Australia’s call for an inquiry into how the coronavirus started has reportedly received the backing of 62 countries.
A draft resolution to be put to the World Health Assembly on Tuesday, obtained by The Australian, is backed by nations including India, Japan, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Indonesia., Russia, Mexico, Brazil, and all 27 EU member states.
According to the newspaper, the resolution demands WHO director-general Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus “initiate at the earliest appropriate moment … a stepwise process of impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of the international response to the pandemic, the actions of the WHO and its “timeline” of the pandemic.
It comes as Trade Minister Simon Birmingham tried to set up a phone call with his Chinese counterpart to sort out a growing trade rift between the two countries, but so far there has been no response.
China is threatening to slap a large tariff on Australian barley imports after it blocked beef imports from four abattoirs.
Such actions have come within weeks of Australia calling for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, sparking a furious response from China.
“We’ve made a request for me to be able to have discussions with my Chinese counterpart,” Senator Birmingham told ABC television’s Insiders program today.
“That request has not been met with a call being accommodated at this stage.”
However, he said there has been lots of government-to-government communication and work continues through diplomatic levels.
and then thisA Sydney woman raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars exporting baby formula stolen in an industrial-scale shoplifting operation to China before the racket was smashed by police.
Detectives secretly watched Lie Ke, 50, meet with a network of thieves who targeted supermarkets in Sydney, the Central Coast and Newcastle to steal infant milk formula using a common modus operandi of hiding tins beneath mats in trolleys.
Ke, who lives in Carlingford after moving to Australia from China in 2001, bought the stolen tins cheaply from the shoplifting teams before onselling them to customers in China at inflated prices.
One thief told police she would regularly steal between 50 to 100 tins of baby formula a day and Ke would pay her around $4000 per week for the goods.
Often the formula was exchanged in brazen rendezvous in public carparks at shopping centres and Bunnings stores.
Unbeknown to Ke, who claims she did not know the tins were stolen, a police strike force set up in February 2018 was listening and watching her every move and arrested her in August 2018.
The inside story of the operation can be revealed after Ke and her husband Yueqi, 53, pleaded guilty to recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime.
They will be sentenced in Parramatta District Court next month.
Ke was originally charged with knowingly directing the activities of a criminal group but the Crown dropped the charge because it could not prove she knew the goods were stolen.
According to an agreed fact sheet, police identified at least 10 baby formula thieves who used a similar method to steal tins by hiding them underneath mats or similar items in trolleys in Coles, Woolworths, Chemist Warehouse and IGA stores between November 2017 and August 2018.
“One of the offenders would act as a lookout within the store throughout the process,” the fact sheet states.
“The offenders would attend the self-service checkout and distract staff whilst another offender exited the store without paying for the trolley of goods.”
After police swooped six thieves gave statements that they would regularly sell the stolen baby formula to Ke, the fact sheet states.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts/woman-shipped...
Forum
Pages: 
