Don McLean recuts American Pie
With acapella group Home Free
Biden hurls his defiance at China. Sorta
Green Woke vs Wolf Diplomacy
The communiqué issued on Sunday fleshed out some of the proposals that have dominated the summit and was explicit in the need to counter the rise of China.
“Three years ago, China wasn’t even mentioned in the G7 communiqué,” according to an administration official who briefed reporters on its contents. “This year, there is a section on China that speaks to the importance of coordinating on and responding to China’s nonmarket economic practices and the need to speak out against human rights abuses, including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.”
G7 News: Summit Ends With Agreement on Global Minimum Tax and Common Threats
The world’s wealthiest large democracies issued a joint communiqué that stressed the need for drastic action to end the pandemic and counter China. President Biden then had tea with Queen Elizabeth and said the monarch reminded him of his mother.
Is power self-legitimizing?
Robinson raises the question of election. An administration’s actual legitimacy may be grounded in such demonstrations of bureaucratic power as gaining the acclaim of institutions. ‘We are in power because we can enforce possession’ may be immoral but enforceable. Even assuming a candidate cheated in an election his ability to get away with it would be a demonstration that the system is willing to go along with it. He can make it happen; he has the vote of the insiders. And that pragmatically counts for something.
Biden sounds the charge vs China but G7 horses keep ambling
Leaders of the world’s largest economies on Saturday unveiled an infrastructure plan for the developing world to compete with China’s efforts, but the democracies didn’t immediately agree on how to publicly call out Beijing, including for its forced labour practices.
Journo Who Broke 2016 Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Meeting Found Dead
His death is being investigated as a suicide. He was 45 years old and leaves behind a wife and three children. He was described by ABC 33/40 as a dedicated family man, who “turned down an opportunity to work for one of the national networks to come to ABC 33/40, and he made that decision because of his family.”
Biden explains why he won’t hold presser with Putin
Smart move in a way. Biden wants to avoid invidious comparisons.
“I always found, and I don’t mean to suggest the press should not know, but this is not a contest about who can do better in front of a press conference or try to embarrass one another,” Biden said
Biden says he won’t hold a joint press conference with Putin because he doesn’t want to get ‘diverted’ by who ‘talked the most’
The solo press conference is a departure from the last meeting between a US president and Putin, which last occurred with Trump in 2018.
Biden’s 40T Woke ‘Belt and Road’
The White House said the program, presented as an alternative to China’s own global infrastructure initiative, will “help narrow the $40+ trillion infrastructure need in the developing world, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
A senior administration official described the plan, called the “Build Back Better World” initiative, as a “bold, new global infrastructure initiative with our G7 partners that will be values-driven, transparent and sustainable” and will compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Biden aims to counter China’s global infrastructure project with new G7 initiative
The United States says it will be a lead partner in a new global, climate-friendly infrastructure program with its Group of 7 partners, part of President Joe Biden’s larger efforts at the G7 summit to better position the US and its allies to compete with China in the aftermath of the coronavirus pan…
The “Chinese defector”: is there an official denial?
Technical details provided by the defector, RedState is told, were given to scientists (who were not told how that information was given to the government) who then re-analyzed data from published sources in conjunction with the new data and concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered. And, the defector was able to confirm numerous non-public details Yan provided the US government.
BOMBSHELL: Defector Claims to Have Evidence That Chinese Military Coordinated Creation and Release of COVID-19
A Chinese defector has provided evidence that the Chinese military orchestrated the creation of the COVID-19 virus, which leaked from the Wuhan lab.
Elbows are the new hands
How don’t you do.
This will be classic one day.
Chinese researchers say new batch of coronaviruses found in bats
Missing link or missing linkage?
The researchers said one strain, garnered from the Rhinolophus pusillus bat species, bears a particularly strong resemblance to SARS-CoV-2, though with differences on the spike protein that the viruses use to attach to cells they infect.
The beast from 20,000 years ago
This animal survived 24,000 years frozen in the Siberian permafrost
A microscopic animal has been revived after slumbering in the Arctic permafrost for 24,000 years.
China squeezes Cambodia for its Covid app data
HRW didn’t see it coming.
However, what HRW didn’t foresee was the China factor. Shortly after the official announcement of the “Stop Covid-19” app’s launch, Wang Wentian, the Chinese ambassador to Phnom Penh, met with Cambodian officials and requested access to the personal data collected via the new system, according to sources familiar with the request.
America’s secret weapon: logistics
The university show trials: what have I done?
I thought about my colleagues, the small college team I worked with every day. We were friends. We sometimes dined together. We would have walked across campus together after a hearing. It had honestly never occurred to me how that would look to an outsider desperately seeking a fair hearing for her son. In her eyes, the fix had been in. She told me what college her son had been expelled from. I knew some of those people. I knew my counterpart there, knew him to be a highly regarded senior student-affairs professional. I offered no defense, however, because I had none.
‘How Much Damage Have My Colleagues and I Done?’
A former dean of students loses faith in how colleges handle sexual assault.
CDC plans “emergency meeting” on rare heart inflammation following COVID-19 vaccines
So far, the CDC has identified 226 reports that might meet the agency’s “working case definition” of myocarditis and pericarditis following the shots, the agency disclosed Thursday. The vast majority have recovered, but 41 had ongoing symptoms, 15 are still hospitalized, and 3 are in the intensive care unit.
CDC plans “emergency meeting” on rare heart inflammation following COVID-19 vaccines
Reported cases represent just a tiny fraction of the nearly 130 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated with either Pfizer or Moderna’s doses.
Inflation looms
“Uncomfortable levels of inflation” may be ahead, Deutsche Bank economists warned in a new report, but said US authorities likely won’t take any action until it’s too late.
Online learning too expensive
One Big Reason Schools Are Ditching Remote Learning: The Cost
Despite increasing demand from parents, states are giving districts little financial incentive to provide online learning this fall.
What other viruses were found in Chinese mine?
From 2012 to 2015, WIV researchers identified as many as 293 coronaviruses in and around the mine.
The institute in November 2020 disclosed the existence of eight other “SARS-type” coronavirus samples taken from the site.
