Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

BEIJING, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- China will intensify tax and fee cuts with targeted measures in 2022 to bring benefits for market entities and bolster economic growth, according to the Finance Ministry on Tuesday.

"China will see a larger scale of tax and fee cuts this year," the minister of finance Liu Kun told a press conference, citing that the country cut about 1.1 trillion yuan (about 173.9 billion U.S. dollars) of taxes and fees last year.

BEIJING, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday called on all parties on the Ukraine issue to remain calm, ease tensions and resolve differences through dialogue and negotiation.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a daily press briefing.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier in the day, expounding China's stance on the Ukraine crisis.

BANGKOK (AP) — Oil prices surged nearly 5% and stock prices dropped after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered forces into separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, bringing a long-feared invasion a step closer.

Russia is a major energy producer and the tensions over Ukraine have brought wide swings in volatile energy prices, on top of the inevitable risks of a broader conflict.

BEIJING (AP) — The just-concluded Winter Olympics weren’t China’s big event of the year — internally, at least. For the Communist Party, that comes this fall at a major meeting that will likely cement Xi Jinping ’s position as one of the nation’s most powerful leaders in its seven decades of Communist rule.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong will test its entire population of 7.5 million people for COVID-19 in March, the city’s leader said Tuesday, as it grapples with its worst outbreak driven by the omicron variant.

The population will be tested three times in March, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said.

She said testing capacity will be boosted to 1 million a day or more.

“Since we have a population of some 7 million people, testing will take about seven days,” she said.

TOKYO (AP) — World leaders scrambled Tuesday to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to signal possible sanctions — after he ordered his forces into separatist regions of eastern Ukraine.

While Russia’s troop movements were still not clear, leaders in Asia and elsewhere voiced strong support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, along with worries about how a European war could hurt global and local economies and endanger foreign nationals trapped in Ukraine.

United Nations, Feb 22 (AP) China has called for restraint and is encouraging every effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, saying Beijing believes all countries should solve disputes by peaceful means in line with the U.N. Charter.

China's U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun called on the key parties in the Ukraine dispute to continue dialogue and consultation and seek reasonable solutions."

BEIJING, Feb 21 (Reuters) - China's foreign ministry on Monday denied a U.S. report that a spent rocket booster forecast to crash on the far side of the moon next month was debris from a Chinese lunar mission in 2014.

The rocket booster, expected to crash on the moon on March 4, was initially identified by an independent researcher as a used Falcon rocket stage from Elon Musk's SpaceX.

HONG KONG, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Two medical expert delegations from the Chinese mainland continued their inspections of Hong Kong's anti-COVID-19 work and patients treatment on Sunday.

The team of the mainland epidemiological experts met and exchanged views with representatives from the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO), the Home Affairs Department (HAD), and the Department of Health (DH) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government.

BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- China has decided to take countermeasures against Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin, U.S. military firms long engaged in arms sales to the Taiwan region of China, for seriously undermining China's sovereignty and security interests.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a daily press briefing on Monday.