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Even though Abbott has promised to open the state, hes only taken piecemeal steps to-date such as putting together a task force of industry executives, mostly campaign donors, to weigh when to lift the ban on nonessential businesses. While New York City created a tip line for everyday people to help enforce social distancing, Abbott has permitted residents to gather in small groups in state parks, retail stores to offer to-go service as long as they follow safety precautions and hospitals to resume some elective procedures.

But hes already closed schools for the remainder of the semester. And many conservatives are unimpressed by his attempts to throw meat their way by declaring abortions nonessential procedures and allowing churches to remain open while urging congregants to maintain social distancing measures.

He seems indecisive, he seems timid, he seems bureaucratic and he seems tone deaf to the concerns of so many Texans, said Matt Rinaldi, a former Republican state representative who is part of the movement to open the state. Alabamas taskforce has already completed their work. Why werent we doing this weeks ago?

Abbott has to constantly negotiate a raucous coalition of urban, suburban and rural conservatives that spans homeschoolers, anti-vaccine advocates, religious activists and business groups for a party whose grip on the states politics is loosening.

So far, Abbotts strategy is working politically.

About 58 percent of Texas voters trust Abbott to give them information on the virus, compared with 44 percent who say they trust Trump, according to a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll released Friday. This week, even President Donald Trump said Kemp moved too quickly in allowing businesses to operate blowback that Abbott is carefully watching.

Its certainly accurate to say that Abbott is a measured and deliberative conservative, said Ray Sullivan, who served as chief of staff to former Gov. Rick Perry and a senior communications aide to George W. Bush, as governor. When you are engaged in a high-profile public policy matter and you are getting flak from the left and the media and even the further right groups on the spectrum, you are usually in a good place from a policy standpoint.

One factor bolstering his critics, albeit indirectly, is Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. The position is elected separately in Texas but Patrick is catching criticism and a following for suggesting senior citizens risk their health in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren.

Texas appears to have been spared the worst of the virus, buoying leaders like Patrick who want to see the state send people back to work sooner. The state has recorded nearly 600 Covid-19 deaths, considerably less than the 1,000 in Florida, 1,500 in California and 16,000 in New York, though low levels of testing might obscure that data.

Lets face the reality of where we are: In Texas, we have 29 million people, Patrick told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week. Weve lost 495 and every life is valuable, but 500 people out of 29 million and were locked down.

Abbotts coming announcement is bound to disappoint critics like Rinaldi and others who want Texas to follow governors like Kemp, who announced plans to open bowling alleys, gyms, hair salons and tattoo parlors Friday.

Instead, Abbott, who has kept many details of the upcoming announcement private for fear of blowback, is likely to issue a set of guidelines on the use of protective equipment and sanitation standards for restaurants and other businesses that might open up rather than pursue a blanket statewide order to immediately reopen, according to business executives and policy experts who say that he is deferring to medical professionals. During a Friday evening television interview, Abbott said efforts to boost asymptomatic testing and tracing would also be part of the announcement and plans to urge people to continue social distancing if they venture out of their homes.

He has said people will be able to start going to hair salons and restaurants as soon as next week, though cautioned the rules would be different across the state.

There are some counties where the outbreak is still progressing too rapidly and they may not be able to fully participate in the initial phase of opening until they get the spread of coronavirus in their county under control, Abbott said in the radio interview earlier this week.

At the outset of the crisis, Abbott let city and county officials take the lead in the pandemic response and moved later than other large states like California and New York in issuing a stay-at-home order. When he eventually did at the request of state public health officials, he refused to use the term for fear of upsetting conservatives.

But even the slightest perception of top-down overreach could further upset GOP activists like Steve Hotze, who sued Houstons Harris County on Thursday over a local mask requirement.

Texas Democrats have slammed Abbott over prioritizing business interests and social conservatives over public health policy. They say Abbotts lack of leadership has led directly to a lackluster pace of testing a key component of lifting lockdown measures, according to public health experts. Theyve also chided Abbott for not including city and county leaders in the state taskforce.

I dont think anyone knows what the governor is going to do, Austin mayor Steve Adler said. He said the city council members were planning to meet after the Monday announcement to decide their next steps, but acknowledged state orders will likely override local measures.

The pandemic poses a political dilemma for Texas Republicans pinning their reelection hopes on the states strong economy, as collapsing oil and natural gas prices have put people out of work. But some state leaders acknowledge that fears of a resurgent Covid-19 are eclipsing short-term economic concerns.

It is our job to do what the data and the science and the medical experts tell us is the most intelligent and responsible things to do, said Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, who is not seeking reelection this year after a far-right activist released a politically damaging conversation.

Texas, when you look at the data, has managed this, whether were blessed by God I dont know," Bonnen said. "Maybe its great leadership I dont know,

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Texas governor takes heat from his right as he plots careful course on coronavirus - POLITICO

Biological warfare is an established weapon of war. From the disease-based experimentation on humans mounted by Japans Unit 731 during World War II to the Soviet Unions development of natural diseases such asanthrax into weaponized pathogens in its illicit Biopreparat research facilities, this is not a topic reserved to Tom Clancy novels or Mission Impossible movies.

As a result, it is reasonable to ask whether COVID-19, which originated in China and has taken more than 167,350 lives globally to date, is a naturally occurring disease or a man-made (or modified) agent of attack.

This is an especially justified question given that the geographic locus for the new coronavirus that causes the disease is Wuhan, home to one of communist Chinasinstitutes for virological research.

>>> When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering Americas top thinkers together to figure that out.Learn more here.

Recent media reports indicate that the virus that causes the disease COVID-19 indeed may have been accidentally leaked. Indeed, much analysis points to the possibility of a connection between the Chinese governmentswork on corona-type viruses and the novel coronavirus that has killed so many across the globe.

It is crucial for all Americansto understand the depths and extent of what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hascalled Beijings coronavirus disinformation campaign.

To that end, here is the chronology of exactly what happened when, and how the communist regime in Beijing lied about it. (I am grateful to Pompeos team, especially the Bureau of Global Public Affairs, for compiling the original COVID-19 cover-up chronology.)

Nov. 17:The first case of someonein China suffering fromCOVID-19 is reported, according to government dataseen by theSouth China Morning Post.

Dec. 10:WeiGuixian, a seafoodmerchant in WuhansHuananmarket, began to feel sick. She will be discharged from the hospital in January, having survived thecoronavirus.

Dec. 27:ZhangJixian, a doctorfrom Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and WesternMedicine,tellsChinas health authorities that a new disease affecting some 180 patients was caused by a newcoronavirus.

Dec. 26-30:Evidence of a new virus emergesfrom Wuhan patient data sent tomultipleChinese genomics companies.

Dec.31:Chinese officials alert theWorld Health Organizations China Country Office of several cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan.

Jan. 9: The World Health Organization releases a statement on the cluster of pneumonia cases inWuhan.

Jan.11: Having provided the genomic sequence of the virus to national authorities Jan. 5 and seeing no action from them,professor ZhangYongzhenof theShanghai Public Health ClinicalCentrepublishesthe data onvirological.organd GenBank, allowing teams around the world to begin work on testing methods.

Jan. 14:The WHO announces for the first time that there may have been limitedhuman-to-human transmission of thevirus.

Jan. 18:Wuhan authorities go ahead with apotluck banquet for 40,000 families in an attempt to break a world record.

Jan. 20:Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a leading authority on respiratory health who was well known for his role in fighting SARS, confirmsin a TV interview that the diseaseisspreadingfrom person to person, a fact first identified by doctors in Wuhan in December. Zhong later will say that if the government had takenaction earlier, in December or even early January, the number of sick would have been greatly reduced.Wuhan Mayor ZhouXianwangsays that rules imposed by the central government in Beijing limit what he could disclose about the threat posed by the Wuhan virus.

Jan. 23: Chinese authorities lock downWuhan after allowing 5 million people to leave the city without screening amid the growing outbreak.

Feb. 7:Dr. Li Wenliangdies of COVID-19 after contracting it from a patient, five weeks after police detained him for trying to alert fellow doctors to the outbreak. His death triggers an outpouring of grief and anger at Chinese authorities.

***

Those are the crucial facts ofwhat happened in China last year and at the beginning of this year.

Another, just as important chronology exists, though: the timeline of how China hid the truth, destroyed crucial biological and genetic evidence, and intimidated those who tried to tell the truth about the Wuhan virus.

Dec. 26-30: The health commission in Chinas Hubei province orders a genomics company to stop testing and to destroy all samples of the new coronavirus.

Dec.31: Chinese internet authorities begincensoring terms from social media, including Wuhan unknown pneumonia, SARS variation, Wuhanseafood market, and related keywords and phrases critical of thegovernments handling of the infection.

Jan. 1:Authorities bring in for questioning eight doctors in Wuhan who had warned about the new virus via social mediain late December, including Li. They condemn the doctors for making false statements on the internet. Authorities also force Lito write a classic Maoist self-criticism denouncing his own prior statements.

Wuhan authorities close the citys seafood market, then disinfect it without swabbing individual animals and cagesfor samples ordrawing blood frominfected workers,eliminatingevidence of whichanimal might have been the source of the coronavirus and who had been infected but survived.

Jan.3: Chinastop healthauthority, theNational Health Commission,follows Hubeis health commissionby issuinga gag order directing that Wuhan pneumonia samples be moved todesignated state testing facilities or destroyed. The National HealthCommission also orders institutions not to publish any information related tothe unknown disease.

Jan. 10:Prominent Chinese governmentexpert WangGuangfatells state broadcaster China Central Televisionthat the Wuhan pneumonia was under control and mostly a mild condition.

Jan. 12: Authorities close Zhangslab in Shanghaifor rectificationone day after sharing genomic sequence data with the world for the first time.

Jan. 14:Plainclothes policedetain journalistswho are trying to report from WuhansJinyintanHospital, andforce them to erasetheirvideo footage and hand in their cellphones and cameras.

Jan. 15:LiQun, head of the emergency center at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, plays down the threat of human-to-human transmission on state television: After careful screening and prudent judgment, we have reached the latest understanding that the risk of human-to-human transmission is low.

Feb. 6: Chinas internet watchdog tightens controls on social media platformsfollowing Chinese President Xi Jinpings directive to strengthen online media control to maintain social stability.

Citizenjournalist and former human rights lawyer ChenQiushidisappears in Wuhan after posting mobile-phone videos of packedhospitals and distraught families.

Feb. 9:Citizen journalist andlocal businessman Fang Bin disappears after posting videos from Wuhan that circulated widelyon Chinese social media.

Feb. 15:Authorities arrest lawyer and civil rights activist XuZhiyong, who has been on the run fornearly two months, after he publishes a Feb. 4 essay calling on Xi to step down for suppressing information about the Wuhan virus.

Feb. 16: Authorities place Tsinghua University professor XuZhangrununder house arrest, bar him from social media, and cut him off from the internet after he publishes an essay declaring: The coronavirus epidemic has revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance.

Feb. 19: Beijing revokes the press credentials of threeWall Street Journalreporters who had covered the coronavirusoutbreak, including one who was reporting from Wuhan.

March 14:Real estate entrepreneur and activist RenZhiqiangdisappears in Beijing after criticizing Xis coronavirus response.

***

At the same time that the Chinese Communist Party and its security organs were suppressing the truth domestically and arresting those who knew the truth about the new coronavirus, its diplomats and bureaucrats initiated a global disinformation campaign.

Their most egregious lie was that COVID-19 originated in America and was brought to China by U.S. military personnel.

China hasnt just lied about thevirus that originated in Wuhan and may have escaped from its own virology lab.The communist regime also is using this global pandemic as a weapon ofdisinformation against the United States.

President Donald Trump is on the cusp of making the decision to reopen America. He has established a task force on restarting the economy, and key nongovernmental organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation, are submitting recommendations as to how we can revitalize and resurrect an economy that was the end of the world prior to our self-enforced lockdown.

The question now is will thedeaths of tens of thousands of Americans, in large part as a result of themendacity of communist China, be our new Sputnik Moment?

We have one strategic-level adversary in the world today.That adversary is China, and it has a plan to displace America and become, at the very least, a regional hegemon. China is using the coronavirus, man-made or not, as a tool in that plan.

We will come through this national emergency. But will we draw the right conclusions?

Follow this link:
The Truth About China and the Coronavirus - Daily Signal

Associated Press Published 10:53 p.m. ET April 20, 2020 | Updated 8:19 a.m. ET April 21, 2020

Media reports say North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is believed to be in "grave danger" after surgery, but officials in South Korea believe otherwise. USA TODAY

The South Korean government on Tuesday was looking into U.S. media reports saying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was in fragile condition after surgery.

Officials from South Koreas Unification Ministry and National Intelligence Service said they couldnt immediately confirm the report. CNN cited an anonymous U.S. official who said Kim, believed to be 36, was in grave danger after an unspecified surgery.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is reported to be in grave condition following surgery in his home country. In this photo, people watch a TV screen showing a news program reporting about North Korea's firing projectiles with file footage of Kim at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 2, 2020.(Photo: Lee Jin-man, AP)

The Unification Ministry, which deals with inter-Korean affairs, said it couldnt confirm another report by Daily NK, which cited anonymous sources to report that Kim was recovering from heart surgery in the capital Pyongyang and that his condition was improving.

Speculation about Kims health was raised after he missed the celebration of his late grandfather and state founder Kim Il Sung on April 15.

Credible information about North Korea and especially its leadership is difficult to obtain and even intelligence agencies have been wrong about its inner workings in the past.

Outside governments and media have a mixed record on tracking developments among North Koreas ruling elite, made difficult by Pyongyangs stringent control of information about them.

In 2016, South Korea media quoted intelligence officials as saying Kim Jong Un had Ri Yong Gil, a former North Korean military chief, executed for corruption and other charges. But North Koreas state media months later showed that Ri was alive and in possession of several new senior posts.

Kims absence from state media often triggers speculations or rumors about his health. In 2014, Kim vanished from the public eye for nearly six weeks before reappearing with a cane. South Koreas spy agency said days later that he had a cyst removed from his ankle.

Kim took power upon his fathers death in December 2011 and is the third generation of his family to rule the nuclear-armed country.

Kim met President Donald Trump three times in 2018 and 2019 and had summits with other Asian leaders as he pursued diplomacy in hopes of ending crippling sanctions and getting security guarantees. But he maintained his right to a nuclear arsenal and most diplomacy has stalemated since.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/04/20/north-korean-leader-kim-jong-un-possibly-grave-condition-media-reports-say/5169828002/

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South Korea looking into reports that dictator Kim Jong Un in 'grave' condition after surgery - Courier Journal

At his daily pandemic briefing the other day, President Donald Trump announced, We are continuing our relentless effort to destroy the [corona]virus. A lot of people manage not to see much continuity in the presidents efforts, and wouldnt use a word like relentless to describe his commitment to the struggle.

They havent been listening to him carefully.

We pored over dozens of transcripts of briefings, tweets, and media comments in an attempt to distill Trumps core positions on the coronavirus threat, on Chinas efforts to combat the virus, on the economic impact of the virus, and on the seriousness of efforts by the administration to fight it. We cannot fathom why people are confused as to his positions.

As Trump himself put it, There was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar, but some people said it wasnt. We hope the following clarifies what areand always have beenthe clear, consistent positions of the president.

Trump has consistently said that his administration has the coronavirus under control: We have it totally under control, he said back in January. A lot of people think that [it] goes away in April with the heatas the heat comes in, he said in February. It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away, he reassured us in March. Its going to disappear one day; its like a miracle.

Continue reading here:
Whats So Hard to Understand About What Trump Has Said? - The Atlantic

Some of the disinformation is produced by state-run media outlets, and some has been put out by the governments themselves. A website run by Russias Defense Ministry, for instance, highlighted the conspiracy theory that billionaire Bill Gates played a role in creating the virus.

Before the virus spread outside of China, per the report, the overlap between the three governments messaging was fairly narrow: They all defended President Nicolas Maduro's government in Venezuela, which the U.S. and other Western powers do not recognize as legitimate; and argued the U.S. fails to uphold its commitments to international agreements.

But by February 2020, according to the report, the messaging began to converge. The report argues this came and accelerated as those governments have struggled to keep public opinion in their own countries on their side.

One core message has been that China is a strong global health leader and that the United States, meanwhile, is a weak ally. Lea Gabrielle, who helms the GEC, told POLITICO that China has also let Russia's propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. spread through its country where the Beijing governments internet censorship is notorious and relentless.

What we saw as the health crisis started to come under control in China is that the CCP really started pushing a concerted effort to try to re-shape that narrative, she said, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party. So in a short period of time the CCP went from letting Russian disinformation claiming the U.S. was the source of the virus proliferate in Chinese social media, to raising questions on state media about the origins source, to promoting disinformation that the U.S. was the source of the virus.

The Chinese governments messaging is both defensive and offensive, she said.

At the same time, we saw Beijing unleashing a steady drumbeat of pro-PRC content across its global media networks and also from its overseas missions and that included increasingly vocal criticism of how democratic countries were responding to the crisis, she said.

In response to a comment request, a Chinese embassy spokesperson pointed to an interview between the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. and Axios on HBO. In the interview, the ambassador declined to explain why a spokesperson for Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs promoted the claim the the U.S. was responsible for the virus. The spokesperson also flagged an interview the ambassador did with Ian Bremmer where he intimated the United States is trying to take political advantage of other peoples sufferings.

A spokesperson for Irans mission to the U.N. said the U.S. is responsible for any propaganda or disinformation about the pandemic, not Iran.

It seems, it became a part of the U.S.s domestic campaign, and unfortunately the U.S. medias are full with stories of lies and disinformation spread by the administration in the lead up to the virus creating a tragic pandemic in almost every state in America, the spokesperson emailed. Blaming others for its own mistakes is a hallmark of this U.S. administration.

A spokesperson for Russias embassy in the U.S. flagged an embassy tweet claiming the country has not spread disinformation, as well as a Facebook post criticizing the Department of Defense for accusing Russia of disinformation efforts. In these conditions, frantic #Russophobia persists in American mainstream media, obtaining inaccurate information from such a briefings by the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of State, the post added.

The State Department report pointed to a March 10 article in the Global Times, a property of Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Peoples Daily. The article argued that Chinas image as a responsible world power has been further strengthened, rather than dented by the pandemic. Two weeks later, the Iran-based Tasnim News Agency which describes its mission as [d]efending the Islamic Revolution against negative media propaganda campaign highlighted comments from the countrys top general thanking China for humanitarian moves related to the pandemic.

Whos helping fight the virus and who isnt has been a core focus for governments and citizens around the world. On March 3, a media company controlled by Russias armed forces ZVEZDA ran a story headlined Bill Gates, a secret laboratory and a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies: who can benefit from coronavirus.

The piece intimates that Gates had foreknowledge of the virus and claims that only people of the Mongoloid race can contract Covid-19.

In addition to flagging the Russian government's intimation that Gates may have been read in on the viruss spread, the report cited material from all three governments calling coronavirus a U.S. bioweapon. It noted the infamous tweet from Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lijian Zhao touting an article claiming the novel coronavirus could have come from the U.S., as well as a Russia Today article highlighting a claim from the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that the virus could be an American bioweapon. The RT story noted that theres still no official proof of that conspiracy theory.

Analysts outside the U.S. government are also tracking the global message wars. Camille Francois, the chief innovation officer at the network analysis firm Graphika, said her company has seen one of the same major themes that the State Department report highlighted.

We have observed both public diplomacy and covert campaigns originating from Iran, China, and Russia converge around Covid-19 narratives, particularly in blaming the U.S. for its own response to the crisis and current role in geopolitical affairs, she said.

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State report: Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation narratives echoing each other - POLITICO