Intelligence probe of COVID-19 origins unlikely to end with high-confidence result, officials say
WASHINGTON — A 90-day intelligence review into the origins of COVID-19 ordered by President Joe Biden is expected to end largely where it began, without high confidence in how the coronavirus first emerged, government officials told McClatchy.
Biden will receive a classified briefing in the last week of August on the findings of the report, which he ordered in May after learning that a large amount of unprocessed genetic data held by the U.S. intelligence community might yield new insight into how the coronavirus developed.
When the review began, intelligence agencies did not expect it to end with a “high confidence assessment” — a term that spy agencies use to describe their level of confidence in the analysis. Just weeks away from the president’s deadline, that view has not changed, according to several government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 17 intelligence agencies conducting the review, coordinated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, are unlikely to come to dramatically different conclusions than they had in May, although progress has been made over the past seven weeks, several officials familiar with the review said.
The data requires analysis from experts with a rare skill set of scientific knowledge, proficiency in the Chinese language and top-level security clearance.
All of the intelligence agencies agree there are two main possibilities: that COVID-19 was the result of a lab accident in Wuhan, China, or that it spread from animal to human.
Virologists and epidemiologists originally believed the pandemic virus known as SARS-CoV-2 most likely jumped naturally from an animal to humans in late 2019. But information has emerged raising the alternative as a possibility.
—McClatchy Washington Bureau
6 years after his arrest, Robert Durst takes the stand in LA murder trial
LOS ANGELES — Hobbled by old age and cancer, Robert Durst began testifying in his murder trial Monday, completing a bizarre,six-year journey from his arrest in a New Orleans hotel to the witness stand in a Los Angeles courtroom.
Durst, who is charged in the 2000 killing of Susan Berman in her Benedict Canyon home, has sat impassively in a wheelchair for nearly three months as L.A. County prosecutors mounted their case that he shot his close friend in the head to stop her from aiding in an investigation into the 1982 disappearance of his wife.
On Monday afternoon, Durst was rolled to an area next to the witness stand wearing a brown jail jumper and a face shield. Court staff placed a small desk and a microphone next to him. The 78-year-old real estate scion stretched his arms overhead as he waited for the jury to return to the courtroom. Speaking in a hoarse whisper, Durst gave his name before his lead attorney, Dick DeGuerin, sat at his side.
“Bob, did you kill Susan Berman?” DeGuerin asked.
“No,” Durst replied.
“Do you know who did?”
“No, I do not.”
Durst has long denied killing Berman or being involved in his wife Kathleen’s disappearance, but it was unclear in recent weeks whether he would elect to testify — a risky move that will allow prosecutors to grill him under oath after DeGuerinis finished with his questions.
Last month, Durst’s attorneys unsuccessfully sought a mistrial, claiming he is too sick to competently testify in his own defense. Diagnosed with bladder and esophageal cancer, the real estate scion has relied on a catheter for much of the trial and was briefly hospitalized in June.
Durst’s past willingness to talk about the suspicions and accusations that have hounded him for decades has been, at times,both a liability and an asset for him.
—Los Angeles Times
Families reunite, couples return to empty properties as Canada border reopens
DETROIT — When the clock struck midnight on Monday, Canada reopened its borders to U.S. citizens after more than a year of only allowing essential travel.
Although some Americans were not going to wait a minute longer than necessary to get into Canada, Detroit’s ports to Canada didn’t get much attention early Monday. Wait times for the Ambassador Bridge hovered around 10 minutes, with the Detroit-Windsor tunnel following closely.
But the Ambassador saw some families reunite and couples return to empty properties across the river.
Asawari Kaur of Indiana, along with her family, huddled together at Detroit’s duty-free shop minutes before midnight. Some of Kaur’s family hadn’t seen her brother, who got married in April, in almost two years.
“We were all so eagerly waiting for that day,” Kaur said. “As soon as it hits midnight, we’re gonna enter the border.”
Carolyn Ferroni and David Bruns of Columbus, Ohio, hadn’t seen their lake house across the border in almost two years. The minute Canada's border reopened, the couple was ready to go.
“It’s just part of a family culture and tradition — we go there every year,” Ferroni said.
—Detroit Free Press
UN agency: 160,000 children face food insecurity in Tigray
JOHANNESBURG — Renewed reports of violence and displacement in an area bordering Ethiopia's Tigray region prompted a warning about the effects of food insecurity on young people by the U.N. children's agency on Monday.
"UNICEF is extremely alarmed by the reported killing of over 200 people, including more than 100 children, in attacks on displaced families sheltering at a health facility and a school in Afar region on Thursday, August 5," agency director Henrietta Fore said.
"Crucial food supplies were also reportedly destroyed in an area that is already seeing emergency levels of malnutrition and food insecurity."
The intensification of fighting in Afar and other areas neighboring Tigray is disastrous for children, Fore said.
"It follows months of armed conflict across Tigray that have placed some 400,000 people, including at least 160,000 children,in famine-like conditions."
Some 4 million people are in crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity in Tigray and adjoining regions of Afar and Amhara, the agency noted.
More than 100,000 have been newly displaced by the recent fighting, adding to the 2 million people already uprooted from their homes.
—dpa
