The controversial British-American kickboxer turned social media influencer Andrew Tate, who has been detained in Romania since December, has denied having lung cancer.
This comes after a copy of his medical file went viral on social media platforms and also came after his manager, The Sartorial Shooter took to Instagram on Friday to inform that the news was true.
Now, Tate has denied the news and called it rumours. Taking to Twitter, he said his lungs have the capacity of an “Olympic athlete”.
“I do not have cancer. My lungs contain precisely 0 smoking damage. In fact, I have an 8L lung capacity and the vital signs of an Olympic athlete,” Andrew Tate tweeted.
“There is nothing but a scar on my lung from an old battle. True warriors are scarred both inside and out,” he added.
He believes that “As one of the most influential men on the face of the planet, it is important for the good of humanity that I live as long as possible. At my current strength levels, I estimate to survive at least 5,000 more years.”
“It is important for the good of humanity that I live as long as possible. At my current strength levels, I estimate to survive for at least 5000 more years. With this in mind, I take my medical care extremely seriously,” Tate continued in a Twitter thread.
Moreover, he mentioned his health check before his arrest in Romania.
“I had a regular checkup organized in Dubai pre-detention. The doctors were extremely interested in the scar on my lung. They do not understand how I survive without treatment. They do not know the secrets of Wudan. But this battle has long passed,” the influencer concluded.
I do not have cancer.
My lungs contain precisely 0 smoking damage.
In fact,
I have an 8L lung capacity and the vital signs of an Olympic athlete
There is nothing but a scar on my lung from an old battle.
Dubai hospital condemns leak of Tate’s medical letter
In response to a leak of the letter, King’s College Hospital in London where Tate was receiving treatment said, “We confirm that the letter, which details Mr Tate’s visits at our hospital in Dubai Hills, and the Medical Centres in Dubai Marina and Jumeirah, as well as the diagnostic tests he underwent was issued by one of our family medicine practitioners Dr Ali Razzak.”
Razzak is the medical director of King’s Dubai Marina Medical Center and Tate’s primary care physician, according to the statement.
Regarding the leaked documents, the hospital “strongly condemned” it and reiterated that the leak did not happen on their end.
Tate is a British-American citizen known for his misogynistic views. He has 5.1 million Twitter followers.
He was arrested on December 29, 2022, when authorities descended on his property north of Bucharest. His brother, Tristan, and two Romanian women are also in detention in the same case. None of the four has been formally charged.
Others are calling for the White House to hold classified briefings on what they knew about Covid-19’s origins, when they knew it, and what led to the latest agency assessment. And still more hope to use the lab leak assessment as momentum for sanctions and investment restrictions on the world’s second-largest economy.
The spectrum of responses played out on Tuesday across nearly a dozen hearings and legislation markups aimed at deterring what GOP lawmakers say is increasingly aggressive behavior from China that the Biden administration has not effectively addressed.
The Covid news “reinforces the vigilance we’re going to have to have vis a vis China on just about every front,” said Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.). “It takes a little time to get momentum, but you’re going to see a lot of fresh China-countering policies from this Congress.”
The U.S. government has not reached a consensus on how the coronavirus pandemic started. But The Wall Street Journal’s weekend report that the Energy Department made a “low confidence” endorsement of the lab leak theory provided fresh ammunition for those who have long accused the federal government of misleading the public about Covid-19, potentially sowing more distrust about the threat the virus still poses.
But even as some Republicans argued the Energy Department news vindicates the lab leak theory they’ve promoted for years, they warned against focusing on the past at the expense of current threats.
“Most certainly, we can have additional hearings, but I think there are other priorities right now,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told POLITICO. “We’ve got a war in Europe right now. We’ve got a new peer competitor in China right now that is growing faster than we are in terms of military capabilities. We’ve got challenges within our own country in terms of a huge debt that we really have to address. So, when we look at the pandemic and talk about assigning blame, I think most of us have already assigned it.”
Going forward, Republicans say they hope to cobble together a China-Covid strategy that includes both fact-finding missions and new policies to counter threats in the U.S. and abroad.
“We should protest that China tried to cover this up, because that delayed our ability to respond,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Senate’s top Republican appropriator and member of the Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO. “We also need to take a look at the kind of research that was being done at that lab, and whether it did receive American tax dollars to support it, which is an open question right now.”
The GOP policymaking, however, got off to a sputtering start on Tuesday. The House Financial Services Committee advanced 10 bipartisan bills, but skirted any meaningful new restrictions on the Chinese economy. The House Foreign Affairs Committee also advanced a handful of bipartisan messaging bills, while clashing over a proposed ban for the Chinese social media app TikTok.
And in the House Science Committee, Republicans broke with their committee chair on Tuesday over what kind of restrictions to impose on Chinese scientists working in the U.S. and Chinese collaborations with American scientists overseas.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) called for curbs on what information U.S. universities share with China, while freshman Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) pushed for ramped-up surveillance of Chinese students and STEM researchers who work in the United States.
Federal law enforcement “should probably be keeping a pretty close eye on” them, he said. “Because there’s significant links back to the place where they come from, including the family that remains in place.”
Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) stopped short of endorsing those moves, though he agreed that Beijing has made efforts “to steal the results of our research and innovations — whether that’s through cyberattacks, forced intellectual property acquisition or malicious recruitment initiatives like the Thousand Talents Program,” which aims to lure academic talent to China from other countries.
Several Republicans said the DOE assessment has revived the caucus’ interest in bills of theirs that failed to advance last year.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said the Energy Department report could be a “breakthrough” for his legislation to declassify intelligence around the origin of Covid.
“I’m guessing this is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back on this issue,” he said. “It’s going to cascade.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) was similarly confident Tuesday that the revelation would lend momentum to his bill to create a 9/11-style, nonpartisan commission to study Covid’s origin — a provision that was left out of the spending bill that passed in December — though he noted that conversations are at the staff level and haven’t yet progressed to members.
Several lawmakers told POLITICO they need more information before they can decide how best to proceed when it comes to U.S.-China policy.
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who sits on the Oversight subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Tuesday that he’s requested a classified briefing from the Energy Department and has yet to receive a response.
“I don’t think we’ve been given a straight story,” he said. “So obviously, when they came up with this observation, I wanted more information.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Amaravati: The question paper leak during the class 10 exams in Andhra Pradesh last year had rattled the education authorities with nearly 70 people including 45 teachers arrested for their alleged role in the leak in a few districts.
The management of some private schools in collusion with a few teachers of government schools allegedly tried to help their students score good marks by leaking the papers soon after the papers reached the exam centres.
The teachers on duty at the exam centres allegedly took photos of the question papers and sent them into a few WhatsApp groups within minutes of the start of the exam.
Teachers known to students waited near the exam centres, wrote the answers and sent them back through water boys or others to the teachers inside, who then showed it to the students.
Officials said since question paper leaks before the exams is not possible due to fool-proof measures taken by the Board of Secondary School Certificate (SSC), some unscrupulous elements came out with this new method.
In the past, there were instances of question papers getting leaked before the commencement of the exams.
The SSC exam was held in April-May after a gap of two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Over 6 lakh students took the exams.
The leak started with the question paper of Telugu on April 27. Later the question papers of Mathematics and English were also leaked.
The teachers arrested in the case include 36 teachers from government schools. They were booked for criminal breach of trust and under the AP Public Examinations (prevention of malpractices and unfair means) Act 1997.
This was the first time that teachers were arrested under this Act.
“We have taken strict action against those involved. We will take more precautions next time to ensure that such incidents do not recur,” said education minister Botsa Satyanarayana.
The arrests were made in Chittoor, Kadapa and Kurnool districts. In one case the Kurnool district police had arrested 12 persons including nine teachers.
Police investigations revealed that nine teachers from six schools hatched a plan to get the question paper leaked in a bid to get all the 183 students appearing for the examinations from these schools to pass without any difficulty.
They took the help of a school clerk and crafts teacher in getting the Telugu question paper leaked from Ankireddipalli Zilla Parishad High School from where the question paper was leaked through WhatsApp to other school teachers.
It emerged during the investigation that the school teachers tried to help the students with the answers with the help of the invigilators at the examination centres across the six schools.
The case took a political twist when the police arrested former minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader P. Narayana, founder of the Narayana Group of Institutions.
Narayana was taken into custody by the Chittoor police from his residence in Hyderabad and was brought to Chittoor town.
The Chittoor police had registered a case in connection with the leak of a question paper of the SSC exams. The case was booked after the Telugu question paper was leaked from an examination centre and circulated in a WhatsApp group.
The police had earlier also arrested Balagangadhar of the Narayana group in Tirupati in connection with the same case.
However, a court in Chittoor granted bail to Narayana after dismissing the arguments put forth by the police.
Narayana’s counsel brought to the notice of the court that he resigned from the post of the chairman of the Narayana Group in 2014 and produced evidence in this regard. His counsel told the magistrate that Narayana is currently not involved in the functioning of the Narayana Group of institutions. The police failed to make a case for sending the former minister to judicial custody.
The opposition TDP had condemned Narayana’s arrest and termed it as political vendetta by the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government.
TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh termed it an ‘illegal arrest’ and alleged that the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led government was victimising the Opposition to cover up its failures. He also alleged political vendetta behind the arrest of Narayana.
However, state government advisor (Public Affairs) Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy said the state sent a strong and unprecedented message that all are equal before the law.
Sajjala said that the action taken against Narayana was after a thorough investigation. He alleged that Narayana turned copying and other malpractices into an organized crime and emerged as a specialist in encouraging mass copying and question paper leaks to break records in achieving 100 per cent pass percentage.
Kolkata: Purported image of a few pages of the English second language question paper was circulated on social media, sometime after the class 10 state board examinations began in West Bengal on Friday, the second day of the exams.
The image of the question paper was uploaded on WhatsApp from an exam centre in Malda district, Education Minister Bratya Basu said.
West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) President Ramanuj Ganguly said it cannot be termed a leak as only three of the 16 pages of the question paper were circulated on WhatsApp one and a half hours after the three-hour-long exam started at 12 noon.
“How can it be called a leak? The candidates were inside the exam centres and the exams were already in progress. You can describe it as an attempt by someone to sabotage the smooth conduct of the examination process. The board will not treat the issue lightly,” he said when contacted by PTI.
Ganguly, who is touring exam centres in various districts since Friday, said the board has requested the state administration to trace the origin of this WhatsApp post which was later forwarded many times.
“The image of the question paper was circulated from an exam centre in Malda district. As stated by the Board president, I also think it is an act of sabotage. The board President will probably submit a report by tomorrow,” the education minister told reporters on the sidelines of an event.
A guardian of an examinee in a north Kolkata school, who got the image on her WhatsApp number, said it was forwarded from one of her acquaintances in Murshidabad district.
Altogether 6,98,627 candidates are writing papers in 2,867 centres in the Madhyamik Examination conducted by the WBBSE. The exams began on February 23 and will continue till March 4.
In 2022, a purported image of the English question paper similarly surfaced on social media but the Board had said it was fake with no resemblance to the original one.
In past editions of the Madhyamik exams between 2017 and 2019, there had been similar instances when images of purported question papers of English, Physical Science and other subjects circulated on social media after the start of the exams. However, each time they did not tally with the original.
A train carrying hazardous materials heading from Pennsylvania to Illinois derailed in early February, causing a major fire and alarm over a possible imminent explosion. The situation has local people worried, despite reassurances from officials, and has highlighted how vulnerable many Americans are to similar incidents.
Up to 2,000 residents living in the immediate area were evacuated as chemicals being carried by the train, run by Norfolk Southern Corporation, were released to prevent an explosion.
Evacuated residents returned to their homes last week but residents report concerns over the lingering effects of the chemicals in the air, water and soil even as officials monitoring the area have deemed it safe. Officials are still investigating the potential long-term environmental impacts of the derailment.
Here is what we know about the derailment and the chemical release so far.
What happened
On the night of Friday 3 February, at least 50 out of 150 train cars of a train heading from Conway, Pennsylvania, to Madison, Illinois, derailed. The train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, a town of about 5,000 residents along the Ohio and Pennsylvania border. A huge fire that spanned the length of the derailed cars erupted. No injuries or deaths were reported.
Residents within a one-mile radius of the derailment were evacuated as officials noted that over a dozen cars carrying vinyl chloride, a carcinogenic chemical, were involved in the derailment and could have been exposed to the fire.
On Monday 6 February, officials enacted a mandatory evacuation, threatening to arrest residents who refused to evacuate, as fear of an explosion rose. Governor Mike DeWine told residents that leaving was “a matter of life and death”. Crews ended up releasing toxic chemicals from five derailed tanker cars to prevent an explosion. Small holes were made into the train cars, whose chemicals were released into pits that were lit on fire. Pictures of the chemical release showed huge clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky over homes.
Evacuated residents, who were staying at shelters and schools, were given the clear to return to their homes on Wednesday 8 February as officials deemed air and water samples safe for residents.
What chemicals were released
The most concerning chemical being carried by the derailed train was vinyl chloride, which is used to make polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a hard resin used in plastic products. Vinyl chloride is colorless and highly flammable. It has been linked to a rare form of liver cancer, as well as other types of cancer like leukemia and lung cancer. Short-term exposure effects include dizziness and drowsiness, while high exposure can lead to hospitalization and death. Another chemical on board was butyl acrylate, also used in plastic production.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) later released information that showed three previously unreported chemicals were also released upon the derailment: ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether. Exposure to the chemicals can cause shortness of breath, burning in the skin and eyes, coughing, headaches and nausea, among other symptoms.
In total, the EPA has reported five chemicals that were contained in rail cars that were “derailed, breached and/or on fire”, in a letter the agency wrote to Norfolk Southern.
Investigation into the derailment and chemical release
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates major rail accidents, said a malfunction of an axle – a rod that connects two train wheels – caused the derailment. Surveillance camera footage from a Salem, Ohio, manufacturer showed a fire under the train happening before it reached East Palestine. An investigation into the derailment is still under way.
Meanwhile, the EPA has been actively monitoring environmental conditions in East Palestine and surrounding towns. Residents have signed up for voluntary home screenings by the agency. As of 13 February, the EPA did not detect vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride – a chemical that is released by burning vinyl chloride – in 291 screened homes, with 181 homes waiting for screening. Officials have told residents that monitoring has shown the area’s drinking water to be safe.
Concerns from residents
Despite reassurances from officials that the area’s air and water quality is safe, residents in the vicinity of the derailment have reported multiple health symptoms, including nausea and burning sensation in their eyes. One resident in a town 10 miles north of East Palestine told a local TV news station that six of their chickens died suddenly a day after the chemical release. Another nearby resident reported seeing dead fish floating in a local creek. Experts have expressed concerns that the agency is not testing for other chemicals that could have been made through the burning of the toxic substances.
Local business owners and residents are suing Norfolk Southern in an effort to get the company to cover medical screenings for residents within a 30-mile radius of the derailment. The lawsuit argues that the company “failed to exercise reasonable care to protect” local residents, who were “exposed to toxic substances, toxic fumes and carcinogens”.
The EPA warned Norfolk Southern that it could be liable for costs related to the derailment, including cleanup and prevention efforts.
History of toxic derailments goes back a decade
Reports have shown that as many as 25 million Americans live in zones that are vulnerable to deadly derailments of trains carrying toxic materials, including substances that can cause explosions.
Just over a decade ago in November 2012, a similar derailment in New Jersey caused 23,000 gallons of vinyl chloride to be released into the environment. The incident sparked a push for further regulation of the rail industry over how it handles the transportation of toxic materials, including crude oil and hazardous chemicals, according to investigative news outlet, the Lever. The push ultimately led to a law that required trains carrying toxic substances to be retrofitted with electronic braking systems, which brake trains cars immediately altogether, rather than front to back like conventional brakes.
The Trump administration, under pressure from lobbyists who argued the change was costly to rail companies, rescinded the rule.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Haridwar: Three people, including an Uttarakhand Public Service Commission official, were arrested on Saturday in connection with last year’s assistant and junior engineers (AE/JE) recruitment exam paper leak case, police said.
They were among nine people named in an FIR lodged on Friday at the Kankhal police station in connection with the case, Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Singh said.
The three were identified as Sanjeev Kumar from Bihar and Nitin Chauhan and Sunil Saini from the district’s Manglaur and Laksar, respectively, he said.
Kumar is a section officer in the Uttarakhand Public Service Commission, Singh said.
Rs 7 lakh cash and blank cheques of several banks have been seized from them, the SSP said.
The accused told the SIT during interrogation that Rs 28 lakh was taken for leaking the question paper, the police official added.
Accused Chauhan and Saini had also earned profits from many candidates in lieu of the papers, he said.
Dehradun: The Special Task Force will soon file an appeal in the High Court against the bail granted by a lower court to the main accused in the paper leak of recruitment examination held by the Uttarakhand Subordinate Services Selection Commission.
“The chief minister has issued directions to take stern action against those involved in the recruitment scam. The STF will soon file an appeal in Uttarakhand High Court against bail granted by the lower court to the main accused Hakam Singh and Sanjiv Chauhan,” ADG, law and order, V Murugesan said.
The lower court’s order granting them bail will be studied when it is made available to the STF after which an appeal will be filed in the high court, Murugesan, who is also the spokesperson of the state police, said.
Singh and Chauhan got bail in the case from the district and sessions court here on January 30. However, they are still in jail as their bail in other cases was rejected.
Hyderabad: A Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) team has reportedly arrested Jit Nayak, an accused in the junior clerk exam paper leakage case, from the city. Although 15 accused persons were identified and arrested in the case, Nayak allegedly fled Ahmedabad and took shelter in Hyderabad.
On credible information, the ATS team located the accused in the city and arrested him. He reportedly is being taken to Gujarat, Ahmedabad on a transit warrant.
The recruitment examination for the post of junior clerks with the Gujarat government was postponed by the Gujarat Panchayat Service Selection Board (GPSSB) hours before it was to be held on Sunday after its question paper was reportedly leaked.
The Gujarat ATS arrested 16 persons in connection with the case registered under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy. The ATS also claimed to have busted an inter-state gang involved in paper leaks.
Gujarat Panchayat Service Selection Board (GPSSB) has announced 1000 vacancies for Class III Junior Clerk (Administration/Account) posts. As many as over 9.53 lakh candidates had applied. The examination was to be conducted at 2,995 examination centres across the state.
In an official statement, the Gujarat ATS declared the names of the 15 accused as Pradeep Nayak, Ketan Barot, Bhaskar Chaudhary, Murari Kumar Paswan, Kamlesh Chaudhary, Mohammed Firoz Alam, Sarvesh Kumar, Mintu Kumar Rai, Mukesh Kumar, Prabhat Kumar, Aniket Bhatt, Raj Barot, Pranay Sharma, Hardik Sharma and Naresh Mohanty.
As per reports, the sixteenth accused was arrested from Hyderabad.
“During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions. The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine,” Curley said.
Curley suggested that there was no “credible” information pointing to any of the justices or their spouses as sources for POLITICO’s story last May disclosing the draft opinion and reporting that the court was poised to overturn the federal constitutional right to abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade almost 50 years ago.
“I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits,” Curley said.
While Curley’s investigation failed to identify anyone who could be considered by a preponderance of evidence to be responsible for the disclosure, several law clerks indicated they had discussed with their spouses the draft opinion and the vote count in the pending case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The court formalized the draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito in nearly identical form about seven weeks after POLITICO’s report, with five justices voting to overrule Roe and four dissenting from that position.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Here are five takeaways on other key findings of the much-anticipated report:
Did investigators interview the justices?
The report indicates Curley’s aides conducted formal interviews of nearly 100 Supreme Court employees and focused on 82 people who had access to either electronic or hard copies of the opinion. All denied involvement in the leak.
The report acknowledges in passing that, unsurprisingly, the justices also had access to the draft. However, the report is silent on whether the nine justices on the court last term were interviewed as part of the investigation, which the court called “diligent” and Chertoff described as “thorough.” It’s unclear whether the court or the chief justice would have the authority to force such interviews.
A Supreme Court spokesperson did not respond to a request to clarify whether the justices or their spouses were interviewed.
The leak was “unlikely” to have been a hack.
There has been speculation that the draft opinion might have emerged as a result of the Supreme Court’s networks, email systems or servers being penetrated by hackers. It’s not an entirely improbable scenario because the federal courts have been the subject of repeated cyberattacks.
Last year, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) announced that “three hostile foreign actors” attacked the electronic filing system used by lower federal courts.
But the Supreme Court’s investigation into the disclosure of the draft opinion scoured system logs and netted no evidence of electronic intrusion of the court’s devices, networks or systems.
“The Court’s IT department did not find any indications of a hack,” the report said.
Social media sleuthing turned up nothing.
In the wake of the article in May, online sleuths fingered several law clerks as potential leakers. The court’s investigators followed up on those claims but got nowhere. The team “assessed the wide array of public speculation, mostly on social media, about any individual who may have disclosed the document,” the report said.
The report doesn’t describe precisely how the investigators pursued those claims, but asserts that the wide array of social media allegations didn’t lead anywhere.
“In their inquiries, the investigators found nothing to substantiate any of the social media allegations regarding the disclosure,” the report said.
Court personnel breached policy by telling their spouses or partners.
A few court employees interviewed in the course of the probe acknowledged they told loved ones how divided the court was in private discussions about the Dobbs case—splitting 5-4 in favor of overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion the court announced 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade.
“Some individuals admitted to investigators that they told their spouse or partner about the draft Dobbs opinion and the vote count, in violation of the Court’s confidentiality rules,” the report said. “Several personnel told investigators they had shared confidential details about their work more generally with their spouses and some indicated they thought it permissible to provide such information to their spouses.”
Some staffers said they didn’t realize that was prohibited, though an existing code of conduct for law clerks says: “The temptation to discuss interesting pending or decided cases among friends, spouses, or other family members, for example, must be scrupulously resisted.”
The report does not indicate whether any employee intentionally shared the full text of the draft opinion with a spouse or partner.
The court is increasing its security.
Investigators concluded that many of the court’s practices for handling physical and electronic copies of opinions and internal communications were too casual and archaic, leaving little way to trace potential leaks.
Provisions allowing many staff to work from home during the pandemic exacerbated these weaknesses, the report found.
The court’s official statement did not address any steps taken to tighten security, but Chertoff said in his letter that the court had “already taken steps to increase security.” Curley also indicated she’d made some recommendations regarding security, but those were not released publicly Thursday.
“While there is not sufficient evidence at present for prosecution or other legal action, there were important insights gleaned from the investigation that can be acted upon to avoid future incidents,” Chertoff added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
