Briefly

BEIJING

China to release white paper on COVID-19

The State Council Information Office will release a white paper on fighting COVID-19 and hold a news conference on Sunday morning. With united efforts of the nation, China has gradually brought the outbreak under control. The Chinese mainland registered five imported COVID-19 cases but no new domestically transmitted cases on Thursday, the National Health Commission said. As of Thursday, the overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 83,027, including 66 patients who were still being treated, and 78,327 people who had been discharged.

Conservation level of Chinese pangolins up

The Chinese government has raised the protection level of Chinese pangolins to the top level, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration announced on Friday. According to a national wildlife survey conducted by forestry authorities in the 1990s, there were 60,000 Chinese pangolins in 11 provinces. In the past decades, their number has witnessed a sharp decline due to habitat destruction, rampant poaching and smuggling. In 2017, the International Union for Conservation of Nature placed Chinese pangolins on the Red List of Endangered Species, as experts believed that the population had dropped by 90 percent.

Forecast: Higher temps, more rain than normal

Temperatures will exceed 35 C on Sunday and Monday in most parts of China along with more rainfall than normal during this period, according to the China Meteorological Administration. In areas along the Yellow, Huaihe and Yangtze rivers and northern China, temperatures could reach 37 C. Precipitation could reach 5 to 25 centimeters along the Huaihe River, the Hanjiang River, southern China and parts of western China. Rainfall in these areas will be 50 to 100 percent more than normal.

GUANGXI

Ministry looks into school knife attack

The Ministry of Education has sent a task force to look into a knife attack involving a man who stabbed 39 people at a primary school in Wuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on Thursday. According to Beijing News, a man armed with a knife attacked people in the Wangfuzhen Township Central Primary School at about 8 am, injuring the school's deputy principal, a security guard and multiple students. The attacker was later brought under police control, and the injured were sent to a hospital, the newspaper said.

Xinhua - China Daily