Devil Child
Devil Child's JournalCoronavirus: Hong Kong imposes quarantine rules on mainland Chinese
Source: BBC
Hong Kong has begun a mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone arriving from mainland China, in a fresh effort to contain the deadly new coronavirus.
Visitors must isolate themselves in hotel rooms or government-run centres. Residents must stay inside their homes.
Anyone caught flouting the new rules faces a fine and a prison sentence.
snip...
The 60-year-old US citizen, the first confirmed non-Chinese victim of the illness, died on Thursday at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, according to a US embassy spokesman in Beijing, who did not give details.
Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51419015
Hong Kong implements quarantine rules on visitors/travelers from mainland China. Also noted in article, a US citizen has now been killed by the illness.
White House asks scientists to investigate origins of coronavirus
Source: ABC
The White House on Thursday asked U.S. scientists and medical researchers to investigate the scientific origins of the novel coronavirus, as misinformation about the outbreak spreads online.
The director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in a letter to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, requested that scientific experts "rapidly" look into the origins of the virus in order to address both the current spread and "to inform future outbreak preparation and better understand animal/human and environmental transmission aspects of coronaviruses."
The national academies consist of private, nonprofit institutions charged with providing scientific support to the federal government.
The director of the OSTP, Kelvin Droegemeier, wrote in the letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences, Marcia McNutt, that a widely disputed paper on the origins -- subsequently withdrawn -- had shown the urgency for accurate information about the genesis of the outbreak.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-asks-scientists-investigate-origins-coronavirus/story?id=68807304
I will not be surprised if the virus is found to have originated in a Chinese bio-weapons laboratory. Wuhan possesses such a facility.
Coronavirus Live Updates: Wuhan to Round Up the Infected for Mass Quarantine Camps
Source: New York Times
A senior Chinese official has ordered the authorities in the city of Wuhan to immediately round up all residents who have been infected with the coronavirus and place them in isolation, quarantine or designated hospitals.
Sun Chunlan, a vice premier tasked with leading the central government’s response to the outbreak that is centered in Wuhan, said city investigators should go to each home to check the temperatures of every resident and interview infected patients’ close contacts.
“Set up a 24-hour duty system. During these wartime conditions, there must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever,” Ms. Sun said.
The city’s authorities have raced to meet these instructions by setting up makeshift mass quarantine shelters this week. The shelters are meant for coronavirus patients with milder symptoms, the government has said. But concerns are growing about whether the centers, which will house thousands of people in large spaces, will be able to provide even basic care to patients and protect against the risk of further infection.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/coronavirus-china.html
Another troublesome update coming out of China. Their criticism of the US's Chinese traveler restrictions looks quite hypocritical to me.
Coronavirus: US bars entry to foreigners travelling from mainland China, declares public health emer
Source: South China Morning Post
The United States will deny entry to foreigners travelling from mainland China to prevent the new coronavirus from spreading after declaring a public health emergency on Friday.
President Donald Trump’s order will require US citizens, permanent residents and immediate family members arriving in the country from China’s Hubei province – the epicentre of the contagion – to be quarantined for 14 days starting Sunday at 5:00pm Eastern time.
The measures were announced by the White House task force on the coronavirus led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. The order came as US health authorities confirmed the seventh case of the contagion – officially known as the 2019 novel coronavirus – in Santa Clara, California.
The move by Washington follows similar restrictions put in place by Japan and Singapore on incoming visitors from mainland China.
Read more: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3048510/coronavirus-us-declares-public-health-emergency
Also saw this reported on CNN twitter feed. About fucking time.
Harvey Weinstein's Use Of Black Cube To Spy On Accusers Becomes Topic At Trial
The trial is likely to heat back up Friday when prosecutors call Jessica Mann to the witness stand. Mann, a hairdresser and former actress, is one of two women whose allegations against Weinstein form the basis of the criminal case against him. She alleges that Weinstein raped her in her hotel room in 2013.
Black Cube was retained by Weinstein via his law firm, Boies Schiller. According to reporting by the New Yorker and others, agency investigators reportedly adopted false identities in order to obtain information about Weinstein’s accusers, among them Rose McGowan and Annabella Sciorra. The role of Black Cube, once it was revealed two years ago, aroused enough suspicion that federal prosecutors looked into charging Weinstein in 2018.
Dev Sen, a corporate attorney from Boies Schiller, gave brief testimony on Thursday, confirming that the firm had hired Black Cube at Weinstein’s behest.
https://deadline.com/2020/01/harvey-weinstein-black-cube-to-spy-on-accusers-rape-trial-1202846724/
The Weinstein case highlights the need to regulate with a fury these so called "private intelligence agencies." Disgusts me that the rich and powerful can utilize a rent-a-Mossad/CIA/FSB for their selfish gain.
The "Stop Sanders" Movement Is Worried That Bernie Can Actually Win, Not That He'll Lose
This week, NBC, the Associated Press, and Politico all reported on the emerging anxiety within elite Democratic circles about Sanders’s ascent in the polls and nascent efforts by operatives to arrest his momentum. As journalist Andrew Perez noted, all three reports cited one Matt Bennett, cofounder of the organization Third Way, who issued boilerplate warnings about the supposed dangers of a Sanders nomination. In a pattern that is almost certain to be repeated in the coming weeks and months, Bennett’s intervention was framed as an earnest expression of concern by a moderate Democrat mindful of taking what he believes to be a major political risk.
But it was actually something else, given Bennett’s job at a self-identified “think tank” that has received extensive contributions from corporate patrons, including health insurance company Humana and Koch Industries. Washington is packed with groups like Third Way and others in the same mold, the function of which is to provide a layer of institutional sediment separating corporate interests from the mouthpieces they fund to advance their interests. In the gelatinous mass of lobbyists, megadonors, corporate spokespeople, and political operatives resulting from this arrangement, it can often be difficult to tell where the private sector ends and the public sector or party apparatus begins.
Nonetheless, Bennett’s anguished intervention is a telltale sign that panic about Sanders is starting to spill outside the op-ed pages and into the boardrooms of corporate interests — from pharmaceutical companies to Wall Street investment firms — who have an immediate pecuniary interest in opposing his program. If Sanders’s performance in the first round of primaries and caucuses matches current expectations, big business will undoubtedly intensify its efforts to stop him — likely aided, as in this case, by centrist Democrat operatives who sit at the noxious juncture of party politics and corporate agitprop.
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/stop-sanders-movement-bernie-2020-election-democratic-party
I share in the author's opinion on the motivation behind recent Third Way driven op-eds which have been popping op with more frequency in response to Sen. Sander's rise in various polls.
U.S. Accuses Harvard Scientist of Concealing Chinese Funding
Source: New York Times
Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, was charged on Tuesday with making false statements about money he had received from a Chinese government-run program, part of a broad-ranging F.B.I. effort to root out theft of biomedical research from American laboratories.
Dr. Lieber, a leader in the field of nanoscale electronics, was one of three Boston-area scientists accused on Tuesday of working on behalf of China. His case involves work with the Thousand Talents Program, a state-run program that seeks to draw talent educated in other countries.
American officials are investigating hundreds of cases of suspected theft of intellectual property by visiting scientists, nearly all of them Chinese nationals or of Chinese descent. Some are accused of obtaining patents in China based on work that is funded by the United States government, and others of setting up laboratories in China that secretly duplicated American research.
Dr. Lieber, who was arrested on Tuesday, stands out among the accused scientists, because he is neither Chinese nor of Chinese descent. And as a department head at Harvard, he is widely published and more prominent than most of the other scientists who have been accused.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/charles-lieber-harvard.html
Greed and corruption on display. Interesting to note Mr. Lieber's role in development of research facilities in Wuhan. One of the prior FBI arrests was for a Chinese national trying to leave the country with vials of cancer cells.
Joe Rogan: Biden, Warren, Buttigieg asked to appear on his show
https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1220742816709730305Does that mean Biden, Warren, and Buttigieg should be cancelled?
At tense Virginia rally, demonstrators reject extremists, defend law-abiding gun owners
Source: NBC
RICHMOND, Va. ─ Thousands of gun-rights activists, banned from carrying their weapons out of fear of violence, crammed into the Virginia Capitol on Monday to urge state lawmakers to reject sweeping measures to limit the spread of firearms.
The rally, planned for weeks as part of a citizen-lobbying tradition held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, has focused national attention on Virginia's attempts to enact new gun regulations, pushed by Democrats who took control of the Statehouse for the first time in 26 years. Gun control supporters say they are acting on voters' wishes, propelled by a May mass shooting in Virginia Beach.
Gun-rights proponents warn that the measures ─ including universal background checks, a ban on military-style rifles and a bill that would allow authorities to temporarily take guns from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others ─ will snowball into attempts to disarm the public.
"We will not comply," activists chanted from both sides of a security fence ringing the Capitol grounds. The crowd was largely white and diverse in age, with most wearing orange stickers saying "Guns save lives." Many rode chartered buses from all over the state, then waited hours in line to get into the Capitol grounds before passing through airport-style security. On the other side of the fence, large crowds formed and many activists openly carried firearms, including long guns. Many also wore camouflage and military gear.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tense-virginia-rally-gun-rights-supporters-chant-we-will-not-n1118811
Massive crowd of gun-owners peacefully demonstrating in defense of their Constitutional rights. A wonderful sight to see. Even better with ZERO arrests and ZERO violence from a crowd that had many participants openly carrying arms. The media was salivating at the prospect of having another Charlottesville and spared no effort in framing defense of the Second Amendment as far-right white supremacist extremism.
Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past
snip...
Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, whose $100 billion-plus fortune has endowed the world’s largest charitable organization, has done his best to minimize his connections to Mr. Epstein. “I didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him,” he told The Wall Street Journal last month.
In fact, beginning in 2011, Mr. Gates met with Mr. Epstein on numerous occasions — including at least three times at Mr. Epstein’s palatial Manhattan townhouse, and at least once staying late into the night, according to interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the relationship, as well as documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Employees of Mr. Gates’s foundation also paid multiple visits to Mr. Epstein’s mansion. And Mr. Epstein spoke with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase about a proposed multibillion-dollar charitable fund — an arrangement that had the potential to generate enormous fees for Mr. Epstein.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html
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