IAN BIRRELL: What a surprise… World health ‘experts’ have let China off the hook over Covid

More than 420 days have passed since the World Health Organisation declared that a strange new disease killing people in a central Chinese city was sufficiently alarming to be declared a global health emergency. The UN body, when making that historic statement last January, praised China for its leadership, its commitment to transparency, its sharing … Read more

IAN BIRRELL: Row erupts over ‘cover-up’ of China’s Covid death toll

Disturbing Chinese government statistics reveal a huge drop in the number of old people receiving state payments in Hubei – the province containing the city of Wuhan – in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic’s eruption. The official data, which shows a fall of more than 150,000 people receiving the benefits in the first quarter … Read more

IAN BIRRELL: Deeming some lives to be ‘more valuable’ than others is utter inhumanity 

Deborah James is a deputy head teacher, a mother of two children and, since her devastating diagnosis with bowel cancer, she has become an inspiration to many for her frank discussions on the subject. She’s written a best-selling book, raised significant sums for charity and become a regular voice in the media despite 17 tumours … Read more

IAN BIRRELL: It’ll be an unforgivable insult to the dead if the world lets China bury the truth 

It has taken 14 months since a sinister new disease emerged in Wuhan for the global health body responsible for protecting the world to be allowed into the Chinese city to investigate the origins of the pandemic. The belated arrival last week of a team from the World Health Organisation (WHO) follows persistent stonewalling from Beijing … Read more

The world must investigate all the mounting evidence Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, writes IAN BIRRELL

It is a year since the world learned of a deadly new respiratory disease stalking the central Chinese city of Wuhan.  Yet we still know little about how and why the virus spread with such devastating consequences. It can almost certainly be traced to bats. But we do not know how this pathogen – having … Read more

Will we ever learn the truth about China and the pandemic, writes IAN BIRRELL 

Explosive emails from a group of top-level scientists and Government doctors in the United States reveal one suggested Covid-19 could have originated from human activities rather than arising naturally from animals. Another asked if it might have been deliberately engineered. The documents also show that a key letter sent early in the pandemic from America’s … Read more

These sickening aid bungs to China’s repellent dictators MUST end, writes IAN BIRRELL 

You have probably never heard of Zhou Qiang but he is one of the key Communist Party leaders in China and president, since 2013, of the Supreme People’s Court. This body oversees ‘justice’ in a country that jails dissidents and harvests body parts from criminals. As a loyal apparatchik, he has argued that China’s courts … Read more

This is a new civil war: IAN BIRRELL hears from a Donald Trump supporter in Joe Biden’s home state

The mood outside the Philadelphia counting centre was ebullient, with balloons, banners and music blasting out and scores of young people dancing in the street.  Joe Biden had just taken the lead in their state of Pennsylvania‘s vote. Beside me, two men were laughing at a small crowd of Trump supporters penned in behind a … Read more

Belarus: The death rate appears lower than the UK’s, writes IAN BIRRELL

As the sun slid from the evening sky over Minsk, clusters of people thronged the imposing entrance of the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus clutching their tickets for the ballet. Many had dressed up to attend one of the city’s landmark buildings, a legacy of the Stalin era that was inspired by Roman amphitheatres. ‘We don’t want … Read more