President Joe Biden speaks at the White House Conservation in Action Summit at the Department of the Interior, Tuesday, March 21, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden is calling for more transparency in the effort to find the origins of COVID-19.
Earlier this month the House of Representatives approved the COVID-19 Origins Act in a 419-0 vote. It was signed by Biden on Monday.
"I shared the Congress' goal of releasing as much information as possible about the origin of Coronavirus Disease 2019," he put out in a statement. "My administration will continue to review all classified information relating to COVID-19's origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
Last month, a report from the Energy Department on the origins of the virus added to the split on findings between multiple agencies. It posited, with low confidence, that the outbreak likely originated from a lab in China. The Wall Street Journal was first to report.
China disagreed with the report, and the country's foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, "Certain parties should stop rehashing the 'lab leak' narrative, stop smearing China, and stop politicizing origins-tracing."
The UN, which had been coordinating a global health response to the pandemic and implementing policies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and future viruses, said that its own investigation was ongoing.
And in the U.S. the FBI had for some time speculated that the outbreak started in a Wuhan lab, while the CIA had not reached a conclusion on the matter.
"We need to get to the bottom of COVID-19's origins to help ensure we can better prevent future pandemics," Biden added in his statement.
A federal appeals court ruled that former President Donald Trump won't have presidential immunity in civil lawsuits related to the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Israeli fighter jets hit targets in the Gaza Strip minutes after a weeklong truce expired on Friday, signaling that the war with Hamas has resumed in full force.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to authorize subpoenas for two prominent conservatives who arranged luxury travel and other benefits for Supreme Court justices, but Republicans planned to object to the legitimacy of the action.
Someone in China created thousands of fake social media accounts designed to appear to be from Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the U.S. ahead of next year's elections, Meta said Thursday.
The House voted on Friday to expel Republican Rep. George Santos of New York after a critical ethics report on his conduct that accused him of converting campaign donations for his own use. He was just the sixth member in the chamber's history to be ousted by colleagues.
