Free Republic

China's Communist Party is at this moment putting in place the infrastructure in America to attack America. [I]n Reedley, California, near Fresno, authorities found a secret Chinese biological weapons lab with at least 20 pathogens, including the one for Ebola, and almost a thousand mice that had been genetically engineered to spread disease. Chinese agents, in addition to hobbling Americans with disease and gunning them down, could bomb power stations, attack military bases, start wildfires, poison reservoirs, or create terror in dozens of ways. These tactics come straight out of Unrestricted Warfare, a 1999 book written by two Chinese air...

Republican lawmakers advanced a bill Wednesday that would ban funding of research labs controlled by North Korea, China, and other adversarial nations. Democrats say the move will put America’s national security at risk... To Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), these measures unravel "the hard-fought credibility and influence the United States has earned as a global leader," the lawmakers said in a press release Wednesday. "The bill threatens our national security and puts the American people and global health at risk," the Democrats added. DeLauro accused Republicans during a markup hearing Wednesday of...

While U.S. intelligence has been unable in two years to determine for sure if COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab, Congress has decided it no longer wants to take the risk of funding medical research at labs controlled by Beijing or other American adversaries.With little fanfare and in bipartisan fashion, House appropriators quietly amended the 2023 federal budget for health and science agencies on Thursday to ban any funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which U.S. intelligence fears may have been the origin point for the coronavirus pandemic, and other labs like it."None of the funds made available by...

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking answers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dr. Anthony Fauci about funding that was provided for experiments on beagle puppies. Twenty-four members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of NIH. The letter was prompted by the nonprofit group White Coat Waste which obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act that appear to show NIAID spent $1.68 million in taxpayer money for experiments on beagle puppies in a lab in Tunisia. Those...

The US moratorium on gain-of-function experiments has been rescinded, but scientists are split over the benefits—and risks—of such studies. Talha Burki reports. On Dec 19, 2017, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A moratorium had been in place since October, 2014. At the time, the NIH had stated that the moratorium “will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new US Government gain-of-function research policy”. This process...

BOSTON (AP) — A Harvard University professor has been c harged with lying about his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program and concealing payments he received from the Chinese government for research, federal officials said Tuesday. Charles Lieber, chair of the department of chemistry and chemical biology, is accused of hiding his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed to recruit people with access to and knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property.

New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson will go before the U.S. Senate in coming weeks as Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of Commerce. Will Democrats in that chamber remember his performance in 1999 and 2000 as Energy secretary, when secrets disappeared from nuclear laboratories, and one Democratic senator promised to oppose Richardson for any future nomination? In the January of 1999, the U.S. House Select Committee on Intelligence published ... the “Cox Report” -- which found that China had stolen and still was stealing nuclear weapons secrets from the U.S. The committee reported that “the primary focus of this long-term,...

After the release of the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer report, the headlines blazed "No WMD Found." ...This reflects the notion that Iraq was only a threat if it had military munitions filled with WMD. The claim "Iraq was not an imminent threat" was also expounded by pundits that seemingly crawled out of the woodwork as well as those opposed to President Bush. But have these individuals read carefully the report...? While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale...

<p>PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- Theranos says the federal government has banned founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes from owning or running a medical laboratory for two years.</p> <p>The company announced the decision by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Thursday.</p>

The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that live anthrax was shipped from a lab in Utah to other states.

The Department of Defense has ordered a review of all labs following revelations that the number of labs that received live anthrax samples is larger than first reported."As of now, 24 laboratories in 11 states and two foreign countries are believed to have received suspect samples. We continue to work closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who is leading the ongoing investigation pursuit to its statutory authorities. The Department will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates to the public," Defense Department said in a statement.The Defense Department had previously reported labs in nine states...

Details of Bioweapons Lab Emerge, but Not Proof U.S. intelligence analysts have been closely examining satellite images of the west bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad for signs of a laboratory rumored to exist there. Called Tahhaddy, or "Challenge," the lab is purported to have 85 employees and a top-secret mission: making biological weapons for Iraq's military.Details about the lab have trickled out of Iraq in recent months in accounts from defectors and Iraqi exiles opposed to President Saddam Hussein. They tell of underground test chambers, heavy security and a viral strain code-named "Blue Nile," which sounds suspiciously like...

Rats or Humans? Inside Saddam's Extermination Plant(August 29, 2002)This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/ He was introduced as director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons. Asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, Dr Mohammed Frah played a straight bat: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna." This is the name of a critical centre in Saddam's weapons program - a huge pesticide complex that produced...

A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer—a high proportion of them from university labs—are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future. During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications—papers in top journals, from reputable labs—for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development. Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. "It...

Expanding Afghan War Awaits New President An expanded U.S. military involvement awaits a new U.S. president in Afghanistan where the unfinished business of September 11 has flared over the past three years into a major insurgency. A raft of assessments and reviews now underway in Washington point to a fundamental rethinking of the Afghan war. But whoever is elected Tuesday will face choices on the size of the military buildup, how to strengthen the central government, how far to go in dealing with insurgent sanctuaries across the border, how to help stabilize Pakistan, and whether and how to reconcile...

Unfortunately for [Linton] Brooks, Los Alamos was unable to shed its image as the problem child of the nuclear labs family. In late October 2006, police stumbled upon thumb drives containing classified information from Los Alamos during a meth bust in a trailer park. On Jan. 4, Brooks finally took the fall. While news of his dismissal was overshadowed by a major shake-up in the top echelons of the military and the intelligence community, it came at a critical time for the future of the nuclear weapons complex. With very little public attention, the NNSA is embarking on a project...

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 4 -- Under the cover of a moonless night, U.S. soldiers on Sunday strung nearly a mile of razor-sharp concertina wire across the northern edge of a neighborhood dominated by insurgents to prevent them from fleeing without a showdown. Several small teams of five or six troops quickly uncoiled spools of wire and fastened it along the deserted sidewalk of a broad thoroughfare. The cordon was intended to prevent insurgents from blending in with the hundreds of people who fled the city during heavy clashes Sunday. "The idea is to trap them in Sarai or force...

Shukhrat Masirokhunov met with Osama bin Laden, was trained by Khattab, recruited mujaheddin and fought Americans in Afghanistan. He also has firsthand knowledge about the situation in Chechnya A Tashkent city court delivered a guilty verdict against members of the Akromiylar movement who took part in the Andizhan events (May, 12-13, 2005). The authorities allege that militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) were also involved. Shukhrat Masirokhunov, 34, a former chief of the IMU counterintelligence service who was extradited from Pakistan several months ago, is now awaiting trial in Tashkent. He faces 20 years in prison. It is...

Mankind has an aggravating habit of complicating simple issues. Perhaps the most obvious example in present times is the raging debate over embryonic stem cell research. Let’s put this in its proper perspective… Do you think it’s okay to create a human child, freeze the little guy for up to 5 years, then thaw the poor kid out and kill him? This is the process of storing human embryos and harvesting embryonic stem cells. I could explore the various facets of the debate ranging from the hidden agenda of pro-abortionists to the possibilities of medical advances. But why bother? All...

Two Chinese diplomats, away from their Los Angeles consulate improperly, recently sped their vehicle past a Los Alamos National Lab guard post near classified facilities in what United States officials think was ian intelligence mission, the Washington Times has learned.The diplomats, identified as Hua Yu and Bo Lai, were on an intelligence mission that is raising new worries of Chinese nuclear spying against the United States, according to US officials familiar with the incident.Pajarito Road is the site of two sensitive facilities. One is the Critical Assembly Facility known as Technical Area 18, the other is the Plutonium Reasearch facility,...