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EcoHealth Alliance – the disgraced research firm accused of using taxpayer funds to conduct gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab before the COVID-19 pandemic began – received nearly $100 million from the federal government over the past decade and a half. From FY 2008 to FY 2024, the U.S. government provided EcoHealth Alliance an estimated $94.3 million in taxpayer funds through contracts, grants, direct payments, loans and other financial assistance, according to a Fox News Digital review of government spending data provided by USAspending.gov. Fox News Digital reported last year that millions of dollars in federal research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were awarded to the nonprofit to study bat coronaviruses in China. The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general released a 64-page report in January 2023 that found NIH did not adequately follow its policies and procedures with respect to three grants to EcoHealth Alliance between 2014...

Viola Zhou / Rest of World : How Threads became a gathering space for young progressives in Taiwan, who now use the app to organize protests against pro-China opposition parties   —  Despite Meta's promise to crack down on political content in the app, Taiwanese activists are using it to organize.

President Biden repeated a claim about turning down an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he purportedly wanted to play football, during his commencement address at West Point on Saturday. Biden told West Point graduates that Republican Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, whom he defeated to become a U.S. senator, had "appointed" him to the Naval Academy years before they ran against each other in 1972. The president recounted that before his interview, "I found out two days earlier they had a quarterback named Roger Staubach, and a halfback named Joe Bellino. And I said, I'm not going there. I went to Delaware. Not a joke."  It's the same story Biden told Naval Academy graduates in 2022, when he claimed he was accepted to the military institution in 1965 but declined to attend. In Saturday's telling of the story, however, Biden did not offer a date. 2024 WILD CARD: COULD TRUMP CRIMINAL TRIAL ROCK WHITE HOUSE RACE? Staubach, a Heisman Trophy winner and...

Justice Clarence Thomas , in the court's latest decision upholding a GOP-drawn redistricting map in South Carolina, took aim at a key, decades-old civil rights decision, calling it an "extravagant [use] of judicial power."  On Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with the Republican-led South Carolina legislature after it was challenged for alleged racial gerrymandering in drawing new redistricting maps.  In a 6-3 decision , written by Justice Samuel Alito, the high court said that "a party challenging a map’s constitutionality must disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship. Second, in assessing a legislature’s work, we start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith." In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote that the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education – written by his predecessor, Justice Thurgood Marshall – introduced an "extravagant [use] of ...

Mayank Parmar / BleepingComputer : Microsoft's Bing, Copilot, and Copilot in Windows services are back online worldwide after an outage that began around 3 AM ET on May 23 and lasted 24+ hours   —  After over a 24-hour outage, Microsoft's Bing, Copilot, and Copilot in Windows services are back online worldwide, with no information released as to what caused the problem.

A Utah Senate candidate who vowed to "push back against the establishment" if he's elected has earned the support of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said he is the "type of Republican" needed in the upper chamber to replace retiring GOP Sen. Mitt Romney. Paul endorsed Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs on Thursday, backing a man who gained notoriety in 2020 for his opposition to mask mandates amid the coronavirus pandemic . "In 2024, Utah will elect a Republican no matter what. It's about what type of Republican," Paul said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital. "We need someone who will stand with myself and Mike Lee defending the Constitution. We need a Republican who will stand against reckless spending and endless war. I enthusiastically endorse Trent Staggs because he is that type of Republican," Paul added. TRUMP ENDORSES GOP UTAH SENATE CANDIDATE LOOKING TO REPLACE ROMNEY: 'HE WILL BE A GREAT SENATOR' Describing Paul as a ...

Forbes : Sources: Helsing, which provides AI tools to militaries, is raising a $400M+ Series C led by General Catalyst at a ~$4B valuation, after raising $200M+ in 2023   —  The Munich-based company is raising at least $400 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst, sources tell Forbes.