CSIS first alerted Ottawa to national-security concerns of two scientists at top disease laboratory

Canada’s spy agency urged the removal of security clearances for two scientists who were later dismissed from the country’s top infectious-disease laboratory because of national-security concerns relating to their work with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to two sources.

In January of this year, Xiangguo Qiu, who headed the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies Section, and her biologist husband, Keding Cheng, were fired from their positions with the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg.

Source: The Globe and Mail #May12

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-csis-first-alerted-ottawa-to-national-security-concerns-of-two/

#CSIS #Ottawa #NationalSecurity #Canada #China

#Censorship
#China censors #ZeroCovid debate after #WHO criticises policy

//China’s censors scrambled to wipe out online debate over its zero-Covid strategy on Wednesday after the World Health Organisation (WHO) criticised the country’s hardline approach to crushing the virus.

China is the last major economy glued to a zero-Covid policy and enforces some of the most stringent virus controls anywhere in the world...

Those restrictions have trapped most of Shanghai’s 25 million people in a lockdown with no clear end date, while Beijing has also gradually coralled many of its residents indoors as it battles its biggest outbreak since the pandemic began.

On Tuesday WHO chief #Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged China to change tack, saying the approach “will not be sustainable” in the face of new fast-spreading variants.

The intervention prompted China’s army of internet censors to race to snuff out his comments.//

Read more:
https://hongkongfp.com/2022/05/12/china-censors-zero-covid-debate-after-who-criticises-policy/

Source: Hong Kong Free Press #May12