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BEIJING, China (AFP) — Beijing has banned “uncivilized” behaviour such as not covering the mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing, the city government said Sunday, in a new set of regulations to improve public hygiene amid the coronavirus outbreak. The laws aim to promote “civilized behaviour” and relate to combating the pandemic which has infected more than 82,000 in China alone. Rulebreakers will be slapped with fines for offences including not wearing a […]
MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — The Canadian government said Friday that one million KN95 masks imported from China did not meet its strict standards and so could not be distributed to frontline health workers amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Public Health Agency of Canada “has identified approximately one million KN95 masks as non-compliant with specifications for healthcare settings,” a spokesman told AFP. “These items were not distributed to provinces and territories for frontline health care […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China announced Thursday it will donate another $30 million to the World Health Organization to help in the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic, days after Washington said it would freeze funding. “China has decided to donate another $30 million in cash to the WHO, in addition to the previous donation of $20 million, to support the global fight against COVID-19 and strengthen developing countries’ health systems,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — New clusters of coronavirus infections in northeastern China near the Russian border forced officials Wednesday to tighten restrictions on movement as they seek to prevent a second outbreak of the contagion. China has largely curbed the spread of the deadly virus, but there are growing fears of a second wave of cases and Heilongjiang province has emerged as a new front in the battle. The region has seen an influx of […]
by Ludovic EHRET Agence France-Presse Beijing, China (AFP) — After Wuhan was sealed off from the world, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang started an online diary about the coronavirus tragedy unfolding in her hometown. Her journal drew tens of millions of readers — but now that it is about to be published abroad in several languages, she is facing a nationalist backlash at home. Critics say the 64-year-old, who was awarded China’s most prestigious literary prize […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China on Tuesday defended its naming of 80 islands and other geographical features in the South China Sea in a move likely to anger neighbors as the country asserts its territorial claims. A joint announcement of the names on Sunday from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Civil Affairs came a day after China established new administrative districts for the contested Spratly and Paracel island chains. The notice […]
by Stéphane ORJOLLET Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Whether it came from a bat or a pangolin is not certain, but one thing is: the coronavirus outbreak that has killed tens of thousands and turned the world upside down comes from the animal world. It is human activity enabled the virus to jump to people, and specialists are warning that if nothing changes many other pandemics of this nature will follow. The name given to […]
by Lianchao LAN Agence France Presse XIAPU, China (AFP) — Fishermen like Zhu Chunfu have hauled their living from the seas off the Chinese province of Fujian for generations, but what happens when over-harvesting causes fish stocks to collapse? In the case of coastal Xiapu county, you turn to raising the fish yourself, a shift that has made it one of China’s most important aquaculture sites and spawned communities floating at sea. The water in […]
BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday urged China to be as transparent as possible about the coronavirus outbreak, as Beijing faces mounting pressure over its management of the crisis. Critics have accused China of downplaying the scale and scope of the outbreak when it first emerged late last year, while conspiracy theories have swirled in the US the virus could have been leaked from a lab. Merkel urged for more information […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — The director of a maximum-security laboratory in China’s coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan has rejected claims that it could be the source of the outbreak, calling it “impossible”. Beijing has come under increasing pressure over transparency in its handling of the pandemic, with the US probing whether the virus actually originated in a virology institute with a high-security biosafety laboratory. Chinese scientists have said the virus likely jumped from an animal […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) US President Donald Trump warned on Saturday that China could face consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the coronavirus pandemic. “It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t,” Trump told reporters at a White House briefing. “And now the whole world is suffering because of it.” Trump was asked whether China should suffer consequences over the pandemic which began in the Chinese city of […]
by Jing Xuan TENG Agence France Presse WUHAN, China (AFP) — China’s coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan on Friday admitted missteps in tallying its death toll as it abruptly raised the count by 50 percent following growing world doubts about Chinese transparency. The United States has led the charge in questioning China’s handling of the pandemic and how much information it has really shared with the international community since the virus emerged late last […]
