Emails obtained by Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that White House coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci in late January approved of a World Health Organization-sponsored press release supporting China's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The email refers to the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, an independent advisory body created by WHO and the World Bank Group. It specifically notes "consensus for the GPMB to issue a statement supportive of countries’ (especially China) and WHO response efforts, and to call for urgent actions to further strengthen global preparedness and response to this outbreak."

"Looks fine," Fauci responded. "Please see my comments in attached document."

China, which claims to have suppressed the virus within its borders, instituted a severe lockdown of the Wuhan province at the outset of the pandemic, reportedly going so far as to lock citizens in their homes by welding their doors shut.
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Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Tuesday asked the U.S. Secret Service to provide information about Hunter Biden's travel history following last week's apparent bombshell report regarding emails between Hunter and a Ukrainian national that suggested the former may have been selling political access to his father Joe Biden.
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That report, first published in the New York Post, cited emails obtained reportedly from one of Hunter Biden's personal laptops that had been left in a computer repair shop. Joe Biden has dismissed the controversy as a "smear campaign," though nobody in the Biden camp has yet denied the veracity of the messages.

On Tuesday, in a letter to U.S. Secret Service Director James Murray, Johnson — the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — asked for several records pertaining to Hunter Biden's travel history with Secret Service details.

In the letter — also signed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — Johnson noted that several of the emails allegedly written by Hunter match up with records of travel history involving his Secret Service detail. One Apr. 13 email, for instance, makes reference to a trip to Houston. "Secret Service records show a travel entry for Mr. Biden from April 13, 2014 – April 14, 2014, to Houston, TX," Johnson noted in the letter.

Noting that one of the emails references an apparent Secret Service detail a year after Hunter Biden ended that arrangement in 2014, Johnson asked the agency for any records indicating that Secret Service agents accompanied Hunter after July of that year, as well as records of communications between Hunter, some of his associates and Secret Service agents during Joe Biden's vice presidential tenure.

"Please provide this information as soon as possible but no later than October 26, 2020," Johnson wrote in the letter.
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A recently declassified government document suggests the FBI opened its most recent investigation of Paul Manafort in January 2016, two months before President Trump hired the lobbyist as a senior official in his campaign. The revelation is prompting new questions about why the bureau did not provide the GOP candidate with a defensive briefing.
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The information about the start of the Manafort probe was contained in footnote 332 of a spreadsheet that FBI analysts constructed analyzing the lack of corroboration for Christopher Steele's now infamous dossier alleging Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016 election, an allegation that has since been disproven.

The spreadsheet was declassified earlier this month, revealing the FBI found little to no corroboration for Steele's allegations against Trump but nonetheless used the dossier to support a FISA surveillance warrant to spy on the Trump campaign through adviser Carter Page.

The information in the footnote and spreadsheet states an "opening EC" or electronic communication was generated in the Manafort probe on Jan. 13, 2016, and by August 2016 "Manafort is an active subject of a money laundering and tax evasion criminal case out of Washington Field Office."

File
Steele SpreadsheetManafortProbeReference.pdf


File
SteeleSpreadsheetManafortProbeFootnote.pdf
The timing suggested in the spreadsheet is consistent with an account from Ukrainian prosecutors, who revealed last year they were summoned on short notice to Washington by the Obama White House for a series of meetings in January 2016 during which Justice Department officials pressed them to find evidence against Manafort and his work for the Ukrainian Party of Regions. The prosecutors also stated the Obama DOJ officials asked the Ukrainians to drop their investigation of the Hunter Biden-related Burisma Holdings gas company and let the FBI take it over.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson last week wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for verification of the claim in the spreadsheet and demanding to know why Trump wasn't given a courtesy warning before he hired Manafort if in fact the probe into the lobbyist started in January 2016 like the spreadsheet stated.

Presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, have gotten defensive briefings over the years when an issue involving national security concerns affects their campaigns.

"What steps, if any, did the FBI take to alert the Trump campaign about its investigation into Manafort when he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016?" Johnson wrote. Wray has yet to respond.

File
2020-10-14 RHJ CEG to ODNI FBI (Steele Spreadsheet).pdf
Manafort Had been investigated for his Ukraine business dealings in 2014 but the FBI closed the case without charges. He was hired by Trump in March 2016 to help wrangle delegates at the GOP nominating convention and promoted to campaign chairman in June 2016.

Kevin Brock, the former intelligence chief for the FBI, said the question surrounding a defensive briefing would likely depend on whether the Manafort probe involved a counterintelligence matter or just crimes.

"Some may wonder why the Trump campaign wasn't warned by the FBI that the bureau had Manafort under investigation when Trump made him his campaign manager in June 2016. The answer lies in the distinction between a criminal investigation and a counterintelligence investigation," he said.

"If the case against Manafort opened by the FBI in January 2016 was strictly based on suspected financial crimes, then the FBI was under no obligation to disclose their case," Brock explained. "However, if the FBI instead opened a counterintelligence investigation that January into Manafort's ties to Russia-supported political operatives in Ukraine, then, yes, a defensive national security briefing to candidate Trump by the FBI sometime in the summer of 2016 would have been a normal and prudent course of action. But we now know the Crossfire Hurricane team at the FBI was not inclined to brief the campaign on anything.”

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch whose conservative watchdog group has unearthed many of the documents showing abuses in the FBI Russia probe, said he believes Manafort's work for the Ukrainians involved adequate counterintelligence and national security concerns to warrant a defensive briefing.

"I presume that this was mishandled given the FBI's conduct throughout the Russia probe. They had it out for Trump," Fitton said, referring to FBI text message in which agents, lawyers and analysts expressed anti-Trump bias including a desire to "stop" him from becoming president.

"Given that Manafort's work in Ukraine necessarily involved a national security component, Trump should have been notified, especially given that the candidate himself had nothing to do with Manafort's issues in Ukraine," he added.
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The inquiry into the 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in London has revealed how the styrofoam thermal insulation layer in newly-fitted wall cladding enabled a small domestic fire to rapidly engulf most of the building, resulting in the loss of 72 lives.

The type of cladding installed complied with advice given to local authorities in 2010 by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to reduce emissions through installing new boilers and insulation in apartment blocks.
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At the time the U.K. was legally committed to an 80% cut in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2050, and this has since been increased to 100%. To meet the already-extravagant target, huge sums of public money would be needed.

However, in 2012, then-finance minister George Osborne imposed strict borrowing limits on all councils across Britain — including the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where Grenfell Towers is situated — pressuring them to make savings where they could.

The Guardian reports that when insulated cladding was installed at the building to reduce its carbon footprint, the Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) put cost above safety.

Despite residents having voted for fire-retardant zinc cladding to be used, KCTMO chose a cheaper alternative — aluminum composite material (ACM) with flammable plastic insulation.

The enquiry has revealed that in a secret meeting the construction company, Rydon Ltd, agreed to a budget reduction of around $1.2m. The lower cost cladding chosen acted as an accelerant, but faulty fire doors and poorly-fitted plastic windows also played their part.

Just six months before the devastating fire happened, residents had been so concerned about the safety of the tower that they formed the Grenfell Action Group, which issued this prescient warning in a blog post titled "KCTMO – playing with fire!":

"Unfortunately, the Grenfell Action Group has reached the conclusion that only an incident that results in serious loss of life of residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation."

The tragedy was compounded by the London Fire Brigade’s decision to issue a "stay put" order to residents while firefighters bravely but vainly tried to extinguish the flames.

Grenfell wasn’t the only building clad in order to meet climate change targets. The cost of having to now rip these out to make apartment blocks across the country safe presents the U.K. government with a further financial burden.

Its solution is to make the leaseholders pay a hefty part of the bill. The building minister, Lord Greenhalgh, has said the government will provide about $2.5 billion, but apartment owners will have to pay some of the costs of removing the cladding, though he said this would be “affordable.”

The BBC claims around 3,000 buildings have so far applied for the fund. A tribunal in Manchester has ruled that residents in two apartment blocks will have to pay $15,000 to make their apartments fire-safe. Until that happens, they will also have to pay for 24-hour fire safety wardens — and they are not alone.

Abi Tubis and her husband live in an apartment in Leeds and have to pay $600 a month for fire wardens on top of their mortgage. “We might have to declare bankruptcy due to this,” she told the BBC. “I wake up every day thinking why is this happening to me?” Until the cladding is removed they cannot sell or remortgage the flat. In tears, Abi stated they are unable to start a family because, “We cannot bring up a child in an unsafe home.”

29-year-old Alex Di Giuseppe, who owns an apartment in Manchester, agrees. “There's a lot of stress involved living in a building that's technically unsafe,” he said. “There are costs we can't afford, and we can't sell our apartments. We are mortgage prisoners.”

Thousands of people across the U.K. are now forced to pay for a problem they didn’t create at the same time as the government’s COVID lockdown continues to cause job losses and uncertainty.

Meeting the U.K.’s net-zero CO2 target by 2050 has been estimated to cost $1.5 trillion. With unforeseen events like COVID also adding hundreds of billions to its debt, similar cost-saving measures that lead to loss of life cannot be ruled out.

The charred remains of the tower originally had a white covering placed around it, but the survivors group Grenfell United wanted the color changed to green at a potential cost of $600,000. As a compromise, a giant green heart was placed at the top with green floodlights illuminating it at night.

A friend of a Grenfell survivor said: “We wanted it to be a vivid color so that this devastating tragedy would not be forgotten.” An unintended consequence is that Grenfell Tower now looks like a monument to an ill-conceived green policy.
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In an effort to prevent any fire outbreaks in a year already marked by major wildfires, up to one million California residents may have their power cut by a major state utility on Sunday in order to avoid sparks from downed wires during expected windstorms.

Pacific Gas & Electric, a San Francisco Bay-area electricity provider, could shut power down to nearly half a million homes and businesses, representing a potential total of 1,000,000 individual Californians.
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The utility is prepping for the arrival of the infamous Diablo wind, a regular occurrence in the Bay Area in the spring and fall that is known to both start and exacerbate wildfires in the area.

Residents living in the region's hills were warned to evacuate ahead of the Diablo wind to avoid getting trapped by any resultant fires.
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We can argue about whether or not a debate held less than two weeks before the election actually matters in terms of changing anyone’s mind, but it certainly proved to be a boost for the president’s reelection campaign in one way: It led to one of Trump’s biggest fundraising hauls of the entire year. Putting together the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, supporters gave the president his “largest digital fundraising day ever” after the final debate with Joe Biden. Clearly, either Trump’s donors saw something they really liked from the president on Thursday…or something they really hated from his opponent.
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A fundraising haul like this is invaluable at this crucial point in the race. Polls be damned, it all comes down at this point to getting the vote out. If Trump’s supporters flock to the polls and Biden’s voters stay home, there is still an excellent chance of securing four more years. And with more than $26 million fresh dollars being injected into the campaign, Trump will have every opportunity to flood the airwaves with ads to go along with his in-person rallies, television interviews, and other methods of inspiring conservatives to come out and cast their ballots.

“Voters saw exactly what is at stake in this election: four more years of strengthening the economy, protecting American jobs, and revamping our broken health care system under President Trump versus Joe Biden’s ‘dark winter’ vision for America,” said RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. “With only 11 days left until the most important election of our lifetimes, Trump Victory is using every resource to mobilize our volunteer army, reach every last voter, and deliver historic wins for President Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot.”

Even the Democrats had to admit that the post-debate fundraising victory went to Trump. The Biden campaign sent out an email to supporters, warning them in plain and simple terms: “Trump outraised us.”

To literally no one’s surprise, everyone in the mainstream media declared Biden the winner of the second debate, even though Trump went out of his way to rein in his discipline and extend politeness to both Biden and moderator Kristen Welker. But Trump could have decimated every single one of Biden’s arguments in a precise and systematic way and Biden’s cheerleaders in the liberal press would have declared him the winner.

We say, forget about the insta-polls, forget about the focus groups, and forget about the op-eds. The financials tell the tale, and the financials say that Trump trounced Biden at the debate.

Is there enough time left to translate that last-minute victory into a big win at the voting booth?

We will soon find out
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Looks bad. I didn't see any reports of protests over this. The videos post date is Sept. 10. Were there any? If not why? Was it because the 14 year old violated mask policy? Was it because he is not black or didn't die as a result of the knee-on-neck? Because this incident wasn't in America?

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In the ultimate act of impotence, Democrats who know they can’t do anything to stop Amy Coney Barrett from being confirmed to the Supreme Court are boycotting the Judiciary Committee’s vote to send Barrett’s nomination to the floor on Thursday. In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that showing up for their jobs would only give this wholly-constitutional process “legitimacy” that it doesn’t deserve.
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“We will not grant this process any further legitimacy by participating in a committee markup of this nomination just 12 days before the culmination of an election that is already underway,” said Schumer. “Republicans broke the promises they made and rules they created when they blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination for eight months under President Obama. Now, Republicans have moved at breakneck speed to jam through this nominee, ignoring her troubling record and unprecedented evasions, and breaking longstanding committee rules to set tomorrow’s vote.”

Schumer did not explain how it was somehow “legitimate” for Obama to nominate Garland in 2016 and yet illegitimate and shameful for Republicans to do the same thing with Barrett, but we’re used to this confused logic.

“That is a choice they are making,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said of the boycott. “I believe it does a disservice to Judge Barrett who deserves a vote, up or down.”

Instead of showing up to do their jobs, Democrats pulled this stunt, as reported by the Washington Post: “In place of the Democratic senators Thursday morning, aides had placed 10 large portraits of people who benefited from the Affordable Care Act in their seats. Each person was someone that the Democratic senators spoke about at Barrett’s confirmation hearings last week, which senators centered around the issue of health care and the future of the Affordable Care Act.”

How touching.

The Democrats’ absence did nothing to stop Barrett’s nomination from being voted out of committee.

“Judiciary Committee approves Judge Barrett. Moves to full Senate for final vote. Big day for America!” tweeted President Trump on Thursday.

Presiding over the hearing, Graham said that Democrats’ concerns about Judge Barrett were unfounded.

“I’ve been here for a while, and I’ve never seen anyone more capable than Judge Barrett on the law,” he said. “And to all the people out there wondering about Judge Barrett I can tell you this: The law of Amy will not be applied to the case and controversy. It will be the law as written in the Constitution or by statute or whatever regulatory body she is going to review. She will take her job on without agenda.”

A big difference, quite frankly, from the woman she’ll be replacing.

The full Senate is scheduled to vote on Barrett’s confirmation on Monday.
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The new decree gives regional governments the option to prohibit travel in and out of their territories unless it is justified, as well as imposing an obligatory nationwide curfew between 11pm and 6am.

The Spanish Cabinet on Sunday morning approved a new national state of alarm for the country, aimed at giving Spain’s regional governments the legal framework they need to limit mobility – in particular nighttime socialising – in a bid to combat the second wave of the coronavirus.
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The government is introducing an obligatory curfew for the entire country from 11pm to 6am, with regional premiers having a margin of one hour to bring forward or back the curfew times. They will not, however, be able to scrap the measure altogether.

Regions will also have the possibility of restricting the entrance to and exit from their territories unless this is for essential reasons such as going to work or to get to the doctor. This would allow regions to close their borders should they have a neighboring territory that is particularly hard hit by the virus. This is an idea that had been floated in the past by the regions that border Madrid, but until now was impossible to implement.

The decree will not see the closure of Spain’s borders, as was the case during the first wave of the pandemic. There are also exceptions, with the Canary Islands – the Spanish region that currently has the best coronavirus data – exempted from the nighttime curfew in a bid to aid the tourism sector. The text also limits social meetings between citizens to six people for the entire country.

“The whole of Europe is now taking measures to limit mobility,” said the prime minister on Sunday to justify the decision. “The situation in which we are in is extreme.”

This will be the second time in seven months that the coalition government – headed by the Socialist Party (PSOE) with junior partner Unidas Podemos – has made use of the emergency measure, the lowest of three that are set out by the Spanish Constitution.

Unlike in March, when the state of alarm was used to subject Spaniards to one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns, this time it will be used in a much less severe manner, in particular to introduce the curfew. Nearly all of the regions want to use such a measure in order to slow the second wave of the pandemic in Spain as quickly as possible, and reach the Christmas season with figures that are more under control.

Another difference between now and March is that the government is making clear its duration from the outset, and wants the measure – which will initially be established for 15 days – to remain in place until May 9, 2021.

The first state of alarm had to be extended every two weeks by Spain’s lower house of parliament, the Congress of Deputies, something that turned into a political headache for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the PSOE given that the coalition lacks a working majority and he thus needed the support of opposition parties to prolong the measure. The state of alarm came to an end in June when it was clear the government no longer had the votes it needed for another two-week extension and full powers to control the epidemic were returned to the regional governments.

For now, the government can only approve the state of alarm for 15 days, but in the text of the decree being prepared there is specific mention of the need to prolong the measure in Congress for a long period of time. The Valencia region, for example, has already talking about keeping a curfew in place until December 9. This way, the government can avoid having to seek support every two weeks in Congress, and is counting on having enough parliamentary votes to secure the measure. Spain would thus be in line with Italy and France, two countries where no one has contested the use of the juridical instrument. Italy has had a state of emergency in place since the start of the pandemic and it has been renewed twice without problems.

The government is also working toward the state of alarm granting powers to control the situation to the regional premiers, allowing them to take their own decisions and respecting the principle adopted in June that they should be the ones in charge of the control of the pandemic. There has been fierce opposition from some regions – in particular Madrid, which is controlled by the conservative Popular Party (PP) and center-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) – to the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, with long-running disagreements over how to get the pandemic in check while protecting the economy.

In Congress, meanwhile, the government should not have problems securing the votes it needs. Ciudadanos has already pledged its support, while the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) will also lend its votes, having been the first region to call on the government to implement the state of alarm. Catalonia has also requested it, meaning that the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (JxCAT) will also support the coalition.

However, the government is insisting on trying to secure the support of the PP, which governs in five of Spain’s 17 regions. The PP voted against the extension of the state of alarm in June and has been reticent to call for it to be implemented again, stating instead that the government should reform existing laws to ensure that the coronavirus measures deemed necessary by regional governments enjoy legal backing. Regional High Courts across the country have been rejecting some of these restrictions, on the basis that only the central government can restrict fundamental rights such as freedom of movement.

The government has no intention of returning to the total lockdown of March and the almost total shutdown of the economy that this involved. But, like the vast majority of the regions, it does believe that a nighttime curfew will reduce infection rates. More than 30% of transmissions are taking place during social meetings in homes. All of the regional governments are seeing that early closing for bars is not enough, as many people – in particular youngsters – are resorting to late-night socialising in private residences.

Pedro Sánchez also called on Sunday for an “overwhelming parliamentary backing” for the measure, thus piling the pressure on the PP to back it. Sánchez also announced that he had been in touch with the PP leader, Pablo Casado, to communicate the measures and request his support.

The objective, Sánchez explained, is to get the cumulative number of coronavirus cases down to 25 per 100,000 inhabitants over a two-week period. Spain currently exceeds 400. “We have a long road ahead, we are going to have to deploy a huge exercise of resistance,” he added, explaining that the six-month time frame for the state of alarm will not be immovable should the coronavirus data improve.

English version by Simon Hunter.
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