsliding and unacceptable.”

The EU also rejected the idea that the entire UK could remain half-inside the EU’s single market, while benefiting from a special customs deal to avoid a hard border.

Whilst the EU increasingly sees itself as being presented as the fall guey for Brexit going wrong, the UK negotiators remain sanguine, putting all the negative comments as negotiation posturing.

Across the pond, President Trump has called off the summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore due to the angry responses from North Korea in recent days. POTUS's letter to the NK President is broadly a well phrased positive lett of regret with only one slight dig included in the sentence "You talk about nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.".

Meanwhile, the effects are hitting home of Trump's global ban on funding to organisations that provide advice on abortion as part of their family planning. Ironically, in Kenya, the disappearance of funding has actually led to an increase in back street abortions in Kenya. There have also been more more unwanted births as the same organisation provide contraception advice and access, pushing poor families even further into poverty with extra mouths to feed.

With GDPR registration due by this Friday, I had completed mine successfully for the company yesterday. Today the battle was with the formatting of our most recent book in a final form to send for review by the author before considering going to print. In the afternoon, I also finally whittled down the images I had taken of the Norris Museum Wisteria, edited and exported them. As Camilla sourdough needed feeding, I also set up a 40% rye - 60% wheat sourdough loaf to ferment during the day before baking and made a fresh batch of soft oat biscuits, flavoured with vanilla and three fruits marmalade.

With the news continuing to report on the Hawaiian volcano eruption and damage, I looked a bit closer into Kīlauea. Teh island of Hawaii is the largest of a chain of islands that stretch Northwest into the Pacific Ocean and continue underwater as a series of further elevations. All the islands have been created by the Pacific plate moving over the so-called Hawaiian Hotspot, where lava pushesthrough the Pacific plate and erupts, the lava gradually building a mound of volcanic rock that emerges from the sea. As the plate moves further Northwest, the resultant island moves away from the hotspot, it's volcanoes grow silent and erosion by the ocean and the elements gradually erodes the new island. Eventually such an island will disappear under the sea. Hawaii is the most recent island being formed over the hotspot and the volcanoes Kilauea and Mauna Loa locate its position, on the Southeast flank of the island.

The basaltic lava that emerges from the volcanoes in Hawaii is relatively fluid, which has two consequences, it can flow fairly rapidly and the volcanoes are relatively flat and disk or shield shaped. Kilauea is relatively young geologically speaking at 300,000 to 600,000 years, and eruptions are relatively frequent, even by human standards. Kilauea is likely to continue to be active within a human timeframe. However, there is already a newer volcano just southeast of it, three miles off the Hawaiian coastline, Lōʻihi Seamount. This is yet to emerge to create it's own new land to add to the island of Hawaii.

For those wanting to buy property in Hawaii, the volcanic activity stamps its authority on house prices, with those in the Southeast, closest to the active volcanoes being much lower than those to the Northwest. Insurance is also more expensive in the Southeast and is likely to exclude lava damage. So the question every homebuyer in the Southeast of Hawaii will ask in a Clint Eastwood kind of way is "Do I feel lucky?"