Hong Kong CNN — China’s outgoing Premier Li Keqiang has announced the country’s lowest GDP growth target in decades, highlighting the domestic and global challenges the world’s second largest economy still faces despite its decision late last year to ditch draconian anti-Covid measures. Li set a target of about 5% growth for 2023 during the […]
CNN — Colombia plans to fly dozens of its “cocaine hippos” – the descendents of drug trafficker Pablo Escobar’s private menagerie – to new homes in India and Mexico in a bid to control their booming population, according to the local governor. There are now between 130 and 160 of the hippos, according to the […]
Hong Kong CNN — A Chinese city says it has destroyed a billion pieces of personal data collected during the pandemic, as local governments gradually dismantle their coronavirus surveillance and tracking systems after abandoning the country’s controversial zero-Covid policy. Wuxi, a manufacturing hub on China’s eastern coast and home to 7.5 million people, held a […]
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here. Hong Kong CNN — The US Department of Energy’s assessment that Covid-19 most likely emerged due to a laboratory […]
Atlanta/Hong Kong CNN — The United States on Thursday added two subsidiaries of Chinese genetics company BGI to a trade blacklist over allegations it conducted genetic analysis and surveillance activities for Beijing, which Washington says was used to repress ethnic minorities in China. The US Department of Commerce, which oversees export controls, said in a […]
Hong Kong CNN — Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko – a close ally of Vladimir Putin – vowed to deepen defense and security ties and expressed shared views on the war in Ukraine during a Wednesday meeting in Beijing, as geopolitical tensions around Russia’s war continue to rise. Lukashenko endorsed China’s […]
CNN — Indonesian security forces say they have surrounded armed rebels holding a New Zealand pilot captive in the restive Papua region but will refrain from taking any action that could endanger his life. Security minister Mahfud MD said Tuesday that New Zealand authorities have asked for there to be no violence in the operation […]
New Delhi CNN — Foreign ministers from the world’s biggest economies have convened in New Delhi, setting the stage for a grand test in Indian diplomacy as it attempts to navigate tensions over Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. In the second high-level ministerial meeting under India’s Group of 20 (G20) presidency this year, […]
Hong Kong CNN — In the year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has been hit by unprecedented Western sanctions and shut out of much of the global economy. But China, which has declared “no limits” to its friendship with its northern neighbor, has thrown the Kremlin an economic lifeline, tempering the impact of […]
New Delhi CNN — When dozens of security personnel crowded onto the runway of New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport on Thursday, it was not to capture a terrorist or fleeing criminal mastermind, or even to apprehend an unruly passenger. It was to arrest an opposition politician who had allegedly “disturbed harmony” — by misstating the […]