China

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s hospitals reached 90% capacity on Thursday and quarantine facilities were at their limit, authorities said, as the city struggles to snuff out a record number of new cases by adhering to China’s “zero tolerance” strategy.

To ease the strain on the city’s healthcare system, officials said they would take a different approach to hospitalization and isolation policies and allow some patients to be discharged sooner. The move comes amid reports of patients being treated on beds outside a hospital in the city’s working-class neighborhood of Sham Shui Po.

BEIJING, Feb 16 (Reuters) - China accused the United States of "playing up the threat of warfare and creating tension", as U.S. President Joe Biden warned that more than 150,000 Russian troops were still massed near Ukraine's borders following Moscow's announcement of a partial pullback.

Western nations have suggested arms control and confidence-building steps to defuse the stand-off, which has prompted them to urge their citizens to leave Ukraine because an attack could come at any time. Russia denies it has any plans to invade.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hospitals in Hong Kong were struggling Wednesday to keep up with an influx of new coronavirus patients amid record numbers of new infections as the city’s leadership doggedly sticks to its “zero-COVID” strategy, and China’s leader Xi Jinping said it was the local government’s “overriding task” to control the situation.

Hong Kong is facing its worst outbreak of the pandemic, topping 2,000 new COVID-19 cases per day this week. The city government has already instituted strict rules, banning gatherings of more than two households.

BEIJING, Feb. 15 (APP): The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday said that Afghan assets belonged to Afghan people and should be returned to Afghanistan for benefit of its people.

The United States should not exacerbate the suffering of the Afghan people. It should unfreeze their assets, lift unilateral sanctions on Afghanistan as soon as possible, and assume due responsibility to ease the humanitarian crisis in the country,

BEIJING, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- As tensions on the Ukrainian situation keep mounting, multiple countries have been engaged in shuttle diplomacy, trying to de-escalate the crisis.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in Kiev on Monday for a working visit. After their talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters that the two parties discussed the peace process in and around Ukraine and the legal guarantees that would help to protect Ukraine.

BEIJING, Feb. 14 (APP): China on Monday dismissed Indian external affairs minister’s remarks about China-India border conflict and said that the responsibility for the border conflict rested with the Indian side.

“As to the China India relations, the merits of the matters are very clear and responsibility does not rest with China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during his regular briefing here in response to Indian External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar comments about China-India relations.

BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday discussed the Ukraine crisis with U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron respectively over the phone as tensions continue to escalate between Russia and Ukraine.

During these conversations, Putin reiterated the absence of a substantive response from the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to Russian initiatives in addressing its security concerns, while agreeing to continue dialogue and contacts with the other two leaders.

BEIJING, Feb 11 (APP): Since Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headed by Narendra Modi came to power, the Indian authorities have been acquiescing in the extremes of Hindu far-right elements against Muslims. their extreme manifestos are arousing the hatred of Hindus against Muslims and inciting civil society groups to exert violence against Muslims.

BEIJING, Feb.10 (APP): Pakistan has exported sesame seeds amounting to $120.44 million to China in the year 2021 and hopefully, it is going to become a top exporter in the coming years, said Badar Uz Zaman, Pakistan’s Commercial Counselor in Beijing.

BEIJING, Feb 9 (APP): The brutal military suppression and grave violation of fundamental human rights of ethnic minorities, including Muslims, by the Hindutva-Modi government shows that the Indian ruling class is very afraid of non-Hindu groups, and that its society is moving towards unrest and division.

The region with the largest concentration of Muslim population in the world is South Asia. In this region, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh alone have a combined Muslim population of more than 500 million, accounting for one third of World’s 1.6 billion Muslim population.