Tag: investigate

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Politics

Home approves choose committee to analyze pro-Trump Capitol rebel

House approves select committee to investigate pro-Trump Capitol insurrection

A supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump sprays smoke during a “Stop the Steal” protest outside of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. January 6, 2021.

Stephanie Keith | Reuters

The House passed legislation Wednesday that will form a select committee to investigate the violent Jan. 6 riot in which Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. 

The measure passed in a 222-190 party-line vote. Only two Republicans, Reps. Adam Kinzinger, R-I.L., and Liz Cheney, R-W.Y., voted in favor of it.

 “We have the duty, to the Constitution and the Country, to find the truth of the January 6th Insurrection and to ensure that such an assault on our Democracy cannot happen again,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to House members Wednesday morning. 

Pelosi announced the legislation after Senate Republicans blocked a bill in May that would have created an independent and bipartisan commission, modeled after the 9/11 commission, to probe the attack. GOP leaders asserted that it would only duplicate existing investigation efforts by the Justice Department and congressional committees. 

Under the newly approved legislation, the select committee will be led by Democrats and consist of 13 members. Pelosi will appoint one chairperson and all members to the committee, 5 of whom will be appointed in consultation with Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, according to the legislation.  

The committee will investigate and report the facts and causes of the event, such as activities of intelligence and law enforcement agencies and technological factors that may have motivated the attack, the legislation says. It will also develop recommendations to prevent similar events from occurring in the future. 

All findings, conclusions and recommendations made by the committee will be issued in a final report to the House, according to the legislation. 

“Will we investigate how our democracy was attacked or will we send a green light to allow it to be attacked again? Will we stand with the cops or roll with the cop killers? Do we want the truth, or will we allow history to be erased? And are we for the constitution or are we for chaos?,” Representative Eric Swalwell said on the House floor.  

“January 6 was a crime against our democracy and the heroes of this Capitol. Now we must investigate it. Failing that, we are lawless. And lost.”

Rep. Michelle Fischbach, R-M.N., urged Republicans not to vote for the legislation, stating that it is “rife with partisan politics at its worst.”

A mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to thwart Congress’ confirmation of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The attack left five people dead, including Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick. 

Pelosi invited Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges to sit in during the House debate and vote. Gladys Sicknick, the mother of the police officer who died, was expected to attend as well. 

Police officers who responded at the Capitol and Gladys Sicknick have all lobbied for the independent select committee, the Associated Press reported Friday. 

Fanone and Dunn met with McCarthy last Friday, asking him to publicly condemn statements made by GOP members who have downplayed the attack and voted against honoring police for defending the Capitol, according to the Associated Press. 

Dunn, who had fought the rioters in hand-to-hand combat and was subject to racial slurs, told the Associated Press after the meeting that the goal is “accountability, justice for everybody that was involved.”

Fanone, who had described being shocked with a stun gun and beaten by rioters, added that he asked McCarthy not to put “the wrong people” on the select committee.

Categories
Health

contemporary calls to analyze the origins of covid

fresh calls to investigate the origins of covid

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting with a bipartisan group of members of Congress.

Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON — The European Union and the United States are expected to call for more progress on an investigation into the origins of Covid-19, according to a draft EU document.

The draft document, seen by CNBC, is the foundation for the outcome of an upcoming summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and European leaders which is due on Tuesday. Its wording could change right up until the end of the meeting. 

Speaking Thursday, European Council President Charles Michel, who chairs European summits, said: “The world has the right to know exactly what happened, in order to be able to learn the lessons.”

We have to know where it did come from.

Ursula von der Leyen

European Commission president

At the same news conference on Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “It is of utmost importance that we learn about the origin of the coronavirus.”

“There is this horrible pandemic, a global pandemic we have to know where it did come from in order to draw the right lessons and to develop the right tools to make sure that this will never happen again and, therefore, the investigators need complete access to whatever is necessary to really find the source of this pandemic,” she added.

These statements follow Biden’s call last month for the World Health Organization to carry out a second phase of a probe into the origins of the virus, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

A WHO report said earlier this year that the most likely cause of the virus was natural, and dismissed a lab leak theory. But it suggested that further studies would need to be carried out.

The U.S. intelligence community said last month that it “does not know exactly where, when, or how the Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident.”

The discussion on the origins of the coronavirus comes at a time when the U.S. and the EU also intend to talk about their broader relationship with China.

While on the one hand, the U.S. and the EU want to criticize what they describe as human rights violations in China; on the other hand, they want Beijing to engage constructively on climate change policies and to open up certain parts of its economy.

Biden is hoping that the EU will be a partner when it deals with China over the coming years.

“Biden believes that with a broad coalition, you may be able to push China down a more constructive path. International pressure, that is pressure not coming from Washington only, could prove useful on any of these topics,” Jeremy Ghez, associate professor at H.E.C. Business School in Paris, told CNBC last week.

The EU decided in March to put on hold the ratification of an investment agreement with Beijing — a deal that had been presented back in December, just weeks before the inauguration of Biden.

This investment partnership is now frozen following a diplomatic row between Brussels and Beijing. In March, the EU decided to impose sanctions against China for its treatment of the ethnic minority Uyghurs and Beijing retaliated by announcing counter-sanctions against members of the European Parliament.

The ethnic Uyghurs, who live mostly in China’s west, have been identified by the United Nations, United States, United Kingdom and others as a repressed group. China’s Foreign Ministry in March characterized such claims as “malicious lies” designed to “smear China” and “frustrate China’s development.”

Categories
Health

CDC Will Not Examine Delicate Infections in Vaccinated People

CDC Will Not Investigate Mild Infections in Vaccinated Americans

She still hasn’t returned to her daily three-mile runs with her dog because of shortness of breath. “I’m young, 43, healthy, with no pre-existing conditions, but you can often find me now resting on the couch,” said Ms. Cohn.

“Don’t people want to know about it?” She asked. “Where do people like me go? What happens next? Practitioners in my life have been shocked and are trying to figure out how to move forward, but there are so many questions. And if nobody studies that, there are no answers. “

Another reason not all breakthrough infections are tracked is that they are unlikely to result in further spread of the virus. However, the scientific evidence for this is inconclusive, say some experts.

At Rockefeller University, which regularly tests students and staff for the coronavirus on its New York City campus, breakthrough infections were found in two women who were fully vaccinated and developed robust immune responses after inoculation, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Both vaccinated women, a 51-year-old and a 65-year-old, developed mild symptoms of Covid-19; Viral sequencing revealed that they were infected with variants. “One of the people had an extraordinarily high viral load,” said Dr. Robert B. Darnell, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and senior author of the newspaper.

The patient is not known to have passed the disease on to others, he said. Even so, he said, “She had twice the transmittable viral load in a pindrop of saliva.”

Diana Berrent, founder of the Survivor Corps, a group of people with Covid-19, has called for a national registry of all people with Covid-19 to be set up, including those with mild and asymptomatic cases, in order to collect as much data as possible for future research .

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Business

U.S. Asks Mexico to Examine Labor Points at G.M. Facility

U.S. Asks Mexico to Investigate Labor Issues at G.M. Facility

WASHINGTON – The Biden government on Wednesday asked Mexico to investigate whether there have been labor violations at a General Motors plant in the country. This is an important step in using a new labor enforcement tool in the revised North American trade agreement.

The Mexican government said later that day it would begin a review as requested.

The Biden administration moved to review the novel “rapid response” mechanism in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement and came into force last summer. The mechanism allows penalties to be imposed on a specific factory for violating workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

The government “received information indicative of serious labor rights violations” at the GM facility in Silao, central Guanajuato, in connection with a recent vote on its collective agreement, the United States sales representative’s office said.

The vote was canceled last month on allegations that the union at the facility had tampered with it, according to news reports. The Mexican Ministry of Labor said Tuesday that it had found “serious irregularities” in the vote and ordered the vote to take place again within 30 days.

The updated North American trade agreement called for Mexico to overhaul its labor system, and the country revised its labor laws in 2019. Bogus collective bargaining agreements, so-called protection agreements, that are made with employer-dominated unions and that have a shortage of workers are widespread Country. As part of a new legitimation process, the unions hold votes for workers to confirm existing agreements.

In a statement, Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, said the request for a review “shows the Biden Harris government’s serious commitment to workers and worker-centered trade policies.”

In business today

Updated

May 12, 2021, 4:56 p.m. ET

“Using USMCA to protect freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in Mexico is helping workers both at home and in Mexico by stopping a race to the bottom,” she said, using the initials for the trade deal. “It also supports Mexico’s efforts to implement recent labor law reforms.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Wednesday: “If there is abuse of workers in a company that exports to the US, if there are no fair wages, if there is no democracy, we need to intervene and a dialogue from government to government. “

GM said in a statement that it believed it had no role in the alleged labor violations and that it had asked a third party company to look into the matter. The company, which makes Chevrolet Silverado, Chevrolet Cheyenne and GMC Sierra pickups at its Silao plant, said it will work with the Mexican Department of Labor and the US government.

“General Motors supports the USMCA’s labor regulations, including the rapid response process,” the statement said. “As a company, we respect and support the right of our employees to make a personal decision about union representation and collective bargaining on their behalf. GM condemns labor law violations and measures to restrict collective bargaining. “

By announcing its request for a Mexican review, the Biden government avoided finding a controversial tone with the Mexican government.

Ms. Tai commended the government for “stepping in to suspend the vote when it became aware of voting irregularities,” adding: “Today’s action will complement Mexico’s efforts to ensure these workers get theirs.” Unrestricted exercise of collective bargaining rights. “

On Monday, the AFL-CIO and other groups filed a Rapid Reaction Mechanism complaint alleging alleged labor violations at Tridonex auto parts plants in the Mexican city of Matamoros across the border with Brownsville, Texas.

The Biden administration will look into the complaint, said an official in the agent’s office. It could then ask Mexico to conduct a review of the matter similar to the one it is seeking for the GM facility.

Oscar Lopez contributed to coverage from Mexico City.

Categories
Health

CDC to analyze demise of Nebraska man who acquired Covid vaccine dose

CDC to investigate death of Nebraska man who received Covid vaccine dose

Vials and a medical syringe are displayed in front of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) US logo. The FDA finds the COVID-19 vaccine.

Pavlo Gonchar | LightRocket | Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will investigate the death of a Nebraska man after local health officials listed the Covid-19 vaccine as one of several causes of death, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services said in a press release on late Thursday with.

The man, a long-term care facility in his late forties with multiple concurrent diseases and conditions, died on January 17 between one and two weeks after receiving his first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

The CDC and FDA received 1,170 reports of deaths in people in the United States who received Covid vaccine between December 14 and February 7 – 0.003% of those vaccinated. During that time, over 41 million doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s Covid were administered 19 vaccines across the country, according to the CDC.

“Typically, deaths from COVID-19 vaccines can be attributed to anaphylaxis and occur relatively soon after the vaccine is administered, so monitoring is done,” said Dr. Gary Anthone, Nebraska Chief Medical Officer.

“While I can’t speculate about this case, if people die days or weeks after being given the vaccine, it is more likely to be due to other underlying factors,” Anthone said.

The death was recorded on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a national vaccination safety monitoring program run by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration. All adverse events or deaths must be reported to the system if they occur after vaccination.

“This process enables the CDC and FDA to closely monitor and assess adverse events for ongoing safety assessments,” said a statement from the state health department.

The CDC has not reported any patterns for cause of death that would suggest safety issues with the vaccines.

People with high-risk diseases should consult their medical providers about vaccination, Anthone said.