UK considers wage cut for 6.3 million furloughed staff - Evening Standard

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s government is considering cutting the proportion of workers’ wages it pays under its massive coronavirus furlough scheme to 60% from 80%, London’s Evening Standard newspaper said on Tuesday.

The scheme now supports the wages of 6.3 million employees, almost a quarter of Britain’s private-sector workforce, who have temporarily stopped work at a cost of around 8 billion pounds (8.00 billion pounds).

The support is due to stop at the end of June, after being extended by a month already.

Finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Monday there would be no sudden cliff edge in June but that he was looking at the best way to phase the scheme out and ease people back to work “in a measured way”.

According to the Evening Standard, a leading option is to lower the proportion of furloughed staff’s wages that the government pays to employers to 60% from 80%.

Employers are encouraged to make up the difference, but are not obliged to. Another approach would be to allow some furloughed staff to work, but with a smaller taxpayer subsidy.

Britain’s finance ministry declined to comment on the possible options for winding down the scheme.

The government is due to review the lockdown on Thursday, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to give more details of his approach on Sunday.

Trump administration pushing to rip global supply chains from China: officialsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is “turbocharging” an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to officials familiar with U.S. planning.

IMPERIALISM THE HIGHEST STAGE OF CAPITALISM\

President Donald Trump, who has stepped up recent attacks on China ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election, has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas.

Now, economic destruction and the U.S. coronavirus death toll are driving a government-wide push to move U.S. production and supply chain dependency away from China, even if it goes to other more friendly nations instead, current and former senior U.S. administration officials said.

“We’ve been working on (reducing the reliance of our supply chains in China) over the last few years but we are now turbo-charging that initiative,” Keith Krach, undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment at the State Department told Reuters.

“I think it is essential to understand where the critical areas are and where critical bottlenecks exist,” Krach said, adding that the matter was key to U.S. security and one the government could announce new action on soon.


The U.S. Commerce Department, State and other agencies are looking for ways to push companies to move both sourcing and manufacturing out of China. Tax incentives and potential re-shoring subsidies are among measures being considered to spur changes, the current and former officials told Reuters.

“There is a whole of government push on this,” said one. Agencies are probing which manufacturing should be deemed “essential” and how to produce these goods outside of China.

Trump’s China policy has been defined by behind-the-scenes tussles between pro-trade advisers and China hawks; now the latter say their time has come.

“This moment is a perfect storm; the pandemic has crystallized all the worries that people have had about doing business with China,” said another senior U.S. official.

“All the money that people think they made by making deals with China before, now they’ve been eclipsed many fold by the economic damage” from the coronavirus, the official said.

ECONOMIC PROSPERITY NETWORK

Trump has said repeatedly that he could put new tariffs on top of the up to 25% tax on $370 billion in Chinese goods currently in place.

U.S. companies, which pay the tariffs, are already groaning here under the existing ones, especially as sales plummet during coronavirus lockdowns.

But that does not mean Trump will balk at new ones, officials say. Other ways to punish China may include sanctions on officials or companies, and closer relations with Taiwan, the self-governing island China considers a province.

Commerce on Monday launched a national security probe that could lead to new U.S. tariffs on imports of key components of power transformers, saying it needed assured domestic access to such goods to be able to respond to power disruptions.

Discussions about moving supply chains are concrete, robust, and, unusually for the Trump administration, multi-lateral.

The United States is pushing to create an alliance of “trusted partners” dubbed the “Economic Prosperity Network,” one official said. It would include companies and civil society groups operating under the same set of standards on everything from digital business, energy and infrastructure to research, trade, education and commerce, he said.

The U.S. government is working with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam to “move the global economy forward,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said April 29.

These discussions include “how we restructure ... supply chains to prevent something like this from ever happening again,” Pompeo said.

Latin America may play a role, too.

Colombian Ambassador Francisco Santos last month said he was in discussions with the White House, National Security Council, Treasury Department and U.S. Chamber of Commerce about a drive to encourage U.S. companies to move some supply chains out of China and bring them closer to home.

China overtook the United States as the world’s top manufacturing country in 2010, and was responsible for 28% of global output in 2018, according to United Nations data.

The pandemic has highlighted China's key role in the supply chain for generic drugs here that account for the majority of prescriptions in the United States. It has also shown China's dominance in goods like here the thermal cameras needed to test workers for fevers, and its importance in food supplies.

HARD SELL FOR COMPANIES

Many U.S. companies have invested heavily in Chinese manufacturing and rely on China’s 1.4 billion people for a big chunk of their sales.

“Diversification and some redundancy in supply chains will make sense given the level of risk that the pandemic has uncovered,” said Doug Barry, spokesman for the U.S.-China Business Council. “But we don’t see a wholesale rush for the exits by companies doing business in China.”

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Monday said Trump had already signed an order that could allow limits on imports of components for the U.S. power grid from Russia and China, and would soon issue a separate order that would require federal agencies to purchase U.S.-made medical products.

John Murphy, senior vice president for international policy at the Chamber of Commerce, said that U.S. manufacturers already meet 70% of current pharmaceutical demand.

Building new facilities in the United States could take five to eight years, he said. “We’re concerned that officials need to get the right fact sets before they start looking at alternatives,” Murphy said.

Trump White House pledges to punish China have not always been followed by action.

A move to block global exports of chips to blacklisted Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, for example, favored by hawks in the administration and under consideration since November, has not yet been finalized.

Exclusive: Trump administration drafting 'Artemis Accords' pact for moon mining - sources
MAY 5, 2020 

WASHINGTON(Reuters) - The Trump administration is drafting a legal blueprint for mining on the moon under a new U.S.-sponsored international agreement called the Artemis Accords, people familiar with the proposed pact told Reuters.
The agreement would be the latest effort to cultivate allies around NASA’s plan to put humans and space stations on the moon within the next decade, and comes as the civilian space agency plays a growing role in implementing American foreign policy. The draft pact has not been formally shared with U.S. allies yet.

The Trump administration and other spacefaring countries see the moon as a key strategic asset in outer space. The moon also has value for long-term scientific research that could enable future missions to Mars - activities that fall under a regime of international space law widely viewed as outdated.

The Artemis Accords, named after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s new Artemis moon program, propose “safety zones” that would surround future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity.

The pact also aims to provide a framework under international law for companies to own the resources they mine, the sources said.

In the coming weeks, U.S. officials plan to formally negotiate the accords with space partners such as Canada, Japan, and European countries, as well as the United Arab Emirates, opening talks with countries the Trump administration sees as having “like-minded” interests in lunar mining.

Russia, a major partner with NASA on the International Space Station, won’t be an early partner in these accords, the sources said, as the Pentagon increasingly views Moscow as hostile for making “threatening” satellite maneuvers toward U.S. spy satellites in Earth orbit.

The United States is a member of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and sees the “safety zones” as an implementation of one of its highly debated articles. It states that celestial bodies and the moon are “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

“This isn’t some territorial claim,” said one source, who requested anonymity to discuss the agreement. The safety zones - whose size would vary depending on the operation - would allow for coordination between space actors without technically claiming territory as sovereign, he said.

“The idea is if you are going to be coming near someone’s operations, and they’ve declared safety zones around it, then you need to reach out to them in advance, consult and figure out how you can do that safely for everyone.'

ARTEMIS AS ‘NATIONAL POWER’

The Artemis Accords are part of the Trump administration’s plan to forgo the treaty process at the United Nations and instead reach agreement with “like-minded nations,” partly because a treaty process would take too long and working with non-spacefaring states would be unproductive, a senior administration official told Reuters.

As countries increasingly treat space as a new military domain, the U.S.-led agreement is also emblematic of NASA’s growing role as a tool of American diplomacy and is expected to stoke controversy among Washington’s space rivals such as China.

“NASA’s all about science and technology and discovery, which are critically important, but I think less salient is the idea that NASA is a tool of diplomacy,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Tuesday.

“The important thing is, countries all around the world want to be a part of this. That’s the element of national power,” Bridenstine said, adding that participation in the Artemis program is contingent on countries adhering to “norms of behavior that we expect to see” in space.

NASA is investing tens of billions of dollars into the Artemis program, which calls for putting humans on the moon by 2024 and building up a “sustainable presence” on the lunar south pole thereafter, with private companies mining lunar rocks and subsurface water that can be converted to rocket fuel.

The United States enacted a law in 2015 granting companies the property rights to resources they mine in outer space, but no such laws exist in the international community.

Joanne Gabrynowicz, editor-in-chief emerita of the Journal of Space Law, said an international agreement must come before staking out “some kind of exclusive area for science or for whatever reason.”

“It is not anything any nation can do unilaterally and still have it be legal,” she said.

Reporting by Joey Roulette; editing by Bill Tarrant and Jonathan Oatis

U.N. Palestinian refugee agency operating on 'month-to-month' basis due to U.S. aid cut: official
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Scrambling to tackle COVID-19 in camps across the Middle East, the U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday it only has enough cash to operate until the end of May because of American funding cuts.

A Palestinian girl poses for a photo inside her family home in Jabalia refugee camp, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the northern Gaza Strip May 5, 2020. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

In 2018 President Donald Trump’s administration halted annual payments of $360 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides assistance to some 5.5 million registered refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Elizabeth Campbell, UNRWA’s director in Washington, told reporters that the loss of U.S. aid had a “corrosive impact” on the agency’s ability to help vulnerable people.

“We are basically operating on a month-to-month basis. Right now, we have funding to pay our 30,000 health care workers until the end of this month,” Campbell said in a Zoom conference call from Washington.

She said UNRWA had only secured a third of its $1.2 billion annual budget and that it was suffering its “worst financial crisis” since beginning operations some 70 years ago.


The agency is trying to plug the $800 million shortfall in part by appealing to European and Gulf countries for emergency donations, Campbell said.

Donations from the European Union, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Canada and Japan have helped fill UNRWA’s 2020 budget gap, Campbell said, while Saudi Arabia has also provided project-specific funding.

The United States was by far UNRWA’s biggest donor until it withdrew funding, calling for reforms and suggesting its services be transferred to refugee host countries.

Palestinian refugees are mostly descendants of some 700,000 Palestinians who were driven out of their homes or fled amid fighting in the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation. Nearly a third live in 58 camps where UNRWA provides services.

Many refugees fear the dwindling aid they receive could fall further as the coronavirus crisis persists and donors shift priorities.


UNRWA has tried to halt the spread of COVID-19 in and around camps, closing all its 276 schools that are attended by close to 300,000 children.

It has launched a $14 million emergency appeal for coronavirus funding, and says it will issue another, larger, aid request in the coming days.

Reporting by Rami Ayyub in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Mark Heinrich

Ecuador indigenous community fears extinction from COVID-19
Alexandra Valencia

QUITO (Reuters) - One of Ecuador’s indigenous communities fears it could be wiped out as coronavirus infections rise in its territory, prompting dozens of its members to flee into the Amazon rainforest for shelter from the pandemic which has killed nearly 1,600 in the country.


A member of the Siekopai nation of Bella Vista Community sits down in a chair as he is being tested for antibodies of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the territories of the Siekopai nation in Sucumbios, Ecuador, April 29, 2020 in this handout photo. Amazon Frontiles y Alianza Ceibo/Handout via REUTERS. THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

The Siekopai nation along the border between Ecuador and Peru, with some 744 members, has 15 confirmed cases of the virus and two elderly leaders died in the last two weeks after showing symptoms of COVID-19, the group said.

A large number of Siekopai have presented symptoms related to the outbreak but, after they sought help from a government health center in nearby Tarapoa city, doctors told them they just had a “nasty flu,” community President Justino Piaguaje said.

When the first of the elderly died in mid-April, Siekopai leaders urged Ecuador’s government to fence off the community and test the inhabitants but have received no response, he said.

“There are barely 700 of us. In the past we were victims of this type of disease and today we don’t want history to be repeated,” Piaguaje said in a meeting held via social media on Monday.


“We don’t want our people saying that there were 700 of us and now there are 100. What a scandal it would be for the Ecuadorian government to leave us with such a sad story in the 21st century,” he added.

Fearful of the coronavirus, dozens of children and elderly Siekopai fled in canoes to Lagartococha, one of Ecuador’s largest wetlands in the heart of the jungle, to avoid infection.

Siekopai who stayed behind in their territory in Ecuador’s Sucumbios province are turning to homeopathic medicines to cope with respiratory problems, said Piaguaje.

Other indigenous groups in Ecuador’s Amazon also have confirmed coronavirus cases, according to indigenous organization CONFENIAE. Ecuador has reported more than 30,000 cases.

In neighboring Peru, indigenous groups submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations in late April, saying the government had left them to fend for themselves against the coronavirus, risking “ethnocide by inaction.”


Human rights organizations working in Ecuador’s Amazonian regions say the health ministry is neglecting communities like the Siekopai, who have yet to receive tests or medical supplies despite their vulnerability.

“They are in serious risk of being physically and culturally wiped out by the spread of COVID-19 in their territory,” said Maria Espinosa, a human rights defender with the group Amazon Frontlines.

Transgender people face discrimination, violence amid Latin American quarantinesAngel Mendoza (2nd L) and Martin Juco (3rd L), who are transgender and non-binary, stand in line outside a bank during gender-based quarantine restrictions, amidst the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Bogota, Colombia May 5, 2020. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez

Julia Symmes Cobb

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Alis Nicolette Rodriguez is bracing themself, nervously looking over their shopping list and preparing in case someone tries to bar their way at the grocery store. It has happened before.

To keep crowds thin during the coronavirus quarantine, Colombian capital Bogota - like some other places in Latin America - has specified that men and women must go out on separate days. That has turned a routine food shopping trip into an outing fraught with tension for social work student Rodriguez, who is transgender and non-binary.

From Panama to Peru, transgender people say gender-based quarantine restrictions have exposed them to discrimination and violence from people questioning their right to be out.

In Bogota, women can only go out on days with even-numbered dates and men on odd, while transgender people are allowed to choose.

However, rights group Red Comunitaria Trans said it had received 18 discrimination complaints since the measure began. One of those complaints was from a transgender woman in southern Bogota stabbed by a man who said she was out on the wrong day, a case also reported in local media. The woman is recovering from her injuries.

“The last time I went out things happened that were really tense,” said Rodriguez, 20, who uses neutral pronouns and began hormone treatments four months ago. “My features are still very masculine so people still say ‘I see the body of a man’ and they deny who you are.”

Rodriguez said the previous Sunday an employee stopped them at a grocery entrance and a police officer asked to see their identification, although the mayor’s office has told police not demand ID to prove gender during the quarantine.

A spokeswoman for Bogota’s government department for women confirmed the police do not have the right to question anyone’s gender identity.

In response to questions about the accusations of discrimination, Bogota’s Metropolitan Police sent Reuters a publicity video of officers and members of the transgender community speaking to store employees, explaining that transgender people can choose their shopping day.

Rodriguez was eventually allowed into the store, but at the check-out one cashier asked another why “this man” had been able to shop, they said. Being non-binary complicates the choice about which day to go out, said Rodriguez, who has chosen the women’s days.

“If you don’t go out with make-up on, with a skirt... If you don’t comply with those stereotypes and gender roles then you can’t identify yourself or be in a public space,” said Rodriguez, who was wearing pink eye shadow and a sparkly silver jacket.

AFRAID TO REPORT DISCRIMINATION

Juli Salamanca, communications director for Red Comunitaria Trans, said the coronavirus pandemic had left transgender people particularly exposed.

“They’re trying to protect themselves from the violence of the police, the violence of the supermarkets, the violence of society in general,” Salamanca told Reuters, referring to the physical and emotional toll of discrimination and prejudice.

She said some transgender people may be afraid to report discrimination because of previous police abuse.

Colombia’s second-largest city, Medellin, has restricted outings based on ID numbers rather than gender, a valid alternative to enforce social distancing, Salamanca said.

Colombia is not the only Latin American country where restrictions have stoked fear among transgender people.

The Panamanian Association of Trans People has received more than 40 discrimination complaints since restrictions began in April, director Venus Tejada said, including problems getting into supermarkets or buying medicine.

Transgender people who are immunocompromised are particularly worried, according to Tejada, and some with HIV fear additional discrimination because of their illness.

“If they need anything we’ve advised them to ask a neighbor or someone else to get it,” Tejada said.

In Peru, the government canceled restrictions based on gender after just over a week, as retailers struggled to control crowds on women’s days and LGBT groups complained of discrimination.

Back in Bogota, Rodriguez is piling a shopping cart with items. They avert their eyes when two police officers walk into the store.

The officers escort out an older man who is violating the rules and then

The officers escort out an older man who is violating the rules and then stare briefly at Rodriguez before leaving.

Today, at least, they shopped in peace.

POSADA CINQUE DE MAYO PRINT

Jose Guadalupe Posada

HAPPY CINQUE DE MAYO
LOVED BY SURREALISTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES AROUND THE GLOBE

Jose Guadalupe Posada, was a lithographer and print maker in Mexico's pre-Revolution times; he is best known for the creation of La Calaca Garbancera, that later became La Catrina, the iconic skeleton lady used during the Day of the Dead celebrations and many folk art styles. Posada is considered by scholars the father of Mexican modern art.

Jose Guadalupe Posada's Work and Life

Posada was born on February 2, 1852 in Aguascalientes, a city in central Mexico, to Petra Aguilar a homemaker and German Posada a baker, both illiterate.

He received elemental education from his brother Jose Cirilo, 12 years his senior who was an elementary school teacher.

Jose Cirilo urged him to work at a kinder garden where Posada spent most of the time drawing portraits of the children and illustrations about the subjects taught to them.

Because his drawing ability was evident he pursued education at the art academy of Aguascalientes which he attended for a brief time.

In 1868 Posada began working at José Trinidad Pedroza's printing house, one of the best in the country.

Pedroza taught Posada the printmaking techniques for lithography and engraving on wood and metal. Three years later, at age 19, Posada was head cartoonist of El Jicote (The Wasp)
a critical newspaper edited by Pedroza with whom Posada became friends and later business partner.

With Posada's help Pedroza opened a second printing house in Leon, Guanajuato. There Jose Guadalupe got married in 1875 to Maria de Jesus Vela with whom he had a child who died at a young age.

Posada did very well illustrating newspapers, magazines, books and commercial items such as cigarette and match boxes and eventually dissolved the partnership with Pedroza. In 1888 a cataclysmic flood struck the city forcing Posada to move to Mexico City.




Right after he arrived to Mexico City he published a series of drawings in the weekly newspaper La Juventud Literaria (The Literary Youth) which were presented by Ireneo Paz with the following introduction:

"Our readers ought to appreciate the imagination of Jose Guadalupe Posada who has drawn these small drawings in his free time. We are very pleased to praise who deserves to be praised and we guess he will become the best Mexican cartoonist. We are waiting for his masterpiece and the praising he will receive from the press and the smart people. Until then we congratulate this young artist and wish him to continue on this path."

Posada opened a humble workshop where he engraved historic scenes, recipe books, news, songbooks, board games, stories, love letters, religious images, etc. The Mexican capital had then 350,000 inhabitants, 80% of them illiterate, therefore illustrations were a great way to communicate.



Posada's most prolific and important work was done in the printing shop of publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, where he began as a staff artist around 1890 and soon became the publisher's chief artist.

There Posada met Manuel Manila, engraver who taught him how to create a rich shade of grays and a more precise and delicate drawing. Posada then abandoned lithography and began to work first with engraving on type metal and later with relief etching on zinc which gave him more flexibility.

Vanegas Arroyo, poet Constancio Suárez and Posada teamed up to publish cheap one-page leaflets with brightly printed, graphics that reported the news and social issues of the day.


They created the calaveras tradition, satirical rhymes illustrated with skulls and skeletons that usually refer to the hypothetic death circumstances of a politician or celebrity. Thanks to Posada's illustrations these verses became an economical success. It was in this gender that Posada created La Calaca Garbancera later known as La Catrina.

He described with originality the spirit of the Mexicans: the political matters, daily life, the terror for the end of the century and for the end of the world, besides the natural disasters, the religious beliefs and popular horror stories; a tireless worker he made 15,000 engravings during his life.

Jose Guadalupe Posada died a widower and without issue on January 20, 1913; he was buried in a common grave at the Dolores cemetery in Mexico City.


Posada, Precursor of Mexican Modern Art

Scholars and artists in Mexico and abroad consider Posada the precursor of Mexican modern art:

Diego Rivera deemed Posada his artistic father and compared him to Goya and Callot, he dedicated him his mural Sunday Evening's Dream, that depicts Posada in the center of the masterpiece holding hands with La Calaca Garbancera, who Rivera named La Catrina.

Painter Jose Clemente Orozco claimed that watching Posada working in at his workshop awoke him to the art of painting.

Mexican poet Octavio Paz, Nobel Prize winner, described his technique like a minimum of lines and a maximum of expression and said about him: "By birthright Posada belongs to expressionism but unlike most expressionists he never took himself seriously".


Posada's Museum in Aguascalientes

Painter, muralist and engraver Luis Seoane said about Posada: "Mexico, who has the most beautiful history in America, the most extraordinary monuments built before and after the Spanish Colony, the most rebellious blood and the weirdest talents has too with Jose Guadalupe Posada the greatest engraver in America, deeply Mexican thus highly universal"

Historian and museographer Fernando Gamboa wrote about him in 1944: "Jose Guadalupe Posada is a popular artist in the deepest and highest sense of the word; popular because of his humble origin; popular, because of the definite class feeling he brings into each of his works; popular, because he was not an artist without antecedents, a phenomenon foreign to the world in which he lived, but rather the outburst of the feelings of a striving people; popular, because of the way he studied and lived in direct contact with life and the way in which he conscientiously listened to the demands of the Mexican people."

https://www.mexican-folk-art-guide.com/jose-guadalupe-posada.html

SOME OF MY FAVORITES 

 

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FOX NEWS STATE MEDIA SOUNDS LIKE RT RUSSIAN STATE MEDIA

Japan will draw up plans for potential UFO encounters, report says

Chris Ciaccia

© Provided by FOX News

After the Pentagon officially released videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena," Japan's Defense Ministry will draw up plans for any potential encounters with UFOs, according to a Japanese media report.

Nippon reports the government agency will "consider procedures to respond to, record and report encounters, but the unknown nature of such objects may confuse Self-Defense Forces pilots, including those of F-15 fighter jets."

Defense Minister Taro Kono noted the country's SDF pilots have yet to encounter UFOs, but protocols are being established "to cover the possibility," the report added.

'UFOs ARE REAL,' BLINK-182 FOUNDER SAYS

Fox News has reached out to the Defense Ministry with a request for comment.

The news comes just one week after the Pentagon officially released unclassified footage that showed "unidentified aerial phenomena" captured by Navy aircraft. The footage had circulated in the public for years.

"After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena," said Pentagon spokesperson Sue Go

Japan will draw up plans for potential UFO encounters, report says

"DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” Gough added. “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.’”

FORMER US DEFENSE OFFICIAL: WE KNOW UFOS ARE REAL - HERE'S WHY THAT'S CONCERNING

After the videos were released, the head of The Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) and former Blink-182 co-founder Tom DeLonge said "UFOs are real" in a now-deleted tweet.

Former Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the footage "scratches the surface of research and materials" made available by the Pentagon.

The videos, known as "FLIR1,” “Gimbal” and “GoFast,” were originally released to the New York Times and to TTSA.

The first video of the unidentified object was taken on Nov. 14, 2004, and shot by the F-18's gun camera. The second video was shot on Jan. 21, 2015, and shows another aerial vehicle with pilots commenting on how strange it is. The third video was also taken on Jan. 21, 2015, but it is unclear whether the third video was of the same object or a different one.

In December 2017, Fox News reported that the Pentagon had secretly set up a program to investigate UFOs at the request of Reid.

Top U.S. general: 'We don't know' if coronavirus emerged from Chinese lab

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley testifies before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on "Department of Defense Budget Posture on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 4, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. general said on Tuesday it was still unknown whether the coronavirus emerged from a wet market in China, a laboratory or some other location, but reaffirmed the U.S. view that it was probably not man-made.

“Did it come out of the virology lab in Wuhan? Did it occur in a wet market there in Wuhan? Did it occur somewhere else? And the answer to that is: We don’t know,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference, adding the U.S. government was looking into it.

The remarks stood in contrast to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assessment on Sunday that there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory.