Published Sunday, February 14, 2021 | 9 pm
Updated 9 hours, 53 minutes ago
BRUSSELS (AP) – The rumors started almost as soon as the disease itself. Claims that a foreign opponent had launched a biological weapon surfaced on the periphery of Chinese social media on the same day that China first reported the outbreak of a mysterious virus. “Watch out for Americans!” a Weibo user wrote on December 31, 2019. Today, a year after the World Health Organization warned of a COVID-19 misinformation epidemic, this conspiracy theory lives on, driven by Chinese officials eager to cast doubt on the origins of a pandemic that has claimed more than 2 million lives worldwide. From Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, political leaders and the allied media effectively functioned as oversize, using their stature to amplify politically convenient conspiracies already in circulation.
As the coronavirus spread across the globe, speculation about its origins has also spread. Perhaps the virus escaped from a laboratory. Perhaps it was designed as a biological weapon. Legitimate questions about the virus have created perfect conditions for conspiracy theories. In the absence of knowledge, conjecture and propaganda flourished. University professors with no evidence or training in virology were considered specialists. Anonymous social media users posing as high-level intelligence officers. And from China to Iran, from Russia to the United States, governments have extended the claims for their own reasons. The Associated Press collaborated with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab on a nine-month investigation to identify the people and organizations behind some of the most misleading information about the origins of the coronavirus.
WASHINGTON (AP) – After ex-President Donald Trump’s acquittal in his second Senate impeachment trial, bipartisan support appears to be growing for an independent 9/11 type commission for the deadly insurrection that took place on U.S. Capitol Hill. The riot investigations were already planned, with Senate hearings scheduled for later this month on the Senate Rules Committee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Asked retired Army Lieutenant General Russel Honoré to lead an immediate review of the Capitol security process. Lawmakers from both parties, speaking on Sunday’s news programs, signaled that further investigations are likely. The Senate verdict on Saturday, with its majority of 57-43 falling 10 votes less than the two-thirds needed to convict Trump, hardly ended the debate over the former Republican president’s guilt for the day
WASHINGTON (AP) – Union activist Terrence Wise remembers being ridiculed when he started pushing for a national minimum wage of $ 15 an hour almost a decade ago. Almost a year after the pandemic began, the idea is not so funny. The coronavirus renewed its focus on the challenges faced by hourly employees who continued to work in supermarkets, gas stations and other personal places, even when much of the workforce moved to virtual environments. President Joe Biden responded by including a clause in the massive pandemic relief bill that would more than double the minimum wage from the current $ 7.25 to $ 15 an hour.
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) – As a student at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy, Aaron Appelhans used to look at pictures of past graduates’ classes hanging on the wall. “I could see, for the most part, there aren’t many people who looked like me around here,” he recalled the mostly white faces. A decade later, Appelhans was named Wyoming’s first black sheriff, a position he took months after the rage for racist policing stirred up American cities. His territory includes one of Wyoming’s last Democratic strongholds, but the state is predominantly conservative and white and he has already faced racist comment from a lawmaker.
COLOMBIA, SC (AP) – South Carolina public health workers have been tasked with keeping the state safe for 143 years, since lawmakers created a health council in 1878 after an outbreak of yellow fever killed 20,000 Americans. Now, with the coronavirus pandemic rising, lawmakers are trying to break their agency. As in most states, the South Carolina public health agency was underfunded and overburdened long before it had to maintain an exhaustive defense against a virus that humans had never seen before. Criticism has grown on all sides since then – because of a slow launch of tests, the agency’s refusal to release detailed data on the first cases and for appearing to marginalize its main epidemiologist.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria was appointed Monday to head the World Trade Organization, becoming the first woman and the first African to take office amid growing protectionism and disagreement over how the agency decides cases involving billions in sales and thousands of jobs. Okonjo-Iweala, 66, was appointed director-general by representatives of the 164 countries that make up the WTO, which deals with the rules of trade between nations. She said during an online press conference that she was taking over at a time when the WTO “faces so many challenges” and needs “deep and comprehensive reforms”. She said the first priority would be to quickly address the economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure that poor countries do not have to “wait in line” for vaccines.
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) – After a weeklong bus trip from Honduras, Isabel Osorio Medina arrived in northern Mexico with the hope that President Joe Biden would make it easier for people like him to enter the United States. “It looks like the new president wants to help migrants,” said Osorio as he prepared to check into a cheap hotel in downtown Tijuana before heading to the United States. “They are saying that it will help, but I am not sure for sure how much is true or not. ”The 63-year-old man is among thousands of people who came to the US-Mexico border with the hope of being able to apply for asylum and head to the USA
PARIS (AP) – More than three dozen French police raided a small private school in Paris, blocked the 92 students inside their classrooms, took pictures everywhere, even inside the refrigerator, and interrogated the school principal . “It was like they were going into a drug business,” said Hanane Loukili, the principal and co-founder of the MHS elementary and high school, recalling the November 17 scene. Loukili did not know at the time, but a team from the Cell to Fight Radical Islam and Withdraw from the Community, or CLIR, had arrived for an inspection. The network sweeps schools, shops, clubs or mosques to end “radicalization”. Within a week, a shaken Loukili informed students that his school was closing.
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden spent his third week in office visiting the Pentagon, visiting the National Institutes of Health and working on the government’s response to COVID-19. He ended up beating one of his granddaughters on Mario Kart during his first presidential visit to Camp David, the historic retreat for US leaders. This is what Camp David traditionally offers presidents: a break from Washington, where they can break free and relax with their family. The Maryland mountain complex, just 97 kilometers from the capital, offers everything from a bowling alley to an archery course.