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Russia's Lavrov, after Pompeo meeting, says felt more constructive U.S. approach
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week that he had felt a more constructive approach from Washington when it came to the U.S.-Russia strategic dialogue.
The two top diplomats met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday in an encounter that neither side has so far spoken about in detail.
“I felt certain small moves toward a more constructive approach by our American partners,” Lavrov said on his ministry’s website on Monday.
Lavrov said the two men had spoken about issues related to strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States and about arms control.
The last remaining major arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington, the New START accord, expires next year. Russia has said it is ready to extend it, but U.S. officials have called it flawed and outdated.
The treaty is the last major nuclear arms control treaty between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers and limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads they can deploy.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-usa-pompeo/russias-lavrov-after-pompeo-meeting-says-felt-more-constructive-u-s-approach-idUSKBN20B1PV
Asia Times Commentary
Why the US is losing its war against Huawei
Humiliated by the United Kingdom’s refusal to exclude Huawei from its 5G broadband network, the Trump Administration has doubled down on its attempts to stop China, with poor prospects for success.
The American response includes prosecution of Huawei under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute, drafted to combat organized crime. It also includes proposed regulations that would stop the sale of any US components to Huawei and China’s second-rank telecommunications firm ZTE if 10% of their production comes from American technology.
Also proposed is a ban on sales of jet engines for civilian passenger aircraft that General Electric and France’s Safran have been selling to China since 2014 – an economic warfare measure that has no national security justification.
Never in the course of American events have so many said too much to so little effect.
US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, meanwhile, told the Wall Street Journal on February 12 that the US had uncovered a secret backdoor in Huawei equipment that enabled the Chinese firm to spy on Western communications. Huawei rejected the charge, demanding that the United States make the data public.
The US charge elicited ridicule overseas. Orange CEO Stephane Richard said on February 14: “I’d be interested to see the evidence. It reminds me of the weapons of mass destruction during the Iraq war.” Germany’s Der Spiegel headlined its report: “A backdoor that only the US can see.”
At the weekend’s annual security conference in Munich, American officials including Defense Secretary Mike Esper and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned European countries to shun Huawei. “Reliance on Chinese 5G vendors, for example, could render our partners’ critical systems vulnerable to disruption, manipulation and espionage,” Esper said. “It could also jeopardize our communication and intelligence sharing capabilities, and by extension, our alliances.”
But the US news outlet Politico titled its report, “Europe turns deaf ear to US warnings on Chinese 5G.”
(Cont.)
https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/02/article/why-the-us-is-losing-its-war-against-huawei/
Coronavirus ‘lab leakage’ rumors spreading
Outbreak ‘could have started’ in Wuhan facility, as first patient never went to wet market identified as source
A Wuhan lab affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences has sought to dispel rumors that it “made and leaked” the highly infectious pneumonic virus that led to the still-raging global outbreak. While Chinese President Xi Jinping was briefed about the public health threat by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) in early January, the government decided against sounding the alarm because it did not want to “mar the festive vibe” during the Lunar New Year celebrations.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the provincial capital of Hubei, which is the ground zero of the contagion, has been thrust into the media spotlight by the allegation last week that it leaked “bio-hazardous agents.”
Posts circulating on WeChat and Weibo claim that a researcher at the institute was the first to be infected by the novel coronavirus, now called Covid-19 by the World Health Organization.
The female virologist and a graduate from the institute, referred to as “patient zero,” had never visited the city’s shambolic wet market – also known as the “zoo” – where a range of wild animals were sold. The market has been identified by the authorities as the most probable source of the deadly pathogen.
In a statement released on Sunday, the lab stressed that the researcher had left the city in 2015 and was in good health, refusing to release more information about her for privacy reasons.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/02/article/coronavirus-lab-leakage-rumors-spreading/
various twittiocies
CIA scientist who was privy to the agency's darkest Cold War secrets was 'murdered by agents when he got cold feet', says family in new book
The family of a CIA scientist who was privy to some of the agency's darkest secrets during the Cold War believes he did not kill himself, as they have been told for decades, and was instead murdered because he posed a risk to them.
Frank Olson died in the early hours of the morning on Nov. 28, 1953 outside The Statler Hotel in New York City, after having apparently fallen from his room on the 13th floor.
His family were not allowed to see his body, instead being told he had suffered significant facial injuries in the fall, and that he had killed himself by jumping.
But the man's nephew Paul Vidich is now claiming in his new book, The Coldest Warrior, that Olson was in fact killed by the CIA.
He says that after the family had Olson's body exhumed, they were told that he died as the result of blunt force trauma in the hotel room and that he was thrown to the street below.
He had LSD in his system which Vidich thinks he was given at a clandestine, off-site meeting earlier in the day to test his trustworthiness.
At the time, he says his uncle had become privy to some of the agency's closely guarded secrets about strategies and techniques the US used in The Cold War.
Among them were interrogation techniques and the facts that the CIA had cooperated with Nazis and some Japanese war criminals following World War 2.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8013879/Family-CIA-scientist-died-Cold-War-say-murdered.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/did-the-cias-dr-frank-olson-jump-to-his-death-or-was-he-pushed?ref=scroll
Republicans urging GOP voters to vote for Sanders in South Carolina primary: report
State Republican leaders in South Carolina are urging GOP voters to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the state's Feb. 29 Democratic primary.
The plan — orchestrated by Greenville GOP chairman Nate Leupp and several other prominent Republican Party leaders — revolves around GOP leadership's belief that Sanders poses the least amount of challenge to President Trump in November's general election and its goal of getting the Palmetto State's Democratic lawmakers to agree to close the state's primaries.
“Bernie Sanders is the most socialistic, liberal candidate running in the Democratic presidential preference primary,” Leupp told The Post and Courier. “So we feel we can make a strong point that our Democratic state legislators need to help work to close our primaries so it protects them as well as the Republican brand.”
South Carolina has open primaries, meaning voters don't have to be associated with a political party to cast a ballot.
According to the paper, Leupp and company are set to unveil their plan on Thursday at a press conference at the GOP's headquarters in Greenville.
In the latest Post and Courier poll, Sanders only trailed former Vice President Joe Biden, who has long been the favorite in the state, by 5 percentage points.
Leupp said that he believes that the state's large Republican voter base could make the difference in the primary. To his point, in 2016 roughly 740,000 people voted in the state's GOP presidential primary, while only 370,000 voted in the Democratic version.
“I think we can easily affect the outcome,” Leupp told the paper. “This is going to catch on like wildfire.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/481489-republicans-urging-gop-voters-to-vote-for-sanders-in-south-carolina-primary-report
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/south-carolina-gop-plans-to-boost-sanders-to-influence-dem-primary/