Panel opens debate on virus’s origins, lab leak during House hearing
WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic opened its first public hearing Wednesday with Republicans and their witnesses making an aggressive case that the virus may have been the result of a laboratory leak — a notion that has become the subject of intense political and scientific debate.
“There is no smoking gun proving a lab origin hypothesis, but the growing body of circumstantial evidence suggests a gun that, at the very least, is warm to the touch,” said Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former State Department official.
Metzl was one of three witnesses invited by Republicans.
The others were Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump, and Nicholas Wade, who was the science editor of The New York Times in the 1990s and left the news organization at the end of 2011.
The three have previously said the virus may have accidentally escaped from a laboratory. But they all said Wednesday that the question of how the virus originated remained an open one, and that it was important to settle the question.
Dr. Paul G. Auwaerter, the clinical director of the infectious diseases division at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, testified at the invitation of Democrats.
Some proponents of the laboratory leak hypothesis have suggested that it was a biological weapon intentionally engineered by China. But Redfield, a virus expert, said he had concluded that the virus was a result of an accident, and that his view was based “primarily on the biology of the virus itself,” including that it was highly infectious, spawning the rapid evolution of new variants.
Scientists have said that ability could have evolved through a natural spillover from an animal. They have cited, among other things, coronaviruses found in bats in 2020 that carry a molecular hook on their surface that is similar to a feature on the virus that causes COVID-19. That hook allows the viruses to latch onto human cells.
Rail proposals: The major freight railroads announced a number of steps Wednesday that they are taking to improve safety in the wake of last month’s fiery Ohio derailment, but it’s not clear if their actions will be enough to satisfy regulators and members of Congress who are pushing for changes.
Many of the proposals from the Association of American Railroads trade group focus on strengthening the network of track detectors that railroads use to spot problems before they can cause derailments. The railroads plan to do this by installing 1,000 more of the detectors nationwide and tweaking the way railroads use the data from them.
Norfolk Southern, the railroad responsible for the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border, proposed similar changes earlier this week, but the Federal Railroad Administration responded saying the company wasn’t doing nearly enough.
And several members of Congress — led by Ohio’s two senators — have proposed a sweeping package of rail reforms that go well beyond what the industry is proposing. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has also urged the railroads to make immediate changes.
Federal regulators didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to questions about the industry’s proposals. Congress plans to scrutinize Norfolk Southern’s safety record and its response to the Ohio derailment at a Senate hearing Thursday morning that will also examine the reforms Ohio’s senators proposed. Two federal agencies also announced broad investigations into Norfolk Southern’s safety record Tuesday.
Deadly heist attempt: An airport shootout in Santiago, Chile’s capital, killed a security officer and an alleged robber Wednesday in what authorities said was an attempted heist of more than $32 million in cash aboard a plane from Miami.
Around 10 heavily armed robbers were able to skirt security measures to reach the runway at the Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport, where a Latam Airlines aircraft had $32.5 million in cash that was being transferred to an armored truck, Interior Subsecretary Manuel Monsalve said.
There was a shootout between the would-be robbers and security officials that killed an employee of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, or DGAC, as well as an alleged assailant.
The other robbers fled. Two burned vehicles were later found nearby.
“The brave action by the DGAC officials frustrated the robbery,” Monsalve said, noting that the would-be robbers were “highly organized” and “very armed.”
German reaction: Germany’s defense minister voiced caution Wednesday over media reports that a pro-ukraine group was involved in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year.
German daily newspaper Die Zeit and public broadcasters ARD and SWR reported Tuesday that investigators were able to largely reconstruct how the pipelines from Russia to Germany were sabotaged on the night of Sept. 26, 2022.
Citing multiple unnamed officials, the news outlets reported that five men and a woman used a yacht hired by a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland to carry out the attack. German federal prosecutors confirmed that a boat was searched in January.
The New York Times also reported Tuesday that U.S. officials reviewed intelligence that suggested a pro-ukrainian group was behind the blasts. The Ukrainian government has denied involvement.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he read the news reports “with great interest” but warned against drawing hasty conclusions.
Marches in Greece: Tens of thousands of people marched in Athens and cities across Greece on Wednesday to protest the deaths of 57 people in the country’s worst train disaster, which exposed significant rail safety deficiencies.
Labor unions and student associations organized the demonstrations, while strikes halted ferries to the islands and public transportation services in Athens, where at least 30,000 people took part in the protest.
Clashes broke out after the rallies in Athens and two other cities.
French pension protests: Tens of thousands of people marched in Paris and other cities across the country Wednesday to denounce the government’s pension plan as unfair to female workers, in demonstrations meant to coincide with International Women’s Day.
Feminist activists say the pension plan — raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 — would deepen gender inequalities at work, where women’s wages are on average 15.8% below men’s.
More marches are planned this week.