Also on today’s menu:
Moscow Comes Under Drone Attack
Profiting From The Insurrection
New Rules End Multi-Use Nature Of Public Lands
A branch of the People’s Republic of China did investigate the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was carrying out coronavirus research and found that scientists there were “following all the protocols”, according to Professor George Gao, head of China’s Centre for Disease Control, a man who played a key role in the country’s pandemic response. However, while the Chinese government dismisses any suggestion that the disease may have originated in the Wuhan laboratory, Gao told the BBC, “You can always suspect anything. That’s science. Don’t rule out anything.”
Gao was the first to acknowledge that an official investigation had taken place, but he has not seen the results. He understands that the lab received a clean bill of health.
Now-declassified U.S. intelligence suggests that several researchers at the WIV became sick in autumn 2019 with symptoms “consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses” but most scientists at the time dismissed the lab-leak theory and got behind an alternate theory that the virus spread naturally from bats to humans, perhaps by way of other animals.
Dissenting scientists who said there is not enough evidence to rule out the most logical possibility — that the virus infected someone involved in the research to better understand the threat of emerging viruses — were ridiculed and shunned.
Moscow Comes Under Drone Attack
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived at work early this morning to learn more about a drone attack that damaged buildings in Moscow and led to the evacuation of some of them. The attack came as Russia made three assaults on Kiev within 24 hours.
The Russian defense ministry called the drone strikes a “terrorist attack” and said five of the drones were shot down and the systems of three others were jammed, causing them to veer off course.
Ukraine made no direct comment on the Moscow attack, but its air force said Ukraine shot down 29 of 31 drones that Russia had fired, most of them in the Kyiv area.
Profiting From The Insurrection
Supporters of people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, have been donating money to them, with Texas resident Daniel Goodwyn having raised more than $25,000 through a website — money that the Justice Department wants to seize to prevent rioters from personally profiting from the insurrection.
An Associated Press review of court records shows that prosecutors are asking judges to impose fines on top of prison sentences to offset supporter donations purportedly to help cover their legal expenses. Many of those charged have government-funded legal representation. So far this year, prosecutors have sought more than $390,000 in fines against at least 21 riot defendants, in amounts ranging from $450 to more than $71,000, according to the AP’s tally.
Separately, judges have ordered hundreds of convicted rioters to pay more than $524,000 in restitution to the government to cover more than $2.8 million in damage to the Capitol and other January 6-related expenses.
Meanwhile, on May 28, Jacob Angeli Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman,” autographed mugshots and t-shirts at the Reformed Living Bible Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. He had been sentenced to 41 months in prison but went to a halfway house in March due, in part, to good behavior while incarcerated, and now is free. When entering a guilty plea, he had said, “I have no excuse. No excuses whatsoever. My behavior is indefensible.” Yet now that he has been released from custody, he thanked supporters for not believing “the lies spoken about me by our own federal government”.
“I certainly felt buried beneath a pile of false accusations, media malarkey, endless pages of legal paperwork,” he said. “But I once heard a saying that, sometimes, when you’re in the dark place in life and you feel like you’ve been buried, you are actually being planted by the hand of God. That sounds a lot better, because if we’re planted, that means it’s because a benevolent force wants us to grow.”
New Rules End Multi-Use Nature Of Public Lands
Two years ago, President Joe Biden announced efforts to “protect America’s natural treasures, increase reforestation, improve access to recreation, and increase resilience to wildfires and storms”, but the Bureau of Land Management has taken that to mean that non-governmental organizations should be able to lease federal lands to “best meet the present and future needs of the people” even if means restricting access to the 245 million acres under its jurisdiction.
“This is an attempt by the Biden administration to end multiple use on public lands,” according to William Perry Pendley, who led the BLM during the Trump Administration.
The proposed rule change includes vague references to prioritizing “ecosystem resilience” and the implementation of “indigenous knowledge” when deciding what is allowed, which could affect grazing rights as well as other uses of federal property. Although proposed guidelines offer protections for those with valid existing rights, ranchers might lose their chance to renew their claims amidst competition from deep-pocketed environmental groups that can now claim priority.
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