Chinese company at the root of tainted milk scandal declared bankrupt

A Chinese court has declared the company at the center of a tainted milk scandal bankrupt.


The milk is blamed for killing six children and sickening nearly 300,000 more.

New Zealand's Fronterra Group said that a court in Shijiazhuang, in China's Hebei province, issued a bankruptcy order against Sanlu Group Co. in response to a petition from a creditor.

"Sanlu will now be managed by a court-appointed receiver who will assume responsibility for an orderly sale of the company's assets and payment of creditors," Fonterra chief executive Andrew Ferrier said in a statement.

Sanlu was one of 22 Chinese dairy companies whose products were found to contain high levels of the industrial chemical melamine, leading to the deaths of six babies and causing 294,000 others to suffer from urinary problems.

Fronterra, a New Zealand farmer-owned co-operative, owns 43 per cent of Sanlu.

At least a dozen individual lawsuits have been filed against state-owned Sanlu, but they're caught in legal limbo as courts have neither accepted nor refused the cases - a sign of the scandal's political sensitivity.

China's government has promised to provide free medical treatment to the children who fell ill due to the milk, along with unspecified compensation to them and families of the deceased.

The Health Ministry had said earlier this month that some Chinese dairy companies would likely have to pay for a compensation plan, the details of which have not been released.

Fronterra was responsible for alerting Chinese authorities to the tainted milk scandal in August.

Police: Woman faked missing baby story to win back ex

22-Year old mother charged with filing a false police report

On Christmas Day, 22 year old Meagan McCormic faced television cameras to plead for the safe return of her missing 5-month-old son.

"I don't even know if he's dead or alive," she said.

In fact, she knew that the child had never existed, police said.

McCormic was trying to lure an ex-boyfriend back when she invented a missing-child story that triggered a statewide search this week, police said Friday.

Investigators have charged the 22-year-old with filing a false police report. If convicted, they said, she may have to pay authorities for the cost of their search.
She was scheduled to appear in court Friday afternoon.

She invented the story to lure back an ex-boyfriend by pretending he had fathered a child he did not know about, said Delrish Moss, a spokesman for the Miami Police Department. When the boyfriend showed up and asked to see the child, Moss said, McCormic told him the boy was missing.

"He finally decided to show up, and she created a story and he had no idea," Moss said.

On Christmas Day, the estranged boyfriend attended a news conference with McCormic under the impression that he had a son who was missing.

"I don't understand," John Buchness, 26, said then, choking back tears. "It's Christmas."

McCormic told police she had left her son with a nanny named Camille.

"I don't know if they're in Florida," she said. "I don't know where they are."

Authorities around Florida started looking for the boy and nanny, using the descriptions McCormic supplied, police said. She even gave police a picture of the boy, but Friday they said they believe she had downloaded the photo from the Internet.

Authorities have called off their search.