Almost 24 Million People Affected by China Floods

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Torrential rains in China continued this week, threatening even worse floods after almost 24 million people have been impacted by 433 overflowing rivers, with millions evacuated and at least 142 dead as of Tuesday.

The largest of those rivers, the Yangtze, remains the focus of great concern. The third major flood of the year hit the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze on Sunday, pouring 50,000 cubic meters of water per second into its containment systems. An even larger surge was expected by Tuesday evening.

According to China’s state-run Xinhua news service, the Three Gorges Dam has discharged water nine times since July 18. Some residents living below the dam suspect there have been more unreported discharges and worry that officials could decide to vent uncontrollable floodwaters on them if the integrity of the showpiece hydroelectric dam is threatened.

The worst is yet to come, according to a statement from China’s water resources ministry on Tuesday. The ministry described the current flood control situation as “severe” and warned “the new peak may appear later,” with at least three more days of torrential rain on tap.

According to Chinese officials, the water level in the Three Gorges reservoir is currently just under 160 meters, down from a high of 164.18 meters last week. The maximum rated level for the reservoir is 175 meters. (Read more from “Almost 24 Million People Affected by China Floods” HERE)

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USDA Warns Against Mysterious, Unidentified Seeds Mailed from China to Multiple US States; “Possible Bioterrorism”

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By Emily Czachork. Kentucky is one of eight U.S. states where residents have reportedly received parcels containing unlabeled seeds, seemingly sent from China by mail.

Ryan Quarles, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, issued an alert [Sunday:] “Multiple states have opened investigations,” he wrote on Twitter, before providing residents with instructions should they receive one of the unsolicited parcels.

A photo attached to Quarles’ tweet showed six small seed bags wrapped in clear packaging. One seemed to contain a different variety of seed from the rest. Chinese characters appeared on two mailing labels pictured, as did a description listing the parcels’ contents as “jewelry” in English.

Agricultural departments in Virginia, Washington, Louisiana and Kansas shared nearly identical reports late last week. Each warned of potentially invasive species in its alert notice and encouraged residents to report any related information to the state. Residents in Utah, Arizona and Ohio have reportedly received unlabeled packages with seeds as well. (Read more about the unidentified seeds HERE)

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USDA Warns Against Chinese Seeds

By Thomson/Reuters. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday warned residents against planting unsolicited packages of seeds arriving from China because they could harm the environment.

At least eight states, from Washington to Ohio, have also told residents in recent days not to put the seeds in the ground, after they arrived apparently from China in the mailboxes of people who did not order them. Officials said the seeds could be invasive species that could threaten crops or livestock.

“At this point in time we don’t have enough information to know if this is a hoax, a prank, an internet scam or an act of agricultural bioterrorism,” Ryan Quarles, Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner, said in a video posted on the department’s website. . .

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Read more about the unidentified seeds HERE)

North Korea Declares Emergency Over COVID-19

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North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un has declared a state of emergency over what he said was the potential entrance of novel coronavirus into the country.

Kim convened on Saturday an emergency meeting of the political bureau of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee. The country is one of only about a dozen in the world that has not declared a single COVID-19 case, though new circumstances over the past weekend near the border city of Kaesong could reportedly affect this record.

“Amid the intensified anti-epidemic campaign for thoroughly checking the inroads of the world’s threatening pandemic, an emergency event happened in Kaesong City where a runaway who went to the south three years ago, a person who is suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus returned on July 19 after illegally crossing the demarcation line,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported Sunday. . .

“Despite the intense preventive anti-epidemic measures taken in all fields throughout the country and tight closure of all the channels for the last six months, there happened a critical situation in which the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country,” Kim was cited as saying, noting he has completely sealed off Kaesong City and isolated each district and region as of July 24. (Read more from “North Korea Declares Emergency Over COVID-19” HERE)

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Italian Community Stuns Scientists Amid Virus Outbreak

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Questions abound as a tiny Italian island has been mostly spared from the devastations of COVID-19.

Were people on Giglio Island perhaps infected but didn’t show symptoms? Was it something genetic? Something else, or just plain luck?

None of Giglio’s roughly 800 close-knit islanders said they developed COVID-19 symptoms even though the conditions seemed favorable for the disease to spread like wildfire, as The Associated Press reported.

The Gigliesi, as the residents are known, have socialized in the steep alleys near the port or on the granite steps serving as narrow streets in the hilltop Castle neighborhood, with densely packed homes built against the remnants of a fortress erected centuries ago to protect against pirates.

Dr. Armando Schiaffino, the island’s sole physician for around 40 years, shared worry about a potential local outbreak. (Read more from “Italian Community Stuns Scientists Amid Virus Outbreak” HERE)

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China Retaliates, Orders U.S. to Shutdown Consulate

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China ordered the United States on Friday to close its consulate in the city of Chengdu, responding to a U.S. demand for China to close its Houston consulate, as relations between the world’s two largest economies deteriorate.

The order to close the Chengdu consulate in southwestern China’s Sichuan province continued Beijing’s recent practice of like-for-like responses to Washington’s actions.

Beijing had threatened retaliation after the Trump administration this week gave it 72 hours – until Friday – to vacate its consulate in the Texas city, and had urged the United States to reconsider. . .

Senior U.S. officials said on Friday espionage activity by China’s diplomatic missions was occurring all over the United States, but its Houston consulate was one of the worst offenders and its activity went well over the line of what was acceptable.

A senior State Department official also linked espionage activity at China’s Houston consulate to China’s pursuit of research into a vaccine for the new coronavirus. (Read more from “China Retaliates, Orders U.S. to Shutdown Consulate” HERE)

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President Trump Hints at Closure of More Chinese Consulates; China Threatens to Retaliate

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Trump Hints at Closure of More Chinese Consulates as China Fumes

By Al Jazeera. US President Donald Trump has indicated that it was “always possible” he would order the closure of more Chinese consulates in the United States, after the US gave Beijing 72 hours to shut its consulate in Houston further souring ties between the two countries.

Trump, at a White House news conference on Wednesday, noted that a fire had been spotted on the Houston consulate’s grounds after the US Department of State ordered the closure.

“I guess they were burning documents and burning papers,” he said. (Read more from “Trump Hints at Closure of More Chinese Consulates as China Fumes” HERE)

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China Threatens to Retaliate Over U.S. Closure of Houston Consulate

By Newsweek. China’s state-backed Global Times newspaper has taken to Twitter to ask followers where Beijing will retaliate for the U.S. closure of its Houston consulate this week.

The nationalistic newspaper—owned by the People’s Daily which is the Chinese Communist Party’s official publication—asked social media users to suggest which U.S. consulate in China would be ordered closed in response to the shuttering of the Houston facility, which means all staff will be evicted by Friday.

The U.S. order—given to “to protect American intellectual property and American’s private information,” according to State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus—was met with scorn in Beijing.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters Wednesday that the order constituted an “unprecedented escalation” in tensions, warning: “If the U.S. continues to go down the wrong path, we will resolutely respond.” (Read more from “China Threatens to Retaliate Over U.S. Closure of Houston Consulate” HERE)

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U.S. Orders China’s Houston Consulate to Close, Citing ‘Massive Illegal Spying’; FBI: China Harboring Military-Linked Biologist Fugitive

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By The Federalist. The United States ordered China to shutter its consulate in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday, accusing the communist government of a “marked increase” in spying operations over the past few years.

The U.S. gave Chinese officials at the consulate 72 hours to move out before being evicted. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) suggested that any Chinese agents from the consulate who don’t leave the country within 72 hours would be arrested as spies.

The consulate is one of five in the U.S., not including the Chinese embassy in Washington.

A statement from a State Department spokesperson accused China of having “engaged for years in massive illegal spying and influence operations,” which have “increased markedly in scale and scope over the past few years.”

Additionally, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told Fox News that the U.S. “will not tolerate the PRC’s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior.” (Read more from “U.S. Orders China’s Houston Consulate to Close, Citing ‘Massive Illegal Spying’” HERE)

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FBI: China Harboring Military-Linked Biologist Fugitive

By Fox News. The Chinese consulate in San Francisco is harboring a biology researcher who falsely denied connections to the Chinese military to obtain a visa and gain access to the country, according to court documents filed by the FBI.

The filing came as part of a document that cited a slew of other alleged episodes in which Chinese nationals allegedly lied on their visa applications by hiding their military connections.

Tang Juan, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, stated on her J-1 visa application that she “had never served in the military, but open source investigation revealed photographs of her in the uniform of the Civilian Cadre of the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], and that she had been employed as a researcher at the Air Force Military Medical University, which is another name for FMMU [Fourth Military Medical University],” the FBI claimed.

Then, during an interview with FBI agents on June 20, Tang “denied serving in the Chinese military, claimed she did not know the meaning of the insignia on her uniform, and that wearing a military uniform was required for attendance at FMMU because it was a military school.”

The FBI revealed it then executed a search warrant immediately at Tang’s home and found additional evidence of Tang’s PLA affiliation. (Read more from “FBI: China Harboring Military-Linked Biologist Fugitive” HERE)

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More Evidence That China Is Lying That COVID-19 Was First Transmitted From Animals to Humans

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Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party has desperately tried to convince the world that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, was naturally transmitted from animals to humans.

That is, SARS-CoV-2, over time, naturally mutated in animals until it attained structures capable of infecting humans.

A new scientific study, however, demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 could not have “jumped” from animals to humans in the way China claims, because it is probably incapable of infecting bats or pangolins (scaly anteaters), the only two animal hosts that could have harboured the virus.

The closest ancestor to SARS-CoV-2 so far identified by China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology is the bat RaTG13 coronavirus with over 96% identity at the genomic level.

A newly reported bat coronavirus, RmYN02, also found by China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, shares 93.3% nucleotide identity with SARS-CoV-2, but apparently lacks the ability to infect humans.

Besides bat coronaviruses, two pangolin coronaviruses share up to 90% and 85.2% sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2.

It is important to note, however, that, while SARS-CoV-2 appears to be of bat ancestry, there is still no definitive evidence of an intermediate host, such as pangolins, that could have transmitted the virus to humans.

When asked about that possibility of pangolins being the SARS-CoV-2 host, Dr Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert from the University of North Carolina, in a March 15, 2020 interview, stated pangolins were not the source.

“Pangolins have over 3,000 nucleotide changes – no way they are the reservoir species [for SARS-CoV-2], absolutely no chance,” he said.

Most of the research on SARS-CoV-2 has been focussed on the cascade of events regulated by the protein part of the spike glycoprotein, or S-protein, which has two sections, S1, primarily responsible for binding to the human cell and S2, driving fusion with the cell membrane and entry.

The S1 section contains a sequence of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, called the receptor binding domain (RBD), which defines the coronavirus’ ability to bind to the specific human angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptor (ACE2).

Several scientific studies have demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 already demonstrated high-affinity human binding even in the earliest cases and that it appeared to be “pre-adapted” for human infection.

Between the S1 and S2 sections of SARS-CoV-2 is a furin polybasic cleavage site (amino acid sequence proline, arginine, arginine, alanine or PRRA), a distinctive feature widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility in coronaviruses , but NOT PRESENT in any closely related bat or pangolin coronavirus.

To summarise, it is believed that SARS-CoV binds to the human cell ACE2 receptor making the furin polybasic cleavage site more accessible to human cell protein cleavage enzymes. The cleavage of the SARS-CoV-2 protein at the S1 and S2 junction facilitates the fusion of the SARS-CoV-2 membrane with the human cell membrane allowing the insertion of viral genetic material for subsequent virus replication and release.

The most astounding finding of the new study is that insertion of the PRRA polybasic cleavage site into the bat RaTG13 coronavirus, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, but lacks the PRRA site, caused the modified RaTG13 to lose its ability to infect both bats and pangolins.

It is, therefore, highly unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 could have originated naturally in bats or pangolins, if the addition of the PRRA furin polybasic cleavage site selects against the survival of the virus in either animal.

This new study further confirms the claim that SARS-CoV-2, which appears to have the “backbone” of a bat coronavirus, must have been genetically manipulated in the laboratory. (For more from the author of “More Evidence That China Is Lying That COVID-19 Was First Transmitted From Animals to Humans” please click HERE)

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Lawrence Sellin, PhD is a retired US Army Reserve colonel. He has previously worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is [email protected].

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Hong Kong Police Detain Protesters, Journalists, and Politicians, Deny Claims of Excessive Force

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Hong Kong riot police on Tuesday evening dispersed a protest marking the first anniversary of the Yuen Long railway station attack, a major event in the 2019 protests locally known as the “721 Incident.”

Police searched out and fined both demonstrators and journalists covering the event, along with two politicians, Kwai Tsing district councilor Rayman Chow and Democratic Party lawmaker Ted Hui. The police denied claims they used excessive force, including pepper balls. The demonstrators reportedly favored black clothing, an inversion of the white shirts worn by the swarm of club-wielding men who attacked pro-democracy protesters, journalists, and innocent bystanders at the Yuen Long station on July 21, 2019.

Critics of the Hong Kong government say Beijing may have ordered the assault, using hired gangsters as muscle and apparently indulged by the Hong Kong police, who responded very slowly to the bloody rampage at Yuen Long and have not vigorously investigated the organizers of the attack.

A few provocative local media reports fueled public anger with the police as the Yuen Long anniversary approached. A documentary prompted the authorities to grudgingly admit they were aware of the white-shirted, club-wielding thugs assembling before they swarmed into the station and started beating people. Further, a separate piece in the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily claimed internal documents show the police were ordered not to respond to calls for help from Yuen Long on the day of the attack.

To date, police have charged only seven people with “rioting” and “conspiracy to injure others” for the 721 Incident, even though over a hundred white-shirted men participated in the beatings. A number of attackers caught on video or photographed by onlookers conspicuously remain unarrested, including one filmed beating up a reporter. (Read more from “Hong Kong Police Detain Protesters, Journalists, and Politicians, Deny Claims of Excessive Force” HERE)

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Russian Elites Reportedly Given Access to Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine

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A group of Russian tycoons, business executives and government officials were given early access to an experimental coronavirus vaccine, according to a report.

They were given shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow as early as April, which last week completed a phase 1 trial on military personnel, Bloomberg News reported.

Gamaleya, backed by the Defense Ministry and the state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund, hasn’t published results of the study and has moved on to the next round of trials.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he doesn’t know the names of those who received the vaccine. . .

The Health Ministry said in a statement that only those participating in the trials are eligible for a shot. (Read more from “Russian Elites Reportedly Given Access to Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine” HERE)

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