Daily case numbers are some of the largest seen in China since the virus was first detected in Wuhan
Covid-19 cases in China’s largest city of Shanghai have risen again as millions remain isolated at home under a sweeping lockdown.
Health officials on Sunday reported 438 confirmed cases detected over the previous 24 hours, along with 7,788 asymptomatic cases. Both figures were up slightly from the day before.
Continue reading...Talks ahead of the key Cop15 summit on halting mass extinction of life were slow – and much has been asked of the developing world
For talks that are meant to be about halting the mass extinction of life on Earth, the slow pace of negotiations in Geneva ahead of Cop15, the major biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, later this year, was not a hopeful sign that meaningful action would follow. As discussions drew to a close this week, little progress was made on the targets and goals that are meant to herald nature’s “Paris moment”.
Rhetoric from rich developed nations about the need for ambition on halting biodiversity loss was not being followed through with resources, negotiators from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa complained.
Continue reading...UK government confirmed that the National Cyber Security Centre is investigating the allegations
China launched cyber-attacks on Ukrainian military and nuclear targets shortly before the Russian invasion, according to a report.
The UK government confirmed that the National Cyber Security Centre is investigating the allegations, which claim that more than 600 websites, including Ukraine’s defence ministry, were subjected to thousands of hacking attempts coordinated by the Chinese government.
Continue reading...Researcher who co-created substance says it is not an April fool’s joke and they hope to deploy it like a robot
Scientists have created a moving magnetic slime capable of encircling smaller objects, self-healing and “very large deformation” to squeeze and travel through narrow spaces.
The slime, which is controlled by magnets, is also a good electrical conductor and can be used to interconnect electrodes, its creators say.
Continue reading...China’s largest city and financial powerhouse is struggling to cope with the country’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic in Wuhan
Shanghai has been plunged into an extended lockdown and some residents face another 10 days of isolation in their homes as China’s strict zero-Covid policy threatens to derail the country’s economy.
The eastern half of China’s biggest city had been due to emerge on Friday from a four-day lockdown aimed at crushing a persistent outbreak of the Omicron variant, but the extension was announced late on Thursday night.
Continue reading...Conference raises only $2.44bn as Russian foreign minister says west is responsible for country’s humanitarian crisis
The world’s donor drought, and growing global divisions over Afghanistan’s political direction, have been laid bare when a UN appeal for $4.4bn (£3.35bn) to help Afghanistan fell massively short, the second UN donor conference in a month to do so.
Donor countries pledged only $2.44bn towards the appeal, a senior UN official said on Thursday after a high-level pledging conference.
Continue reading...Fu Zhenghua, who had brought down ex security chief for corruption, denounced as ‘extremely despicable’
Beijing has expelled its high-profile former justice minister and deputy police chief from the ruling Communist party, denouncing him as being “extremely despicable” and accusing him of befriending “political frauds”.
Fu Zhenghua – who had reportedly helped bring down China’s former security chief Zhou Yongkang a few years ago – has been removed from public office over serious violations of party discipline and laws, said the state news agency Xinhua in a brief announcement that attributed the decisions to Beijing’s top anti-graft body.
Continue reading...Bloc pressed to threaten sanctions at bilateral summit amid concerns about global authoritarian alliance
EU leaders are being urged to tell China it will face sanctions if it offers military aid to Russia for the war in Ukraine, amid concerns about a deepening authoritarian alliance that threatens the rules-based international order.
Senior EU and Chinese leaders are expected to hold discussions on Friday at a video summit that is likely to be dominated by the war.
Continue reading...Canberra protests as court verdict deferred after closed-door, one-day trial
A Chinese court has deferred its verdict after the closed-door national security trial of the Australian journalist Cheng Lei lasted less than a day.
Foreign journalists and diplomats, including Australia’s ambassador, were denied entry to the courtroom on Thursday as Cheng, a former anchor for the Chinese state TV broadcaster CGTN, faced trial on charges of “illegally supplying state secrets overseas”.
Continue reading...A cyber monitoring group says Chinese sources are amplifying disinformation about Ukrainian ‘nazism’
Close ties between Russian and Chinese state media along with strict government control of information have allowed Russian propaganda to spread swiftly throughout China, “nazifying” Ukraine in the eyes of some Chinese citizens and fostering pro-Russian sentiment, a new report has claimed.
Taiwan-based cyber monitoring group, Doublethink Labs, tracked state and social media from mid-February until late March. It said Chinese sources were amplifying Russian disinformation about Ukraine and linking Ukrainian nazism to the Hong Kong protests to encourage solidarity between Russian and Chinese people against “foreign forces interfering with internal affairs”.
Continue reading...Pacific nation has batted away concerns from Australia, New Zealand and the US, saying its policy is ‘friends to all and enemies to none’
Solomon Islands has announced it is pushing ahead with a security agreement with China hours after a senior Australian defence force officer said the deal may force Canberra to change the way it conducts air and sea operations in the Pacific.
The Solomon Islands government said officials from both countries had on Thursday “initialled” elements of the proposed security agreement with China which would be signed at a later date.
Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning
Continue reading...Coalition urged to refrain from megaphone diplomacy as it tries to persuade Honiara to change course
China’s proposed treaty with Solomon Islands is an “adverse development for Australia’s security” but it may be too late to stop the deal, a former senior Australian intelligence official has warned.
Richard Maude, head of the Office of National Assessments from 2013 to 2016 and an experienced former diplomat, urged the Morrison government not to engage in megaphone diplomacy as it tried to persuade Solomon Islands to change course.
Continue reading...Residents in China’s largest city express growing frustration with Covid measures, as well as anger over food shortages
A rap about food shortages has become a hit in Shanghai, with the artists behind the song describing it as an attempt to “cheer up” tens of millions of residents locked down in China’s largest city amid a surging Covid outbreak and increasing restrictions.
The song, Grocery Shopping, laments empty shelves and fights in the supermarket aisles, and is set to footage of residents crowding around market stalls, or lining up for PCR tests.
Continue reading...U-turn comes after health policy caused outrage among families and campaigners in city
Hong Kong hospital authorities have made a U-turn to allow parents of Covid-positive children to accompany them in paediatric wards, regardless of their own Covid status, as the city’s “fifth wave” of the virus eases.
Many toddlers were hospitalised during the Omicron-fuelled outbreak, which peaked this month, government data showed. But until recent days, only parents who also tested positive were allowed to remain in the same ward as their children.
Continue reading...Manasseh Sogavare says it is ‘utter nonsense’ that China’s presence is a threat to regional stability
Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare has dismissed foreign criticism of the country’s security negotiations with China as “insulting” and called those who leaked the draft agreement “lunatics”, in his first comments to parliament on the proposed treaty.
“We find it very insulting, Mr Speaker, to be branded as unfit to manage our sovereign affairs,” Sogavare said on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Labor leader says inaction on climate change and cuts to foreign aid have broken trust, forcing Pacific nations to turn elsewhere
Australia has lost influence in the Pacific by failing to act on climate and cutting foreign aid, Anthony Albanese says, amid concerns about China’s proposed security deal with Solomon Islands.
Australia and New Zealand are worried the draft agreement could jeopardise regional stability, with China having the opportunity to base navy warships in the Pacific less than 2,000km off the Australian coast.
Continue reading...China will shut down city in two stages as it sticks to a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy amid growing outbreaks
Shanghai has begun its phased lockdown as an Omicron-fuelled Covid-19 wave spreads through mainland China’s most significant financial hub, resulting in the highest caseloads in the country since the early days of the pandemic.
The eastern side of the Huangpu River, which divides Shanghai, would be under lockdown between Monday and Friday, officials said, followed by similar restrictions across its western side from 1 April. Massing Covid testing across the city is also under way.
Continue reading...Searchers find flight data recorder buried 1.5 metres underground by impact, after earlier recovering cockpit voice recorder
Both flight recorders or “black boxes” have been recovered from the crash of a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 that killed all 132 people on board, Chinese state media has said.
Searchers found the second box, the flight data recorder, on a mountain slope, buried about 1.5 metres underground by the impact, the state broadcaster CCTV said. The impact of the crash scattered debris widely and created a 20-metre deep pit in the side of the mountain.
Continue reading...Concern about economy leads city to try targeted approach with rolling restrictions of individual neighbourhoods
Shanghai has recorded a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, but officials have ruled out a full lockdown over the damage it would do to the economy.
Millions of Chinese in affected areas have been subjected to city-wide lockdowns by an Omicron-led outbreak that has sent daily case counts creeping ever-higher, though they remain insignificant compared with other countries.
Continue reading...Ukraine crisis is uniting democracies in Europe and Pacific but complicating relationships with China, India and Gulf states
“Decide who you are with” Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the European council, pointing to a choice that is becoming increasingly hard to avoid, as the sheer violence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine crystallises the division of the world into two camps.
The camp that stands with Russians is becoming easier to define with every passing day of the war. The colour-coded scoreboard at the UN general assembly in recent weeks, recording the votes on resolutions deploring the attack and calling for a ceasefire, could not have been clearer.
Continue reading...