Wednesday, June 2 top stories
It is Wednesday, June 2. Here are today’s top stories.
The Washington Post obtained over 850 pages of emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci from March and April 2020, which was when the coronavirus pandemic was taking over the world.
The emails show that Fauci was friendly and maintained a working relationship with a top Chinese health official named George Gao. Gao would check in on Fauci to make sure he was doing okay as he went through public criticism. Fauci said he was doing well despite some “crazy people in this world.”
The emails have added to the controversy over the possibility that the Covid-19 pandemic came from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci has in the past dismissed the idea, saying the virus makeup shows it most likely had an animal origin.
One of the emails came from a British man named Peter Daszak, who is the president of a global health-related nonprofit organization. He was one of the investigators tapped by the WHO to find the origins of Covid-19.
In April 2020, Daszak emailed Fauci a note of gratitude for him saying in public that the virus came from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab.
A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal reported that three workers from the Wuhan lab became sick and were hospitalized in November, which brought more credibility to the lab leak theory.
President Joe Biden has ordered the intelligence community to do a 90-day review of all evidence about the origin of the virus.
A viral video shows a 17-year-old female rushing to a backyard wall to push a mother bear with two cubs who were walking on the wall and swiping at her family dogs.
This happened east of Los Angeles and the teen’s name is Hailey Morinico. Here is a clip from KCAL 9 News.
[Video clip]
That’s incredible to see.
Morinico said the only thing in her mind was to protect her dogs and said she was lucky to not get seriously injured.
In Volusia County, Florida, a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl ran away from a juvenile home, broke into a house and found an AK-47 and a shotgun, and opened fire on deputies several times for more than 30 minutes.
The sheriff said deputies took gunfire multiple times but did not return fire, but at one point the girl came out of the garage and threatened to kill a deputy, went back inside to retrieve a shotgun, and as she came out again, deputies shot at her several times. She was hospitalized and is now in stable condition. The boy was detained.
The sheriff criticized the department of juvenile justice for sending the teenagers to places that can’t handle them. Both teens were charged with attempted first-degree murder of law enforcement officers.
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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the Biden administration is suspending oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were granted by the Trump administration so there can be a review of environmental impacts. The area is remote, is full of animals, and has oil reserves that could deliver 11 billion barrels of oil.
Drilling in the Arctic has been a controversial topic for many years. Generally, Republicans support more drilling, while Democrats want less drilling.
Indigenous tribes in Alaska are opposed to any kind of drilling and said it is a human rights issue.
China reported that a 41-year-old man is the world’s first human infected by the H10N3 bird flu strain, but said the risk of the flu spreading to others is low.
China’s National Health Commission said the man was hospitalized with fever symptoms on April 28 and was diagnosed with H10N3 a month later. He is currently in stable condition and his close contacts are feeling normal.
What this means is that a virus that is causing birds to become sick has “jumped” into a human.
CBS News said the last time there was a human epidemic of bird flu in China was in 2017 with the H7N9 virus, which has killed just over 600 people.
On Memorial Day, a 56-year-old hiker fell 500 feet to his death from a summit ridge in the Sequoia National Park in California. The National Park Service said the man was with two other people and that one of them, a 45-year-old woman, tried to grab the man and then fell 30 feet, but survived. The third person used a satellite beacon to declare an emergency and then called 911. A rescue crew was able to transport the injured woman to a hospital where she underwent surgery. The man’s body was recovered on Tuesday and taken to a funeral home.
That is all the top news briefs for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
Fauci Emails: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/tony-fauci-emails/
Teens shooting at cops: https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/crime/12-and-14-year-old-involved-shootout-deputies-volusia-county/77-2616b9b1-b980-4f51-bc26-184a8baaeae6
H10N3 Bird Flu: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/h10n3-bird-flu-china-first-human-case/