Samples From Early Wuhan COVID Patients Had Genetically Modified Henipah, One of Two Types of Viruses Sent From Canadian Lab

/0 Comments/in , /by

Samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of genetically modified Henipah virus, an American scientist has found.

Henipah was one of the two types of viruses sent to China by Chinese-born scientists from a Canadian laboratory at the centre of a controversy over the firing of the scientists and collaboration with Chinese military researchers. It is not clear whether the virus found in the Chinese samples is related to the virus samples sent by the Canadian lab, which were shipped in late March 2019.

The finding was confirmed for The Epoch Times by another qualified scientist.

The evidence was first found by Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist and former faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who looked at early COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) shortly after China informed the World Health Organization about the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.

The samples from the patients, who reportedly were found to have an “unknown pneumonia disease” in December 2019, were uploaded to the genetic sequence database, GenBank, on the website of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH). (Read more from “Samples From Early Wuhan COVID Patients Had Genetically Modified Henipah, One of Two Types of Viruses Sent From Canadian Lab” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Dozens of California Students, Parents Stranded in Afghanistan After Summer Trip Abroad

/0 Comments/in , /by

Dozens of California students and parents are stranded in Afghanistan after taking a summer trip to the country.

More than 20 students and 16 parents from the Cajon Valley Union School District in El Cajon, Calif., visited Afghanistan on summer vacation. Now they are among thousands of people who are waiting to leave the country amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal that has caused political unrest across the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Cajon Valley Superintendent David Miyashiro alerted school board members on Tuesday that he would be meeting with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to discuss the situation, the Times noted.

Miyashiro told the news outlet that the families traveled to Afghanistan on special visas for U.S. military service and that the school district was able to provide government officials with information on the families as they work to locate them.

The stranded students reportedly attend different schools within the school district. (Read more from “Dozens of California Students, Parents Stranded in Afghanistan After Summer Trip Abroad” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

China Launches Massive War Exercises Near Taiwan

/1 Comment/in , /by

The Chinese military is ramping up massive military exercises in the South China Sea intended to brush back the United States as the Biden administration pleads with the Taliban to bring Americans back home from Afghanistan.

People’s Liberation Army Navy forces are conducting drills in the South China Sea, Yellow Sea, and Bohai Strait near Korea until Thursday. The intense war drills come shortly after another set of military exercises off the coast of Taiwan intended to help China achieve “supremacy” in a potential showdown with the United States and Taiwan, and in response to recent activity in the South China Sea, according to one former Chinese colonel.

Lawmakers and experts say combative messaging around the exercises from China’s military brass shows an increasingly relentless attitude from Beijing when it comes to seizing Taiwan. Brent Sadler, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former naval officer, told the Washington Free Beacon the war drills show the Chinese Communist Party is not just saber-rattling but also preparing for a conflict in the coming years.

“The timing of them may be normal, but the intensity and coordination of them are different,” Sadler said of the exercise. “China is setting the battlefield for a fight if it should happen in this six-year period that it can fight on its terms. There’s an urgency with that where we should similarly be setting the stage for more favorable conditions with our allies.”

China’s demonstrations come as President Joe Biden directs his national security team to focus on Afghanistan, where thousands of Americans are stuck behind Taliban lines. Though Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Asia to engage allies on how to team up against Beijing, Chinese survey ships are already directly intruding into territory belonging to countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia. China also conducted another set of military exercises near Taiwan earlier in August, as well as a separate drill with Russian troops. The United States in turn is conducting its own annual maritime exercises with India, Australia, and Japan next week. (Read more from “China Launches Massive War Exercises Near Taiwan” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Biden Sticks With Afghanistan Withdrawal Deadline; CIA Boss Secretly Meets With Taliban as Evacuation Deadline Looms

/0 Comments/in , /by

By CNN. President Joe Biden will stick, for now, with an August 31 deadline to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan after determining the risks of Taliban reprisal or terror attacks were too high.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden relayed his decision in crisis talks of the Group of 7 on Tuesday morning, making clear the decision to stick to the withdrawal timeline was in large part driven by those security risks.

“The President conveyed that our mission in Kabul will end based on the achievement of our objectives,” Psaki said in a statement. “He confirmed we are currently on pace to finish by August 31st and provided an update on progress in evacuating Americans who want to come home, third-country nationals, and Afghans who were our allies during the war.”

Psaki said Biden noted that each day the risks are getting higher in a country now controlled by the Taliban. The President made a particular point of warning of the potential for terror attacks, which has become an acute concern inside his administration, Psaki said. (Read more from “Biden Sticks With Afghanistan Withdrawal Deadline” HERE)

__________________________________________________

CIA Boss Secretly Meets With Taliban as Evacuation Deadline Looms

By Washington Examiner. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns met in person with top Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar during a low-publicity rendezvous in Kabul on Monday.

Burns, a former diplomat and deputy secretary of state, traveled to the war-torn capital city of Kabul in Afghanistan for undisclosed negotiations with Baradar, according to reports first shared by the Washington Post. While the CIA has remained tight-lipped about the details of the meeting, Burns’s position as CIA director and a former high-ranking member of the State Department makes him the highest-ranking U.S. official to meet with the Taliban’s top brass in the flesh.

Word of the high-level meeting between Burns, a longtime diplomat now heading the spy agency under Biden, came as the U.S. mulled extending the Aug. 31 deadline to evacuate Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman warned of “consequences ” if the U.S. remained in Kabul into September, but the massive evacuation effort is proving difficult, and the military is running out of time to pull out American government workers, citizens, contractors, and Afghans who served the U.S. over the last 20 years. (Read more from “CIA Boss Secretly Meets With Taliban as Evacuation Deadline Looms” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

UN Leaders Say Taliban Is Responsible for Stability of Afghanistan

/1 Comment/in , /by

Leaders of the nations included in the Group of Seven (G-7) on Tuesday said the Taliban is responsible for preventing terrorism, respecting human rights and working toward a peaceful solution in Afghanistan.

The leaders made the statement in a joint release, marking the first time the international community has recognized the insurgent, Islamic fundamentalist group.

The G-7 statement came following an emergency meeting convened by the United Kingdom and is part of an effort to unite allies on global strategy toward Afghanistan.

The meeting also came amid increasing tension between international allies and President Biden, who has doubled down on completing U.S. military evacuations by Aug. 31.

The joint statement sought to project unity among leaders of the G-7, a grouping of the most advanced economies in the world, comprising the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Top officials from the European Union and NATO also joined the meeting. (Read more from “UN Leaders Say Taliban Is Responsible for Stability of Afghanistan” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Taliban Going Door-to-Door Executing Christians

/1 Comment/in , /by

A Christian ministry that has worked for years in Afghanistan has confirmed that the Taliban, in power because of Joe Biden’s abrupt withdrawal of American troops without a plan to evacuate endangered citizens ahead of the power change, is going door to door in a hunt for Christians to be executed.

The Frontier Alliance International ministry revealed in a statement that the atrocities are confirmed by first-hand ground reports.

“What we are witnessing right now is the decimation of the country and people of Afghanistan. We are watching 20 years of work and the strengthening of a nation being destroyed in a single day,” the organization posted online.

“The Taliban has a hit list of known Christians they are targeting to pursue and kill. The U.S. Embassy is defunct and there is no longer a safe place for believers to take refuge. All borders to neighboring countries are closed and all flights to and from have been halted, with the exception of private planes. People are fleeing into the mountains looking for asylum. They are fully reliant on God, who is the only One who can and will protect them.”

The statement continued, “The Taliban are going door-to-door taking women and children. The people must mark their house with an ‘X’ if they have a girl over 12 years old, so that the Taliban can take them. If they find a young girl and the house was not marked they will execute the entire family. If a married woman 25 years or older has been found, the Taliban promptly kill her husband, do whatever they want to her, and then sell her as a sex slave,” the ministry said. (Read more from “Taliban Going Door-to-Door Executing Christians” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Afghan Refugee Claims Taliban Raping the Dead Bodies of Its Victims

/1 Comment/in , /by

A female Afghan refugee using the name “Muskan” told India’s News18 on Saturday that Taliban fighters are raping both live women and the dead bodies of their victims.

News18’s account described Muskan as a “girl” who left her job in Afghanistan and fled to New Delhi after “her life was threatened by a Jihadist group.” The article did not say exactly when she left Afghanistan.

“When we were there, we received numerous warnings. If you go to work, you are under threat, your family is under threat. After one warning, they would stop giving any warning,” Muskan said.

“They rape dead bodies too. They don’t care whether the person is dead or alive. Can you imagine this?” she added.

Muskan claimed the Taliban is seizing women from “each household” in towns they conquered and planned a “horrible destiny” for any women suspected of working for the U.S.-supported Afghan federal government. (Read more from “Afghan Refugee Claims Taliban Raping the Dead Bodies of Its Victims” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Chinese Embassy Calls For WHO Investigation of U.S. Lab

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Chinese embassy called for a World Health Organization investigation into a United States military lab more than 7,500 miles away from the first documented cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China.

Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu responded to a Washington Free Beacon report on a Chinese propaganda campaign that claims the coronavirus leaked from a military lab in Fort Detrick, Md., saying the campaign not only reflects “serious concerns” but also warrants a full WHO investigation into the U.S. military installation.

“About Fort Detrick, the US has remained silent on the serious concerns raised by the international community, including US media,” Liu told the Free Beacon. “The US side must understand that the international community has every reason to raise questions about Fort Detrick, which has a poor track record and is notorious for breaches in lab and contaminant leak, and demand clarification and explanation from the US side and call on the WHO to conduct a thorough investigation into it. This requirement is not only for tracing the origin of COVID-19, but also for the safety of people in all countries.” (Read more from “Chinese Embassy Calls For WHO Investigation of U.S. Lab” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Heartbreaking: U.S. Student Details Horrors Afghan Family Experiencing After Taliban Takeover

/0 Comments/in , /by

A college student at Virginia Tech whose parents emigrated from Afghanistan is detailing the horrors her relatives are experiencing with the Taliban in control of the country.

“The night after the Taliban took over, I wake up – it’s another day here in America. I look at my phone and I have a missed call and a couple messages from a cousin in Afghanistan,” Mariam Farzayee, president of the Afghan Student Association at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, told Fox News. “He’s begging me for help to get him out, he says, ‘Is there any way you can sponsor me to leave? Is there any way you can help me get into another country?’”

“He was talking to me about he’s terrified for his own life and he feels so helpless and doesn’t know what he can really do from there,” Farzayee said, detailing the photos and videos she received showing how Taliban fighters were outside her cousin’s building. “He said the night before, the Taliban had come to his house and they broke a ton of windows in his neighborhood and they also broke the windows in his cars. He said all he could do was shelter in place because there’s really nothing he can do.”

Farzayee said her cousin was at the airport when he witnessed several people being trampled to death as crowds stampeded onto the tarmac and some desperately clung to the side of a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it took off. She said he has since returned to his home not far outside of Kabul. (Read more from “Heartbreaking: U.S. Student Details Horrors Afghan Family Experiencing After Taliban Takeover” HERE)

Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Taliban Leader Was Freed From Guantanamo Bay in 2014 Swap by Obama

/1 Comment/in , /by

When President Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American deserter in 2014, he assured a wary public that the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan.

In fact, they were left free to engineer Sunday’s sacking of Kabul.

Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the Obama-Biden administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn’t long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile.

Eventually, they were recognized by Western diplomats as official representatives of the Taliban during recent “peace” talks.

Earlier this year, one of them, Khairullah Khairkhwa, actually sat across the table from President Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Moscow, where Khairkhwa was part of the official Taliban delegation that negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years. (Read more from “Taliban Leader Was Freed From Guantanamo Bay in 2014 Swap by Obama” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.