Tag: china

Chinese team behind extreme animal gene experiment says it may lead to super soldiers who survive nuclear fallout

A team of military medical scientists in China says it has inserted a gene from the microscopic water bear into human embryonic stem cells and significantly increased these cells’ resistance to radiation.

They said success in this unprecedented experiment could lead to super-tough soldiers who could survive nuclear fallout.

From water bear to super soldier

The water bear, also known as tardigrade or moss piglet, is an eight-legged animal smaller than 1 millimetre long and the hardiest creature on Earth. Over years of scientific testing, it has survived -200 degrees Celsius, more than anour hour in boiling water and after flying in space.

The water bear’s toughness comes in part from a gene that can generate shieldlike proteins to protect its cells against radiation and other environmental damage.

The Chinese team said it had found a way to introduce this gene into human DNA using CRISPR/Cas9, a gene-editing tool now available in most bio-labs.

In their laboratory experiment, nearly 90 per cent of the human embryonic cells carrying the water bear gene survived a lethal exposure to X-ray radiation, according to the team led by professor Yue Wen with the radiation biotechnology laboratory at the Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing.

There has been a growing interest in the study since Yue and his colleagues published their findings in the Chinese-language journal Military Medical Sciences in October, according to a Beijing-based life scientist.

“This is amazing, considering the big difference between the water bear and a human,” said the researcher who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the technology.

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Pentagon Leaders Say New Budget Will Help Prepare For War With China

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress at a Thursday hearing that the Pentagon’s 2024 budget request will help the country prepare for a future war with China.

Milley insisted the Pentagon’s massive $842 billion budget request is meant to deter war but said it will also prepare the US military to fight one. He told the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense that deterring and preparing for a conflict “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”

The Pentagon identified China as the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security strategy” in the 2022 National Defense Strategy, and lately, US military leaders have been speaking more explicitly about how they’re preparing for a direct war with China despite the risk of nuclear war. President Biden has also vowed to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

Milley said China’s actions “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States,” echoing similar warnings made by Chinese officials.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang warned earlier this month that if the US doesn’t change course on its military buildup in the Asia Pacific and other policies aimed at China, it will lead to “conflict and confrontation.” The Pentagon’s budget request will further expand the US military footprint in the region by funding a buildup plan known as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

“This budget includes a 40 percent increase over last year’s for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to an all-time high of $9.1 billion,” Austin said at the hearing.

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They’re Rebooting “Axis Of Evil” On The 20th Anniversary Of The Iraq Invasion

The western political/media class has suddenly resurrected the phrase “Axis of Evil” in recent days to refer to the increasing intimacy between Russia and China, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Famed Iraq War cheerleader Sean Hannity appears to have kicked things off last week, saying on his show that “a new Axis of evil is emerging” between China, Russia and Iran, a slogan that has since been echoed numerous times this week.

On Tuesday former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Fox News that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are “two dictators that have said they are unlimited partners,” asserting that “This is the new Axis of Evil, with Iran being their junior partner.”

Also on Tuesday Representative Mike Lawler tweeted, “Xi’s meeting with Putin in Moscow is deeply concerning and highlights the growing threats posed by this new axis of evil,” and on Thursday he tweeted, “We are dealing with a new axis of evil and failure to stop Putin in Ukraine will have far-reaching implications as Russia pushes further into Eastern Europe and China moves against Taiwan.”

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The growing Chinese investment in illegal American weed

A few days before Christmas, a joint law enforcement task force found nearly 9,000 pounds of cannabis worth almost $15 million during a raid in a suburban neighborhood in Antioch, Calif.

The California Department of Cannabis Control believes that the four houses searched in the bedroom community 45 minutes outside San Francisco were linked to China.

Mexican cartels have a long history of importing, growing and redistributing illicit cannabis in the United States. But Chinese investors, owners and workers have emerged in recent years as a new source of funding and labor for illegal marijuana production.

What is known — from interviews with state law enforcement officials, experts on the international drug trade, economists and lawmakers — is that the number of farms funded by sources traceable back to Chinese investors or owners has skyrocketed. Chinese owners and workers have become a larger presence at illegal grows in Oklahoma, California and Oregon, they say.

In Oklahoma, close to 3,000 of the state’s nearly 7,000 licensed marijuana farms have been flagged for suspicious activity by law enforcement over the last year. Those operations are now being investigated for obtaining their licenses fraudulently and/or for selling into the illicit market, according to Mark Woodward, spokesperson for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.

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New Wuhan Scandal: US Agencies Double-Paid Virus Research Costs

The US government may have made tens of millions of dollars in duplicate payments for virus research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology, according to a review of government records by a former federal investigator, CBS News reports.

“What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research,” said Diane Cutler, whose services were engaged by Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall.

Cutler has more than 20 years of experience investigating healthcare fraud and white-collar crime, an her conclusions spring from her review of over 50,000 documents relating to US grants that financed coronavirus research in China.

The apparent double-payments, made via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and US Agency for International Development (USAID), related to a variety of claimed costs, including salaries, travel, medical supplies and equipment.

Anonymous sources told CBS the damage may amount to tens of millions of dollars. Marshall has turned over Cutler’s findings to USAID and the agency’s internal watchdog, which has launched an investigation of its own. It could take six months or more.

On Feb. 28, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau had long ago concluded the Covid-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a leak from a Chinese lab. Days earlier, it was reported that the Department of Energy had — in 2020 — reached its own determination that a lab leak was most likely.

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Pentagon asks for biggest budget EVER at $842 BILLION – and it could soon hit $1 TRILLION: US wants $11B for hypersonic weapons, $29.8B for missile defense systems, 72 jets and $1.5B to defend Guam from China

The Pentagon has asked Congress for a range of advanced missiles, modern jets, state-of-the-art defense systems and more money to guard against threats from China in its biggest peacetime budget in history.

The $842 billion request includes $11billion for hypersonic weapons, $37.7 billion to modernize the nuclear arsenal and a huge investment in research and development to take on threats from adversaries including China and Russia.

$6.2 billion has been requested for a Columbia ballistic missile submarine, $28.8 billion on missile defense systems, an investment in space warfare and cash to bolster defenses in Guam and Hawaii – as Beijing bulks up its military and threatens Taiwan.

There’s almost $38 billion to buy new nuclear submarines, field the new B-21 stealth bomber and manufacture new ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles 

The huge Department of Defense blueprint would put the military’s annual budget over the $1 trillion threshold in just five years, its chief financial officer said Monday.

It’s the largest request since the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the mid-2000s, when the weight of hundreds of thousands of troops deployed in those overseas conflicts ballooned overseas war spending.

There could be the largest pay raise for troops in more than 20 years, as the Pentagon faces problems with recruitment across all branches.  

The budget could surge again to meet the higher cost of weapons and parts, but also to answer the vulnerabilities that the Ukraine war has exposed in the U.S. defense industrial base, and the strategic threat the U.S. sees from China´s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal, its hypersonic capabilities and its gains in space.

Even if it only grows to account for inflation, ‘the budget will hit a trillion dollars,’ probably before the next five years, Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord told a press briefing.  

‘Maybe that´s going to be a psychological, big watershed moment for many of us, or some of us, but it is inevitable.’

While the number seems astronomically high, it is only about 3 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. For comparison, during the Second World War the country was spending about one-third of its GDP on defense, McCord said.

The budget request is part of an overall $6.8 trillion spending proposal rolled out by Biden last week, which Republicans say they’ll reject. 

But it’s not clear how they’ll act on the Pentagon proposal.

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The Drums Of War With China Are Beating Much Louder Now

Comments from both Washington and Beijing have suddenly become much more pointed and aggressive in recent days, with talk about hot war now being discussed as not just a real possibility but in many cases as a probability. Let’s have a look at some of the most significant recent developments.

Beijing comments on US encirclement

The Chinese government has finally broken from its usual restrained commentary on the way the empire has been aggressively encircling the PRC with war machinery in ways that Washington would never permit itself to be encircled and waging economic warfare that it itself would never tolerate.

“Western countries—led by the U.S.—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech last week.

China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang followed up on Xi’s comments the next day with a warning of “conflict and confrontation” should US aggressions and encirclement continue.

“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there surely will be conflict and confrontation,” he said, adding, “Who will bear the catastrophic consequences? Such competition is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity.”

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Study Suggests Bronze Age Ice Skates Discovered In China Were Imported From Europe

A 3,500-year-old pair of ice skates were discovered in a mountainous area of China, archaeologists claimed in late February.

Researchers investigating the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region discovered the oldest-known skates in a tomb in the Gaotai Ruins, according LiveScience. The skates are made out of the bones of oxen and horse, but it is unclear whether they were used for sport, hunting, or regular travel throughout the region.

The design is unique, made of a very flat blade that forms a cutting edge allowing users to glide over ice, LiveScience continued. Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology researcher Ruan Qiurong said the newly-discovered skates are almost exactly the same as some found in prehistoric Europe.

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US Ambassador To China: “We’re The Leader” Of The Indo-Pacific

A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran.

Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns made the very interesting comment that Beijing must accept that the United States is “the leader” in the region and isn’t going anywhere.

“From my perspective sitting here in China looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or ten years ago,” Burns said, citing the strength of US alliances, its private sector and its research institutions and big tech companies.

“And I do think that the Chinese now understand that the United States is staying in this region — we’re the leader in this region in many ways,” Burns added emphatically.

The “Indo-Pacific” is a term which has gained a lot of traction in geopolitical discourse in recent years, typically describing the vast multi-continental region between Australia to the south, Asia to the north, Africa to the west, and the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the east. It contains half the Earth’s population, and it very much includes China.

After making the rather audacious claim of being “the leader” of a region which China is a part of but the United States is not, Burns went on to claim the US does not want any kind of confrontation with the Chinese government.

“We want a future of peace with China,” Burns said. “As President Biden makes clear every time he talks about this, we don’t want conflict, but we’re gonna hold our own out here. And I feel optimistic, just concluding my first year as ambassador, about the American position in this country and in this region.”

Again, Burns is saying this from China, so by “in this country” he means in China.

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Senate unanimously votes to declassify Wuhan lab leak intelligence

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously voted in favor of a bill mandating that the Biden administration declassify intelligence materials involving the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republican Sens. Mike Braun, Ind., and Josh Hawley, Mo., reintroduced the measure following a report from the Department of Energy concluding that the virus was likely the result of a lab leak, the Epoch Times reported.

Hawley celebrated the measure’s passage in a Tweet, saying “Tonight the Senate UNANIMOUSLY passed my bill to declassify all the intelligence the government has on #covid origins. Let the people see the truth!”

Formerly maligned as a conspiracy, the notion that the virus spread by way of a leak has increasingly gained traction among major federal agencies, including the DOE and FBI.

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