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The Paris prosecutor’s office announced it is investigating the suspected widespread use of the Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human rights activists and politicians in multiple countries.

Phones of Macron and some French ministers targeted in Pegasus affair, according to French media

The cell phones of French President Emmanuel Macron and 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets in 2019 of surveillance by spyware made by the Israel-based NSO Group…

Most Americans now believe that the coronavirus leaked from a laboratory in China, according to a new POLITICO-Harvard poll that found a dramatic shift in public perception of Covid-19’s origins over the last year.

POLITICO-Harvard poll: Most Americans believe Covid leaked from lab

Opinion on the lab leak scenario, once seen as a fringe theory, has shifted dramatically.

The Biden administration blacklisted seven Chinese officials over violations of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, a bill signed into law by former President Donald Trump in July 2020. President Trump ended the special economic status granted to Hong Kong in response to China’s drive to erode the territory’s autonomy guaranteed by the Communist regime under the “one country, two systems” policy when it took control of the territory in 1997.

China Threatens to Deal a “Head-on Blow” to U.S. Over Sanctions on Chinese Officials

U.S. Treasury blacklists seven Chinese officials under Trump-era Hong Kong Autonomy Act.

1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones said she believes Cuba is the most equal country in the western hemisphere. She noted how Cuba was one of the most ‘equal’ and ‘multiracial’ countries in the with ‘very little inequality’ between black and white people living there.

1619 Project founder says communist Cuba among ‘most equal’ countries

1619 Project writer Nikole Hannah-Jones said she believes Cuba is the most equal country in the western hemisphere. She believes the communist country could serve as a model for integration.

From what I can tell Cuba is in trouble for 4 immediate reasons:

1. The demise of Venezuela’s Daddy Oilbucks largesse;
2. The collapse of the tourism industry;
3. The pandemic;
4. The lack of FX to import food and other essentials due to the abolition of their dual currency system

Together they add up to no hay nada.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration and Western allies formally blamed China on Monday for a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software and asserted that criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government have carried out ransomware and other illicit cyber operations.

Microsoft Exchange hack caused by China, US and allies say

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration and Western allies formally blamed China on Monday for a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software and asserted that criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government have carried out ransomware and other illicit cyber operations.

The first signs of catastrophe were detected nine days ago by a satellite orbiting 500 miles above the tranquil hills around the Rhine river

Germany knew the floods were coming, but the warnings didn’t work

The first signs of catastrophe were detected nine days ago by a satellite orbiting 500 miles above the tranquil hills around the Rhine river.Over the next few days a team of scientists sent the German

Few pause to think that their phones can be transformed into surveillance devices, with someone thousands of miles away silently extracting their messages, photos and location, activating their microphone to record them in real time… in the coming days the Guardian will be revealing the identities of many innocent people who have been identified as candidates for possible surveillance by NSO clients in a massive leak of data.

Huge data leak shatters lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance

Our investigation shows how repressive regimes can buy and use the kind of spying tools Edward Snowden warned us about

New at the Belmont Club. Discernment and reasons of the heart are the secret to survival.

If the Origin of the Pandemic Proves to be a Lab Leak

Technology can kill you

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the Biden administration believes social media users who spread COVID-19 misinformation should be banned from all platforms if one platform has given them the boot. Psaki had revealed the day before that White House staff were tracking dangerous coronavirus misinformation with help from the surgeon general’s office and flagging problematic posts to Facebook.

Psaki: COVID Deniers Banned From One Social Network Should Be Booted From Them All

“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation out there,” press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.

All three have been fully vaccinated, but one of the lawmakers is experiencing symptoms

Maskless Democrat lawmakers who fled Texas test positive for COVID-19

The Texas House Democratic Caucus leadership made the announcement on Saturday – five days after the left-wing lawmakers jetted out of the state.

Although officials still remain divided on whether the virus emerged from nature, passing from animals to humans, the acknowledgment marks a shift from the scorn that was heaped on former President Trump and a group of European scientists who first brought up the lab-leak theory during the height of the pandemic last year.

Top Biden officials now believe COVID lab-leak theory: report

The lab-leak theory, once derided as fanciful fiction, is now being seriously considered by senior administration officials.

Tighter than a fast and furious movie U-turn

Senior Biden officials finding that Covid lab leak theory as credible as natural origins explanation

Senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild — a dramatic shift from a year …

HAVANA — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel for the first time is offering some self-criticism while saying that government shortcomings in handling shortages and other problems played a role in this week’s protests.

Cuba’s President Has Made A Rare Mea Culpa, Admitting To Failures That Fueled Unrest

In a televised address Wednesday night, President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that failings by the state have played a role in the protests that roiled the island nation this week.

JAKARTA — Indonesia has overtaken India as Asia’s new epicenter for the coronavirus pandemic, with daily infections exceeding 40,000 for two straight days and officials warning that the delta variant is spreading outside the most populous island of Java.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy on Tuesday reported 47,899 new infections, a record high, up from 40,427 the previous day. India’s cases, meanwhile, dropped to 32,906 from 37,154.

More alarming is that despite having more daily infections, Indonesia’s population of 270 million population is just a fifth of India’s. Indonesia now has around 132 cases per million people, compared with India 26 as of Sunday, according to ourworldindata.org.

Indonesia overtakes India to become Asia’s COVID epicenter

Southeast Asia’s largest economy reports new daily record of 47,899 new cases

in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans….

He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

It’s not wholly surprising therefore that the same sources who say they know he was some sort of intelligence asset say that he became a liability — which is why, possibly, he lost any “protection” and was arrested.

Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?

The notorious financier pedophile told exaggerated stories of his time in intelligence circles — but some of those stories may have been, at least partially, true

Po-Shen Loh has resurrected the United States International Mathematical Olympiad team, leading it to four first-place rankings in the last six years as the team’s head coach.

The Coach Who Led the U.S. Math Team Back to the Top

Po-Shen Loh has harnessed his competitive impulses and iconoclastic tendencies to reinvigorate the U.S. Math Olympiad program.