Free Republic

A top U.S. biosecurity lab is assuming responsibility for signing “poorly drafted” agreements with three high-level biosecurity labs in China that they concede may have broken the law.The three contracts, including one with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), gave the Chinese labs powers to destroy “secret files” from any stage of their collaboration.“The party is entitled to ask the other to destroy and/or return the secret files, materials, and equipment without any backups,” stated the 2017 memorandum of understanding (MOU) that the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) signed with the Wuhan lab, which first came to light in...

Saturday November 26, 2005 5:46 PM AP Photo XIN108 By JOE McDONALD Associated Press Writer HARBIN, China (AP) - Premier Wen Jiabao visited this city in China's northeast Saturday and expressed concern for the 3.8 million residents enduring a fourth day without running water while they wait for a spill of toxic benzene in a nearby river to pass. The government warned residents that water supplies, suspended to protect the city after a chemical plant explosion, would not resume until 11 p.m. Sunday, a full day later than initially planned. China has been criticized by environmentalists for its slow response...

About 100 tons of dangerous chemicals equivalent to 10 tanker-truck loads was spewed into the Songhua River, which supplies water to Harbin, the nation's environment watchdog disclosed yesterday. Zhang Lijun, vice-minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), told a press conference in Beijing that Jilin Petrochemical Corporation, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), "should be responsible" for the leak of benzene and its derivatives following an explosion at a chemical plant. The plant, on the upper reaches of the river in Jilin Province, earlier denied any connection between the contaminated water and the explosion on November 13,...