'Coming for us': Expert sounds alarm on CCP's mission to 'kill Americans' after FBI makes shocking arrests
Following news that two Chinese nationals were charged with allegedly smuggling a "dangerous biological pathogen" into the U.S. to study at an American university, Fox News Digital spoke to an expert on China who said the arrests should be a wake-up call to the country.
"I was entirely unsurprised, which is a sad commentary, but it speaks to the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP wants to kill Americans," Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute focusing on U.S. and China relations, told Fox News Digital after FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrests of the two Chinese nationals.
"Look at what they've done with smuggling fentanyl precursors into our country to kill Americans, look at the effects of them failing to stop the spread of COVID-19," Sobolik said. "Dead Americans. The fact that they want to target Americans here within the United States with pathogens and with bioweapons. This is the Chinese Communist Party. This is what they do. They're in a cold war with the United States. They want to become the most powerful nation in the world and they wanna make the world safe for their tyranny and unsafe for freedom. And they're coming for us here at home."
The couple are accused of smuggling a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a "potential agroterrorism weapon," according to the Justice Department. Federal prosecutors note that the noxious fungus causes "head blight," a disease of wheat, barley, maize and rice, and "is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year."
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The Justice Department also says Fusarium graminearum's toxins cause vomiting, liver damage and "reproductive defects in humans and livestock."
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According to the criminal complaint, one of the accused allegedly received Chinese government funding for her work on the pathogen in China.
The couple are accused of bringing the pathogen into the U.S. to study at a University of Michigan laboratory, which raises more concerns about Chinese nationals infiltrating American universities.
Last month, a bombshell report out of Stanford University shed light on the influence of spies from the Chinese Communist Party that the student newspaper says have likely infiltrated the prestigious institution and other universities nationwide to gather intelligence.
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"American higher education is addicted to the Chinese Communist Party," Sobolik told Fox News Digital. "It's addicted to easy money that has come from Beijing for decades. It's addicted to international students that pay full tuition, many of which are then coerced and pressured by the Chinese embassy and consulates and other networks to spy for the party and report back.
"American universities need to finally open their eyes and stop being willfully blind to the threat of the CCP. They're vectors for intelligence gathering. They are vectors for these threats that target Americans on our own soil. That's unacceptable. If sovereignty means anything, we need to be able to protect Americans within the borders of the United States. And universities cannot continue to be willing accomplices of the Chinese Communist Party."
A Chinese embassy official said Wednesday he was unaware of the case involving two Chinese nationals charged with smuggling a "dangerous biological pathogen" into the U.S. for university research.
"I don't know the specific situation, but I would like to emphasize that the Chinese government has always required overseas Chinese citizens to abide by local laws and regulations and will also resolutely safeguard their legitimate rights and interests," said Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party Embassy in the U.S.
Fox News Digital's Danielle Wallace and Charles Creitz contributed to this report.Original article source: 'Coming for us': Expert sounds alarm on CCP's mission to 'kill Americans' after FBI makes shocking arrests
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The Hill
36 minutes ago
- The Hill
How the Vatican manages money and where Pope Leo XIV might find more
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The world's smallest country has a big budget problem. The Vatican doesn't tax its residents or issue bonds. It primarily finances the Catholic Church's central government through donations that have been plunging, ticket sales for the Vatican Museums, as well as income from investments and an underperforming real estate portfolio. The last year the Holy See published a consolidated budget, in 2022, it projected 770 million euros ($878 million), with the bulk paying for embassies around the world and Vatican media operations. In recent years, it hasn't been able to cover costs. That leaves Pope Leo XIV facing challenges to drum up the funds needed to pull his city-state out of the red. Anyone can donate money to the Vatican, but the regular sources come in two main forms. Canon law requires bishops around the world to pay an annual fee, with amounts varying and at bishops' discretion 'according to the resources of their dioceses.' U.S. bishops contributed over one-third of the $22 million (19.3 million euros) collected annually under the provision from 2021-2023, according to Vatican data. The other main source of annual donations is more well-known to ordinary Catholics: Peter's Pence, a special collection usually taken on the last Sunday of June. From 2021-2023, individual Catholics in the U.S. gave an average $27 million (23.7 million euros) to Peter's Pence, more than half the global total. American generosity hasn't prevented overall Peter's Pence contributions from cratering. After hitting a high of $101 million (88.6 million euros) in 2006, contributions hovered around $75 million (66.8 million euros) during the 2010's then tanked to $47 million (41.2 million euros) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches were closed. Donations remained low in the following years, amid revelations of the Vatican's bungled investment in a London property, a former Harrod's warehouse that it hoped to develop into luxury apartments. The scandal and ensuing trial confirmed that the vast majority of Peter's Pence contributions had funded the Holy See's budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe. Peter's Pence donations rose slightly in 2023 and Vatican officials expect more growth going forward, in part because there has traditionally been a bump immediately after papal elections. The Vatican bank and the city state's governorate, which controls the museums, also make annual contributions to the pope. As recently as a decade ago, the bank gave the pope around 55 million euros ($62.7 million) a year to help with the budget. But the amounts have dwindled; the bank gave nothing specifically to the pope in 2023, despite registering a net profit of 30 million euros ($34.2 million), according to its financial statements. The governorate's giving has likewise dropped off. Some Vatican officials ask how the Holy See can credibly ask donors to be more generous when its own institutions are holding back. Leo will need to attract donations from outside the U.S., no small task given the different culture of philanthropy, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Church Management Program at Catholic University of America's business school. He noted that in Europe there is much less of a tradition (and tax advantage) of individual philanthropy, with corporations and government entities doing most of the donating or allocating designated tax dollars. Even more important is leaving behind the 'mendicant mentality' of fundraising to address a particular problem, and instead encouraging Catholics to invest in the church as a project, he said. Speaking right after Leo's installation ceremony in St. Peter's Square, which drew around 200,000 people, Gahl asked: 'Don't you think there were a lot of people there that would have loved to contribute to that and to the pontificate?' In the U.S., donation baskets are passed around at every Sunday Mass. Not so at the Vatican. The Vatican has 4,249 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value, according to the annual report from the APSA patrimony office, which manages them. Some 70% generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 10% are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2023, these properties only generated 35 million euros ($39.9 million) in profit. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue. But Ward Fitzgerald, the president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, which finances papal charities, said the Vatican should also be willing to sell properties, especially those too expensive to maintain. Many bishops are wrestling with similar downsizing questions as the number of church-going Catholics in parts of the U.S. and Europe shrinks and once-full churches stand empty. Toward that end, the Vatican recently sold the property housing its embassy in Tokyo's high-end Sanbancho neighborhood, near the Imperial Palace, to a developer building a 13-story apartment complex, according to the Kensetsu News trade journal. Yet there has long been institutional reluctance to part with even money-losing properties. Witness the Vatican announcement in 2021 that the cash-strapped Fatebenefratelli Catholic hospital in Rome, run by a religious order, would not be sold. Pope Francis simultaneously created a Vatican fundraising foundation to keep it and other Catholic hospitals afloat. 'They have to come to grips with the fact that they own so much real estate that is not serving the mission of the church,' said Fitzgerald, who built a career in real estate private equity. ___ AP reporter Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
43 minutes ago
Can an American pope apply US-style fundraising and standards to fix troubled Vatican finances?
VATICAN CITY -- As a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost was often on the lookout for used cars that he could buy cheap and fix up himself for use in parishes around his diocese. With cars that were really broken down, he'd watch YouTube videos to learn how to fix them. That kind of make-do-with-less, fix-it-yourself mentality could serve Pope Leo XIV well as he addresses one of the greatest challenges facing him as pope: The Holy See's chronic, 50 million to 60 million euro ($57-68 million) structural deficit, 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall and declining donations that together pose something of an existential threat to the central government of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic Church. As a Chicago-born math major, canon lawyer and two-time superior of his global Augustinian religious order, the 69-year-old pope presumably can read a balance sheet and make sense of the Vatican's complicated finances, which have long been mired in scandal. Whether he can change the financial culture of the Holy See, consolidate reforms Pope Francis started and convince donors that their money is going to good use is another matter. Leo already has one thing going for him: his American-ness. U.S. donors have long been the economic life support system of the Holy See, financing everything from papal charity projects abroad to restorations of St. Peter's Basilica at home. Leo's election as the first American pope has sent a jolt of excitement through U.S. Catholics, some of whom had soured on donating to the Vatican after years of unrelenting stories of mismanagement, corruption and scandal, according to interviews with top Catholic fundraisers, philanthropists and church management experts. 'I think the election of an American is going to give greater confidence that any money given is going to be cared for by American principles, especially of stewardship and transparency,' said the Rev. Roger Landry, director of the Vatican's main missionary fundraising operation in the U.S., the Pontifical Mission Societies. 'So there will be great hope that American generosity is first going to be appreciated and then secondly is going to be well handled,' he said. 'That hasn't always been the circumstance, especially lately.' Pope Francis was elected in 2013 on a mandate to reform the Vatican's opaque finances and made progress during his 12-year pontificate, mostly on the regulatory front. With help from the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, Francis created an economy ministry and council made up of clergy and lay experts to supervise Vatican finances, and he wrestled the Italian-dominated bureaucracy into conforming to international accounting and budgetary standards. He authorized a landmark, if deeply problematic, corruption trial over a botched London property investment that convicted a once-powerful Italian cardinal. And he punished the Vatican's Secretariat of State that had allowed the London deal to go through by stripping it of its ability to manage its own assets. But Francis left unfinished business and his overall record, at least according to some in the donor community, is less than positive. Critics cite Pell's frustrated reform efforts and the firing of the Holy See's first-ever auditor general, who says he was ousted because he had uncovered too much financial wrongdoing. Despite imposing years of belt-tightening and hiring freezes, Francis left the Vatican in somewhat dire financial straits: The main stopgap bucket of money that funds budgetary shortfalls, known as the Peter's Pence, is nearly exhausted, officials say. The 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall that Pell warned about a decade ago remains unaddressed, though Francis had planned reforms. And the structural deficit continues, with the Holy See logging an 83.5 million euro ($95 million) deficit in 2023, according to its latest financial report. As Francis' health worsened, there were signs that his efforts to reform the Vatican's medieval financial culture hadn't really stuck, either. The very same Secretariat of State that Francis had punished for losing tens of millions of euros in the scandalous London property deal somehow ended up heading up a new papal fundraising commission that was announced while Francis was in the hospital. According to its founding charter and statutes, the commission is led by the Secretariat of State's assessor, is composed entirely of Italian Vatican officials with no professional fundraising expertise and has no required external financial oversight. To some Vatican watchers, the commission smacks of the Italian-led Secretariat of State taking advantage of a sick pope to announce a new flow of unchecked donations into its coffers after its 600 million euro ($684 million) sovereign wealth fund was taken away and given to another office to manage as punishment for the London fiasco. 'There are no Americans on the commission. I think it would be good if there were representatives of Europe and Asia and Africa and the United States on the commission,' said Ward Fitzgerald, president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation. It is made up of wealthy American Catholics that since 1990 has provided over $250 million (219 million euros) in grants and scholarships to the pope's global charitable initiatives. Fitzgerald, who spent his career in real estate private equity, said American donors — especially the younger generation — expect transparency and accountability from recipients of their money, and know they can find non-Vatican Catholic charities that meet those expectations. 'We would expect transparency before we would start to solve the problem,' he said. That said, Fitzgerald said he hadn't seen any significant let-up in donor willingness to fund the Papal Foundation's project-specific donations during the Francis pontificate. Indeed, U.S. donations to the Vatican overall have remained more or less consistent even as other countries' offerings declined, with U.S. bishops and individual Catholics contributing more than any other country in the two main channels to donate to papal causes. Francis moved Prevost to take over the diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014. Residents and fellow priests say he consistently rallied funds, food and other life-saving goods for the neediest — experience that suggests he knows well how to raise money when times are tight and how to spend wisely. He bolstered the local Caritas charity in Chiclayo, with parishes creating food banks that worked with local businesses to distribute donated food, said the Rev. Fidel Purisaca Vigil, a diocesan spokesperson. In 2019, Prevost inaugurated a shelter on the outskirts of Chiclayo, Villa San Vicente de Paul, to house desperate Venezuelan migrants who had fled their country's economic crisis. The migrants remember him still, not only for helping give them and their children shelter, but for bringing live chickens obtained from a donor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prevost launched a campaign to raise funds to build two oxygen plants to provide hard-hit residents with life-saving oxygen. In 2023, when massive rains flooded the region, he personally brought food to the flood-struck zone. Within hours of his May 8 election, videos went viral on social media of Prevost, wearing rubber boots and standing in a flooded street, pitching a solidarity campaign, 'Peru Give a Hand,' to raise money for flood victims. The Rev. Jorge Millán, who lived with Prevost and eight other priests for nearly a decade in Chiclayo, said he had a 'mathematical' mentality and knew how to get the job done. Prevost would always be on the lookout for used cars to buy for use around the diocese, Millán said, noting that the bishop often had to drive long distances to reach all of his flock or get to Lima, the capital. Prevost liked to fix them up himself, and if he didn't know what to do, 'he'd look up solutions on YouTube and very often he'd find them,' Millán told The Associated Press. Before going to Peru, Prevost served two terms as prior general, or superior, of the global Augustinian order. While the order's local provinces are financially independent, Prevost was responsible for reviewing their balance sheets and oversaw the budgeting and investment strategy of the order's headquarters in Rome, said the Rev. Franz Klein, the order's Rome-based economist who worked with Prevost. The Augustinian campus sits on prime real estate just outside St. Peter's Square and supplements revenue by renting out its picturesque terrace to media organizations (including the AP) for major Vatican events, including the conclave that elected Leo pope. But even Prevost saw the need for better fundraising, especially to help out poorer provinces. Toward the end of his 12-year term and with his support, a committee proposed creation of a foundation, Augustinians in the World. At the end of 2023, it had 994,000 euros ($1.13 million) in assets and was helping fund self-sustaining projects across Africa, including a center to rehabilitate former child soldiers in Congo. 'He has a very good interest and also a very good feeling for numbers,' Klein said. 'I have no worry about the finances of the Vatican in these years because he is very, very clever.' Franklin Briceño contributed from Lima, Peru.
43 minutes ago
How the Vatican manages money and where Pope Leo XIV might find more
VATICAN CITY -- The world's smallest country has a big budget problem. The Vatican doesn't tax its residents or issue bonds. It primarily finances the Catholic Church's central government through donations that have been plunging, ticket sales for the Vatican Museums, as well as income from investments and an underperforming real estate portfolio. The last year the Holy See published a consolidated budget, in 2022, it projected 770 million euros ($878 million), with the bulk paying for embassies around the world and Vatican media operations. In recent years, it hasn't been able to cover costs. That leaves Pope Leo XIV facing challenges to drum up the funds needed to pull his city-state out of the red. Anyone can donate money to the Vatican, but the regular sources come in two main forms. Canon law requires bishops around the world to pay an annual fee, with amounts varying and at bishops' discretion 'according to the resources of their dioceses.' U.S. bishops contributed over one-third of the $22 million (19.3 million euros) collected annually under the provision from 2021-2023, according to Vatican data. The other main source of annual donations is more well-known to ordinary Catholics: Peter's Pence, a special collection usually taken on the last Sunday of June. From 2021-2023, individual Catholics in the U.S. gave an average $27 million (23.7 million euros) to Peter's Pence, more than half the global total. American generosity hasn't prevented overall Peter's Pence contributions from cratering. After hitting a high of $101 million (88.6 million euros) in 2006, contributions hovered around $75 million (66.8 million euros) during the 2010's then tanked to $47 million (41.2 million euros) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches were closed. Donations remained low in the following years, amid revelations of the Vatican's bungled investment in a London property, a former Harrod's warehouse that it hoped to develop into luxury apartments. The scandal and ensuing trial confirmed that the vast majority of Peter's Pence contributions had funded the Holy See's budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe. Peter's Pence donations rose slightly in 2023 and Vatican officials expect more growth going forward, in part because there has traditionally been a bump immediately after papal elections. The Vatican bank and the city state's governorate, which controls the museums, also make annual contributions to the pope. As recently as a decade ago, the bank gave the pope around 55 million euros ($62.7 million) a year to help with the budget. But the amounts have dwindled; the bank gave nothing specifically to the pope in 2023, despite registering a net profit of 30 million euros ($34.2 million), according to its financial statements. The governorate's giving has likewise dropped off. Some Vatican officials ask how the Holy See can credibly ask donors to be more generous when its own institutions are holding back. Leo will need to attract donations from outside the U.S., no small task given the different culture of philanthropy, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Church Management Program at Catholic University of America's business school. He noted that in Europe there is much less of a tradition (and tax advantage) of individual philanthropy, with corporations and government entities doing most of the donating or allocating designated tax dollars. Even more important is leaving behind the 'mendicant mentality' of fundraising to address a particular problem, and instead encouraging Catholics to invest in the church as a project, he said. Speaking right after Leo's installation ceremony in St. Peter's Square, which drew around 200,000 people, Gahl asked: 'Don't you think there were a lot of people there that would have loved to contribute to that and to the pontificate?' In the U.S., donation baskets are passed around at every Sunday Mass. Not so at the Vatican. The Vatican has 4,249 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value, according to the annual report from the APSA patrimony office, which manages them. Some 70% generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 10% are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2023, these properties only generated 35 million euros ($39.9 million) in profit. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue. But Ward Fitzgerald, the president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, which finances papal charities, said the Vatican should also be willing to sell properties, especially those too expensive to maintain. Many bishops are wrestling with similar downsizing questions as the number of church-going Catholics in parts of the U.S. and Europe shrinks and once-full churches stand empty. Toward that end, the Vatican recently sold the property housing its embassy in Tokyo's high-end Sanbancho neighborhood, near the Imperial Palace, to a developer building a 13-story apartment complex, according to the Kensetsu News trade journal. Yet there has long been institutional reluctance to part with even money-losing properties. Witness the Vatican announcement in 2021 that the cash-strapped Fatebenefratelli Catholic hospital in Rome, run by a religious order, would not be sold. Pope Francis simultaneously created a Vatican fundraising foundation to keep it and other Catholic hospitals afloat. 'They have to come to grips with the fact that they own so much real estate that is not serving the mission of the church,' said Fitzgerald, who built a career in real estate private equity. ___
