Trump snubs Pelosi for signing ceremony of trade deal she helped him pass
NO ONE EVER SAID HE COULD NOT BE PETTIER IT WAS MORE HER BILL THAN HIS

NOTICE NO ONE CALLS THE 'TRADE DEAL' BY ITS TRUMPIAN NAME; USMCA

OF COURSE HE HAS NOT INVITED DEMOCRATS TO ANY OF HIS EVENTS

FOR HIM AND HIS TRUMPETTES THERE IS ONLY ONE TRIBE

January 28, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Tuesday, CNN’s Haley Byrd reported that President Donald Trump 

is not inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the signing of the 

United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the president’s

 signature trade agreement that updates and modernizes the earlier NAFTA deal.

Major Democratic committee chairs who were instrumental in shaping the final resolution, including Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) were reportedly also not invited to the signing.

Democratic votes were critical to the ultimate passage of USMCA, and also played a role in influencing the final, bipartisan details of the agreement.

The trade deal was passed in the House on the same day that the articles of impeachment for the Ukraine scheme were unveiled against the president.

FTC sues Martin Shkreli for illegally monopolizing drug
By Darryl Coote

Attorney Benjamin Brafman puts his hand on the shoulder

 of former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli as 

he exits the United States Federal courthouse after being

 found guilty of multiple criminal charges in his federal 

securities fraud trial on Aug. 4, 2017 in New York City. 

Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 28 (UPI) -- The Federal Trade Commission has charged disgraced former drug industry executive Martin Shkreli and Vyera Pharmaceuticals with concocting an elaborate competition-fixing scheme to maintain their monopoly over the life-saving drug Daraprim.

The FTC and the State of New York filed the complaint in federal court against the pharmaceutical company and its former executive who is currently severing a seven-year jail sentence for fraud, accusing them of pursuing "an elaborate anticompetitive scheme" to prevent generic versions of Daraprim from being introduced into the market.

According to the complaint, Daraprim, which treats a rare parasitic infection that is fatal in those with compromised immune systems, was relatively affordable for some 60 years until Vyera, then known as Turing Pharmaceuticals, hiked up its price from $17.50 a tablet to $750 immediately after purchasing the drug in 2015.  

It then prevented other companies from developing a generic equivalent of the drug through drawing up restrictive distribution agreements that barred them from buying samples of the medication while also limiting their access to a necessary ingredient used in its manufacturing, the FTC said in the complaint.

RELATED Costs for multiple sclerosis meds tripled in past decade

"Daraprim is a lifesaving drug for vulnerable patients," said Gail Levine, deputy director of the Bureau of Competition at the FTC. "Vyera kept the price of Daraprim astronomically high by illegally boxing out the competition."

The regulators also said Vyera and its then-executive Shkreli created other so-called data blocking agreements to prevent sales information on Daraprim from getting into the hands of companies that make generic drugs in order to prevent them from assessing whether it is in their interest to even pursue manufacturing a cheaper version of the drug.

"Absent Defendants' anticompetitive conduct, Daraprim would have faced generic competition years ago," regulators said in the complaint. "Instead, toxoplasmosis patients who need Daraprim to survive have been denied the opportunity to purchase a lower-cost generic version, forcing them and other purchasers to pay tens of millions of dollars a year more for this life-saving medication."

RELATED Blue Cross Blue Shield group joins $55M project to lower drug costs

The FTC is suing for monetary relief for those who suffered due to the alleged scheme to keep the price of the drug artificially inflated, remedial injunctive relief to restore competitive conditions to the market and to bar Shkreli and other named defendants from working in the pharmaceutical industry again.

Along with Shkreli, who is also known as "Pharma Bro," former pharmaceutical executive Kevin Mulleady and Vyera's parent company Phoenixus AG are named as defendants in the complaint.

New York Attorney General Letitia James accused the defendants of not only "despicably" jacking up the price of Daraprim but also holding it hostage from those who needed it.

RELATED FDA approving meds faster, based on less evidence

"We filed this lawsuit to stop Vyera's egregious conduct, make the company pay for its illegal scheming and block Marin Shkreli from ever working in the pharmaceutical industry again," James said in a statement. "We won't allow 'Pharma Bros' to manipulate the market and line their pockets at the expense of vulnerable patients and the health care system."

Shkreli was convicted in August of 2017 for running a Ponzi scheme and bilking investors out of $11 million and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Shkreli's lawyer Benjamin Brafman said in a statement that "Mr. Shkreli looks forward to defeating this baseless and unprecedented attempt by the FTC to sue an individual for monopolizing a market."

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TWO TRIBES FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD EXTENDED RELEASES

BRONSKI BEAT
 LGBTQ DANCE & ROMANCE TO OVERCOME THE OPPRESSION OF THE HOMOPHOBIC NINETIES 

Lawsuits seek to halt new federal hog slaughter inspection system 

"It poses a significant risk to the public,"

Center for Food Safety

At least three lawsuits seek to stop a new federal system for inspecting hog slaughter on the grounds that it could endanger workers and lead to more foodborne illnesses

By Jessie Higgins


Three lawsuits have been filed challenging the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture's new swine 

slaughter inspection system. Photo courtesy of Pixabay

EVANSVILLE, Ind., Jan. 22 (UPI) -- At least three lawsuits seek to stop a new federal system for inspecting hog slaughter on the grounds that it could endanger workers and lead to more foodborne illnesses.

"It poses a significant risk to the public," said Ryan Talbott, a staff attorney for the Washington D.C.-based Center for Food Safety, one of the groups involved in a suit.

Part of his group's concern, Talbott said, is that the new system will reduce the number of federal inspectors directly supervising the plant "line," where the animals are killed and butchered.
Under the previous system, inspectors were placed at various stages of the slaughter process to monitor for disease and contamination. But the new system gives the inspectors other responsibilities in the plant.

The USDA adopted the system Oct. 1 in an amendment to federal meat inspection regulations. The new system is optional for commercial slaughter establishments. Plants that want to implement it have until March 30 to sign up.

The USDA has said the change "modernizes" the inspection process by using current science and technology to make slaughter safer.

The new system requires slaughterhouses to conduct microbial testing for pathogens and develop written plans for sanitation. Inspectors removed from the slaughter line will instead monitor and review implementation of those sanitary plans and microbial testing, according to the USDA.

"This regulatory change allows us to ensure food safety while eliminating outdated rules and allowing for companies to innovate," Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement in September. "The final rule is the culmination of a science-based and data-driving rule making process."

But critics say that removing inspectors from the line will undermine the USDA's ability to spot and prevent diseased animals or contaminated meat from making it through the plant and into stores.

"It's stopping inspectors from being able to do the critical appraisal and inspection of the animals," said Zach Corrigan, senior staff attorney at Food & Water Watch, based in Washington, D.C., another group that is suing USDA.

In addition, the new system also eliminates federally imposed "maximum line speeds," which cap the rate at which animals and carcasses move through the plant, Corrigan said.

"Raising the line speeds is going to put a lot of pressure on poorly trained individuals who are not going to be able to conduct adequate inspections," said Sarah Sorspher, deputy director of regional affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is not part of the current lawsuits.

More than a dozen organizations are involved in federal lawsuits asking the courts to overturn the system.

One suit, brought the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, alleges that pulling inspectors from the line and eliminating line speed caps will put workers in danger.

"There is no doubt that increasing line speed will increase laceration injuries to workers," according to the lawsuit, which was filed in October in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota. The union has asked the court to set aside a new rule through which USDA established the revamped inspection system.

The USDA has moved to dismiss the union workers' suit. Judge Joan N. Ericksen has yet to rule on that motion.

A second suit, filed in December in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York by a handful of animal welfare and environmental groups, contends that increasing line speeds will inhibit a plant's ability to humanely handle and kill the animals. The suit also asks that the new inspection rule be set aside.

And the most recent suit, filed Jan. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California-San Francisco by the Center for Food Safety and Food & Water Watch, alleges that having fewer inspectors on the line puts consumers' "health and welfare" at risk. It asks the court to not only vacate the rule, but also declare it illegal.

The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service declined to comment on the pending litigation.

The agency has about two months to respond to the consumer safety suit. It has about a month to respond to a suit that was filed by multiple animal rights groups Dec. 18.

"Part of what makes this such an interesting issue is the way it brings together all these different groups with different concerns," said Lori Ann Burd, the environmental health director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of several nonprofits that filed a suit that challenges the new system based on the impact to animal welfare and the environment.

"These changes are bad for the pigs, they're bad for the workers, they're bad for the people living around the slaughterhouses and they're bad for consumers," Burd said.

Various meat industry groups have defended the new system, however.

"The important thing to remember is the USDA is still inspecting 100 percent of the live animals and carcasses," said Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for the North American Meat Institute, which supports the new system.

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Pork industry joins battle to stop plant-based products from being called 'meat'
By Jessie Higgins

The Impossible Foods company says its burger tastes just

 like a beef burger, but without the beef. 

Photo courtesy of Impossible Foods

EVANSVILLE, Ind., Jan. 28 (UPI) -- The unveiling of Impossible Foods' latest product -- "Impossible Pork" -- has drawn American pork producers into a years-long battle waged by the beef industry to stop plant-based companies from calling their foods some sort of meat.

"It's not pork," said Dan Kovich, the assistant director of science and technology for the National Pork Producers Council. "The ironic thing is that's impossible. You can't get pork from plants unless you feed them to a pig."

Beginning in 2016, companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat launched a series of meat alternatives made from plants. Their early products were beef burger substitutes. The companies later started to market plant-made sausage, and Impossible Pork was unveiled earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The companies claim their products are virtually indistinguishable from real meat -- and many include the name of the meat they are mimicking in the product label.

"They're trying to get as close as possible to beef without actually being beef," said Danielle Beck, executive director of government affairs at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. "But their entire marketing strategy is to disparage beef. They are trading on beef's good name, but disparaging beef in the process."

Organizations like the National Pork Producers Council, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the Livestock Marketing Association are pushing the federal government to force these companies to rename their products.

Under current law, only the Food and Drug Administration has the power to stop plant-based operations from using traditional meat terms to define their products.

Asked about the FDA's position on plant-based meat, a spokesperson said the agency is reviewing its stance of the "standards of identify" for dairy products, and that "until we finish reviewing, we don't have additional comment on the labeling of plant-based food product."

The spokesman added in an email: "The FDA believes it is important to take a fresh look at existing standards of identity in light of marketing trends and the latest nutritional science."

Meanwhile, as the FDA waits, at least 13 states have enacted laws that ban companies from calling plant-based products by terms used to define traditional meat. And lawmakers in at least 27 states have filed similar bills.

On the national level, U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., introduced the Real MEAT Act in October, which defines "beef" as coming from a cow and requires companies imitating beef to include the word "imitation" in the label, among other provisions.

Its purpose is to eliminate consumer confusion and deceptive marketing, Marshall has said.

"For years now, alternative protein products have confused many consumers with misleading packaging and creative names for products," Marshall said in a statement. "With this bill, consumers can be sure that the meat products they are buying are indeed real meat."

The bill was referred to the Committee on Agriculture, which then referred it to the House Subcommittee on Livestock and Foreign Agriculture, where it remains. The bill has 18 co-sponsors.

U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., introduced a similar bill in the Senate in December. No action has been taken on that bill.

"What's ironic about [these bills] is we bend over backwards to make it clear we are plant-based," said Rachel Konrad, a spokeswoman for Impossible Foods. "We have a huge logo on our products that says, 'Made from plants.' We do not want any confusion and we know the reason why our growth is skyrocketing is because there is no confusion."

She added that her company is monitoring the new bills and will follow all applicable state and federal laws.

"Impossible Foods has always anticipated this kind of attack," she said.

The Impossible company anticipated the attack, in part, because it is not targeting vegetarians -- it is trying to woo meat eaters.

"Ninety-five percent of [Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods] customers are omnivores who also eat meat," said Zak Weston, a food service analyst at the Good Food Institute, a pro-plant-based food nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. "These companies are looking at the market differently."

The meat industry's attack has some plant-based supporters concerned.

Though growing rapidly, the plant-based protein industry is in its infancy, said Ocean Robbins, the CEO of Food Revolution Network, a pro-plant-based food group that supports "healthy, ethical and sustainable food for all."

"In the long run, if these terms are banned, companies are going to figure out another way," Robbins said. "But it will have an impact. The meat industry is putting a lot of money into this because they're aware that the terms are impactful. And they're afraid of mainstream people giving this a try."

--30---

A rare species of ‘glass frogs’ reappear in Bolivia after 18 years

NO NEED FOR DISSECTION YOU CAN SEE RIGHT INTO THEM 
January 27, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

A rare species of frog native to the eastern slopes of the Bolivian Andes has been spotted in the South American country for the first time in 18 years, the investigation team that made the discovery told AFP.

The Bolivian Cochran frog is notable for its transparent belly, leading to its nickname, the “glass frog”.

“The rediscovery of this species fills us with a ray of hope for the future of the glass frogs — one of the most charismatic amphibians in the world — but also for other species,” said investigation team members Rodrigo Aguayo and Oliver Quinteros, from the Natural History Museum “Alcide d’Orbigny”, and Rene Carpio of the San Simon University in Cochabamba.

The team came across the frogs on January 8 during a mission to rescue reptiles and amphibians threatened by a hydroelectric project in the Carrasco National Park to the east of Cochabamba, the fourth largest city in Bolivia.

Glass frogs are tiny, measuring only 0.7-0.9 inches (19-24 millimeters) and weighing just 2.5-2.8 ounces (70-80 grams). They can be found in the departments of La Paz (west), Cochabamba, Santa Cruz (east) and Chuquisaca (southeast).

Some frogs’ hearts and digestive tracts can be seen through their transparent bellies.

Those found in the Carrasco National Park had a transparent belly with a “white chest. The bones and vocal sac of the males are dark green,” the team said.

The three frogs found were taken to the K’ayra amphibian conservation center at the Alcide d’Orbigny museum.

Experts will try to encourage the frogs to breed as part of a conservation strategy.

The K’ayra Center is also home to a pair of Sehuenca water frogs, known as Romeo and Juliet, that scientists have been trying to convince to mate to help preserve their critically endangered species.

Their attempts have so far been in vain.

© 2020 AFP

UK 
Facial recognition could be 'spectacular own goal', police warned amid accuracy concerns
THE SECURITY STATE, DO YOU FEEL MORE SECURE?
Only eight arrests were made as a result of facial recognition matches in three years of Metropolitan Police trials
THE SECURITY STATE IS A PLACEBO

Lizzie Dearden Home Affairs Correspondent @lizziedearden
Tuesday 28 January
An unmarked police van parked in London's West End during a facial recognition trial ( PA )

Facial recognition could be a “spectacular own goal” for police if it fails to be inaccurate and effective, the government has been warned.

MPs raised concerns about the technology after the Metropolitan Police announced the start of live deployments in London.

Only eight arrests were made as a result of facial matches in almost three years of trials in the capital, which saw a high rate of “false positive” alerts wrongly flagging innocent people as wanted criminals.

Two deployments outside the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford in 2018 saw a 100 per cent failure rate and monitors said a 14-year-old black schoolboy was fingerprinted after being misidentified, while in Romford a man was stopped for covering his face.

During a House of Commons debate on Monday, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “To bring in technology which may be inaccurate and may mean the guilty may go unapprehended and the innocent wrongly identified would be a spectacular own goal.”

Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney, who asked an urgent question on facial recognition, said an independent review of Metropolitan Police trials had been “damning” and found potential conflicts with human rights law.

“According to analysis of the Met’s test data, 93 per cent of supposed matches in their trials have been wrong,” she added.

“As well as being inaccurate, facial recognition technology has also been shown to be much less accurate in identifying women and ethnic minorities than it has been for identifying white men.”

Following warnings by the Information Commissioner and court challenges, Ms Olney said the legal basis for Scotland Yard’s deployments was “questionable at best”.

Labour's Chi Onwurah told MPs that facial recognition “automates the prejudices of those who design it and the limitations of the data on which it is trained”.

John Whittingdale, a Conservative MP, pointed out that the Surveillance Camera Commissioner had issued a warning over an insufficient legal framework for facial recognition and a lack of transparency in its use.

Labour MP Daniel Zeichner was among the politicians calling for a pause in using the technology until rules were established, adding: “That approach of trying it out and seeing how it goes is exactly the wrong way to maintain public trust.”

Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, argued that the technology would become “more effective and reliable” as it was rolled out.

“None of the evidence in the trials thus far is pointing to that disproportionality,” he said.

“Frankly, if the police were seeking to apprehend the killer of my child, I would want them to consider using this technology.”

Facial recognition trial in London's West End

He said he could not comment on legal proceedings, after the Big Brother Watch campaign group said it would review its ongoing action against the Metropolitan Police and home secretary.

A separate legal challenge, against South Wales Police, found two facial recognition deployments in Cardiff were lawful but is currently under appeal.

An increasing number of private companies have also been using the technology, sparking questions about public consent and privacy.

The King’s Cross estate in London came under fire for scanning unwitting shoppers after being given Metropolitan Police wanted lists.

Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave called the incident an “inappropriate sharing of images with good intent to look for wanted people” on Friday and said information exchanges with private companies had stopped.

Sheffield’s Meadowhall shopping centre carried out two facial recognition trials in 2018, looking for just three offenders and one missing person.

According to information obtained by the BBC’s File on 4 programme, more than two million shoppers may have had their faces scanned. Only the missing person was found.

Tony Porter, the Surveillance Camera Commissioner, called for an inspection regime to monitor such deployments.

Former minister David Davis called for “explicit regulation” and parliamentary debates.
A South Wales Police van mounted with facial recognition cameras (Liberty)

“We need to see the data, we need to think through the risks,” he said. “The UK as a state, as a government has a habit of collecting data willy nilly on the premise that it might be useful somehow, some-day.”

He also criticised private companies for building up watchlists of suspected wrongdoers for customers, including shops and security firms.

Anna Bacciarelli, a technology researcher with Amnesty International, said: “It is a wild west at the minute.

“We have an utter lack of regulation and a lot to lose. We would ask for a pause on the use of live facial recognition until all of the human rights risks can be addressed.”

The Metropolitan Police said every London deployment would be “bespoke” and target lists of wanted offenders or vulnerable missing people.

Mr Ephgrave said the technology would be primarily used for serious and violent offenders who are at large, as well as missing children and vulnerable people.

He said live facial recognition “makes no decisions” alone, and works by flagging potential facial matches from live footage to watchlists of police images drawn up by officers.

Officers then judge whether the person could be the same and decide whether to question them in order to establish their identity.

Police said any potential “alerts” would be kept for one month, while watchlists will be wiped immediately after each operation.

Read more 

Go-ahead for facial recognition cameras in London ‘could break law’

Facial recognition to be rolled out across London by police

Police may have used 'dangerous' facial recognition unlawfully in UK

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Most popular

People In 43 US Cities Are Drinking Toxic "Forever Chemicals" In Their Tap Water, Tests Show

Drinking water was contaminated in 43 US cities, a new study found.

Dan Vergano BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From Washington, D.C. Posted on January 22, 2020

Martin Bernetti / Getty Images

Dozens of cities nationwide — including Miami, Philadelphia, and New Orleans — have toxic “forever chemicals” in their drinking water, an environmental group reported on Wednesday.

Such long-lived "fluorinated" PFAS chemicals (short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have emerged in the last decade as a wider pollution concern because of some evidence of links to cancer and lowered fertility. They are perhaps best known from the 2019 movie Dark Waters, about pollution from a DuPont facility in West Virginia.
Earlier surveys have linked water contamination with these chemicals to firefighting foams and Teflon, but the new independent lab results, which detected PFAS chemicals in 43 of 44 cities tested last year, point to a more widespread problem.


EWG / Via ewg.org
A map of PFAS in drinking water from 2018.

“PFAS in drinking water is not okay,” Environmental Working Group study co-author Sydney Evans told BuzzFeed News. Evans said the group was surprised to see the chemicals turn up in cities as varied as Miami, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. The only place they tested that didn't have PFAS contamination was Meridian, Mississippi, which gets its water from a 600-foot-deep well.

Earlier surveys conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the EWG had not shown such a widespread presence of the chemicals in drinking water, Evans said. Her team tested for 30 PFAS chemicals, including some widely used in making stain-resistant clothing, rather than only the two most common ones.

EPA has suggested a 70 parts-per-trillion (ppt) limit on those two chemicals. Some states have set stricter limits in response to more recent health studies, with New Jersey setting the strictest of 13-14 ppt. The new report’s drinking water samples held concentrations higher than those lower limits in more than a dozen places. The highest levels of contamination were found in North Carolina and Iowa.

“To date, EPA has developed methods to reliably detect 29 PFAS chemicals in drinking water,” an agency spokesperson told BuzzFeed News by email. “Aggressively addressing PFAS will continue to be an EPA priority in 2020 and we will provide additional information on our upcoming actions as it becomes available.” The agency delayed setting more limits on PFAS chemicals last year, announcing instead a commitment to start testing large cities for contamination.
Independent experts say the findings are preliminary, but concerning. Earlier EPA tests ending in 2015 looked at only six PFAS chemicals, for example, and missed contamination in Wilmington, North Carolina. “This EWG study is certainly not comprehensive but gives some insight” into how much contamination has been missed by past tests, said North Carolina State University environmental engineer Nadine Kotlarz.

The environmental group is calling for a more thorough nationwide look at the compounds in drinking water, and increased efforts to filter them by utilities.

“PFAS levels may not actually have changed, but we are now able to measure the levels,” drinking water scientist Martin Shafer of the University of Wisconsin told BuzzFeed News. He called for caution before panicking over the new numbers, pointing out that tests of the health risks, if any, of the newer PFAS chemicals will need to be done first. “One really needs to compare apples to apples here.”


Paul Morigi / Getty Images

PFAS chemicals are perhaps best known from the 2019 movie Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo, about pollution from a DuPont facility in West Virginia.

MORE ON THIS
EPA Delays Decision To Set Drinking Water Limits On Toxic “PFAS” Chemicals

Nidhi Subbaraman · Feb. 14, 2019

Farmers Are Losing Everything After “Forever Chemicals” Turned Up In Their Food

Nidhi Subbaraman · July 2, 2019

Check This Map To See If Your Water Has Unsafe Levels Of “Fluorinated” Chemicals

Dan Vergano · May 20, 2016

Dan Vergano is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Contact Dan Vergano at dan.vergano@buzzfeed.com.

Chinese State Media Spread A False Image Of A Hospital For Coronavirus Patients In Wuhan

The photo actually shows an apartment building.

Jane Lytvynenko BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on January 27, 2020

Twitter / @zlj517 / Via Twitter: @zlj517

Chinese state media and a government official spread a false image they claimed showed a newly constructed hospital building in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. The image actually shows a modular apartment building more than 600 miles away in Qingdao, China, and was taken from an online listing.

The out-of-context photo was shared in tweets from the verified accounts of Global Times and People's Daily, both of which are state media outlets, and was tweeted by Lijian Zhao, deputy director general of the information department in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Global Times also published an article, archived using Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, featuring the photo.

The false image was spread after videos showing the rapid construction of a new hospital in Wuhan went viral across social media networks. Bloomberg reported that China was planning to build a hospital in a week in the coronavirus-stricken city. The hospital would reportedly have 1,500 beds.


Global Times

The tweets by Global Times and Zhao claimed to be the first look at the first building of Huoshenshan Hospital. The Global Times article featuring the false image attributed the photo to Chinese social media platform Weibo. Zhao has spread disinformation in the past and is known for his anti-US trolling.

Coronavirus disinformation has spread online since news of the virus broke. Much of it includes baseless conspiracy theories, unverified video, and false numbers of confirmed infections.

Health officials have confirmed five cases across the US so far, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. China has reported over 80 deaths and nearly 3,000 infections, according to the New York Times. Health officials around the globe are asking any recent travelers from China to self-isolate, the Guardian reports.



MORE ON THIS
Here's A Running List Of Disinformation Spreading About The Coronavirus                           Jane Lytvynenko · Jan. 24, 2020

QAnon Supporters And Anti-Vaxxers Are Spreading A Hoax That Bill Gates Created The Coronavirus  Ryan Broderick · Jan. 23, 2020

These Pictures Give A Glimpse Of What It's Like Inside The Chinese City On Lockdown That's At The Center Of The Coronavirus Outbreak   Matthew Champion · Jan. 23, 2020

Jane Lytvynenko is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Toronto, Canada. PGP fingerprint: A088 89E6 2500 AD3C 8081 BAFB 23BA 21F3 81E0 101C.
Contact Jane Lytvynenko at jane.lytvynenko@buzzfeed.com.