Man arrested in Peru for carrying ancient mummy in his cooler bag

‘She's like my spiritual bride,’ says 26-year-old Julio Cesar Bermejo, admitting to having the mummy for almost 30 years

Yavuz Aydın |02.03.2023

Credit: https://www.gob.pe/

ANKARA

Police in Peru have arrested a delivery man in the southern city of Puno after discovering a 600 to 800-year-old mummy in his cooler bag.

According to local media, police found the mummy while patrolling a park where 26-year-old Julio Cesar Bermejo was drinking with two other men.

The mummy was found "in a fetal position" inside a red refrigerated courier bag carried by Bermejo, said Marco Antonio Ortega, a spokesperson for the Puno region’s National Police.

Speaking to local media, Bermejo described the mummy, whom he called "Juanita," as his "spiritual girlfriend," adding it was brought home by his father and has been in his family’s possession for almost 30 years.

"At home, she is in my room. She sleeps with me. I take care of her," he said.

Police said Bermejo remains in custody.

The mummy, classified as a national cultural asset, has been taken under the custody of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.

The ministry said the mummy, once believed to be a ‘she,’ was identified as an adult male over 45 years old and 1.51 meters (about 5 feet) tall.

Peru is home to hundreds of archaeological sites belonging to various civilizations that developed before and after the Inca Empire.

In 2021, archaeologists found another mummy, estimated to be 800 to 1,200 years old, in a region near the country's capital, Lima.

*Writing by Anna Cecilia Canatan

 

Before Norfolk Southern Poisoned Ohio, It Poisoned The Statehouse – OpEd

 March 2, 2023  Eurasia Review  0 Comments

By Jim Hightower

“The Wreck of the Old 97” is a classic bluegrass song recounting a spectacular train crash in 1903, caused by the company’s demand that the engineer speed down a dangerous track to deliver cargo on time.

Fully 120 years later we have the “Wreck of the Norfolk Southern” — a devastating crash caused by the company’s demand that it be allowed to run an ill-equipped, understaffed, largely unregulated, 1.7 mile train carrying flammable, cancer-causing toxins through communities, putting profit over people and public safety.

This rolling bomb of a train was hardly unique, for the handful of multibillion-dollar railroad giants that control the industry also control lawmakers and regulators who are supposed to protect the public from profiteers.

A measure of their arrogance came just two years ago, when an Ohio legislative committee dared to consider a modest proposal for just a bit more rail safety. Norfolk Southern executives squawked like Chicken Little, asserting a plutocratic doctrine of corporate supremacy on such decisions. They even imperiously proclaimed that state lawmakers have no right to interfere in safety matters.

Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce dutifully echoed Norfolk’s concern for profit over people, testifying that “Ohio’s business climate would be negatively impacted” by the bill. Never mind that Ohio’s public safety climate can literally be “negatively impacted” by train wrecks!

Plunging deeper down the autocratic rabbit hole, the Chamber insisted that corporate control over workers is sacrosanct. It postulated that a crew-safety provision in the Ohio bill was illegal because it “would interfere with the employment relationship between employers and their employees.”

Yes, that’s a corporate claim that executives have an inalienable right to endanger workers.

Sure enough, bowing to the corporate powers, Ohio lawmakers rejected the 2021 safety bill. And that is why, 120 years after the wreck of the old 97, train catastrophes keep happening.

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

A Norfolk Southern train. Photo Credit: Michael Hoskins, Wikipedia Commons

 

East Palestine, Ohio And The Oligarchy – OpEd

 March 2, 2023  

By Margaret Kimberley

A freight train derailment brought environmental catastrophe to a small Ohio town. While the circumstances are somewhat unique, events followed a predictable pattern in a country run by and for the ruling class.

The U.S. is an oligarchy. Stating this fact explains events that may seem mysterious if this simple truth is not spelled out. The ruling class are fully in control and ensure that their needs are met. They disregard the public good and any claims of democracy are easily exposed as a cruel hoax. Americans have no representation in congress or the white house and the corporate media are also part of the oligarchic class. They expose nothing that their partners in crime want to hide. Governmental action and inaction if the wake of a freight train derailment exemplify all of these dynamics.

On February 3, 2023 a 150-car Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio near the Pennsylvania border. Twenty of those cars were carrying chemicals such as vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylene glycol, isobutylene, and ethylhexyl acrylate. One doesn’t need to be a scientist to figure out that none of these should be in the air or water.

Despite photographic and video evidence of an environmental catastrophe, the accident initially received little media attention. Nothing is covered unless the Biden administration wants it to be and East Palestine didn’t make the cut when there was war propaganda about Ukraine to stir up. In addition, Biden had already made clear that the railroads are in the class of corporate untouchables who are to be placated. They are among those who were promised that “nothing would fundamentally change” and he kept his promise to them by giving the derailment little attention. However he did give these corporations all the attention they demanded. 

When railroad unions rejected a contract that didn’t include paid sick leave provisions the Biden administration forbade them to strike. There was a phony show among “progressives” about having made a good deal but they were lying. Barack Obama excluded the railroads from a requirement that federal contractors provide paid sick leave. Biden could have issued an executive order changing that policy. But he had no intention of doing anything that might upset the oligarchs, and the Democratic Party succeeded in presenting a false narrative.

Pete Buttigieg is Secretary of the Department of Transportation (DOT), and is responsible for overseeing railroad safety. But he has made it clear that he follows his boss’s dictate to change nothing that would upset their oligarchic bosses.

As DOT Secretary, Buttigieg has the ability to regulate corporations such as airlines in regard to their public service. When a series of Southwest airlines snafus left thousands of passengers stranded during the holiday season, Buttigieg made a great show of saying his hands were tied. Of course he is the one person who can direct the airlines or levy large fines. Buttigieg was a no-show when the people needed him to act.

It took Buttigieg three weeks to show up in East Palestine and he only did so after Donald Trump visited. The town residents may have been better off without him. When he arrived he whined about railroad companies, “fighting us every time we try to do a regulation.” It is hard to believe that Buttigieg makes any effort to fight back when corporate chieftains tell him what to do.

The duopoly worked together to cover up their mess. Ohio’s republican governor Mike DeWine and Biden’s EPA Administrator Michael Regan took a page out of Barack Obama’s Flint, Michigan book by dramatically drinking East Palestine water . Fortunately the U.S. still has plenty of lawyers, and one of many lawsuits filed in recent days specifically names the stunt as having made a “mockery of Ohio citizens.”

The back and forth over freight train regulations isn’t complicated. Trump undid regulations that Obama enacted but Biden didn’t undo what Trump had done. But even worse, regulations currently on the books allowed Norfolk Souther to get away with not labeling the train as carrying hazardous materials because it also carried wheat and vegetables. All over the country trains go through residential areas carrying hazardous materials but the law doesn’t require anyone to be informed of the dangers. And yes, the oligarchs like it that way.

The Biden administration is siding with Norfolk Southern in a case before the Supreme Court . A worker claims to have developed cancer as a result of exposure to carcinogens without having had the proper protective equipment. Norfolk Southern wants to restrict plaintiffs from choosing the venue in which they file suits, a practice known as forum shopping. Corporations are the biggest proponents of forum shopping, for themselves, but want to restrict where they can be sued. The Biden administration filed a brief in favor of Norfolk Southern. It doesn’t matter if the presidents are democrats or republicans, at the end of the day they end up doing what the oligarchs want.

Next year in 2024 the people will be subjected to the quadrennial political hoax, i.e., a presidential election. Let’s tell the truth before the theater begins anew. The power doesn’t rest with the presidency. It rests with the people who do the presidential hiring, and they don’t care about railroad workers or any other workers or people who have hazardous chemicals traveling through their communities. Should an accident happen, their hirelings will just drink water for the camera.

Scene of train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. Her work can also be found at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com."

Union rep: Employees reporting illness after working on cleanup for East Palestine derailment

BY STEPHEN NEUKAM 

THE HILL

03/01/23

Workers that aided in the cleanup of the train derailment in Ohio have experienced lingering migraines and nausea, according to a union representative for workers that build and maintain railways for Norfolk Southern.

Jonathan Long, a union representative for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said in a Wednesday letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) that around 40 workers were ordered by Norfolk Southern, which owns the train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last month, to clean up the wreckage.

Long said he had received reports that the workers were not given proper personal protection equipment to help clean up the wreckage, not being offered respirators, eye protection and protective clothing.

He also said many employees “reported that they continue to experience migraines and nausea, days after the derailment, and they all suspect that they were willingly exposed to these chemicals at the direction of [Norfolk Southern].”

Norfolk Southern in a statement challenged the claim that proper personal protective equipment was not used at the scene.

“In East Palestine, Norfolk Southern was on-scene immediately after the derailment and coordinated our response with hazardous material professionals who were on site continuously to ensure the work area was safe to enter and the required PPE was utilized, all in addition to air monitoring that was established within an hour,” the company said in a statement to The Hill.These four House Republicans broke with the GOP to oppose inflation estimates billPence disagrees with Haley’s call for competency tests: ‘The American people can sort that out’

The derailment of the train in East Palestine, which was carrying hazardous materials, has raised concerns about potential environmental and health hazards. Area residents were briefly ordered to evacuate after the crash before being cleared to return to their homes days later. Some have since reported experiencing unusual symptoms such as rashes and burning sensations when they breathe.

The incident has also sparked a political hailstorm both in the state and nationally. The Biden administration, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in particular, has faced tough scrutiny for its reaction to the derailment.

Norfolk Southern has also been met with criticism, including for dropping out of a town hall event in the village in mid-February, citing concerns for employee safety.

US Product safety commission requests information on gas stoves, taking possible step toward regulation

BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 

THE HILL

03/01/23 


The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission on Wednesday said it is asking the public for information on any hazards associated with gas stoves and possible solutions, marking what could be a step toward regulating the appliances.

The commission approved a formal request for Information on the topic, Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. said in a statement on Wednesday.

The request asks for research that links gas stoves to health issues including childhood asthma and seeks possible solutions, as well as the costs and feasibility of those options.

Requests for information are a common step taken by the federal government ahead of taking regulatory action as part of an effort to gauge what the impacts of possible regulations could be. But such a request doesn’t necessarily guarantee further action.

The request comes after Trumka, a Biden appointee, had floated further regulations or even a possible ban on gas stoves. The latter sparked a firestorm in Washington with many Republicans opposing the idea of a ban.

After the backlash, Commission chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric, also appointed by Biden, said that he was not looking to ban gas stoves and that the commission didn’t have any proceedings to do so. Greta Thunberg removed from site of Norwegian wind farm protestHouse Foreign Affairs sets first hearing to review Afghanistan withdrawal

However, this does not take other regulations off the table. Advocates have pointed to technology aimed at limiting releases of pollution or warning labels informing people of the stoves’ health impacts as other measures that could be taken.

Trumka has, in the past, pointed to pollution coming from the stoves as a reason to regulate. Recent studies have found that gas stoves can emit substances that are harmful to human health.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is made up of three Biden appointees and one Trump appointee.

FINALLY THE DOG BARKS

Israeli minister's call to 'erase' Palestinian village an incitement to violence, US says
By Rami Ayyub
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich arrive to attend a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem, February 23, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool/File Photo


WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's call for a Palestinian village to be "erased" amounted to incitement to violence and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must publicly disavow it, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.

An ultranationalist in Netanyahu's right-wing coalition, Smotrich made the comments at a conference on Wednesday amid a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks and Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Asked about a weekend settler rampage through the Palestinian village of Huwara, which an Israeli general on Tuesday described as a "pogrom," Smotrich said: "I think that Huwara needs to be erased".

Smotrich added: "I think that the state of Israel needs to do it, but God forbid not individual people."

State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters that Smotrich's comments "were irresponsible. They were repugnant. They were disgusting."

Price continued: "And just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence."

Israel's police have arrested 10 people for suspected involvement in the Huwara attack in which one Palestinian was killed. The rampage followed a Palestinian gun attack that killed two Israelis.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed one Palestinian and arrested six others suspected of involvement in the fatal shooting of an Israeli American in the West Bank on Monday.

After making the Huwara comments, Smotrich issued a statement saying the media had misinterpreted them, without retracting his call for the village to be erased.

"I spoke about how Huwara is a hostile village that has become a terrorist outpost" where attacks against Jews are launched daily, Smotrich said, adding it was forbidden to take the law into one's own hands.

"I support a disproportionate response by the (Israeli military) and the security forces to every act of terrorism," including the "deportation of the families of the terrorists," Smotrich added.

Netanyahu under pressure from United States, Israeli protests grow

Israeli police also arrested 10 people suspected of involvement in the settler rampage through Huwara on Sunday, launched after two Israeli brothers were shot by a suspected Palestinian gunman as they sat in their car.

Reuters
Washington,

Mar 2, 2023 

Members of the Israeli troops walk as they clash with Palestinians during a raid in Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank (Photo: Reuters)

In Short

US demands he repudiate call to erase Palestinian village
Israeli general calls settler violence 'a pogrom'
Police confront Israeli protesters in 'day of disruption'

By Reuters:

Israel's closest ally the United States on Wednesday demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repudiate a call by his hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for a Palestinian village to be erased.

Further, pressuring the Israeli leader were images unseen for years in Tel Aviv where police fired stun guns and scuffled with Israeli protesters on a main road during a national "day of disruption" over government plans to overhaul the judiciary.

The head of a pro-settler party in Netanyahu's nationalist-religious coalition, Smotrich made the comments at a conference on Wednesday amid a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks and Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Asked about a weekend settler rampage through the Palestinian village of Huwara, which an Israeli general on Tuesday described as a "pogrom," Smotrich said: "I think that Huwara needs to be erased".

Smotrich added: "I think that the state of Israel needs to do it, but God forbid not individual people."

ALSO READ | Israel: Palestinian gunman's home sealed after Jerusalem unrest kills 7

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price called the comments "irresponsible," "repugnant" and "disgusting," telling reporters: "We call on Prime Minister Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials to publicly and clearly reject and disavow these comments."

Palestinian leaders welcomed the State Department reaction.

The unusually forthright reaction from Washington underlined the increasing international alarm at the escalating violence in the West Bank, where three Israelis and a Palestinian were killed in two days of bloodshed earlier in the week.

Violence persisted on Wednesday. Israeli forces killed one Palestinian and arrested six in the West Bank.

ALSO READ | Israel hits Gaza with airstrikes after rockets intercepted, kills 10 Palestinians in West Bank violence

ARRESTS IN SETTLER RAMPAGE

Israeli police also arrested 10 people suspected of involvement in the settler rampage through Huwara on Sunday, launched after two Israeli brothers were shot by a suspected Palestinian gunman as they sat in their car.

One Palestinian was killed and scores were hurt as dozens of houses and cars were torched in what one Israeli commander described as a "pogrom". A day later, an Israeli American was shot dead in his car on a highway in the Jordan Valley.

As the man, Elan Ganeles, was being laid to rest, Israeli forces surrounded a house in the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp adjacent to the city of Jericho, and arrested six Palestinian men suspected of involvement in his killing, and killed another man during the operation.

Amid international alarm and calls for restraint, the Huwara rampage was condemned by Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, who said people should not take the law into their own hands.

Smotrich's comments underlined the gulf between international calls for de-escalation and the instincts of major sections of Netanyahu's right-wing government who have called for tougher action against Palestinians.

After making the Huwara comments, Smotrich issued a statement saying the media had misinterpreted them, without retracting his call for the village to be erased.

"I spoke about how Huwara is a hostile village that has become a terrorist outpost" where attacks against Jews are launched daily, Smotrich said, adding it was forbidden to take the law into one's own hands.

"I support a disproportionate response by the (Israeli military) and the security forces to every act of terrorism," including the "deportation of the families of the terrorists," Smotrich added.

ALSO READ | Netanyahu-led Israel govt unveils plan to curtail judicial powers, weaken top court

POGROM

With the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and Jewish Passover festival weeks away, foreign mediators have sought to tamp down tensions that have surged after a spate of deadly Palestinian street attacks and lethal Israeli military raids.

Earlier on Wednesday Major General Yehuda Fuchs, who commands the Israeli military in the area, said his forces had prepared for attempted settler retribution but had been surprised by the intensity of the violence, which he said was perpetrated by dozens of people.

"The incident in Huwara was a pogrom carried out by outlaws," he told N12 News late on Tuesday.

"Collective punishment doesn't help to combat terrorism, on the contrary, it might even cause terrorism," he added.

A pogrom is a mob attack, often approved by authorities, against a religious, racial or national minority. The term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Netanyahu formed a government two months ago, promising his coalition partners to limit the Supreme Court's ability to strike down legislation or rule against the executive and to entrench Israeli control of the West Bank where Palestinians hope to establish an independent state.

ALSO READ | Israeli-American motorist killed in West Bank after settlers rampage against Palestinians

The protests have been going on for weeks. The overhaul has yet to become law, but it has already affected the shekel currency. Businesses and economists say the planned reforms could harm Israel as an investment destination.

US slams Israeli minister’s ‘disgusting’ comments about Palestinian village

“Just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence,” a State Department official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich hold a news conference at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem, January 25, 2023. (Reuters)

Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English
 02 March ,2023:

The US on Wednesday lambasted Israel’s finance minister for “repugnant, irresponsible, and disgusting” comments after he called for wiping out the Palestinian village of Huwara.

During a press briefing, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the remarks by Bezalel Smotrich amounted to an “incitement to violence.”

Smotrich said the village of Huwara needed to be wiped out. “I think the state of Israel should do it,” he said in televised remarks.

Price called on PM Benjamin Netanyahu and other government members to publicly condemn the comments. “Just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence,” he added.

Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have been at odds with the Biden administration over their far-right policies, including a pledge to expand illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

Washington has publicly and privately urged the Netanyahu government, considered one of the most extreme in the country’s history, against moving ahead with this move.

Israel has also witnessed nationwide protests against plans by Netanyahu to proceed with moves that would be seen as weakening the Supreme Court and granting politicians more power over the judiciary.

--- ENDS ---

EXACTLY
Coronavirus origins still a mystery 3 years into pandemic


By LAURA UNGAR and MARY CLARE JALONICK

February 27, 2023

 This 2020 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, which cause COVID-19. A crucial question has eluded governments and health agencies since the COVID-19 pandemic began: Did the virus originate in animals or leak from a Chinese lab? Now, the U.S. Department of Energy has assessed with “low confidence” that it began with a lab leak although others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree. (Hannah A. Bullock, Azaibi Tamin/CDC via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A crucial question has eluded governments and health agencies around the world since the COVID-19 pandemic began: Did the virus originate in animals or leak from a Chinese lab?

Now, the U.S. Department of Energy has assessed with “low confidence” in that it began with a lab leak, according to a person familiar with the report who wasn’t authorized to discuss it. The report has not been made public.

But others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree.

“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started,” John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said Monday. “There is just not an intelligence community consensus.”

The DOE’s conclusion was first reported over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, which said the classified report was based on new intelligence and noted in an update to a 2021 document. The DOE oversees a national network of labs.

White House officials on Monday declined to confirm press reports about the assessment.

In 2021, officials released an intelligence report summary that said four members of the U.S. intelligence community believed with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab.

While some scientists are open to the lab-leak theory, others continue to believe the virus came from animals, mutated, and jumped into people — as has happened in the past with viruses. Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.

CALLS FOR MORE INVESTIGATION

The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the report. All 18 offices of the U.S. intelligence community had access to the information the DOE used in reaching its assessment.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, said she isn’t sure what new intelligence the agencies had, but “it’s reasonable to infer” it relates to activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. She said a 2018 research proposal co-authored by scientists there and their U.S. collaborators “essentially described a blueprint for COVID-like viruses.”

“Less than two years later, such a virus was causing an outbreak in the city,” she said.

The Wuhan institute had been studying coronaviruses for years, in part because of widespread concerns — tracing back to SARS — that coronaviruses could be the source of the next pandemic.

No intelligence agency has said they believe the coronavirus that caused COVID-19 was released intentionally. The unclassified 2021 summary was clear on this point, saying: “We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.”

“Lab accidents happen at a surprising frequency. A lot of people don’t really hear about lab accidents because they’re not talked about publicly,” said Chan, who co-authored a book about the search for COVID-19 origins. Such accidents “underscore a need to make work with highly dangerous pathogens more transparent and more accountable.”

Last year, the World Health Organization recommended a deeper probe into a possible lab accident. Chan said she hopes the latest report sparks more investigation in the United States.

China has called the suggestion that COVID-19 came from a Chinese laboratory “ baseless.”

SUPPORT FOR ANIMAL THEORY

Many scientists believe the animal-to-human theory of the coronavirus remains much more plausible. They theorize it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal.

In a 2021 research paper in the journal Cell, scientists said the COVID-19 virus is the ninth documented coronavirus to infect humans — and all the previous ones originated in animals.

Two studies, published last year by the journal Science, bolstered the animal origin theory. That research found that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was likely the early epicenter. Scientists concluded that the virus likely spilled from animals into people two separate times.

“The scientific literature contains essentially nothing but original research articles that support a natural origin of this virus pandemic,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who has extensively studied COVID-19′s origins.

He said the fact that others in the intelligence community looked at the same information as the DOE and “it apparently didn’t move the needle speaks volumes.” He said he takes such intelligence assessments with a grain of salt because he doesn’t think the people making them “have the scientific expertise ... to really understand the most important evidence that they need to understand.”

The U.S. should be more transparent and release the new intelligence that apparently swayed the DOE, Worobey said.

REACTION TO THE REPORT

The DOE conclusion comes to light as House Republicans have been using their new majority power to investigate all aspects of the pandemic, including the origin, as well as what they contend were officials’ efforts to conceal the fact that it leaked from a lab in Wuhan. Earlier this month, Republicans sent letters to Dr. Anthony Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera and others as part of their investigative efforts.

The now retired Fauci, who served as the country’s top infectious disease expert under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has called the GOP criticism nonsense.

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has asked the Biden administration to provide Congress with “a full and thorough” briefing on the report and the evidence behind it.

Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, emphasized that President Joe Biden believes it’s important to know what happened “so we can better prevent future pandemics” but that such research “must be done in a safe and secure manner and as transparent as possible to the rest of the world.”

___

AP reporters Farnoush Amiri, Nomaan Merchant and Seung Min Kim contributed. Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Covid-19: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is back, despite no new evidence

The Wuhan Institute of Virology. Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP

Explainer: More than three years after Covid-19 was detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the question of how the virus first emerged remains a mystery.

But on 28 February 2023, the controversial claim that the pandemic might have leaked from a Chinese laboratory - once dismissed by many as a fringe conspiracy theory - resurfaced with FBI director Christopher Wray's comments that the bureau believes Covid-19 "most likely" originated in a "Chinese government-controlled lab".

It is the first public confirmation of the FBI's classified judgement of how the pandemic virus emerged.

In response, Beijing accused Washington of "political manipulation".

So what do we know about the competing theories - and why does the debate matter?

What is the lab-leak theory?

It's a suspicion that the coronavirus may have escaped, accidentally or otherwise, from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where the virus was first recorded.

Its supporters point to the presence of a major biological research facility in the city. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has been studying coronaviruses in bats for over a decade.

The institute is a 40-minute drive from the Huanan wet market where the first cluster of infections emerged.

Those who entertain the theory say it could have leaked from a WIV lab and spread to the wet market. Most argue it would have been an unaltered virus collected from the wild, rather than engineered.

The controversial theory first emerged early on in the pandemic, and was promoted by then-US President Donald Trump. Some even suggested it could have been engineered as a possible biological weapon.

While many in the media and politics dismissed these as conspiracy theories at the time, others called for more consideration of the possibility. The idea has persisted, despite many scientists pointing out there is no evidence to back it up.

A classified US intelligence report - saying three researchers at the Wuhan laboratory were treated in hospital in November 2019, just before the virus began infecting humans in the city - began circulating in US media in 2021.

Those who entertain the theory say it could have leaked from a WIV lab and spread to the wet market. Most argue it would have been an unaltered virus collected from the wild, rather than engineered.

The controversial theory first emerged early on in the pandemic, and was promoted by then-US President Donald Trump. Some even suggested it could have been engineered as a possible biological weapon.

While many in the media and politics dismissed these as conspiracy theories at the time, others called for more consideration of the possibility. The idea has persisted, despite many scientists pointing out there is no evidence to back it up.

A classified US intelligence report - saying three researchers at the Wuhan laboratory were treated in hospital in November 2019, just before the virus began infecting humans in the city - began circulating in US media in 2021.

What do scientists think?

The issue is still hotly contested.

A World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation was supposed to get to the bottom of it, but many experts believed it produced more questions than answers.

A team of WHO-appointed scientists flew to Wuhan in early 2021 on a mission to investigate the source of the pandemic. After spending 12 days there, which included a visit to the laboratory, the team concluded the lab-leak theory was "extremely unlikely".

WHO investigators in Wuhan. Photo: AFP

But many have since questioned their findings.

A prominent group of scientists criticised the WHO report for not taking the lab-leak theory seriously enough - it was dismissed in a few pages of a several-hundred-page report.

"We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data," the scientists wrote in Science magazine.

They're not the only experts who called for the laboratory leak to be looked at more closely.

Even the WHO's own director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called for a new investigation, saying: "All hypotheses remain open and require further study."

And Dr Anthony Fauci said in 2021 he was "not convinced" the virus originated naturally. That was a shift from a year earlier, when he thought it most likely Covid had spread from animals to humans.

What does China say?

China has hit back at suggestions the virus may have escaped from a laboratory by calling it a smear. State media have consistently accused the US government and Western media of spreading rumours about the source of the pandemic.

Responding to Wray's remarks, China's foreign ministry spokesperson accused US intelligence agencies of politicising the investigation into the origins of the virus.

The US intelligence community had a history of "misdeeds" involving "fraud and deception", Mao Ning told a press briefing. As such, she said, their conclusions regarding the origins of Covid-19 had no credibility.

China has pushed another theory, suggesting the coronavirus may have entered Wuhan in food shipments of frozen meat from elsewhere in China or Southeast Asia.

The Chinese government has also pointed to research published by one of its leading virologists into samples collected from bats in a remote, abandoned mine.

Prof Shi Zhengli - often referred to as "China's Batwoman" - a researcher at the Wuhan Institute, published a report in 2021 revealing that her team had identified eight coronavirus strains found on bats in the mine in China in 2015. The paper says that coronaviruses from pangolins pose more of an immediate threat to human health than the ones her team found in the mine.

Added to this is an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory long pushed by Chinese propagandists - and repeated by Mao Ning at the foreign ministry briefing on 1 March 2023 - suggesting the coronavirus was made and leaked from Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, about 80km north of Washington DC.

Once the centre of the US biological weapons programme, Fort Detrick now houses biomedical labs researching viruses including Ebola and smallpox.

Is there another theory?

Yes, and it's called the "natural origin" theory.

This argues the virus spread naturally from animals, without the involvement of any scientists or laboratories.

Supporters of the natural origin hypothesis say Covid-19 emerged in bats and then jumped to humans, most likely through another animal, or "intermediary host".

That idea was backed by the WHO report, which said it was "likely to very likely" that Covid-19 had made it to humans through an intermediate host.

This hypothesis was widely accepted at the start of the pandemic, but as time has worn on, scientists have not found a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic make-up of Covid-19, leading some to doubt the theory.

Nevertheless, following FBI director Wray's remarks, many scientists who have studied the virus have stressed there is no new scientific evidence pointing to a lab leak.

FBI director Christopher Wray. Photo: AFP / Pool / Ting Shen

A natural origin is still the more likely theory, said Professor David Robertson, head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow.

"There's been an accumulation of evidence (what we know about the viruses' biology, the close variants circulating in bats and locations of early human cases) that firmly points to a natural origin centred on the Huanan market in Wuhan city," he said.

Prof Alice Hughes from the University of Hong Kong agreed. She said the US Department of Energy's conclusion that the virus was most likely the result of a lab leak in Wuhan "appears not to be based on new evidence, and remains the weaker of the two main hypothesis of the origin of the virus"

.
Why does this matter?

Given the massive human toll of the pandemic - with the recorded deaths of about 6.9 million people worldwide - most scientists think understanding how and where the virus originated is crucial to prevent it happening again.

If the "zoonotic" theory is proved correct, it could affect activities such as farming and wildlife exploitation. In Denmark, fears about the spread of the virus through mink farming led to millions of mink being culled.

But there would also be big implications for scientific research and international trade if theories related to a laboratory leak or frozen food chains were confirmed.

Any confirmation of a leak may also affect how the world views China, which has already been accused of hiding crucial early information about the pandemic, and place further strain on US-China relations.

"From day one China has been engaged in a massive cover-up," Jamie Metzl, a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council who has been pushing for the lab-leak theory to be looked into, told the BBC in 2021.

"We should be demanding the full investigation of all origin hypotheses that's required."

But others have cautioned against pointing the finger at China too quickly.

"We do need to be a bit patient but we also need to be diplomatic. We can't do this without support from China. It needs to be a no-blame environment," Prof Dale Fisher, of Singapore's National University Hospital, told the BBC.

- BBC

Latest report on COVID-19’s suspected lab origins fuels more conspiracies: ‘Everything we skeptics said was true’

BYDAVID KLEPPER AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 1, 2023 

Origin conspiracies about COVID-19 are increasing again.
SUZANNE. KREITER—THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES


COVID-19’s origins remain hazy. Three years after the start of the pandemic, it’s still unclear whether the coronavirus that causes the disease leaked from a lab or spread to humans from an animal.

This much is known: When it comes to COVID-19 misinformation, any new report on the virus’ origin quickly triggers a relapse and a return of misleading claims about the virus, vaccines and masks that have reverberated since the pandemic began.

It happened again this week after the Energy Department confirmed that a classified report determined, with low confidence, that the virus escaped from a lab. Within hours, online mentions of conspiracy theories involving COVID-19 began to rise, with many commenters saying the classified report was proof they were right all along.

Far from definitive, the Energy Department’s report is the latest of many attempts by scientists and officials to identify the origin of the virus, which has now killed nearly 7 million people after being first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

The report has not been made public, and officials in Washington stressed that a variety of U.S. agencies are not in agreement on the origin. On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the FBI “has for quite some time now” assessed that the pandemic’s origins are “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”

But others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree, and there’s no consensus. Many scientists believe the likeliest explanation is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans, possibly at Wuhan’s Huanan market, a scenario backed up by multiple studies and reports. The World Health Organization has said that while an animal origin remains most likely, the possibility of a lab leak must be investigated further before it can be ruled out.

People should be open-minded about the evidence used in the Energy Department’s assessment, according to virologist Angela Rasmussen. But she said that without evaluating the evidence contained in the classified report, there’s no reason to challenge the conclusion that the virus spread naturally.

“We can and do know what the scientific evidence shows,” Rasmussen tweeted Tuesday. “The available evidence still shows zoonotic emergence at Huanan market.”

Many of those citing the report as proof, however, seemed uninterested in the evidence. They seized on the report and said it suggests the experts were wrong when it came to masks and vaccines, too.

“School closures were a failed & catastrophic policy. Masks are ineffective. And harmful,” said a tweet that’s been read nearly 300,000 times since Sunday. “COVID came from a lab. Everything we skeptics said was true.”

Overall mentions of COVID-19 began to rise after The Wall Street Journal published a story about the Energy Department report on Sunday. Since then, mentions of various COVID-related conspiracy theories have soared, according to an analysis conducted by Zignal Labs, a San Francisco-based media intelligence firm, and shared with The Associated Press.

While the lab leak theory has bounced around the internet since the pandemic began, references to it soared 100,000% in the 48 hours after the Energy Department report was revealed, according to Zignal’s analysis, which combed through social media, blogs and other sites.

Many of the conspiracy theories contradict each other and the findings in the Energy Department report. In a tweet on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, called COVID-19 a “man made bioweapon from China.” A follower quickly challenged her: “It was made in Ukraine,” he responded.

With so many questions remaining about a world event that has claimed so many lives and upended even more, it’s not at all surprising that COVID-19 is still capable of generating so much anger and misinformation, according to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based organization that has tracked government propaganda about COVID-19.

“The pandemic was so incredibly disruptive to everyone. The intensity of feelings about COVID, I don’t think that’s going to go away,” Schafer said. “And any time something new comes along, it breathes new life into these grievances and frustrations, real or imagined.”

Chinese government officials have in the past used their social media accounts to amplify anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, including some that suggested the U.S. created the COVID-19 virus and framed its release on China.

So far, they’ve taken a quieter approach to the Energy Department report. In their official response, China’s government dismissed the agency’s assessment as an effort to politicize the pandemic. Online, Beijing’s sprawling propaganda and disinformation network was largely silent, with just a few posts criticizing or mocking the report.

“BREAKING,” a pro-China YouTuber wrote on Twitter. “I can now announce, with ‘low confidence,’ that the COVID pandemic began as a leak from Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

US’ hype of COVID-19 origin-tracing issue will only undermine its own credibility: Chinese FM

By Global Times

Published: Feb 28, 2023

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday refuted the COVID-19 origin-tracing issue hyped up by US Ambassador to China, warning that politicizing the issue will not smear China, but will only undermine its own credibility.

Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, said on Monday that China must be more honest with the origins of COVID-19 and urged China to take a more active role in the World Health Organization (WHO) after the US Energy Department concluded that the pandemic likely arose from a Chinese laboratory leak.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning refuted the accusation on Tuesday, saying that China has always been open and transparent on sharing relevant information and data with the international community in a timely manner in terms of the origin-tracing of COVID-19.

China is the only country that has repeatedly invited the WHO team of international experts to cooperate in the tracing of the origins of COVID-19 and China shares the most data and research findings on origin-tracing work, making important contributions to the global research of origin-tracing work, Mao said.

The US is the one who should respond to the questions and concerns from the international community about its Fort Detrick and military biological labs around the world, Mao said, noting that politicizing the issue will not smear China, but will only undermine its own credibility.

Mao said that Burns, as US ambassador to China, should do more to improve China-US relations and enhance understanding between the two peoples, rather than do the opposite.

Global Times

Ice Age Europeans found refuge in Spain, doom in Italy

By FRANK JORDANS

yesterday

This image provided by the Max Planck Institute shows a male and female skull buried in western Germany (Oberkassel) about 14,000 years ago, the oldest evidence of migration during a climate change period. Genetically these individuals came from the south. Research published Wednesday, March 1, 2023, in the journal Nature reveals that the hunter-gatherer people who dominated Europe 30,000 years ago sought refuge from the last Ice Age in warmer places, but only those who sheltered in what is now Spain and Portugal appear to have survived.

 (Juergen Vogel/LVR-Landes Museum Bonn/Max Planck Institute via AP)

BERLIN (AP) — New research reveals that the hunter-gatherer people who dominated Europe 30,000 years ago sought refuge from the last Ice Age in warmer places, but only those who sheltered in what is now Spain and Portugal appear to have survived.

Using new genetic analysis of prehistoric human remains, scientists were able to trace the fate of the Gravettian culture, a term used to describe the people who once roamed Europe and produced distinctive tools and art such as the voluptuous ‘Venus’ figurines found at ancient sites across the continent.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, highlights the impact that climate change and migration had on the early inhabitants of Europe. It suggests that those who lived in what is now Italy when the ice expanded southward some 25,000 years ago appeared to have found themselves in a dead end compared to their cousins who lived in region that now covers parts of southern France, Spain and Portugal.

Those who went west survived the worst of the Ice Age, known to scientists as the last glacial maximum, said Cosimo Posth, a researcher at the University of Tuebingen who led the study.

“To our big surprise, in Italy the population that was present before the last glacial maximum completely disappears,” said Posth. “They didn’t make it.”

Genetic analysis of individuals from Italy after the last Ice Age shows the dark-skinned, dark-eyed Gravettian population was replaced by newcomers from the Balkans, who brought blue eyes and a touch of Near Eastern ancestry with them.

The researchers analyzed 116 new genetic samples they added to 240 ancient specimens already known, covering a span from about 45,000 to 5,000 years ago.

The Gravettians who survived the Ice Age in Spain, meanwhile, mixed with migrants from the east as Europe warmed again almost 15,000 years ago and then swiftly repopulated the continent from Iberia to Poland and the British Isles, dominating it for thousands of years.

The genetic footprint of the Gravettians can be found in the last Spanish hunter-gatherer populations until the arrival of the first farmers, who migrated to Europe from Anatolia some 8,000 years ago, said Posth.

In an accompanying commentary published by Nature, Ludovic Orlando of the Center for Anthropobiology and Genomics in Toulouse, France, said the study showed how climate change affected populations in Europe and that ancient human cultures weren’t always ethnically homogenous.

Orlando, who was not involved in the study, said the findings also demonstrate how fluid Europe’s genetic history was. “No modern population can claim a single origin from the human groups that first became established on the continent,” he said.

Posth hopes to delve deeper into the history of ancient migration in Europe, particularly the mysterious people who arrived from the Balkans around the time of the last glacial maximum.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Ancient restaurant highlights Iraq’s archeology renaissance


By ABBY SEWELL

yesterday

What is considered a world's oldest bridge , some 4,000 years-old is seen by the ancient city-state of Lagash, near Nasiriyah, Iraq, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Nabil al-Jourani)

BAGHDAD (AP) — An international archeological mission has uncovered the remnants of what is believed to be a 5,000-year-old restaurant or tavern in the ancient city of Lagash in southern Iraq.

The discovery of the ancient dining hall — complete with a rudimentary refrigeration system, hundreds of roughly made clay bowls and the fossilized remains of an overcooked fish — announced in late January by a University of Pennsylvania-led team, generated some buzz beyond Iraq’s borders.

It came against the backdrop of a resurgence of archeology in a country often referred to as the “cradle of civilization,” but where archeological exploration has been stunted by decades of conflict before and after the U.S. invasion of 2003. Those events exposed the country’s rich sites and collections to the looting of tens of thousands of artifacts.

“The impacts of looting on the field of archeology were very severe,” Laith Majid Hussein, director of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq, told The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, the wars and periods of instability have greatly affected the situation in the country in general.”

With relative calm prevailing over the past few years, the digs have returned. At the same time, thousands of stolen artifacts have been repatriated, offering hope of an archeological renaissance.

“‘Improving’ is a good term to describe it, or ‘healing’ or ‘recovering,’” said Jaafar Jotheri, a professor of archeology at University of Al-Qadisiyah, describing the current state of the field in his country.

Iraq is home to six UNESCO-listed World Heritage Sites, among them the ancient city of Babylon, the site of several ancient empires under rulers like Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar.

In the years before the 2003 U.S. invasion, a limited number of international teams came to dig at sites in Iraq. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, Jotheri said, the foreign archeologists who did come were under strict monitoring by a suspicious government in Baghdad, limiting their contacts with locals. There was little opportunity to transfer skills or technology to local archeologists, he said, meaning that the international presence brought “no benefit for Iraq.”

The country’s ancient sites faced “two waves of destruction,” Jotheri said, the first after harsh international sanctions were imposed following Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and desperate Iraqis “found artifacts and looting as a form of income” and the second in 2003 following the U.S. invasion, when “everything collapsed.”

Amid the ensuing security vacuum and rise of the Islamic State militant group, excavations all but shut down for nearly a decade in southern Iraq, while continuing in the more stable northern Kurdish-controlled area. Ancient sites were looted and artifacts smuggled abroad.

The first international teams to return to southern Iraq came in 2014 but their numbers grew haltingly after that.

The digs at Lagash, which was first excavated in 1968, had shut down after 1990, and the site remained dormant until 2019.

Unlike many others, the site was not plundered in the interim, largely due to the efforts of tribes living in the area, said Zaid Alrawi, an Iraqi archeologist who is the project manager at the site.

Would-be looters who came to the area were run off by “local villagers who consider these sites basically their own property,” he said.

A temple complex and the remains of institutional buildings had been uncovered in earlier digs, so when archeologists returned in 2019, Alrawi said, they focused on areas that would give clues to the lives of ordinary people. They began with what turned out to be a pottery workshop containing several kilns, complete with throwaway figurines apparently made by bored workers and date pits from their on-shift snacking.

Further digging in the area surrounding the workshop found a large room containing a fireplace used for cooking. The area also held seating benches and a refrigeration system made with layers of clay jars thrust into the earth with clay shards in between.

The site is believed to date to around 2,700 BC. Given that beer drinking was widespread among the ancient Sumerians inhabiting Lagash at the time, many envisioned the space as a sort of ancient gastropub.

But Alrawi said he believes it was more likely a cafeteria to feed workers from the pottery workshop next door.

“I think it was a place to serve whoever was working at the big pottery production next door, right next to the place where people work hard, and they had to eat lunch,” he said.

Alrawi, whose father was also an archeologist, grew up visiting sites around the country. Today, he is happy to see “a full throttle of excavations” returning to Iraq.

“It’s very good for the country and for the archeologists, for the international universities and academia,” he said.

As archeological exploration has expanded, international dollars have flowed into restoring damaged heritage sites like the al-Nouri mosque in Mosul, and Iraqi authorities have pushed to repatriate stolen artifacts from countries as near as Lebanon and as far as the United States.

Last month, Iraq’s national museum began opening its doors to the public for free on Fridays — a first in recent history. Families wandered through halls lined with Assyrian tablets and got an up-close look at the crown jewel of Iraq’s repatriated artifacts: a small clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and bearing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh that was looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago and returned from the U.S. two years ago. The tablet is among 17,000 looted artifacts returned to Iraq from the U.S.

Ebtisam Khalaf, a history teacher who was one of the visitors to the museum on its first free day, said, “This is a beautiful initiative because, we can see the things that we only used to hear about.”

Before, she said, her students could “only see these antiquities in books. But now we can see these beautiful artifacts for real.”

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Associated Press writers Nabil al-Jurani in Lagash and Ali Abdul Hassan in Baghdad contributed to this report.