Venture capital firm Spark Capital has decided to ‘sever all ties’ with Dispo, a photo-sharing app co-created by famous YouTuber David Dobrik. The move, announced by the firm late Sunday, was triggered by a recent investigation by Business Insider that exposed allegations from a woman who said that a member of Dobrik’s Vlog Squad sexually assaulted her.
“In light of recent news about the Vlog Squad and David Dobrik, the cofounder of Dispo, we have made the decision to sever all ties with the company,” Spark Capital tweeted. “We have stepped down from our position on the board and we are in the process of making arrangements to ensure we do not profit from our recent investment in Dispo.
1/ In light of recent news about the Vlog Squad and David Dobrik, the cofounder of Dispo, we have made the decision to sever all ties with the company.
— Spark Capital (@sparkcapital) March 22, 2021
Hours later, Dobrik stepped down from the board of Dispo, as first reported by The Information. Dispo, in a statement to TechCrunch, said the following: “David has chosen to step down from the board and leave the company to not distract from the company’s growth. Dispo’s team, product, and most importantly- our community- stand for building a diverse, inclusive, and empowering world.”
The VC angle
Spark Capital’s decision to step back from the Dispo investment feels like a first of its kind, and if not, rare. It could trigger other investors with stakes in the company to do the same.
Spark Capital led a Series A in Dispo, a $20 million dollar financing event that valued the company at $200 million, less than one month ago. The current statement by Spark does not indicate that the investment has been pulled from the company.
Spark Capital did not immediately respond to request for comment in regards to what this process would look like, and if the shares will be sold back to the company or to another buyer. While the mechanics of the decision are unclear, the fact that the firm led a deal so recently in the company may have given it some leeway to walk away.
Unshackled Ventures, a firm that backs immigrant founders, was an early investor in Dispo and declined to comment on the record. Seven Seven Six, an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian, led the seed round and was unable to be reached for comment.
Other sponsors of Dobrik, including HelloFresh and Dollar Shave Club, have ended their partnerships with the creator.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect Dobrik’s departure from Diispo.
NEW YORK — Kyrie Irving tied his season high of 40 points on Thursday night against the Boston Celtics, notching his fifth game with 40 or more points since joining the Brooklyn Nets prior to the 2019-20 season. Only two players — Vince Carter and John Williamson — have had more such games for the franchise.
After the Brooklyn Nets’ 121-109 win over Boston, Irving hugged his former teammates before walking off the floor.
“Big surprise to a lot of people,” Irving said in jest. “All that s— talking about me and all the relationships I have with every former teammate of mine.”
Irving played for the Celtics from 2017 to 2019. The Nets’ guard has scored a combined 77 points against Boston this season. Still, Irving said facing his former team didn’t necessarily add extra fuel to his game, but that he expected to see the Celtics in the playoffs.
“I’m just waiting for the main stage,” Irving said. “Playing in front of millions of people and it actually mattering in terms of win or lose or go home. I’m looking forward to that, but games like this in the middle of the season against guys that you know well, that’s always a blessing.”
Irving’s former teammate Marcus Smart called Irving’s performance “vintage Kyrie,” but added that the sharpshooters around Irving made the Nets particularly tough to guard. Landry Shamet had 18 points for Brooklyn off the bench, while Joe Harris added 12 points and Jeff Green finished with 11.
James Harden had 22 points and 10 rebounds for the Nets, who have now won 11 of their past 12 games. After the game, Harden said that early on, he could feel the team was shaking off a bit of post-All-Star rust, but that Irving helped carry them to a win.
“He’s a different breed,” Harden said of Irving. “He has that killer mentality in a sense of, no matter who we play or where we’re playing, he is going to go out there and try to destroy the opponent, and that’s something that you’d want on your team at all times. That mentality is what sets him apart from a lot of guys in this league.”
JERUSALEM (AP) — Half a year after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain established diplomatic relations with Israel, discreet Jewish communities in the Gulf Arab states that once lived in the shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict are adopting a more public profile.
Kosher food is now available. Jewish holidays are celebrated openly. There is even a fledgling religious court to sort out issues such as marriages and divorces.
“Slowly, slowly, it’s improving,” said Ebrahim Nonoo, leader of Bahrain’s Jewish community, which recently hosted an online celebration of the Purim holiday for Jews in the Gulf Arab region.
Nonoo is among the founders of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, a new umbrella group for the tiny Jewish populations in the six Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Their goal is to win greater acceptance of Jewish life in the region.
“It’s just going to take a bit of time to seep through before we see a Jewish restaurant or a kosher restaurant spring up from somewhere,” said Nonoo, a former member of Bahrain’s parliament.
Even a modest online gathering like the Purim celebration would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when relations with Israel were taboo and Jews kept their identities out of public view for fear of offending their Muslim hosts.
That changed with last year’s accords between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain that brought thousands of Israeli tourists and business people to the region and led to a fledgling industry of Jewish weddings and other celebrations aimed at Israeli visitors. Emirati and Bahraini authorities have launched a public relations blitz to cultivate their image as Muslim havens of inclusion and tolerance for Jews, in stark contrast to regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.
“A door has been opened,” said Elie Abadie, the new senior rabbi of the Jewish Council of the Emirates. “I think there is more openness and more welcome and enthusiasm for the presence of a Jewish community or Jewish individuals or Jewish tradition and culture.”
The Lebanon-born Abadie, a member of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, said he is certain the shift is taking place across the Gulf, not only in the UAE.
The association aims to provide support and services for the small Jewish populations in Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. These might include kosher certifications for hotels, restaurants and food products, a rabbinic court and pastoral guidance for religious events like bar mitzvahs, circumcisions and burials.
Their tiny Jewish populations are almost all comprised of foreign nationals who have come to the region for business. Only Bahrain has a rooted Jewish community. Its 80 or so members are descendants of Iraqi Jews who arrived in the late 19th century, seeking opportunity in trade.
The Jewish community in the UAE is the largest, with an estimated 1,000 members. It is also one of the newest, and Abadie said he has to “start things from scratch.”
Only about 200 are active members of the community. The rest, like most Jews in Gulf Arab states, keep a low profile. Given the growing enthusiasm about Jewish life in the UAE, Abadie said he expects that “more of them will kind of come out to the light.”
Jewish communities had flourished for centuries across the Islamic world. For long periods, they enjoyed a protected status, and occasionally, as in medieval Muslim Andalusia, thrived in a golden age of coexistence. Most of those communities vanished following Israel’s establishment in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven out or fled.
Given the large numbers of Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians and Pakistanis who live in the Gulf Arab countries, some Jews have been uncomfortable in recent years in sharing their religious identity in public. Residency permits in the UAE, for instance, require applicants to state their religion, and “Jewish” is not an option.
Most Arab states have conditioned a normalization of diplomatic ties with Israel on ending the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Israeli occupation of lands the Palestinians seek for an independent state.
But recently, those attitudes have eroded among some Arab leaders, even as hostility toward Israel — in part because of its policies toward Palestinians — has persisted among their populations.
The Gulf Arab monarchies have a few scattered remnants of bygone Jewish communities, said Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation.
Saudi Arabia is home to sites that predate the advent of Islam in the 7th century, and Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman have old Jewish cemeteries. The UAE emirate of Ras al-Khaimah is home to a solitary Jewish headstone, possibly from a traveling merchant — like most of the Jews arriving in Dubai today.
“Jews have been in the Gulf for a very long time, and now it’s kind of a return to this historical pattern of people coming in for trade,” Guberman said, adding it was “very exciting to see some of this return of the pluralist past of the Middle East.”
Jean Candiotte, a TV director from New York who has been in Dubai for seven years, said the new atmosphere is liberating.
“We used to be this small, little family of Jewish people. We would find each other in hidden ways and everyone thought they were the only one,” she said. “We were sensitive to the fact that we were in a Muslim country and didn’t know if everyone was ready for us.”
“Now it feels quite the opposite,” she said. “I truly feel like I can be myself here, more openly attending ceremonies and Jewish celebrations. Jewish life here is becoming more like Jewish life anywhere else.”
Still, this new reality remains fragile. Some countries have been slower to change. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have long been criticized for promoting anti-Semitic attitudes in textbooks.
Security remains a concern, as illustrated by the recent attack on an Israel-owned ship in the Persian Gulf. Israel has blamed archenemy Iran, and officials fear other Jewish and Israeli targets could be vulnerable. Many Jews in the region keep their religious identities a secret.
A Jewish businessman who has lived and worked in Oman for the past several decades said he is one of perhaps 20 Jews living in the sultanate.
He said the country has a more tolerant approach to religious diversity than its neighbors, but still insisted on anonymity because he was concerned about repercussions from local officials.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he said that Zoom Sabbath services organized by the Jewish Community of the Emirates on Friday evenings have been a lifeline for him. He said he hopes the new Gulf communal organization “will generate a feeling of a bit of security to come out of the closet, so to speak.”
___
Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Nicolas Cage stars as a loner stuck in a small town who’s forced to clean a family restaurant and battle animatronic robots in ‘Willy’s Wonderland.’
USA TODAY
Nicolas Cage is again “Leaving Las Vegas” hitched.
The 57-year-old Academy Award winner tied the knot for the fifth time to his 26-year-old girlfriend Riko Shibata in Las Vegas on Feb. 16, a nod to the Cage’s late father’s birthday, the actor’s representative Shannon Barr confirmed to USA TODAY Friday.
“It’s true, and we are very happy,” Cage said in a statement.
It appears Shibata has taken on her husband’s famous moniker. A Clark County, Nevada marriage license lists Shibata as Riko Cage.
Cage first announced his engagement to Shibata in August on his brother Marc “The Cope” Coppola’s Q104.3 radio show, where he opened up about his non-traditional proposal amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“She left New York and went back to Kyoto, Japan and I went back to Nevada and I haven’t seen her for six months,” Cage said during his Aug. 24 appearance. “We’re really happy together and we’re really excited to spend that time together so I finally just said , ‘Look, I wanna marry you’ and we got engaged on FaceTime.”
‘I was pretty upset’:Nicolas Cage on split after 4-day marriage to Erika Koike
Coronavirus weddings: How some can say ‘I do’ among so many new don’ts
Cage said he sent Shibata a “black diamond engagement ring” via snail mail: “Her favorite color is black so she wanted the black gold, and the black diamond. I customized and personalized it and I actually sent it to her Fedex.”
He continued: “So we are engaged but we don’t have a date because of the world we live in currently. I’m hopeful… I would love to have a really beautiful Shinto wedding.”
Cage got his wish. According to Barr, the newlyweds exchanged traditional Catholic and Shinto vows during their intimate ceremony at Las Vegas’ Wynn Hotel. Shibata honored her culture by wearing a handmade Japanese bridal kimono from her native country while Cage opted for a Tom Ford tuxedo.
The wedding ceremony was followed by a small reception attended by Cage’s ex-wife Alice Kim and their 15-year-old son Kal-El. Cage also shares son Weston, 30, with actress Christina Fulton.
Cage’s rep says the actor “remains very good friends” with Kim.
Cage was previously married to actress Patricia Arquette (1995-2001), singer Lisa Marie Presley (2002-2004) and Kim (2004-2016).
His fourth marriage to makeup artist Erika Koike in 2019 was his shortest: Cage filed for divorce after just four days.
More: Nicolas Cage granted divorce from Erika Koike after seeking annulment due to ‘intoxication’
The 10 craziest Nicolas Cage performances,ranked (including his new movie ‘Willy’s Wonderland’)
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San Diego County health officials have cut ties with a local vaccine provider after allegations it had been handing out COVID-19 shots to ineligible patients.
One Medical Group, a membership-based healthcare practice out of San Francisco, operates offices across the country including here in San Diego County, and county officials said it was briefly permitted to distribute vaccines locally. But the county said that stopped once it discovered the group was acting as “a pay-for-membership facility.”
Download our NBC 7 mobile app for iOS or Android to get San Diego’s latest First Alert Weather and breaking news.
“We learned [One Medical] was operating as a pay for membership facility and immediately reported them to the state,” said a spokesperson for San Diego County’s Health and Human Services Department.
One Medical’s Chief Medical Officer has vehemently denied any wrongdoing when it comes to the provider’s vaccine efforts.
“Any assertions that we broadly and knowingly disregard eligibility guidelines are in direct contradiction to our actual approach to vaccine administration,” a statement from Chief Medical Officer Andrew Diamond, M.D. read in part. “Recent media reporting about One Medical perpetuates dangerous public misconceptions about our COVID-19 vaccine protocols.”
An NPR investigation published on Wednesday found internal communications from One Medical staff members raising questions about the national provider not policing eligibility requirements closely for members seeking COVID-19 shots via the provider’s website. NPR found “patients who were disqualified from receiving the vaccine were nonetheless permitted to skip the line ahead of other high-risk patients.” (NBC 7 Investigates has not independently reviewed the internal communications reported by NPR.)
NBC Bay Area reports the San Francisco Department of Public Health, along with a list of other state and local health departments, have stopped allocating vaccines to the healthcare practice after receiving individual complaints that the provider vaccinated ineligible patients.
San Diego County officials told NBC 7 that they had permitted One Medical to distribute vaccines here locally “early on” in their vaccination efforts.
Officials said One Medical requested 2,000 vaccines, but the county only gave them 900 doses. The county emphasized that moving forward officials will no longer allocate vaccines to the healthcare provider.
San Diego County officials said they had reported One Medical to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) for further investigation.
One Medical’s downtown office in San Diego.
One Medical would not say how many of the 900 doses it allocated were distributed locally.
The healthcare provider’s Chief Medical Officer has defended its actions, telling reporters it did not “knowingly vaccinate ineligible patients.”
“Patients do not have to pay in order to get vaccinated at One Medical. As we did with COVID-19 testing, we’ve opened up access to the One Medical technology platform for patients, free of membership fees, to provide equitable access to vaccine appointments,” a statement read. “We routinely turn people away who do not meet eligibility criteria.”
One Medical went on to say that according to their data, 96% of individuals who were vaccinated by One Medical across the U.S. have eligibility documentation on file with the healthcare provider, and the remaining 4% “generally were vaccinated in accordance with zero wastage protocols.”
The spokesperson added that One Medical’s online platform requires patients to confirm their vaccine eligibility, with “numerous checkpoints in place — online at the time of appointment booking, prior to the appointment via a labor-intensive ‘schedule scanning’ process, and in-person verification at the point of care as needed– to mitigate abuse of our vaccine booking system.”
(To read One Medical’s full statement to NBC 7 Investigates, click here.)
According to One Medical’s website, the healthcare provider is “no ordinary doctor’s office,” offering patients a primary care membership for $199 a year. Subscribers are provided around-the-clock care via on-demand services, the website reads. Patients who do not want to pay the membership fee can also sign up for free services offered by the provider.
But when it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations, the provider said membership is not a requirement.
“The majority of individuals vaccinated by One Medical across the US are not our own annual dues-paying members but have been referrals from departments of health, including health care workers, nursing home patients, educators, and the homeless,” Diamond said.
When users try to sign up for vaccination appointments in San Diego, the One Medical website now states appointments are “Not currently available … We’re working with local health officials to get additional vaccines as quickly as possible.”
NBCWashington
Internal communications published by NPR found within One Medical’s walls, employees raised alarms for months over enforcing eligibility requirements for patients seeking vaccines.
NPR reported those communications included a staff member of One Medical who wrote, “I have questions about our approach of not requiring [patients] to bring proof of vaccine eligibility… A quick Google search indicates that this is not consistent with many states’ requirements. I am concerned about advertising an overly permissive approach.”
One Medical has contested several elements of NPR’s reporting and told the outlet it has since “fired several members of its clinical staff due to disregard for eligibility requirements.”
Diamond told NBC 7 despite the reporting, the provider is still committed to the community it serves.
“Although this type of reporting is disheartening to our team members who have worked tirelessly nights and weekends dealing with the complexities and challenges of the vaccine roll-out, we remain committed to serving our communities and hope that this report does not impede our ability to continue doing this vital work,” a statement reads.
But another state discovered problems with One Medical and stopped allocating vaccines to the provider for distribution as well.
The Washington State Department of Health told NPR it had received a complaint regarding One Medical on Feb. 10 and had “halted COVID-19 vaccine distribution to the company.”
Back in California, San Mateo and Alameda Counties also confirmed with NBC Bay Area on Thursday that they will no longer allocate vaccines to the provider. San Mateo County health officials said the move was due to a complaint it had received. Alameda County officials said they stopped allocating vaccines to One Medical “after learning the practice was planning to vaccinate more than their healthcare workers.”
In Los Angeles County, Public Health officials confirmed to NBC 7 they are continuing to work with One Medical, and to date have allocated more than 5,800 doses to the company.
LA officials said they too had received a complaint about One Medical and in response, issued the healthcare provider a warning.
“We received one report at the end of January that they vaccinated someone who was not a health care worker and Public Health followed up with them and had them explain their process,” a statement from Los Angeles County reads. “Public Health made it clear they must validate that the people they are vaccinating are HCW or those 65+ onsite at the time of appointment or else we cannot allocate them more doses. We have not received further complaints.”
The California Department of Public Health did not respond to requests for comment about any pending investigations.
A spokesperson for the state’s Medical Board confirmed One Medical Group, and its Chief Medical Officer Andrew Diamond have not faced any state disciplinary actions according to a review of its license history dating back to 2004.
Diamond told NBC 7 he has not been contacted by any state or local health departments regarding any complaints, or active investigations.
“We have not been informed by any of our department of health partners that there are current or pending investigations underway,” Diamond told NBC 7 on Friday. “As is the case with other large health providers, it is commonplace for a department of health to inquire about any concerns flagged to them. This is in no way unique or specific to One Medical.”
To learn more about vaccination efforts in San Diego County, including how eligible patients can book an appointment, click here for the county’s website.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell (L) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (R) hold a joint press conference following their meeting in Moscow, Russia on February 5, 2021. (Photo by Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Russian Foreign Ministry | Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
LONDON — Russia has said it is ready to cut ties with the European Union, according to a fragment of an interview published on Russia’s foreign ministry website Friday morning. The comments mark yet another escalation in tensions between the two sides.
When asked if Russia was heading for a break with the European Union, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov said: “We proceed from the fact that we are ready (for that). In the event that we again see sanctions imposed in some sectors that create risks for our economy, including in the most sensitive spheres,” according to a translation of the comments by Reuters.
“We don’t want to isolate ourselves from global life, but we have to be ready for that. If you want peace then prepare for war,” Lavrov added.
Neither the Russian foreign affairs ministry nor the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, was immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC on Friday.
The relationship between Russia and the EU hit a new low last week when the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, visited his counterpart in Moscow. It has since been described as a “humiliating” trip by analysts.
Borrell wentto voice the EU’s opposition to the arrest of Alexei Navalny, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, he accused Russia ofputting together “an aggressively-staged press conference” during his trip.
In remarks to the press, Lavrov said that, “the EU is not a reliable partner, at least at the current stage.” Borrell failed to address that comment, which sparkedanger among some European lawmakers.
In addition, Borrell learned via Twitter during a meeting with Lavrov that Russia had expelled three EU diplomats for attending demonstrations in support of Navalny.
“An aggressively-staged press conference and the expulsion of three EU diplomats during my visit indicate that the Russian authorities did not want to seize this opportunity to have a more constructive dialogue with the EU,” Borrell said in a blog post two days after his trip.
As a result, he has suggested that the EU should impose fresh sanction on Russia — a decision that needs to be approved by European governments.
It would not be the first time that Russian companies and individuals have been sanctioned by the EU. Their relationship has deteriorated significantly sinceRussia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, but ultimately their ties are hugely important to both given their shared economic, energy and strategic interests.
Analysts have told CNBC that the latest differences between Moscow and Russia could put pressure on the gas pipeline being built from Russia to Germany, Nord Stream 2.
The project has been sharply criticized, including by the United States, which has imposed sanctions on companies working on the pipeline — a stance that new U.S. President Joe Biden has shown no indication of changing.
Leon Black plans to step down as chief executive of Apollo Global Management Inc. after an independent review revealed larger-than-expected payments to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that it nevertheless deemed justified.
The monthslong review by Dechert LLP found no evidence that Mr. Black was involved in the criminal activities of the late Epstein, who was indicted in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges involving underage girls, according to a copy of the law firm’s report that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
In its report, Dechert found the fees that the billionaire had paid Epstein were for legitimate advice on trust- and estate-tax planning that proved to be of significant value to Mr. Black and his family. Mr. Black paid Epstein a total of $148 million, plus a $10 million donation to his charity—far more than was previously known.
Mr. Black wrote in a letter to Apollo’s fund investors that he would cede the role of CEO to co-founder Marc Rowan on or before his 70th birthday on July 31 while retaining the role of chairman. In the letter, a copy of which was viewed by the Journal, Mr. Black detailed other governance changes he is recommending to the board, including the appointment of more independent directors and the elimination of Apollo’s dual-class share structure.
Mr. Black also pledged to donate $200 million of his family’s money to women’s initiatives.
Dr. Peter Daszak described how easy it was to manipulate bat-based coronaviruses in an interview filmed just weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
Daszak has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and reportedly pushed back against a National Institute of Health request that he arrange an outside inspection of the lab.
Daszak orchestrated a statement at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that condemned “conspiracy theories” that the virus did not have a natural origin.
Daszak now serves on a World Health Organization panel currently investigating the origins of the pandemic on the ground in China.
A U.S. doctor who is part of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic discussed his work manipulating bat-based coronaviruses in labs just weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
Dr. Peter Daszak, a close associate with China’s premier bat-based coronavirus researcher and a key figure in directing taxpayer funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, explained how easy it was to alter coronaviruses during a podcast interview filmed Dec. 9, 2019.
“You can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily,” Daszak said. “Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus. Zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein — and we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this — and insert the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab.”
It’s unclear where the coronavirus manipulation Daszak described in the podcast, also known as gain of function research, was conducted. Daszak did not return multiple requests for comment.
Daszak said that manipulating coronaviruses in labs is a useful tool in developing treatments and vaccines for potential future outbreaks, but some virologists say such research is playing with fire.
“The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright told New York magazine.
There’s no evidence suggesting that Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina had anything to do with COVID-19. However, the high-containment lab was the site of a “near-miss” incident in 2016 after a researcher was bitten by a mouse infected by a lab-created variant of the SARS coronavirus, according to ProPublica.
And Baric told New York magazine that he can’t rule out the possibility that COVID-19 unintentionally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not,” Baric said.
WATCH:
Daszak also said in the podcast that he and his team had discovered “over 100 new SARS-related coronaviruses” after seven years of surveilling bats across southern China.
“We’ve even found people with antibodies in Yunnan to SARS-related coronaviruses, so there’s human exposure,” Daszak said. “We’re just beginning another five years’ work to look at cohorts in southern China to see how frequent does spillover happen.”
Chinese researcher Shi Zhengli, known by her colleagues as the “bat lady,” reported in early 2017 that she and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had discovered 11 new strains of SARS-related viruses from horseshoe bats in the Yunnan Province, situated over 1,000 miles away from Wuhan. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Coronavirus Expert Says Virus Could Have Leaked From Wuhan Lab)
Shi told the Scientific American in March that she lost sleep worrying that COVID-19 could have leaked from her lab in Wuhan after first learning of the outbreak in December 2019.
“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,” Shi said.
Daszak routed funds from former President Barack Obama’s Predict program and the National Institute of Health to Shi’s bat-surveillance team through his nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, according to New York magazine.
Shi contributed to a study published in February 2020 reporting that COVID-19 is 96.2% identical to a viral strain that was detected from one of the Yunnan horseshoe bats.
Former President Donald Trump’s State Department announced on Friday that it had obtained evidence showing that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick with flu-like symptoms in Fall 2019 prior to the first known cases of COVID-19, a sign that experts have previously stated would be evidence pointing to the theory that the virus unintentionally leaked from the Wuhan lab.
Daszak was a key figure in leading the charge at the onset of the pandemic against the theory that COVID-19 unintentionally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Daszak orchestrated a statement published in The Lancet medical journal in February, prior to any serious research on the origins of COVID-19, condemning “conspiracy theories” that suggest the virus doesn’t have a natural origin.
A spokesman for Daszak told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that his statement, which was cited by numerous news outlets — and by fact check organizations to censor unwelcome inquiries — during the onset of the pandemic, was meant to protect Chinese scientists.
“The Lancet letter was written during a time in which Chinese scientists were receiving death threats and the letter was intended as a showing of support for them as they were caught between important work trying to stop an outbreak and the crush of online harassment,” Daszak’s spokesman told The Journal.
Daszak is a part of the WHO’s 10-person panel that began investigating the origins of COVID-19 on the ground in China on Thursday.
Daszak obtained a position on the investigative panel despite his previous objection to the NIH to cease funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology until he arranged an outside inspection of the lab.
“I am not trained as a private detective,” Daszak said, according to New York magazine.
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