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WHO Calls Out China's Lack of Transparency Over COVID Infections
The World Health Organization (WHO) is leading calls for China to share more pandemic data as the world's most populous country responds to its nationwide COVID-19 outbreak by scaling back the publication of official statistics.
On December 29, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus defended the right of the United States and other nations to impose restrictions on travel from China. Around 10 countries, including many of China's neighbors, now require negative PCR tests from passengers departing Chinese airports.
"In the absence of comprehensive information from China, it is understandable that countries around the world are acting in ways that they believe may protect their populations," he tweeted.
The caution, which Beijing argues is unscientific, is related to a general lack of information about the true extent of China's surge in infections after its government dismantled three years of strict virus controls—lockdowns, mass testing and layers of contact tracing—in the span of a single month.
On January 8, China will officially downgrade COVID from a Class A to a Class B infectious disease, paving the way for an end to all quarantine measures nationwide. That's before most epidemiological models expect the country's first wave to peak, while the government has already stopped releasing accurate infection and fatality numbers.
Experts also question whether Beijing still has the capacity to track the spread of the virus within its borders. Individuals who return positive results on at-home rapid antigen tests aren't required to report their infection to authorities.
On Friday, the WHO convened virtually with Chinese health officials "to seek further information on the situation, and to offer WHO's expertise and further support," according to a statement.
https://www.newsweek.com/china-who-tedros-covid-19-infections-deaths-data-transparency-1770696
DOJ hiding hundreds of Hunter Biden, James Biden records, lawyer claims
A Colorado lawyer says the Justice Department is trying to conceal hundreds of “potentially responsive” documents about gifts received by first son Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden from contacts in China, Russia and Ukraine, according to a new report Monday.
Kevin Evans sued the Justice Department in March after he said the agency failed to comply with his Freedom of Information Act request for records about the overseas business relationships of Joe Biden’s son and brother, the Daily Mail reported.
Evans said he sought documents “pertaining to any relationship, communication, gift(s), and/or remuneration in any form” from China, Russia or Ukraine.
He said lawyers for the federal government admitted in court to having at least 400 pages of “potentially responsive” documents but are now saying they can “neither confirm nor
“They eventually produced about 60 pages of documents, but they’re all letters from senators and congressmen asking about Hunter, and letters from DOJ back,” Evans told the Daily Mail.
“Then towards the end of last year they said, ‘Well we have these 400 pages of potentially responsive documents, we need to review them,'” Evans said the lawyers told him, a claim he said the government repeated again in court.
After a few months, Evans said the government came back with the “neither confirm nor deny” response.
Evans said he initially filed an FOIA request in November 2020 after reading about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings in China and Ukraine, connections The Post broke wide open that October.
The Post’s expose on the first son’s business relationships was based on emails and messages found on a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Del., in April 2019.
Evans said he believes the government will do what it takes to keep the information under wraps.
“I’m quite confident that they will move for summary judgment on the privacy exemptions under FOIA in an effort to avoid having to produce these documents,” he told the publication.
“But I don’t think they should in this instance, particularly when they’ve disclosed and put on the record that potentially responsive documents exist.”
Evans said the next status hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 9.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has said James Biden is a focus of investigators examining Hunter Biden’s business deals.
Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released a report in September 2020 on the Bidens’ business pursuits.
In April, the two senators released new documents delving deeper into the Biden family’s business ties.
The documents revealed that Hunter Biden and Jim Biden received monthly payments of $100,000 and $65,000, respectively, as part of an August 2017 consulting agreement between the first son and Gongwen Dong, a top official at CEFC China Energy.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/02/lawyer-claims-justice-department-hiding-records-on-hunter-biden-report/
UK Saw Record 45,000 Clandestine Boat Migrants in 2022 as People Traffickers Ply Deadly Trade
The number of ‘clandestine’ boat migrants crossing the English Channel is up more than 60 per cent in a year, the government reveals, with levels having reached yet another new record high.
A record 45,756 migrants crossed the English Channel on 1,104 small boats in 2022, smashing the previous year’s figure, and dramatically underlining the prolonged failure of the government to get a grip on so-called clandestine border crossings which have now been an ongoing ‘major incident’ for over four years.
The number is an increase of 60.3 per cent over the 28,526 migrants who crossed the English Channel by boat in 2021, itself already a record. As UK broadcaster Sky News notes of the migrant boat trend, while the number of ‘irregular migrants’ that came by boat this past year is considerably higher, the number of boat crossings is nearly identical, with 1,034 boats detected in the English Channel in 2021, demonstrating how ruthless people smugglers are cramming more people onto each potentially deadly crossing.
Although boat crossings to reach the United Kingdom by irregular migrants — what were once called illegal migrants, although this terminology appears to be falling out of favour — are a relatively new phenomenon, attempts to break into the country by foreigners are, of course, not. In recent memory, illegals tended to enter the United Kingdom by stowing away on cross-channel ferry traffic, typically inside freight-carrying trucks, itself a deadly venture.
But changes to that border in the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic, and possibly Brexit as well, has made stowing away in that way more difficult. Yet the government has proven unwilling or unable to secure the nation’s coast from being forced by criminal gangs taking large fees in return for places on inflatable boats, and so the demand for clandestine border crossings switched to the sea, a technique honed in the Mediterranean sea during the 2015 Europe Migrant Crisis.
Despite boat migrants being declared a “major incident” way back in 2018, a year in which just 299 made the crossing, the British government has not yet made any serious progress on defending the nation’s borders and putting a stop to the deadly trade in human beings. Arrests of people smugglers are relatively infrequent, and functionally speaking migrants who come this way are almost never deported, rubbishing the idea there is any meaningful disincentive for trying.
The Conservative Party continues to talk tough on immigration, promoting an endless series of headline-catching but doomed plans that they claim will get the nation’s borders under control. Yet the party has been in power for over 12 years and despite nearly 14 years of elections and national votes in which the British people have voted for parties and causes speaking the language of border control, migration is now higher than ever.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/01/03/uk-saw-record-45000-clandestine-boat-migrants-in-2022-as-people-traffickers-ply-deadly-trade/
Beijing threatens response to ‘unacceptable’ virus measures
BEIJING (AP) — Beijing blasted COVID-19 testing requirements imposed on passengers from China and threatened countermeasures against countries involved, which include the U.S. and several European nations.
“We believe that the entry restrictions adopted by some countries targeting China lack scientific basis, and some excessive practices are even more unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing Tuesday.
“We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity,” she said.
Australia and Canada this week joined a growing list of countries requiring travelers from China to take a COVID-19 test prior to boarding their flight, as China battles a nationwide outbreak of the coronavirus after abruptly easing restrictions that were in place for much of the pandemic.
Other countries including the U.S., U.K., India, Japan and several European nations have announced tougher COVID-19 measures on Chinese travelers amid concerns over a lack of data on infections in China and fears of the possibility that new variants may spread.
China, which for most of the pandemic adopted a “zero-COVID” strategy that imposed harsh restrictions aimed at stamping out the virus, abruptly eased those measures in December.
Chinese authorities previously said that from Jan. 8, overseas travelers would no longer need to quarantine upon arriving in China, paving the way for Chinese residents to travel.
https://apnews.com/article/politics-sports-health-china-beijing-d9b5f0e1520c899ffe6b614135be73a8
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North Korea 'Firmly' Supporting Ukraine War, Russia Diplomat Says
Asenior Russian diplomat has lauded North Korea for "firmly" supporting Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which has found few fully committed supporters in the international community.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko told the state-run Tass news agency that Pyongyang's support for Kremlin's attack on its neighbor will help further cooperation between the two nations.
"North Korea was among the countries that firmly supported, including on the [United Nations] platform, the decision by the Russian Federation to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine," Rudenko said.
He added that North Korea was one of few nations to back Moscow's claimed annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian territories—in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk—in September.
"We appreciate this support and, undoubtedly, take it into account in promoting the course towards comprehensively developing traditional relations of friendship and cooperation that was laid down at a meeting of the Russian and North Korean leaders in Vladivostok in April 2019," Rudenko said, referring to the first face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the Pacific port city.
Moscow-Pyongyang alignment on a range of issues and growing diplomatic ties, Rudenko added, "create good pre-requisites for that."
North Korea is offering diplomatic, and reportedly military, support for Russia's invasion, while nations including China and India have tried to straddle the growing divide between Moscow and its Western rivals.
The invasion is now in its eleventh month with no sign that Russia plans to backtrack despite successive battlefield defeats and increasingly grim economic conditions.
In March, North Korea was one of only five nations—alongside Belarus, Eritrea, Syria, and Russia—to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow's invasion, which then looked poised to seize Kyiv.
In April, North Korea was one of 24 nations voting against a proposal for Russia to be suspended from the UN Human Rights Council.
And in October, North Korea stood with Russia against a UN General Assembly resolution—passed with an overwhelming 143-nation majority—calling on member-states not to recognize Moscow's claimed annexations. Belarus, Nicaragua, Syria, and Russia also voted against the motion.
North Korea had already officially recognized the independence of Moscow's puppet republics—Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics—in eastern Ukraine, the supposed protection of which was among Putin's justifications for his invasion. Following this recognition, Ukraine severed diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.
Russian diplomats, meanwhile, have been backing their North Korean counterparts at the UN as Pyongyang adopts an unprecedented rate of ballistic missile tests that have irked the U.S. and its regional allies South Korea and Japan.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said in November that Moscow is offering "blanket protection" for North Korea from UN Security Council action over the launches.
"You don't get to abandon Security Council responsibilities because the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] might sell you weapons to fuel your war of aggression in Ukraine, or because you think they make a good regional buffer to the United States," Thomas-Greenfield said.
U.S. officials have accused North Korea of sending weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine as Moscow looks abroad for suppliers to restock its depleted arsenal. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby last month accused Pyongyang of sending weapons to Wagner Group mercenaries.
North Korea's foreign ministry dismissed the allegations of sending military supplies to Russia as "the most absurd red herring."
https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-firmly-supporting-ukraine-war-russia-diplomat-andrey-rudenko-un-1770826