News of the World

[kyonides]

Congressman Fires Staffer With Ties to Chinese Embassy, Investigation Called For

According to the National Review, Congressman Don Beyer (D-VA) fired a staffer when her connection to the Chinese embassy was brought to the Congressman’s attention. Barbara Hamlett, employed as a scheduler at Beyer’s office since August 2019, allegedly facilitated meetings between other congressional staffers and Chinese embassy staff in Washington D.C.

On Tuesday, the House Sergeant at Arms (SAA) notified Beyer’s office about the investigation into Hamlett, which was triggered by reports from several congressional aids Hamlett apparently had approached.

Beyer’s team conducted their own investigation, which confirmed that Hamlett attempted to schedule off-the-record meetings for Chinese embassy staff with staffers in at least two Republican congressmen’s offices. Hamlett was fired after the investigation.

Beyer’s deputy chief of staff told the National Review that the Congressman “was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” and that the Democratic congressman  “has a hawkish record on China, and was deeply upset upon learning about Hamlett’s activities.”

 Man, Democrats are becoming experts at hiring Chinese spies or agents or infiltrators.

White House Deletes Post After Getting Fact-Checked on Twitter

The White House on Wednesday deleted a Twitter post after it was fact-checked for making an inaccurate claim about the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that was recently announced.

“Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership,” the now-deleted White House Twitter post said.

However, the post failed to mention that the COLA adjustment was due to surging, decades-high inflation. COLA adjustments have been automatically done every year for decades due to federal law, and the adjustments are not contingent on any of the Biden administration’s policies.

“The point was incomplete,” a White House official told The Epoch Times via email.
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CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale, in response, accused the White House of making an inaccurate claim.
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The Twitter addition also made reference to former President Richard Nixon’s signing a law that mandated automatic benefit adjustments tied to the consumer price index, a key metric that measures inflation. For September 2022, the index surged to 8.2 percent year-over-year, according to data released by the Department of Labor.
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“Next year’s Social Security increase will be one of the largest in decades b/c of Biden’s disastrous policies, which have caused prices to rise, fueled record inflation, & cut it into critical retirement savings,” wrote Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) on Twitter in response to the Twitter post.

Fed Raises Interest Rates by Another 0.75 Percentage Points to Cool Inflation

The Federal Reserve raised the benchmark federal funds rate by 75 basis points on Nov. 2 to a target range of 3.75 to 4 percent, in line with market expectations.

The decision came after the Fed’s policy-making arm, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), concluded its two-day meeting on Nov. 2.

It’s the sixth rate increase this year and the fourth consecutive 75-point increase in 2022. Interest rates are now the highest they have been since January 2008.

It was widely expected that the Fed would pull the trigger on a three-quarter-point rate boost. 
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However, when Powell told reporters that talk of a pause in the central bank’s tightening efforts is “premature,” the leading benchmark indexes erased their gains and tanked.

“It’s very premature to be thinking about pausing,” Powell said, adding that there’s still some room for policy tightening. But he stopped short of saying where the policy rate should be next year.

When asked about more clarification, Powell said, “The question of when to moderate the pace of increases is now much less important than the question of how high to raise rates and how long to keep monetary policy restrictive.”

UN Security Council Blocks Russian Calls for Ukraine Biological Weapons Probe

And Moscow summons UK ambassador over attack on Black Sea Fleet, no details yet on result of 30-minute meeting.

Calls by Moscow for a formal inquiry into claims that the United States is running a covert biological weapons program in Ukraine were thwarted at the UN Security Council after the United States, the UK, and France all voted against the proposal.

In the vote, which took place on Nov. 2, only Russia and China voted in favor of the proposal, while the remaining 10 non-permanent council members abstained from casting ballots.

Speaking shortly afterward, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy UN representative, expressed disappointment with the vote’s outcome.
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The Biological Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1975, prohibits signatories from developing, producing, or using biological and toxin weapons.

“Irrespective of the result of today’s voting, we still have questions for the United States and Ukraine,” Polyansky said.

Moscow, he added, “will continue making efforts to establish all facts connected with the activities of U.S. biological laboratories in Ukraine.”

Washington and Kyiv, for their part, have both dismissed the allegation as a “conspiracy theory.”

Well, we don't know  if they ever produced such dangerous weapons in Ukraine but Senator Marco Rubio and Undersecretary Victoria Nuland know there are or were secret laboratories in the Ukrainian territory before the war sparked there. Does that justify Russia's claims?  We don't know.

Former AG Barr: There Will Be ‘No’ FBI Accountability After Russiagate Controversy

Accountability in the sense of criminal or civil penalties? No.
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Well, reputation in this country is largely under the control of the mainstream media, which likes to overlook these kinds of sins. But I think the story will be told, and maybe in a more sober age, people will appreciate how destructive and damaging to the country this was.
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In July [2016], before the election, they pounced on the flimsiest pretext, on the idea that there was collusion between Trump and the Russians, which is something the Clinton campaign was trying to whip up. And they jumped on it. I don’t think there was a predicate for them to do it. And they started this investigation [Crossfire Hurricane] of the campaign.
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I was hoping that there’d be accountability at the FBI. However, following special counsel John Durham’s losses in two court cases, it’s unlikely.
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It became very clear that the issue wasn’t whether there was collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign.

The real question was how this false narrative got started and why people doubled down on it after the [2016] election and when they knew that it really was nonsense. And so, I think [Durham] is getting as much to the bottom of it as anyone could and I think, ultimately, will write a report, which is what I asked him to do.

He's a very optimistic attorney, don't you think?
So should the FBI keep fabricating fake evidence for the time being!?