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Peter Ben Emerek of the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaims it “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). According to the WHO, the issue warrants no further study. But evidence is emerging that the Wuhan lab deliberately engineered the virus. The story begins in Canada. This month Canada removed Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, a virologist from Tianjin, China, and her husband, Keding Cheng, from the nation’s Public Health Agency because, as Karen Pauls of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported on February 6, the pair had previously been removed from Canada’s National Microbiology...

QUEENSLAND vet Alister Rodgers lost his battle with the lethal Hendra virus overnight, dying after two weeks in a coma. State Health Minister Paul Lucas today sent his deepest sympathies to Dr Rodgers' widow, Linda, and children Courtney and Duncan. “This is a terrible tragedy for his family and they are being supported by the staff of Princess Alexandra Hospital,” Mr Lucas told Parliament this morning. Dr Rodgers, of the Rockhampton Veterinary Clinic, was infected with the virus when he treated a sick filly - thought at the time to be suffering from snakebite - at the J4S stud in...

Father Joe The Man Who Saved My Soul By Tony Hendra Random House. 271 pp. $24.95 Tony Hendra will always occupy a warm spot in my heart because of his hilarious (and uncanny) imitation of John Lennon on "Magical Misery Tour," one of the selections on National Lampoon's 1972 LP Radio Dinner. Hendra was one of the founders of National Lampoon, and he recounts both his days there and how the Lennon send-up came about in Father Joe. But only in passing. For this is definitely not your usual show-biz memoir. True, by starting off with an account of how...