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https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/26/polit...index.html

President Joe Biden said Wednesday he has directed the US intelligence community to redouble their efforts in investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and report back to him in 90 days.

The announcement comes after a US intelligence report found several researchers at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized -- a new detail that fueled fresh public pressure on Biden to delve deeper into the origin of the virus.
"As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China. I have also asked that this effort include work by our National Labs and other agencies of our government to augment the Intelligence Community's efforts. And I have asked the Intelligence Community to keep Congress fully apprised of its work," Biden said in a statement.
The President said: "The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19."
Biden said in the statement that in March he directed his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to task the intelligence community with preparing a report on the most up-to-date analysis of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, including whether the virus emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident. Biden said he received that report earlier this month and asked for additional follow-up.
"As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has 'coalesced around two likely scenarios' but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question. Here is their current position: 'while two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter -- each with low or moderate confidence -- the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,'" Biden said in the statement.
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That's essentially the same public determination that the intelligence community has had for more than a year about the origins of Covid-19 though Wednesday's statement does make clear that these two scenarios are "likely" and not just being investigated. CNN reported in April 2020 that the intelligence community was investigating if the novel coronavirus spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market in Wuhan, China. The Chinese government has maintained that the virus originated and spread naturally.
A series of factors went into Biden's decision to task his intelligence community with a deeper dive into the origins of Covid-19, including the thinking that the initial March-ordered report didn't go far enough in delving into the issue, according to a source familiar with the decision.
Biden viewed Wednesday's statement, and additional review, as in the compelling public interest given the scale of the devastation wrought by the pandemic, the source said.
There was also clear public pressure on the administration to address the issue after recent Wall Street Journal and CNN reporting on new information that underscored the plausibility of the lab theory, as well as new comments by Dr. Anthony Fauci -- Biden's chief medical adviser -- that acknowledged he and other scientists may have been too definitive in previous public statements dismissing that possibility.
Pressure has heightened from Congress as well.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on Wednesday called for "clear answers" from the intelligence community on the origins of coronavirus and said her panel would explore any additional options it could take.
Also on Wednesday, legislation backed by Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Mike Braun of Indiana passed by unanimous consent requiring the Biden administration, specifically Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, to declassify any intelligence relating to links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last month, Haines testified that US intelligence agencies still do not know "exactly where, when or how Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially" in China but remain focused on two primary theories, that "it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident."
Two sources told CNN on Sunday that assessment has not changed.
Biden said the US would work with allies to continue to press China "to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence."
When asked during a White House briefing if the announcement was related to the recent US intelligence report on the researchers falling ill, principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday the issue is "something that the President has been working on for some time."
"We have been saying that for a very long time that China needed to provide more access to the lab, cooperate more fully with the scientific investigators, and we don't think that they have met that standard," Jean-Pierre told CNN.
She added: "Getting to the bottom of the origin of this pandemic will help us understand how to prepare for the next pandemic and the next one."
CNN reported on Tuesday that Biden's team shut down a closely held State Department effort launched late in the Trump administration to prove that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese lab over concerns about the quality of its work, according to three sources familiar with the decision.
The decision to terminate the inquiry, which was run primarily out of the State Department's arms control and verification bureau, was made after Biden officials were briefed on the team's draft findings in February and March of this year, a State Department spokesperson said.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report the intelligence surrounding the earlier hospitalizations.
That State Department investigation that was shut down is separate from the intelligence community's investigation, which has never stopped. US intelligence agencies have continued to examine whether the virus emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or if it could have been the result of a laboratory accident.
The World Health Organization conducted an investigation into the origins of the pandemic and concluded in a report that the risk of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute, where coronavirus research was being conducted on bats, was "extremely low." The report said there was "no reporting of Covid-19 compatible respiratory illness during the weeks/months prior to December 2019, and no serological evidence of infection in workers through SARS-CoV-2-specific serology-screening."
But the WHO probe was criticized by the US, United Kingdom and other governments over its limited access to "complete, original data and samples." The organization was also accused of being overly deferential to China throughout the course of the study. The study was co-authored by 17 Chinese scientists, several of them from state-run institutions.
When the WHO report was released in March, the group's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in statement that the report was the beginning, not the end of the investigation into the source of the virus.
"We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do," the WHO Director-General said in a statement.
As Biden administration officials were working through the exact next steps, it had become exceedingly clear through public statements as recently as Tuesday at the World Health Assembly meeting that the Chinese government had no intention of engaging on the WHO's second phase of their investigation.

[WhatDoYouThink?]

if they never check FD, UNC and all their biowar labs, how to find the original source?

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https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231798.shtml

While the US administration is speeding up to process a report on their so-called 90-day investigation to trace origins of the coronavirus that targets China, the Global Times learned from a source that they are enticing or threatening international scientists to cooperate with them on suppressing China by hyping unfounded topics like "China refuses to join in the virus origins tracing work" and "China refuses to cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO)."

This is despite the fact that most of these scientists are dissatisfied with and oppose the US in politicizing the issue. But the US has exhausted all means to lure and coerce some scientists to serve its agenda, the source close to the matter said.

In May, US President Joe Biden ordered intelligence officials to "redouble" efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China. He said the US intelligence community was split on whether it came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal, and he asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.

The Global Times learned recently that the US intelligence agencies are incapable of producing any concrete "proof" or scientific support for the "lab leak" theory. The so-called evidence that has been fabricated so far is mostly circumstantial evidence that is completely unreliable and US allies also believe that the virus was almost certainly not created artificially.

The US administration knows clearly that the Chinese government insists on scientific principles in the virus origins tracing issue, and opposes the politicization or disregarding the conclusions reached in the joint report on the China-WHO research, a stance that is also supported by many other governments, according to the source.

China's refusal to participate in the US-led second stage of the WHO virus origins tracing work and the joint statement China made with some developing countries that was sent to the WHO, have seriously hurdled the US' plan to promote their "virus origins investigation" that targets China. In desperation, the US administration has to win support from the international community by perpetuating lies like "China refuses to join in the virus origins investigation" and "China refuses to cooperate with the WHO." These lies, although groundless, are helpful to the US administration in smearing China and shifting responsibility of their own failure in fighting against the virus, the source said.

The latest move by the US administration is to arrange the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy and presidential science adviser to collide with governmental science advisers from the EU, Australia and Japan to issue a statement on the second phase of investigation to urge the Chinese government to reflect on its decision on the rejection, expressing disappointment on China and requiring China to "shoulder responsibility" and "take action," according to the source.

The US administration will also try to win support from science advisers from more WHO member countries especially those in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The latter may release joint announcement with the US or make independent announcements, claiming that WHO's second phase origins tracing investigation is scientific, rather than politically driven. It may also condemn China's absence as "going against the stance of international science community," "preventing global fight against the virus" and "damaging global safety and health."

Many international scientists loathed US' politicization of the issue, they oppose US' stance and refuse to support the US administration. However, the US government is going all out to threaten and entice them, including doxing these scientists and their families, censoring their papers and forcing their employers to put pressure on them, according to the source.

It is not the first time that the US administration has played such dirty plots to threaten international scientists and force them to smear China over the virus origins investigation issue.

The Global Times learned previously that prominent US scientists focused on the tracing of COVID-19 origins have been facing tremendous political pressure, and some have been sidelined for not yielding to politicians-driven conspiracy theories on the matter and many have received anonymous threats.

Meanwhile, despite mounting political pressure, dozens of scientists recently published an open letter on international media journal The Lancet. In the letter they urged that science, not speculation, is essential to determine how the virus that triggered the COVID-19 pandemic reached humans, reiterating that the virus most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory and they refuted the US-led "lab-leak" theory that put some prominent epidemiologists into a difficult situation.

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http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202108/18...69a45.html

Acting on his order of May 26 that it do so within 90 days, the intelligence community of the United States is expected to deliver a report to President Joe Biden identifying China as the origin of the novel coronavirus.

To make sure his message got across, in announcing the order, the president went so far as to single out China as a country that had "specific questions" to answer, vowing that the US is working with its allies to "press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence".

That said, although the composers of the supposed investigative report know what the end result should be, how to arrive at that conclusion is proving to be a mind-boggling challenge for them. Otherwise, insiders with close contacts to this undertaking would not have complained to the media recently about it being mission impossible.

Given the strengths of the US intelligence departments, which have been made well known to the world thanks to the bragging of Mike Pompeo, previous state secretary and former CIA chief — "we lied, we cheated, we stole" — it is inevitable that the report will arrive at the desired conclusion by hook or by crook. But even the best liars, cheats and thieves in the world cannot fill the gap between the evidence and the conclusion with anything that holds water.

The report on its field research in China for origin tracing the World Health Organization published in March, which says a leak from the virology lab in Wuhan is "extremely unlikely" to have been the source of the virus, should be taken as the authoritative conclusion on that conspiracy theory the US administration is pushing given the field study was conducted by experts. The report of the WHO team of scientists should also be the foundation for future origin-tracing efforts in other parts of the world, including the US, where the spotlight of suspicion falls most heavily.

That the Biden administration has openly questioned the integrity of the report and its authors, and threatened to hold the WHO accountable for it before instructing its own intelligence community to undertake the work only reveals its true color as a political speculator trying to exploit the pandemic for its own narrow ends.

By instructing the intelligence machinery of the US to undertake "scientific research", Biden has simply exposed his true intention is to secure another pretense to scapegoat China for the pandemic, and so deflect attention from the US' horribly failed response to the pandemic at home and the possibility it might be the origin of the virus.

The great lengths the Biden administration has been going to coerce the WHO to conduct a so-called second phase origin-tracing probe in China, and pressing other countries to align with it for a supposedly independent investigation targeting China as being responsible for the pandemic speaks volumes of its callousness in putting politics before science as well as lives.

It is almost predictable that the report on the origins of the virus the US intelligence community is to release by the end of this month will be another ugly and shameful show of the US administration's readiness to silence science for political ends.

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cartoonist edward crossword

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https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1232236.shtml

[cityhantam]

Getting ready washing powder?

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In May, US President Joe Biden announced a jaw-dropping decision, demanding US intelligence officers to look into the origins of the coronavirus, and he gave the task a deadline — 90 days. The White House announced on Monday that the review of this report is expected to be completed by its Tuesday deadline. As the report is due to come into public light in a "few days," the Global Times dug deep into how the US intelligence department attempted to solve a puzzle in three months that has baffled the world's scientists over the past year and a half.

Even at the final stage, Biden's intelligence officials have little solid evidence in their hands to support the "lab leak" theory, a hypothesis even US scientific institutions and allies find far-fetched, but the US teams still made do with second-hand, unreliable evidence to compile a report that tries to smear China as culprit for the virus origins, sources close to the matter told the Global Times.

In order to churn out a report that makes China look bad, the US also sought to clamp down on scientists and the WHO, rope in its allies, and coerce China's neighbors to join in its smear campaign against China, according to sources. The US' true purpose is not about unearthing the origins of this mysterious virus. Instead, it intends to exhaust China's diplomatic resources, strengthen the US leverage on thwarting China's development and offset China's rising international influence.
A dead end

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that it will take a "few days" to put together an unclassified version of the review for the public.

Sources close to the matter told the Global Times previously that US intelligence agencies cannot produce any concrete proof or scientific evidence to support the "lab leak" theory. The sources noted that the so-called evidence, which has been fabricated so far, is mostly circumstantial and completely unreliable.

Moreover, the US' research institutions and its allies also believe that the virus was almost certainly not created artificially, and that it will be highly unlikely for them to draw definitive conclusions within 90 days which can verify the "lab leak" theory, according to the sources.

An expert close to the WHO-led origins-tracing work told the Global Times on Tuesday that there will be nothing major about the new evidence pointing to the lab leak theory, and it would be similar studies as Jesse Bloom, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, has done in analyzing genetic sequences. And the expert also doubted that the so-called report would change the story, as it may include both natural origin and lab origins as possible hypothesis with "usual criticism of China."

CNN reported in early August that investigators both inside and outside the government have long sought genetic data from 22,000 virus samples that were being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

It also reported that it is unclear exactly how or when US intelligence agencies gained access to genetic data they were working on.

The Global Times found that an online open source intelligence group, named DRASTIC, has been sourcing sequencing data trying to gain insights into the WIV. When researchers publish sequences, they typically post the raw data from which those sequences are assembled to a public database.

The Economist reported last week that Gilles Demaneuf, a data scientist working with DRASTIC, said he has a hunch the American intelligence community's 90-day study is using the same angle by analyzing the raw data from such a public database.

Although the authenticity of data shared on those public platforms can be guaranteed, there is still huge space yet for US intelligence officials to manipulate that data for their own purposes, Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist at Wuhan University, told the Global Times.
The Chinese virologist also said that data about the WIV will offer a way forward only in the case if the virus indeed leaked from the lab, so if the US sticks to that data, it is yet more proof that the so-called 90-day investigation is a presupposed farce to throw mud at the WIV and China.

Sources also told the Global Times over the weekend that due to the lack of concrete evidence to frame China, the US government instigated certain domestic media outlets to hype up the conspiracy that Chinese wet markets are where the virus came from, and pinned the theory as a back-up plan for Washington's China smear campaign.

The Global Times reporter noticed that Bloomberg on August 17 published an article named "Delayed Wuhan Report Adds Crucial Detail to Covid Origin Puzzle" to hype up the connection between Huanan seafood market in Wuhan and the coronavirus origins.

Three days before Biden launched his 90-day task, Michael R. Gordon, a national security correspondent for the Wall Street Journal wrote an article Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin, claiming three researchers from WIV got sick with "symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness" in November 2019 and tried to target the WIV as the virus origins suspect.

Interestingly, the same Gordon also wrote an article for the New York Times in 2002 when he was serving as correspondent for that newspaper, and one year before the US launched war against Iraq, framing Iraq attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. Later the evidence that the US presented for starting the Iraq war was teased as "washing powder."

In response to Biden's upcoming release of the report, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that "the US intelligence has a notorious record, their so-called origins-tracing report isn't based on facts and evidence but only draws up a conclusion with made-up 'evidence' to frame China."

Sources told the Global Times previously that US intelligence officials were also trying to find some witnesses or insiders during the initial stage of the outbreak in Wuhan, the city that first reported the virus in China, prying into "lockdown measures" and "restricted areas," with people who work in the medical system, biological research institutions or those who live in Wuhan being their targets.

The officials were also collecting evidence to prove loopholes in China's anti-epidemic work, eyeing detailed information about COVID-19 patients, the lives of residents under lockdown, the timing of diagnosis, and patients' movements before infection, the source said.
Despite the report not coming out yet, some Chinese and foreign experts said it is highly possible the Biden administration would only provide an "inconclusive" answer. As Yang said the probe should be a technical issue that requires genetic analysis of the virus. Scientists in Asia, the US and Europe should analyze the genetic profile of the virus that has emerged in the region and then discuss the information together to confirm the next steps of the investigation. "Having an intelligence team to look for virus origins is ridiculous enough, and it's unsurprising that Biden would end up with no definitive answer, but if Biden seeks another investigation, it will downgrade his administration's credibility and make it a laughing stock," said Yang.

"If former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had actual intelligence that would convince people, he would have released it," a foreign expert close to the WHO-China joint team told the Global Times, noting that Biden has to address it because the Republicans are aggressive, pushing him to go down this path.

Diplomatic front

With little progress on the actual report itself, the US also resorted to pressuring other countries, the WHO and international scientists to turn them against China on the probe of coronavirus origins.

According to the source, the next step for the US government is to continue pressuring the WHO and Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to make sure they would tilt toward the US.

Yet China's refusal to participate in the US-led second stage of the WHO virus origins tracing work, and the joint statement China made with some developing countries that was sent to the WHO have seriously impeded the US' plan to promote its "virus origins investigation" that targets China.

In desperation, the US government has to seek support from the international community by perpetuating lies like "China refuses to join the virus origins investigation.

Moreover, the US government will arrange the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and presidential science advisor to collude with government-affiliated science advisers from the EU, Australia and Japan to issue a statement on the second phase of the investigation to urge the Chinese government to reflect on its decision of rejection, expressing their disappointment regarding China and requiring the nation to "shoulder responsibility" and "take action," according to the sources.

Moreover, sources told the Global Times that the US is roping in China's neighbors with COVID-19 vaccines, access to participate in international affairs and other means, for the US to access their official data, information regarding early COVID-19 cases and pulling them into the "China smear campaign."

The US tends to prioritize China's neighboring countries as a major target of their coronavirus origins probe, and divert international attention from European countries, as well as Latin America countries.

Some European countries, such as Italy and Spain, already found traces of coronavirus earlier than when the alleged "initial" outbreak occurred in Wuhan, so did the US, said Yang, noting that Washington fears that targeting European countries, or Latin American countries, who are geographically closer to the US, may invite more suspicion upon itself.

Facing the US' "political war on coronavirus origins," which is designed to turn the international community against China, Yang Xiyu, a former Chinese diplomat and senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies told the Global Times that China can also play the "science card and cooperation card" to cope with it.

China's responsibility highlighted by proposing scientific ways of finding the coronavirus origins, and cooperation regarding COVID-19 vaccines, can also offset the US' darkness, selfishness and incapability.

[Teeth53]

Israel reported 9,831 new diagnosed cases on Tuesday, a hairbreadth away from the worst daily figure ever recorded in the country—10,000—at the peak of the third wave.

More than 350 people have died of the disease in the first three weeks of August.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” coronavirus czar Dr. Salman Zarka told the Israeli parliament this week, “this is the data. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.”

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[WhatDoYouThink?]

now they are blaming china for not providing evidences to prove where the virus came from?

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Sleepy joe what your conclusion LMAO

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https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/11/polit...index.html