News of the World

[kyonides]

Senators Call for Declassifying Assessment
That COVID-19 Likely Came From Chinese Lab

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrote on Twitter that documents described in a Wall Street Journal report “should be declassified.”

“President Biden needs to declassify everything we know today,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) added.

According to the report, the U.S. Energy Department is assessing that the pandemic likely started from a Wuhan laboratory leak.

The assessment was described in a document authored by the office of Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, a Biden appointee, the Journal reported.
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The Energy Department told news outlets in a statement that it “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”

Virginia Moves to Ban China From Buying Farmland

Virginia will ban foreign adversaries, including China, from buying agricultural land in the commonwealth after legislators in the House of Delegates and Senate recently approved versions of the proposal and sent the measure to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin for his expected signature. The ban would be retroactively effective from Jan. 1.

Prohibiting China from buying farmland in Virginia tops Youngkin’s legislative agenda this year.

“Virginians—not the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]—should own the rich and vibrant agricultural lands God has blessed us with. That is why I am asking the General Assembly to send me a bill to prohibit dangerous foreign entities tied to the CCP from purchasing Virginia farmland,” he said in his State of the Commonwealth address at the beginning of the 2023 legislative session.

The law will also require Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) to publish an annual report of foreign land ownership to the governor and General Assembly. The inaugural report is due on the VDACS website by July 1. The law, once enacted, won’t affect any transactions that were completed before this year.*

Education Reform Documentary ‘Canceled’ by Woke Activists in Illinois

Two attempts to publicly show the documentary film “Truth and Lies in American Education” were thwarted this month by threats of violence from self-avowed Antifa activists.

The one-hour movie advocates for parents’ rights, the abandonment of what it sees as the sexualization and political indoctrination of school children, and a return to classical education in public schools.

The film also urges that the lowering of academic standards be reversed and presents homeschooling and private schools as alternatives to public education.
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The day before the scheduled free public showing, the management of a community theater in suburban Chicago backed out of a commitment to allow the Illinois chapter of USPIE to use the public building to show the documentary and conduct a panel discussion of its content afterward.

The event’s organizers quickly found another venue, a southside Chicago tavern, that was initially willing to accommodate them. At the last minute, its management backed out too, citing anonymous threats to “shoot up the bar” and concern for the safety of patrons and staff as the reason.

USPIE national founder and president, Sheri Few, told The Epoch Times, “So-called anti-fascists claimed credit for both cancellations on social media. They had threatened that if the film was shown ‘bullets would fly.’”

DeSantis Signs Bill Ending Disney’s ‘Corporate Kingdom’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis consigned Disney World’s self-governing status to the historical dustbin on Feb. 27 as he signed the bill setting up a new board to govern the Central Florida property, one of the world’s premier tourist destinations.

DeSantis staged the bill with a backdrop not of the Magic Kingdom, but of a big yellow fire truck at Reedy Creek Fire Station No. 4. Reedy Creek was the name of Disney’s self-governing district, which had governmental powers unlike those granted to any other business in the state.
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The new legislation means Disney will no longer have governmental powers, including the right to tax, to avoid state building and fire codes, to avoid state regulatory reviews and approvals, to issue tax-exempt bonds, and to operate its own utility and emergency services within its 25,000 acres that straddle Orange and Osceola counties.

The measure, which takes effect in June 2023, renames the Reedy Creek Improvement District, dubbing it the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

Pennsylvania County Gets Rid of ‘Sanctuary’ Status Amid Fentanyl Crisis

Butler County, Pennsylvania, has terminated its “sanctuary” designation and will now cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when dealing with illegal immigrants as the area faces a fentanyl crisis and an uptick in trafficking crimes.
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On Feb. 21, the Butler County prison board adopted a policy authorizing it to accept ICE detainers accompanied by arrest warrants for illegal aliens in the region. The agency will offer a list of inmates to the county prison on a weekly basis. An ICE detainer will allow the agency to assume custody of an illegal immigrant who’s in Butler County prison.

The decision comes as the county sees fentanyl making up a large portion of overdose deaths in the region. A powerful synthetic opioid, Fentanyl is about 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. In 2021, of the 66 overall overdose deaths in Butler County, 57 were attributed to fentanyl.

Energy Giant Moves Quietly to Erase Taiwan

A British-Australian energy giant has chosen to erase Taiwan from its financial statements, deciding instead to list all revenue from the autonomous region as from “Greater China.”
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Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest metal and mining corporations, made the decision to merge Taiwanese revenue data with those of Greater China in its 2022 Full Year Data Report (pdf).

“Consolidated sales revenue by destination has been adjusted to classify Taiwan and China together as ‘Greater China’; previously Taiwan was included in Asia (excluding Greater China and Japan),” the report said. “This change has resulted in a decrease in 2021 revenue attributable to Asia (excluding Greater China and Japan) of: 2.5 percent and US$1,570 million.”

Previously, Taiwanese revenues were classified as part of Other Asian Regions in the annual reports.

And that's exactly how you'll gonna get surprised that China eventually invades Taiwan, all because of companies that are entirely bought by the CCP.

DC Police Officer Who Struck Protesters With Flagpole on Jan. 6 Bragged
‘That Was My Best Weapon’

A Metropolitan Police Department officer wielding a wooden flagpole like a medieval lance inside the U.S. Capitol tunnel on Jan. 6, 2021, later bragged to fellow officers that the long wooden dowel was “my best weapon,” newly released bodycam video shows.

Video recorded by Officer Michael Dowling’s bodycam shows him climbing onto a narrow ledge in the Lower West Terrace tunnel and attacking a woman in a white coat standing near the entrance.

As Dowling jabbed at the woman—including two contacts to the head—she hurried to get off the ledge and escape the tunnel.
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Dowling picked up the flagpole from the floor of the tunnel entrance at 3:19 p.m. and moved into the tunnel.

After dislodging the woman in white, Dowling jabbed at a number of men at the front line who faced inward toward the police. That drew the ire of protest leader Anthony Alexander Antonio of Wilmington, Delaware, who had been addressing the crowd with a bullhorn.
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Two hours later, after the crowds were pushed from the Lower West Terrace, Dowling met up with MPD Officer Jeffrey Leslie.

“I lost my flagpole,” Dowling lamented. “That was my best weapon.”

I don't know how he'd still be called a  cop after such acts of extreme violence against people that didn't attack him at all.

Republicans Sound Alarm on Beijing’s Efforts to Spread Propaganda in Western Outlets

In an op-ed recently published in the Washington Post, Xu Xueyuan, the chargé d’affaires at the Chinese regime’s embassy in Washington, repeated Beijing’s narrative that the balloon was for “meteorological research” and “posed no real security threat.”
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The article has been shared by prominent CCP diplomats and Chinese state-run media, including Huang Ping, Beijing’s consul general in New York, and Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington.
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“Communist China’s attempt to play nice and cover up their surveillance operation is not the least bit surprising. This is what they do—pretend everything is fine and dandy while they continue to spy on Americans using TikTok, steal our intellectual property, and buy up our farmland,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, told The Epoch Times.
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“Communist oppression is a very serious and dangerous threat to the entire world, and we should not take these ‘wandering balloons’ lightly,” Higgins told The Epoch Times. [Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.)] added that Xu’s response has “certainly not wandered far from the Communist party line and shows that every citizen of every nation should be aware of the CCP’s global agenda.”
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“America did not overreact. If anything, we didn’t act soon enough,” [Sen. Marsha] Blackburn said.
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“The appropriate time for China to claim its balloon posed no threat was prior to its launch, not after it was deliberately floated across the U.S.,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who sits on the House Rules Committee, told The Epoch Times.

“With all due respect to Ms. Xu, our nation, not hers, will determine whether that payload was benign or malicious,” Norman added.