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(BEIJING) — China’s economic growth accelerated to 4.9% over a year earlier in the latest quarter as a shaky recovery from the coronavirus pandemic gathered strength. Figures announced Monday for the three months ending in September were in line with expectations after the ruling Communist Party declared the outbreak under control in March and began reopening factories, shops and offices. Factory output rose, boosted by foreign demand for Chinese-made masks and other medical supplies. Retail sales, which had lagged behind the manufacturing rebound, finally returned to pre-virus levels. The economy “continued the steady recovery,” the National Bureau of Statistics said in a report. However, it warned, “the international environment is still complicated and severe.” It said China still faces “great pressure” to prevent a resurgence of the virus. China, where the pandemic began in December, became the first major economy to return to growth with a 3.2% expansion in the qua...

BANGKOK — Thai police early Thursday dispersed a group of pro-democracy protesters who camped out overnight outside the office of the prime minister to demand his resignation, leading him to implement a “severe” state of emergency in the capital area. An Associated Press journalist saw riot police advance from multiple locations to force out a few hundred protesters who remained outside Government House, the seat of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. Protesters were seen taken away into police trucks. The police operation came after Prayuth declared a severe state of emergency in the Bangkok area to allow authorities to move against the protests. Thailand is technically still under a state of emergency as part of coronavirus restrictions. Before the police dispersal, a large number of protesters had already left the area after one of the their leaders announced the end of the rally at Government House though a few hundred stayed on. It was also announced that the rally ...

As President, Donald Trump has cast China as a global villain: a malevolent actor that all but launched a worldwide pandemic on an unsuspecting world, robbed Americans of their jobs and stole U.S. business secrets. He has made the Chinese Communist Party a catch-all enemy that pulls puppet-like strings to make international organizations like the World Health Organization work at cross-purposes with Washington, all charges Beijing vigorously denies. At the same time, Trump has presented himself to the world—and to U.S. voters—as the only person capable of pummeling Beijing into submission, chiefly through a landmark trade deal. Democrats, the President and his allies say, are the willing patsies who bow to Beijing, as when former Vice President-turned-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden sought closer ties to the growing superpower in his multiple visits there. “A rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ la...

(BEIJING) — The U.S. ambassador to China will step down early next month, ending a three-year tenure marked by a trade war and increasingly bitter relations between the world’s two largest economies. Terry Branstad, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, confirmed his decision in a phone call with Trump last week, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement Monday. It did not give a reason for his departure. “I am proudest of our work in getting the phase one trade deal and delivering tangible results for our communities back home,” he was quoted as saying at an embassy staff meeting on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview late Monday thanked Branstad for his service. “Over the past years, he’s done yeoman’s work helping us deliver on something that’s a complete change from what any administration has done with respect to the Chinese Communist Party,” Pompeo told Fox News. Word of Branstad’s departure had leaked out earlier in the day when Pompeo ...

KYIV, Ukraine — More than 100,000 demonstrators calling for the authoritarian president of Belarus to resign marched through the capital of Minsk on Sunday as the daily protests that have gripped the nation entered their sixth week. Many in the crowd, which the human rights group Viasna estimated as numbering more than 150,000, carried placards critical of Russia, reflecting concerns about President Alexander Lukashenko’s planned meeting on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It would be their first face-to-face contact since the unrest broke out in Belarus after the Aug. 9 presidential election that officials say gave Lukashenko a sixth term with 80% support. Protesters and some poll workers say the results were rigged. Putin has said he stands ready to send Russian police into Belarus if the protests turn violent, stoking fears that Moscow could use the political dissent as an excuse to annex its neighbor like it did in Crimea in 2014. The countries have a u...

(LONDON) — Prince Harry has repaid 2.4 million pounds ($3.2 million) in British taxpayers’ money that was used to renovate the home in Windsor intended for him and his wife Meghan before they gave up royal duties and moved to California. A spokesman for the couple said Monday that Harry had made a contribution to the Sovereign Grant, the public money that goes to the royal family. He said the contribution “fully covered the necessary renovation costs of Frogmore Cottage,” near Queen Elizabeth II’s Windsor Castle home, west of London. He said Frogmore Cottage will remain the home of Harry and Meghan, also known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, when they visit the U.K. Royal accounts for 2019 show that 2.4 million pounds was spent renovating the house, including structural work, rewiring and new flooring. Harry and Meghan agreed to pay back the money and start paying rent as part of the plans drawn up when they quit as senior working royals in March. They recently bought a h...

New Zealand’s largest city has exited lockdown after the government said a Covid-19 outbreak there has been brought under control and it remains on track to again eliminate the virus from the community. Auckland schools and customer-facing businesses re-opened on Monday and a ban on traveling out of the city was lifted, almost three weeks after the outbreak prompted the reintroduction of restrictions. Social distancing requirements remain in place for the whole country under level 2 restrictions and everyone from the age of 12 is now required to wear a mask on public transport. “Our testing shows that it is highly unlikely there is Covid anywhere else in the country and we want to keep it that way,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday. “The last thing we want from re-opening Auckland is to spread the virus around the country, and that is one of the reasons we continue to have level 2 settings across New Zealand,” she said. The government expects to further review al...

(PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti) — Marco became a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday on a path toward the Louisiana coast, while Tropical Storm Laura killed at least 11 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Laura moved over eastern Cuba late in the day, following a path likely to take it to the same part of the U.S. coast , also as a potential hurricane. It appeared the storms would not be hurricanes simultaneously — something that researchers say has never happened in the Gulf of Mexico at least since records began being kept in 1900. The National Hurricane Center said Marco was about 180 miles (290 kilometers) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River on Sunday evening and heading north-northwest at 13 mph (20 kph), packing winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kph). The center warned of life-threatening storm surges and hurricane-force winds along the Gulf Coast. National Hurricane Center The National Hurricane Center said Marco was about 180 miles south-...

(WELLINGTON, New Zealand) — Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has delayed New Zealand’s elections by four weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak in Auckland. The election had been scheduled for Sept. 19 but will now be held on Oct. 17. Opposition parties had sought a delay after the virus outbreak prompted the government last week to put Auckland under a two-week lockdown and halted election campaigning. Before the latest outbreak, New Zealand had gone 102 days without any known community transmission of the virus, and life had returned to normal for most people, with restaurants and schools open and sports fans back in stadiums. The only known cases during that time were returning travelers who were quarantined at the border. Officials believe the virus was reintroduced to New Zealand from abroad but haven’t yet determined how. The Auckland outbreak has grown to 49 infections, all thought to be connected, giving health officials hope the virus isn’t spreading beyond the clus...

As LGBTQ activist Malgorzata Szutowicz, sits in solitary confinement for a fourth day in the city of Plock, central Poland, hundreds of people across the country are protesting in her name. On Friday, Margo, as she is more commonly known, was placed in pre-trial detention for two months, on charges of assaulting a driver of a truck that displayed an anti-LGBT banner. The same day, hundreds of people gathered in the capital, Warsaw, to defend her freedom. In doing so, they were risking their own: 48 protestors were detained and many more injured in what experts say was an unprecedented level of police aggression against an LGBTQ demonstration, particularly in a European Union member state. By Saturday, thousands had gathered in Warsaw to denounce Margo’s arrest and police aggression against LGBTQ people. And although Poland is experiencing a rise in new cases of COVID-19, at least 15 solidarity protests, both big and small, took place on Monday in towns and cities acr...

Hong Kong police arrested media tycoon and prominent democracy activist Jimmy Lai under a national security law passed in late June for allegedly colluding with foreign forces, local media reported. The arrest was reported by Apple Daily, the flagship newspaper under Lai’s media network Next Digital Ltd., as well as TVB. Seven people were arrested in total, including Lai’s two sons and other top members of Next Digital, Oriental Daily reported, citing unidentified people. “The lawyers are on the way to the police station now,” Next Digital Group Director Mark Simon said in an email, following an earlier tweet that Lai had been arrested. Calls and emails placed to the Hong Kong Police went unanswered. Jimmy Lai is being arrested for collusion with foreign powers at this time. — Mark Simon (@HKMarkSimon) August 9, 2020 China has called the security legislation, which bars subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, a “sword of Damocles” hangin...

Wearing face shields, masks, two layers of gloves and navy cotton overalls, two scientists carefully lift off a metal manhole cover to reveal the cumulative waste of some 400 migrant workers. As one of them lowers a yellow rubber tube into the fetid sewer outside a dormitory in central Singapore, a third explains how samples of the brownish liquid provide a crude snapshot of how the city-state is trying to keep a step ahead of the coronavirus. Wastewater surveillance — which Dutch scientists showed in March can identify evidence of the pathogen earlier than testing patients — is one of a handful of strategies around the world being developed to pinpoint emerging hotspots and flare-ups before cases spiral out of control. “If you think the community has no Covid, but it’s found in the wastewater, then you know it’s there somewhere,” said Dale A. Fisher , an infectious diseases physician at Singapore’s National University Hospital and chair of the Global Outbreak Alert and...