Bill Gertz: Australian researchers see virus design manipulation
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/21/australian-researchers-see-virus-design-manipulati/
A forthcoming Australian scientific study concludes that the coronavirus causing the global pandemic contains unique properties suggesting it was manipulated in a Chinese laboratory and was not the result of a natural occurrence.
Five scientists who conducted the study discovered an unusual ability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as the pathogen behind COVID-19 is called, to easily infect humans.
The scientists said there is no sign so far that the virus can be found in other animals, including bats or the exotic wildlife sold for fresh meat at a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified and where China maintains a major laboratory studying such viruses.
The preliminary report of the study, which is now being peer-reviewed, is based on computer modeling of the virus’ ability to infect various animals, including humans. It was published May 13 on the Cornell University website arXiv.org, which is used for discussion of pre-publication papers.
Nikolai Petrovsky, the lead researcher, said his team suspects human manipulation in Wuhan because of the unmatched ability of the virus’ protruding spike to infect human cells.
The virus’ binding strength for human cells “far exceeds” similar properties for infecting other animals, he said in a statement on the forthcoming report.
“This, plus the fact that no corresponding virus has been found to exist in nature, leads to the possibility that COVID-19 is a human-created virus,” said Mr. Petrovsky, a professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.
LED TO:
Wuhan lab admits to having three live strains of bat coronavirus on site
https://nypost.com/2020/05/24/wuhan-lab-admits-to-having-three-live-strains-of-bat-coronavirus/
“Now we have three strains of live viruses… But their highest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8 percent,” Yanyi said, referring to the coronavirus strain that causes COVID-19.
“It’s an obvious difference,” she said, according to AFP.
Mueller prosecutor held secret meetings targeting Paul Manafort before Russia probe: IG
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/24/top-mueller-prosecutor-andrew-weissmann-focused-pa/
Former Trump-Russia prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who emerged last week as a fundraiser for Joseph R. Biden, is a sidelight in the Justice Department inspector general’s report on FBI wiretap abuse.
The Weissmann story by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz deals with a group of Justice Department and FBI personnel who met secretly during and after the election to try to rev up a stalled money laundering probe into Paul Manafort, briefly Donald Trump’s campaign chairman.
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As told by Mr. Horowitz, the anti-Manafort gaggles attracted the leading players in the Trump-Russia saga: FBI agent Peter Strzok; his then-lover, bureau counsel Lisa Page; and Bruce Ohr, then an associate deputy attorney general. Mr. Ohr became a freelance courier for a variety of anti-Trump claims from dossier-writer Christopher Steele and his handler, Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS.
Mr. Horowitz veered into the Manafort matter because Mr. Weissmann, Mr. Strzok and others kept their meetings off-limits to the department’s political leaders, during both the Obama and the Trump administrations.
They also didn’t inform the chief of Justice’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, which had custody of the Manafort probe. Kendall Day, who ran MLARS, said the group had an “unusual level of interest” that could be interpreted as targeting Manafort for “inappropriate reasons.”
Criminal Division assistant AG Leslie Caldwell, one of those kept out of the loop, told the inspector general that the group’s secrecy was “a little bit paranoid.”