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Tag: leak

  • U.S. Agencies Divided Over COVID-19 ‘Lab Leak’ Origin Theory | Health News

    U.S. Agencies Divided Over COVID-19 ‘Lab Leak’ Origin Theory | Health News

    U.S. agencies are divided over the origin of COVID-19, with a new report from the Office of Electricity about the weekend including gas to the hearth.

    The Wall Avenue Journal on Sunday described that the Electricity Department made a decision with “low confidence” that the coronavirus most most likely emerged from an accidental lab leak in China. Officials stated the improve of position was dependent on new information that hasn’t been shared publicly.

    White Household national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Sunday acknowledged that the intelligence neighborhood doesn’t have a “definitive answer” to the problem of COVID-19’s origin.

    “There is a selection of sights in the intelligence neighborhood,” Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Some features of the intelligence group have arrived at conclusions on one aspect, some on the other. A range of them have explained they just don’t have plenty of details to be absolutely sure.”

    “Here’s what I can convey to you,” he continued. “President Biden has directed, continuously, every single ingredient of our intelligence neighborhood to set effort and hard work and methods guiding acquiring to the base of this issue. … But, appropriate now, there is not a definitive reply that has emerged from the intelligence group on this issue.”

    Cartoons on the Coronavirus

    On the global amount, the Planet Well being Organization is nevertheless investigating, continuously declaring that it is probable the origin will in no way be identified.

    As lately as this thirty day period, the group said that much more cooperation from China is necessary to progress its scientific studies.

    “We will not stop till we realize the origins of this, and it is getting increasingly difficult since the extra time that passes, the extra hard it gets to be to really recognize what took place in those people early stages of the pandemic,” WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove said at a press conference.

    China on Monday dismissed the Electricity Department’s report, with an formal saying that “certain events need to cease rehashing the ‘lab leak’ narrative, prevent smearing China and prevent politicizing origins-tracing.”

    The place Do Agencies Stand on the ‘Lab Leak’ Concept?

    The Energy Section joins the FBI in supporting the concept that the virus accidentally emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

    Although the DOE arrived to its summary with “low” assurance, the FBI achieved its conclusion in 2021 with “moderate” self-assurance. But The Wall Road Journal reported that the organizations achieved their conclusions individually for distinct factors.

    Also, the Electrical power Section reportedly shared the information with other agencies, but none of them transformed their personal conclusions.

    Four companies and a countrywide intelligence panel claimed they think the pandemic probable started out with purely natural transmission from animal to human.

    The remaining two agencies, which consist of the CIA, are however undecided.

    One factor that is typically agreed on is that China did not manufacture the virus for use in warfare. The Countrywide Intelligence Council in 2021 described that the intelligence local community is in settlement that “the virus was not created as a biological weapon.” The report also stated that the intelligence local community “assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus in advance of the original outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.”

    But it acknowledged that the intelligence local community continues to be divided above COVID-19’s origin, noting that “China’s cooperation most probable would be necessary to get to a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19.”

    Republicans Seize on DOE Report

    The new report from the Electrical power Division has reinvigorated the lab leak concept, underscoring that while the genuine origin could not be recognized anytime shortly, the theories are not going absent.

    It gave new strength to Republicans on Capitol Hill who very long held the lab leak theory and who designed a Home subcommittee to examine it.

    Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, tweeted that it does not make any difference that the lab leak idea was “proven correct.”

    “What matters is keeping the Chinese Communist Social gathering accountable so this does not come about all over again,” he stated.

    Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted that “the govt caught up to what Actual America knew all alongside.”

    Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, tweeted that “for several years, Anthony Fauci and Biden officials referred to as this a conspiracy.”

    GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri tweeted that he would introduce legislation to make the U.S. intelligence reports on COVID-19 “open to the people.”

    The report is most likely to gasoline congressional Republicans’ hearings on COVID-19 origins.

  • After Supreme Court leak, future of abortion in NC

    After Supreme Court leak, future of abortion in NC

    By Elizabeth Thompson and Rose Hoban

    As abortion rights advocates across the country chewed over a leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion that would strike down the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, North Carolina Democrats emphasized the importance of the state government’s role in keeping abortion legal.

    At a press conference at the North Carolina General Assembly on Wednesday, North Carolina Democrats and abortion rights advocates stressed that the draft opinion is not yet in effect. 

    Sen. Natalie Murdock (D-Durham), said the future of abortion “will begin in the States.”

    “What we now unfortunately know is we cannot depend on the U.S. Supreme Court,” Murdock said. “It is up to us and state legislative bodies to continue to hold the line to say that we will fight to maintain full freedom and autonomy over our bodies so that we can determine our own future and destiny.”

    The leaked draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, would overrule Roe v. Wade, which gave pregnant people the ability to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. 

    Should the draft become the Supreme Court’s decision, it would throw decisions about abortion access to state governments, instead of being a federally recognized right. 

    Meanwhile, North Carolina has laws on the books that limit the ability to get an abortion. Some of those statutes pre-date 1973, when Roe went into effect, and some were penned after in attempts to chip away at Roe’s allowances. 

    But what would happen in North Carolina is far from clear.

    Crossing state lines

    In the past year, Texas and Oklahoma passed restrictive abortion laws that only allow the procedure for up to six weeks after conception. In the wake of implementation, abortion providers in other states have said they’ve seen patients arriving from Texas. 

    “We have helped patients come in from as far as the Rio Grande Valley, all the way to our clinic in Minnesota or our clinic in Virginia, or Maryland,” Sonja Miller, head of the Texas-based Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, told a gathering of health care journalists in Austin, Texas this past weekend. 

    Whole Woman’s Health, which also has clinics in other states, recently opened a clinic south of Minneapolis. 

    “[We] began serving our first patients with in-clinic surgical procedures at the end of February,” said Miller.

    Miller referred to surgical abortions, which tend to take place after about 12 weeks of pregnancy and require a physical procedure done by a health care provider. In recent years, people looking to terminate a pregnancy have also had the option of “medical” abortion, which uses a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol pills to end a pregnancy. Medical abortions can be self-administered by the person seeking an abortion and can only be used for up to about 12 weeks after conception. 

    Miller said that her organization deliberately situated the Minnesota facility close to the airport. 

    “We … opened it because we wanted a place that is in a safe state, a haven state,” she said. “Minnesota is such a state where we could take our patients.”

    She said that about 30 percent of the patients currently being seen at that clinic are from outside of Minnesota, with many arriving from Texas.

    ‘Squishy language’

    In 2020 in North Carolina (the latest year for state statistics), the state Department of Health and Human Services recorded 25,058 abortions, with 37.4 percent of procedures done surgically, and 59.1 percent of abortions were accomplished using the combination of pills. (DHHS data notes that 3.5 percent of procedures are “unknown.”)

    Statistics show of all the procedures taking place in North Carolina in that year, almost 99 percent of procedures were performed on state residents.

    That could change, said Meghan Boone, a faculty member at the Wake Forest University law school who specializes in issues of constitutional law and reproductive rights. She said North Carolina could see an influx of people seeking abortion care in the coming months if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe later this summer.

    North Carolina is circled by states that have so-called “trigger laws” which go into effect to restrict or ban abortion should the Supreme Court overturn Roe, she explained. And it is likely that South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia would all ban abortion as soon as the Supreme Court decision is made.

    The laws on North Carolina’s books, however, are less clear. 

    “There’s a little bit of sort of squishy language in 14-44,” Boone said referring to the North Carolina law written in 1881 that made abortion illegal. 

    That law was altered in modern times, first by a 1967 law that made abortion legal to preserve the life of the mother, in the case of the pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or if “the child would be born with grave physical or mental defect.”

    Eventually, state law was altered in 1973 to conform with the Roe v. Wade ruling that had been decided earlier that year, but the North Carolina statute placed a prohibition on procedures taking place after the 20th week of pregnancy. That post-20-week ban was struck down by a federal judge in the Bryant v Woodall case, which was decided in 2021. 

    All those layers of laws and court decisions make for a murky picture in the absence of Roe, Boone said. 

    “You have one part of the criminal code that says ‘you can’t do this,’ but then other parts of the criminal code that say, ‘you can do this in these sorts of circumstances, situations’” she said. “It’s just not clear that you would be able to criminally prosecute someone under these earlier laws in the face of more modern laws that suggests that legal abortions are legal.”

    Enforcement in a post-Roe world

    It’s also not clear what would have to happen to make North Carolina’s older laws go into effect. 

    “You could have a prosecutor who decided to bring charges and then I think in the face of that you would have a criminal defendant who would make an argument that that law was no longer valid in light of the post-Roe subsequent changes to the criminal code, which made their particular circumstance legal,” Boone said. 

    There’s also the possibility that the legislature could act, she said. But Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed several abortion bills passed by the Republican-majority legislature since he was elected in 2016. 

    Cooper doubled down on his support for abortion in a tweet Monday night, as the Supreme Court leak started to go viral on social media.

    There could be further legislative action to reinstate the 20 week limitation law, but with a Democratic governor and too few Republicans in the legislature to override a gubernatorial veto that seems unlikely.