his aerial photo taken on Dec 27, 2020 shows the snow-covered Taklimakan Desert in Yopurga county in Kashgar, northwest China s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. - Xinhua
BEIJING (China Daily/ANN): China is set to encounter a freezing cold front as a cold air mass is sweeping across the country from north to south, the National Meteorological Center warned on Monday (Dec 28).
The centre issued an orange cold wave warning on Monday, the highest in the three-tier ranking, followed by yellow and blue. The centre issued its last orange warning in 2016.
Northeast China, and North China s Inner Mongolia and Northwest China s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions have experienced sharp temperature drops since Sunday.
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HONG KONG (China Daily/ANN): An electronic platform for Hong Kong residents to book their Covid-19 vaccinations will be ready by next month, according to a government official, as the city logged 59 new coronavirus infections on Saturday (Dec 26).
Hong Kong Secretary for Innovation and Technology Alfred Sit Wing-hang told reporters that the platform will help create a centralised record of residents vaccine history.
It will allow residents to book the first and second doses of the vaccine together, and the vaccination records will be stored on the Hospital Authority and Department of Health system, Sit said.
Separately, Hong Kong will prioritise vaccinations for the elderly and key personnel, including cross-border truck drivers, and medical and care workers, local media cited a senior government official as saying.
BEIJING (China Daily/ANN): Unilateral sanctions and unjustified crackdowns imposed by Washington have drawn strong criticism from both Beijing and Moscow, and were discussed in a phone conversation between State CounciLlor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday (Dec 22).
In their second phone conversation since November, Wang said the United States runs counter to this era s trends and frequently threatens and imposes unilateral sanctions, which could only leave it with one of the more disgraceful records in the world.
China is willing to work with Russia and with the global community to staunchly protect the basic norms of international relations and ensure world fairness and justice, Wang said.
BEIJING (China Daily/ANN): As the nation s economy and power continue to grow, Chinese people are getting taller, but they are also putting on weight at a worrisome rate, according to a report released by the National Health Commission on Wednesday (Dec 23).
More than half of Chinese people age 18 and above are obese or overweight owing to unhealthy diets and static lifestyles, according to the report, which surveyed the nutritional condition and chronic diseases of people in China from 2015 to 2019.
At the beginning of the century, less than one in three adult Chinese were considered obese or overweight, according to data from the commission.
Shoppers walk through a festive themed market in Shanghai, China on Saturday, Dec 19, 2020. China pulled further ahead of other major economies in November as industrial output and retail sales strengthened, reinforcing expectations of healthy growth in 2021. -Bloomberg
BEIJING (China Daily/ANN): Economic activity will continue to accelerate in China next year on the back of existing supportive policies, despite a grim outlook for global growth due to the resurgence in novel coronavirus cases and lockdowns, economists said.
The comments came after the World Bank updated its projections for China s GDP growth on Wednesday (Dec 23) and said the country will return to its pre-pandemic growth level next year.