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BEIJING, China (AFP) — China said Monday it would retire an app used to track Covid-19 contacts, a milestone in the country’s rapid turn away from its zero-tolerance coronavirus strategy. The state-run “Communications Itinerary Card”, which tracks whether someone has been to a high-risk area based on their phone signal, will go offline at 12 am Tuesday, according to an official WeChat post, after more than two years in operation. The “Itinerary Card” was a […]
Beijing, China (AFP) China announced Wednesday a nationwide loosening of its hardline Covid restrictions that had hammered the world’s second biggest economy and ignited rare protests against the ruling Communist Party. The new rules are a major relaxation of President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-Covid policy, three years into the pandemic and long after the rest of the world had largely learnt to live with the virus. However, with vaccination rates remaining low among China’s elderly […]
Beijing, China (AFP) Authorities in China’s financial hub of Shanghai will from Monday scrap some testing requirements in the country’s latest relaxing of its strict zero-Covid policy following nationwide protests unseen in decades. Multiple cities have started to roll back some restrictions after public resentment at harsh and prolonged containment measures reached a boiling point last weekend, when spontaneous protests broke out in multiple Chinese cities. Shanghai residents will no longer need a 48-hour negative […]
Bruxelles, Belgium (AFP) China’s President Xi Jinping suggested in talks with EU chief Charles Michel that the spread of the less lethal Omicron strain of Covid-19 may allow Beijing to ease lockdown rules, European officials said Friday. Michel met the Chinese leader in Beijing on Thursday. According to an account of the meeting from a senior European official, Xi told Michel that Chinese “people were frustrated” after three years of the coronavirus epidemic. Anger […]
by Abhaya SRIVASTAVA Agence France-Presse NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — All that balding Indian television executive Athar Rasheed wanted was to look handsome and get married. But the 30-year-old’s seemingly harmless hair transplant went fatally wrong. Women have been judged on their appearance for millennia, but in an increasingly materialistic Indian society, men are also feeling pressure to look young and presentable for fear of losing their social standing. More and more prematurely balding men […]
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — Peruvian authorities have culled at least 37,000 birds on a chicken farm due to bird flu, officials said Thursday. After previously affecting wildlife in several areas nationwide, this outbreak took place at a farm in Huacho, north of Lima, the national agricultural health agency SENASA said Thursday. “They have all been slaughtered; this infectious focus has already ended on a small farm in Huacho (north of Lima), with a population of […]
by Matthew Walsh, with Jing Xuan Teng in Beijing Agence France-Presse SHANGHAI, China (AFP) — China’s censors were working Monday to extinguish signs of rare, social media-driven protests that flared across major cities over the weekend calling for political freedoms and an end to Covid lockdowns. Sunday saw people take to the streets in several major cities across China to call for an end to lockdowns and greater political freedoms, in a wave of nationwide […]
Beijing, China (AFP) by Laurie CHEN One by one Beijingers braved the cold Sunday night after word of a rally spread on social media — a RALLYfor the victims of a deadly fire as well as a protest against China’s harsh Covid-19 restrictions. Within hours, hundreds had gathered on the banks of Liangma river in near freezing temperatures, an AFP journalist at the scene saw, many holding blank white papers — a symbolic protest against […]
London, United Kingdom (AFP) The BBC said on Sunday one of its journalists in China had been arrested and beaten by police while covering protests against the country’s zero-Covid policy. Hundreds of people took to the streets in China’s major cities on Sunday in a rare outpouring of public anger against the state. “The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests […]
by Joe JACKSON Agence France-Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Nurses across most of Britain will next month hold the first strikes in their union’s 106-year history, joining a host of other UK workers taking industrial action over pay. Staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — but not Scotland — will walk out on December 15 and 20, after the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) union said the government had turned down an offer […]
Beijing, China (AFP) China has ordered six million people into lockdown in a city where violent protests broke out at an iPhone factory over Covid isolation policies and working conditions. Hundreds of workers took to the streets around the vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou on Wednesday, confronting hazmat-clad personnel wielding batons in a rare display of public anger in China. In the wake of the unrest, Zhengzhou authorities ordered mass testing and an effective […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China has ordered six million people into lockdown in a city where violent protests broke out at an iPhone factory over Covid isolation policies and working conditions. Hundreds of workers took to the streets around the vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou on Wednesday, confronting hazmat-clad personnel wielding batons in a rare display of public anger in China. In the wake of the unrest, Zhengzhou authorities ordered mass testing and an effective […]
