90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

A mysterious unsanctioned lab operating in a warehouse Reedley, California, a city in the central part of the state, was discovered by local and federal authorities.

The bizarre discovery was made in March when Reedley code enforcement officers were sent to the warehouse over an illegally attached garden hose and other building code violations.

“It was pretty clear right off the bat that something was going on we didn’t have a business license for,” Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba said. “They didn’t have any city approvals; that building was supposed to be vacant.”

The Fresno County Department of Health was then called, where they found an “unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials”, including samples of coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, chlamydia, and E. Coli.

The discovery of biological and viral agents at the warehouse led to a multi-agency investigation which included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FBI, the State Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the State Department of Health and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).

NBC News reported:

According to court documents, city officials inspected the location at 850 I St. on March 3 for building violations and found various chemicals being stored. On March 16, an inspection by county public health officials allegedly turned up medical devices thought to have been developed on-site, such as Covid and pregnancy tests.

“Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” court documents said. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”

Hundreds of mice at the warehouse were kept in inhumane conditions, court documents said. The city took possession of the animals in April, euthanizing 773 of them; more than 175 were found dead.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the substances and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a Health and Human Services letter dated June 6.

The tenant of the warehouse is China-linked company Prestige BioTech, who is not license to operate in California.

Officials spoke to the company’s president Xiuquin Yao, who claimed that Prestige BioTech “moved assets belonging to a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., to the Reedley warehouse from Fresno after UMI went under. Prestige Biotech was a creditor to UMI and identified as its successor, according to court documents,” NBC News reported.

“The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified,” court documents said.

The documents also reveal that between October 2022 until its discovery, Prestige BioTech was illegally disposing of medical wastes, including...

Visage à trois #1590

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1246

‘A Ticking Time Bomb’: China Infects American Infrastructure With Malware To Disrupt U.S. Military

U.S. officials are aggressively searching for malware that they say hackers from China have implanted into American infrastructure to disrupt U.S. military operations in the event that the communist nation launches an attack on Taiwan.

Officials said that the malicious computer code, which penetrated U.S. systems well over a year ago but was only detected by Microsoft in May, was especially troubling because its purpose was not traditional spying, i.e., information gathering. Microsoft and the U.S. government both said the malware came from China.

The malware was hidden “deep inside the networks controlling power grids, communications systems and water supplies that feed military bases in the United States and around the world,” The New York Times reported. It infected systems that impact not only the U.S. military but also U.S. citizens and the economy.

Officials said that while the effort to destroy the malware has been underway for months, they still don’t know how widespread it is.

Officials say there were two possible goals when China infected utility infrastructure that “serve both civilian populations and nearby military bases,” the Times reported. The malware has not been detected in classified systems.

One motivation could be to delay a U.S. response to an invasion of Taiwan, noting that a slowed response time of even a couple of days due to logistical issues could be the difference between China winning or losing. A second possible goal is to cause such chaos in the U.S. during their invasion that Americans would not care about what is happening in Taiwan.

Officials told the Times that the malware was “a ticking time bomb” and that it “raises the question of what, exactly, they are preparing for.”

Officials have reportedly exercised caution in determining how to remove the malware because any action from the U.S. could tip off China as to what the U.S. is able to detect and not able to...