"Matthew Bayliss, the director of the city’s new Pandemic Institute, says history shows that preparedness should be based on “expecting and rigorously planning for the expected” - FT, 02/2022
🤔
devex.com/news/what-will…
" The institute has been given a grant of £10 million ($14 million) by pharmaceutical company Innova Medical Group, which provided the tests used in Liverpool’s pilot project."
You remember Innova, right?
Date Issued: June 10, 2021
Stop Using Innova Medical Group SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Qualitative Test: FDA Safety Communication fda.gov/medical-device…
🤔
"A Pasadena startup got billions selling COVID tests. Then came questions " - LA Times, July 2021
archive.ph/2whpu
" Innova Medical Group moved into a luxury office building in Pasadena. The startup’s contract with the British government has been a boon"
" Innova Medical Group was founded by Charles Huang, a former Chinese auto executive who settled in the San Gabriel Valley and is no stranger to ambitious ventures — including separate efforts to help revive the storied British carmaker MG Rover ..
"In June, the U.S. FDA said it had “significant concerns” that Innova’s test could produce false results leading to serious illness or death. The agency urged the relatively few Americans who had received Innova’s product to “destroy the tests by placing them in the trash.” ..
"The warning followed an inspection earlier this year of Innova’s offices, where FDA officials found things in disarray.
Inside a storage room, government inspectors found 13 cartons of tests co-mingled with boxes of the product damaged or set to be destroyed with no markings
indicating which boxes were OK to ship, according to an FDA letter sent to the company. Tests had been shipped with the wrong instructions, the inspectors found. And Innova had not inspected or otherwise verified its tests after receiving them from its manufacturer in China.
"The decision by the U.K. government to buy the antigen tests in massive quantities from the Pasadena startup was rooted in the desire by Johnson’s government to reopen the economy after shutdowns...
Uh huh 🙃🤡🤔
"Government and OXFORD UNIVERSITY scientists evaluated 40 tests and selected Innova’s for a pilot program based on the initial study. The tests are made by Xiamen Biotime Biotechnology Co., a company in Fujian province..." gov.uk/government/new…
"Dr. Tim Peto, an Oxford University scientist who led the initial government study, said Innova was chosen after its test “passed the threshold of performance” and it became clear the company could supply the test in large quantities. ..
"The startup has defenders in the public health sector, including Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has thrust himself into the U.K. debate..
"“I know people want to hate on the government for purchasing tests — but the Innova test is working entirely as expected,” Mina tweeted to his more than 100,000 followers.. “Very good for detecting contagious people. Which is the only goal here..
I’d be happy to write an OpEd for @guardian to explain.”"
Oh.
Innova has leveraged Mina’s advocacy. Its website links to an interview with Mina by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. headlined “Could quick COVID ‘antigen’ tests break the back of the pandemic?”
"Mina led a pilot program at Citibank in which bank employees in New York & Chicago checked themselves 3 times a week with Innova’s tests. In March, Innova hired away Sean Rogers, a Citibank executive who had worked on the pilot, to be its new chairman..
"The bank has since decided to use another antigen test that, unlike Innova’s, has been authorized by the FDA.
The British government, however, has continued to distribute the Innova tests despite the FDA action. ..
Chunhua Huang's Pasaca bio boasts of him “playing a key role in the strategic alliance” in 2002 between MG Rover Group and China’s Brilliance Group, a major commercial vehicle maker and the first Chinese company to go public on Wall Street..
"But the alliance fell apart and the parent of MG Rover filed for the British equivalent of bankruptcy in 2005 after Brilliance’s chairman, Yang Rong, fled to the U.S. following accusations by Chinese authorities of economic crimes. Huang was Brilliance’s finance director,
according to a British Parliamentary report that investigated the MG Rover failure..
"Huang retained his ties to Yeung, who resurfaced in 2009 telling Reuters in an interview from his Southern California home that he expected to build three multibillion-dollar plants that would make 3 million clean technology vehicles per year.. swissinfo.ch/ita/il-mondo-d…
"It’s unclear what led Huang to the import-export deal with the Chinese manufacturer Xiamen Biotime, .He was born in China, according to L.A. County voter registration records &served in the late 2000s as director of China equity research for BNP Paribas👀, according to a bio..
"A September news release on Xiamen Biotime’s website announcing the distribution agreement quotes Huang saying Innova had a “longstanding relationship with Biotime” but does not provide details...
"An Innova subsidiary and Pasaca Capital registered two Gulfstream jets early this year, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. One was a Gulfstream 650, among the top corporate jets on the market. A new Gulfstream 650 costs more than $60 million. ..
"In the San Gabriel Valley, 3 local real estate agents, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to nondisclosure agreements, said executives with the companies have been looking at estates in Pasadena, San Marino & Arcadia listed for anywhere from $3 million to $20 million
over the last year... In October, Innova President and Chief Executive Daniel Elliott shelled out $4.1 million for an 8,000-square-foot mansion in Arcadia. ..the 2-story showpiece includes 6 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, a sauna, wine cellar, movie theater and elevator.
Then in April, Weining Mao, president of the Charles Huang Foundation, paid $4.198 M for a .. estate near San Marino’s Lacy Park. The home ..comes with a swimming pool, spa, multiple entertaining areas and a bocce ball court set ..
"“Innova has supplied more than a billion rapid antigen tests to the world and will continue to supply to meet customer demand,” the spokeswoman said.
Such demand may help explain why company executives are flying around the world. Flight records ..
"for the older jet show it has flown to Iceland, Qatar, Cyprus, Israel and France. The records are unavailable for the G650..
🙄
Still, Huang may be hedging his bets. .. Pasaca has gone on something of an investment spree — &some of the companies don’t appear COVID-19-related.
"In March, Pasaca announced a $50-million investment in Caton Technology, a Singapore firm developing “next-generation IP network transport solutions.” ..
"And more recently, a new company appeared on the firm’s website. It’s a Rancho Santa Margarita company called Sweegen, described as providing “sweet taste solutions for multinational food and beverage manufacturers.”"
"the Foreign Office told Lownie they cannot provide him with information relating to the prince’s visits to Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, partly on the grounds of cost."
"The prince’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2011 was also rejected due to the fact it would cost the department too much to collect the information for the author."🤔
"Lownie told Declassified: “Over the last four years, I have made over a hundred FOI requests…without eliciting any information on Prince Andrew’s decade as a taxpayer-funded Special Trade Representative.
“Every possible exemption has been deployed to avoid releasing papers"
"The hard-hitting themes of incel culture raised in the hit Netflix series Adolescence are being addressed in a new resource for secondary schools from charity Into Film." sec-ed.co.uk/content/news/a…
"Adolescence tells the story of how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school.
The four-part Netflix series includes themes of incel culture, mysogyny, and the treatment of women."
"Through PSHE lessons, boys are taught at increasingly young ages to explore their sexuality and consume pornography “sensibly” – something which drives them further into the darkest parts of sexual violence, addiction and degrading misogyny."
- Catholic Herald
"The show has been so influential that the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has called for the programme to be shown in schools to raise awareness of the issues."🤔 thecatholicherald.com/adolescence-wh…
"In the show, Jamie commits the murder because he is being bullied by his victim, Katie, who is commenting on Instagram posts, calling him an “incel” (involuntary celibate)."..
Forbes:
"Julio Mario Santo Domingo III, an heir to one of the world's largest beer fortunes, is a disc jockey in New York City for the group Sheik 'N' Beik.".. 🎶
"He inherited his wealth from his late grandfather, who owned a large stake in SABMiller following its 2005 acquisition of family brewer Bavaria." forbes.com/profile/julio-…
'Delfina Blaquier is the daughter of Argentine racing driver Delfina Frers and Eduardo Blaquier, a member of one of the wealthiest families in Argentina. ' ..🎶
"Donald Trump Jr. caused an uproar among some when pictures surfaced of him holding the tail of a dead elephant after a big-game hunt in Africa years ago. Now, new policy changes proposed by his father’s administration may allow Americans to bring the carcasses of elephants &..
and lions killed in Zimbabwe & Zambia back to the US.
The importing of so-called hunting trophies was banned by former President Obama in 2014, but the Fish & Wildlife Service announced that it will allow Americans to bring back elephant & lion trophies."