News of the World

[kyonides]

China cryptically warns Elon Musk about sharing posts on COVID lab leak theory

China is warning Twitter CEO Elon Musk against sharing posts that promote the lab leak theory of the coronavirus, suggesting that such commentary could hurt Tesla’s relationship with the company’s second-largest market.

The cryptic warning came on a social media post by the state-run Global Times newspaper.
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The original tweet, from the account “Kanekoa The Great,” questioned whether Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was involved in the development of COVID-19 because he had funded “gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.“

“He did it via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth),” Musk responded, referring to the nonprofit group that was awarded nearly $8 million in federal research grants to study bat coronaviruses in China.
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The Global Times warned Musk that he could be “breaking the pot of China.” The saying is similar to the expression “to bite the hand that feeds you,” according to CNBC’s Eunice Yoon.
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As noted by the outlet, the electric vehicle maker maintains a factory campus in Shanghai – China is the company’s second-largest market.

Of course, the lab leak explanation has hurt the feelings of the  Chinese authorities a lot.

China Revives Conspiracy Theory
Coronavirus Came from Maryland as Wuhan Lab Suspicion Grows

Chinese officials sputtered insults at every Western authority promoting the lab leak theory and insisted China has done nothing to impede the global hunt for the true origin of the coronavirus.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday blasted Nicholas Burns, the American ambassador to China, for saying Beijing should be “more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan with the origin of the [Chinese coronavirus] crisis.”
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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning responded by laughably insisting China has been “open and transparent, and shared information and data on [coronavirus] with the international community in a timely manner.”
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In truth, China has consistently destroyed evidence and denied access to vital information, a fact the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) was reluctantly forced to admit after Beijing turned the long-delayed visit by W.H.O. investigators to Wuhan in early 2021 into a stage-managed farce.

W.H.O. formally abandoned the search for the virus’s origins two weeks ago, expressly because China has effectively obstructed the investigation.
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Mao then trotted out China’s lunatic conspiracy theory that the virus was secretly created by the U.S. military in Maryland and dropped on Wuhan like a biological bomb.

“It is the U.S. who should respond to the world’s questions and concerns over Fort Detrick and its military and biological labs across the world. By politicizing the issue, the U.S. will not succeed in discrediting China. Instead, it will only hurt the U.S.’s own credibility,” she railed.

China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday rolled out another conspiracy theory, in which the Biden administration tasked all of its agencies to drop “dirt bombs” on China to tee up the Republican majority in the House of Representatives for a big attack on Beijing.

Well, it wouldn't be hard to convince them of China being a real threat to US national security after what has happened in the last couple of years, especially after the spy balloon incident.

Right, they've also come with other weird theories in the past like calling out Italy or even Spain for irresponsibly releasing the   virus to the public.

Hunter Biden advised Joe’s office on answering Burisma queries

Then-second son Hunter Biden coached then-Vice President Joe Biden’s press secretary on how to respond to media questions about him joining the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, emails reviewed by The Post show.

The May 13, 2014, exchanges between Hunter and Kendra Barkoff, which have not been previously reported, form the basis of a complaint sent to the Justice Department on Friday alleging that the Biden scion, now 53, violated federal law by failing to register as a foreign agent.

...“Hunter Biden ‘represent[ed] the interests of [a] foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States,'” America First Legal Foundation general counsel Gene Hamilton wrote to the assistant attorney general for national security, Matthew Olsen, quoting the relevant statute.

Burisma announced Hunter Biden’s appointment to its board of directors on May 12, 2014. The following day, according to the complaint, Barkoff sent Hunter an email saying: “Thanks for talking to me. [L]et me know who I should refer folks to.”

“What exactly are they asking?” Hunter responded. “For the time being I’d just refer them to my office. FYI I joined the board of Burisma Holdings Ltd. (Burisma.com) an independent/private natural gas producer in Ukraine along with the former president of Poland. I think the press release is on their website.”

Barkoff then forwarded Hunter an email from Max Seddon, then a foreign correspondent at BuzzFeed News.

“Russian state media is loving this press release, supposedly from a Cypriot-held Ukrainian natural gas company, claiming that the Vice President’s son has joined its board of directors,” Seddon wrote, addressing then-National Security Council spokesperson Laura Lucas Magnuson, who had forwarded it to Barkoff.

“The news seems rather odd on its face and, if true, would present a fairly glaring conflict of interest given the VP’s role on Ukraine policy – particularly since the company is controlled by Nikolai Zlochevsky, who was energy minister and deputy NSC chief under [former pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych,” the reporter added.

Emphasis is mine.

Russian billionaires who shopped for US property with Hunter Biden
and dined with Joe dodge sanctions

Two Russian billionaires who have managed to dodge US sanctions over Moscow’s year-old invasion of Ukraine went property shopping with Hunter Biden, dined with then-Vice President Joe Biden, and discussed “favors” they might swap, sources tell The Post.

New details of Joe and Hunter Biden’s association with Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov flesh out tantalizing clues from the first son’s abandoned laptop. The sources spoke with The Post this week after the duo was yet again spared a fresh batch of sanctions announced by the Treasury Department Friday.

“I think it’s very fishy,” said one source who had firsthand knowledge of the business relationship between Hunter Biden and Yevtushenkov — who is sanctioned by the UK and Australia but not by the US.
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Yevtushenkov, whose Sistema business empire until recently included Russian rocket and radar-maker RTI and drone-maker Kronstadt, admitted last year he met with Hunter Biden for breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan on March 14, 2012 — but denied any further contact.

However, emails and calendar entries from Hunter’s former laptop show that they were set to meet again on Jan. 27, 2013, for dinner at DC’s Cafe Milano before looking at a commercial real estate development the next day near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
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“He made it very clear to me that, you know … ‘I think it would be good to have a good relationship with this guy … maybe he can do a favor for us and we can do a favor for him,’” the source continued. “It was a complete quid pro quo that he was going in for.”
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A different source, meanwhile, told The Post he vividly recalled Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, looking “like an odd couple” at a now-infamous, intimate dinner with Hunter and his father, the then-vice president.

It’s long been uncertain whether Baturina, estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.4 billion, and Luzhkov actually attended the April 16, 2015 dinner at Cafe Milano — the same Georgetown restaurant where Hunter and Yevtushenkov set a date more than two years prior.

Alex Murdaugh juror reveals reason behind quick verdict

A juror on the Alex Murdaugh case has come forward, revealing it took less than an hour to reach a verdict.
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“[Murdaugh is] a good liar, but not good enough,” juror Craig Moyer told Eva Pilgrim on “Good Morning America” early Friday, less than 24 hours after the disgraced South Carolina attorney was convicted of killing his wife and son.

After a six-week trial involving mountains of evidence from over 70 witnesses, Moyer and the 11 other jurors deliberated for three hours before finding Murdaugh, 54, guilty of the murders and related weapons charges.

Ultimately, Moyer said, it took just 45 minutes for the group to reach the unanimous decision that Murdaugh shot his wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, in cold blood near the kennels on the family’s sprawling estate on June 7, 2021.
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Moyer was unmoved by Murdaugh’s emotional testimony, during which he broke down several times when discussing the murders.
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“All he did was blow snot, [there were] no tears. I saw his eyes.

“I didn’t see any true remorse or compassion or anything.”

Mom put to death — at her own request — after murdering her 5 kids

A Belgian woman who murdered her five kids was put to death — at her own request — 16 years to the day after she slit the throats of her son and four daughters with a kitchen knife, her lawyer said.

Genevieve Lhermitte, 56, murdered her children — ages 3 to 14 — on Feb. 28, 2007, in the town of Nivelles while their dad was away, the BBC reported.
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Lhermitte was sentenced to life in prison in December 2008 and transferred to a psychiatric hospital in 2019.

Her lawyer, Nicolas Cohen, said she died by euthanasia Tuesday — the 16th anniversary of the killings, according to Sky News. It’s not clear how she died, but lethal injection is typically the method.

Lhermitte died at Leonard de Vinci hospital in Montigny-le-Tilleul, the news outlet reported.
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During the trial, Lhermitte’s lawyers argued the woman was mentally disturbed and should not be sent to prison. But the jury found her guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced her to life behind bars.

In 2010, Lhermitte filed a civil lawsuit demanding up to 3 million euros — about $3.2 million — from a former psychiatrist, claiming his “inaction” failed to prevent the murders.

Semafor news site partners with think tank ‘linked to Chinese Communist Party’

Semafor, the news site recently co-founded by former BuzzFeed and New York Times star Ben Smith, touted a new partnership with a China think tank suspected of having ties to Beijing’s ruling Communist Party.

The site trumpeted an “ambitious new initiative” with the China Center for Globalization (CCG) which will “create a new platform…for global business leaders seeking a way forward” despite economic tensions between the US and China.
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The collaboration will include two events titled “China and Global Business.” The first will be held in New York City in June followed by another in Beijing in October, according to Semafor.

A spokesperson for Semafor told The Post on Thursday that the news site will retain “full editorial independence and financial control.”
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On its website, CCG denies that it is “an organ of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government.”
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CCG bills itself as a “nongovernmental think tank” which “relies on corporate donations and research grants for funding” — particularly from “Chinese private sector companies and multinational corporations.”
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One way in which “United Front Work Department” (UFWD) promotes the agenda of the Chinese government is through engaging with foreign think tanks.

The paper alleges that the CCG is headed by Wang Huiyao, who also happens to be an adviser to UFWD.