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U.S. Ambassador: China must be honest about COVID’s origins

U.S. Ambassador: China must be honest about COVID's origins
Photo: EFE

February 28 |

The U.S. ambassador to China says Beijing needs to be more forthcoming about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a day after reports that the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that the outbreak likely began because of a leak at a Chinese lab.

Nicholas Burns said Monday at a US Chamber of Commerce event via video link that China needs to “be more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan with the origin of the COVID-19 crisis.” Wuhan is the Chinese city where the first cases of the new coronavirus were reported in December 2019.

His comments come a day after U.S. media reported that the Department of Energy determined that the pandemic likely stemmed from a lab leak in Wuhan.

The department made its judgment in a classified intelligence report provided to the White House and key members of Congress, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the development, citing people who read the report.

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The WSJ said the Energy Department’s intelligence agency was now the second U.S. intelligence agency after the FBI to conclude that a leak at a Chinese lab was the likely cause of the pandemic, although U.S. spy agencies remain divided over the origins of the virus.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby echoed that sentiment.

“There has been no definitive conclusion or consensus in the U.S. government on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kirby told reporters Monday when asked about the WSJ report.

The Energy Department’s assessment was made with “low confidence,” while the FBI’s conclusion was determined with “moderate confidence,” according to the WSJ. Four other U.S. agencies reportedly determined with “low confidence” that the virus was naturally transmitted through animals, while two other agencies remain undecided.

The reports bring national attention back to the question of what caused the COVID-19 outbreak.

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The Energy Department’s conclusion marks a shift from its earlier position that it was undecided about how the virus began. U.S. officials did not disclose what new intelligence prompted the change. The Energy Department’s analysis came from its network of national laboratories, giving it a different perspective than more traditional intelligence assessments.

On Sunday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that “there are a variety of views in the intelligence community.”

“Some elements of the intelligence community have come to conclusions on one side, some on the other,” he said.

Scientists have also been divided on the issue, with some pointing to the live animal market in Wuhan as the most likely place where the virus emerged, noting that animal-to-human transmission has been the pathway for many previously unknown pathogens. However, other scientists have given credence to the laboratory escape theory, noting that no animal source has been found and that Wuhan is a major site of coronavirus research.

The question of how the virus began has also exacerbated political divisions in the U.S., with Republicans more likely to back the lab leak hypothesis.

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Republican Senator Tom Cotton was one of the first high-profile politicians to express the theory that the virus originated in a laboratory, commenting in February 2020, when the prevailing view was that the virus had been transmitted by bats and spread at a food market in Wuhan.

After a growing number of scientists urged serious consideration of both hypotheses, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered an intelligence review of the origins of COVID-19 in May 2021.

An intelligence assessment declassified in October 2021 indicated that both hypotheses were plausible, but that intelligence agencies remained divided over which theory was correct. The report said there was consensus among intelligence agencies that the pandemic was not the result of a Chinese biological weapons program.

China has repeatedly denied that there was a lab leak in Wuhan. It has placed limits on World Health Organization investigations to determine the origin of the virus.

Some of the information in this report came from Reuters.

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International

The Court of the IADH rules out measures in favor of Gustavo Petro amid investigations into his campaign

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IDHR) considered it “inappropriate” to grant provisional measures in favor of the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, which his representatives requested in the midst of investigations for apparent irregular financing of his political campaign.

The IADH Court explained that Petro’s legal team requested the measures as part of the process of supervising the sentence issued in 2020, in which the court condemned Colombia for the dismissal of Petro from his position as mayor of Bogotá in 2013.

The resolution, published on the website of the IADH Court, determined that the case resolved in 2020 is not related to the provisional measures and therefore rejected them.

“The Court considers that the aforementioned request is not related to the subject of the case (resolved in 2020) or to the implementation of any of the three guarantees of non-repetition of regulatory adequacy ordered in the judgment, which makes it inappropriate,” the resolution indicates.

A “factual” and “legal” situation different from that of 2020

The text adds that the request of Petro’s representatives “is based on a factual and legal situation different from that known to this Court in the Petro Urrego case judgment issued in 2020.”

“On that occasion, the Court considered it unconventional for an administrative authority to order the cessation and eventual disqualification of popularly elected officials. From the information provided in this request for provisional measures, it does not appear that the administrative body in question has the power to disqualify or restrict the political rights of a popularly elected official,” the Court of Human Rights determined.

Last October, the National Electoral Council (CNE) filed charges for alleged irregularities to the campaign that led Petro to the Presidency of Colombia in 2022.

The investigation found an alleged violation of spending caps of 5.3 billion pesos (about 1.19 million dollars).

In the request for provisional measures before the Inter-American Court, Petro’s representatives affirmed that there is an “irregular attribution of powers to the CNE to investigate President Gustavo Petro Urrego, which contravenes the conventional and constitutional guarantees of the integral jurisdiction enjoyed by the dignity of the office of President of the Republic.”

They added that the responsibility for investigating belongs to the Legal Committee of Investigation and Prosecutions of the Senate House of Representatives.

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International

The Constitutional Court of Peru annuls the sentence against the leader of Dina Boluarte’s former party

The Peruvian Constitutional Court (TC) annulled this Thursday the sentence for corruption against the politician Vladimir Cerrón, leader of the Marxist party Free Peru in which President Dina Boluarte campaigned until 2022, after remaining on the run for more than a year, a time in which time the president began to be investigated for her alleged cover-up.

The TC declared the appeal of habeas corpus presented by Cerrón’s defense against the sentence, issued last year, which sentenced him to 3 and a half years in prison for the crime of collusion, for the concession of the Wanka Aerodrome when he was a regional authority of Junín, according to the judicial decision published by local media.

Boluarte was linked to Cerrón’s escape, after his official car was discovered by the press in a spa south of Lima, where the police searched days before for the leader of his former political party.

The Court claimed that the Junín Appeals Chamber violated the right to due motivation of judicial decisions by not specifying whether the crime of simple collusion was an instant, continuous and permanent crime.

The nullity of the sentence

The magistrates pointed out that this information is important to define the prescription of the crime, as Cerrón’sdefense maintains.

In that sense, the TC has ordered the Junín Appeals Chamber to issue a new pronouncement, in which it responds on the limitation periods of the crime to determine whether the criminal proceedings are still in force or are being filed.

Once the resolution was released in the media, Cerrón himself celebrated the news on the social network X and said that the TC is, in recent times, “the moral reserve” of Peruvian justice.

He added that the Constitutional Court declared the sentence against him null and void for being “arbitrary”, by declaring his appeal of habeas corpus in the Wanka Aerodrome case well-founded.

Cerrón is currently being prosecuted for other cases of alleged corruption when he was a regional authority and for the last electoral campaign in which his party presented the formula headed by Pedro Castillo, the dismissed former president for his failed coup d’état in 2022, and Boluarte as vice president.

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International

Guterres calls for “avoiding at all costs” the integration of AI into nuclear weapons

UN Secretary-General António Guterres advocated on Thursday in the UN Security Council to “avoid at all costs” the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in nuclear weapons, something that could have “potentially disastrous consequences”.

“AI without human supervision would leave the world blind, and would put world peace and security in a dangerous and reckless place,” Guterres told the Security Council, where a ministerial session is being held today, chaired by US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, on the progress of this tool and its implications in global security.

The Secretary General stressed that, while AI is making “a positive difference” in countries suffering from conflicts, food insecurity or the effects of climate change, it has also entered “the battlefield in a more problematic way.”

In this sense, he indicated that recent conflicts have become a testing ground for military applications of AI, which “creates a fertile ground for misunderstandings, miscalculations and mistakes.”

Humans and the algorithm

Thus, he recalled that this tool has already been used to select targets and make “life or death” decisions, and pointed out that cyberattacks made possible by AI “could paralyze the critical infrastructures of a country and its essential services.”

“Let’s be clear: the fate of humanity should never be left in the hands of the ‘black box’ of an algorithm. Humans must always have control in decision-making guided by international law, including international humanitarian and human rights laws and ethical principles,” he added.

In addition to its effects on international security, Guterres focused on the danger posed by the AI creating “very realistic content” that is then spread on the Internet and “manipulates public opinion, threatens the integrity of information and makes the truth indistinguishable from lies.”

The Portuguese politician brought up the UN Global Digital Compact, which was approved last September and addresses the rapid advance of AI, and shared his intention to finance innovative opportunities for this tool “where it is most needed.”

“A world of rich and poor in AI would be a world of perpetual instability. We must never allow (this technology) to lead to an advance of inequality,” he stressed, and said that technology must be “at the service of all humanity.”

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