Free Republic

A leftist economist connected to liberal billionaire George Soros claimed that the Wuhan COVID-19 virus actually originated in a U.S. lab, feeding Communist Chinese anti-American propaganda. Columbia University Center for Sustainable Development Director Jeffrey Sachs decried the U.S. government’s “very harsh line against China” during a talk at the Madrid-based GATE Center June 15. “I’m pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature — Just to mention after two years of intensive work on this. So it’s a blunder in my view of [U.S.] biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover,” Sachs said. Sachs’s...

Three Chinese warships completed a 17-day circuit around the Japanese archipelago on Wednesday, following a route similar to one taken by Russian warships earlier in June. Two Chinese guided-missile destroyers and a replenishment oiler steamed through the Miyako Strait, between Okinawa and Miyako Island, around 11 p.m. Wednesday, Japan's Joint Staff said in a news release Thursday. The Joint Staff confirmed the same ships were spotted June 12 starting a journey that took them past Japan's largest islands. A flotilla of seven Russian vessels began a similar journey June 15, of which five completed a circuit around Japan on June...