![Taking a look at the media's role in the Covid-19 lab leak theory](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/210527130027-wuhan-institute-of-virology-0203-super-tease.jpg)
Taking a look at the media's role in the Covid-19 lab leak theory
CNN
New reporting has sparked renewed interest in the virus' origins.
How exactly did the coronavirus pandemic begin? More than a year after the outbreak spread across — and upended — the world, we still do not have a firm answer. But new reporting has sparked renewed interest in the virus' origins. And with cases and deaths on the decline in the US, the topic is back in the spotlight. One of this week's top headlines came on Wednesday when President Biden announced that he had directed the intelligence agencies to "collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion" within 90 days. That announcement followed a Sunday WSJ report, confirmed by CNN and other media orgs, that the US had intelligence about three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology becoming ill in November 2019.![](/newspic/picid-6252001-20250206034049.jpg)
The CIA has sent the White House an unclassified email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less in an effort to comply with an executive order to downsize the federal workforce, according to three sources familiar with the matter – a deeply unorthodox move that could potentially expose the identities of those officers to foreign government hackers.
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Trump administration officials are hurrying to catch up to the president’s audacious and improbable plan for the United States to take ownership of Gaza and redevelop it into a “Middle Eastern Riviera,” trying to wrap their heads around an idea that some hope might be so outlandish it forces other nations to step in with their own proposals for the Palestinian enclave.