Aus PM Morrison loses control of WeChat Chinese account as election looms

 Australia’s two major political parties have used the social media platform to communicate with Australian voters of Chinese ethnicity in tightly fought electorates since 2019

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison‘s Liberal Party lost access to his official WeChat social media account months ago, politicians said on Monday, issuing claims of censorship, while the still-active account being run by an unidentified controller now promotes Chinese life in Australia.

Amid growing diplomatic tensions with China, Australia’s two major political parties have used the social media platform, owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, to communicate with Australian voters of Chinese ethnicity in tightly fought electorates since 2019. With a national election due by May, the government would have aimed to use the Morrison account to promote its policies during the Chinese New Year celebrations starting Feb. 1. The prime minister’s office has made multiple fruitless requests to WeChat to regain access to the account, most recently on Jan 10, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Coronavirus : Toll crosses 1300; 242 deaths in a day in China’s Hubei

The death toll from coronavirus (COVID-19) in China jumped to 1355 on Wednesday, with the number of confirmed cases rising to 44,763. Catch LIVE updates

The death toll from the coronavirus epidemic continues to climb. So far, the virus outbreak has claimed 1,355 lives with 242 new fatalities reported in the worst-affected Hubei province on Wednesday. The number of confirmed cases abroad rose to 440 with one death so far in the Philippines. Japan reported the highest number of 203 cases with a majority of them from a cruise ship. On Wednesday, two Indian crew on board a cruise ship off the Japanese coast were tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the Indian Embassy in Japan said as authorities confirmed that 174 people have been infected with the deadly disease. The virus, now named COVID-19, has spread to over 20 countries, including India.

CATCH ALL THE UPDATES

Stranded by coronavirus blockade, Chinese man fights to get back to work

Tian Bing has spent six straight nights curled up in the back of his white sedan, stranded at an expressway service station in eastern Jiangsu province in China because of a blockade aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. On Sunday, the 35-year-old completed a near-2,000 km (1,243 mile) drive from his hometown to Taixing, a city of about 1 million people in Jiangsu, to return to work. But policemen guarding the highway exit to the city, where he runs a home appliances repair business, told him turn back. The reason: Tian is not considered a local resident under China’s Byzantine hukou system, barring him from entry due to the city’s recent decision to keep out outsiders.

China’s Hubei province communist party chief relieved of duty

The head of the Communist Party in the Chinese province of Hubei, the epicentre of a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than a thousand people, has been relieved of duty, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday. Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong has been appointed as the new secretary of the Hubei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Coronavirus Update: 636 dead, 31,161 infected; Twitter mourns doctor’s death

The virus, called 2019-nCoV, is a coronavirus – which infects the nose, throat, or sinuses – and has pneumonia-like symptoms. The death toll has now risen to 636 in China. Catch LIVE update

The death toll from the novel coronavirus in China jumped to 636 on Friday, with 31,161 infected. Out of the total rise in the toll, central Hubei province – the epicentre of the outbreak – reported 69 deaths, including 64 in the provincial capital Wuhan. Across mainland China, there were 3,143 new confirmed infections. Authorities are fighting to stop it from spreading as millions travel for Chinese New Year, and scientists are trying to understand the virus, which has not been seen by humans before, and its effects. Experts say the virus, called 2019-nCoV can be spread from human to human.

Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, one of the eight whistle-blowers who warned other medics of the Novel coronavirus outbreak but were reprimanded by the police, died of the epidemic on Thursday. Meanwhile, China vehemently denied a Taiwan media report that Beijing is under-reporting the death toll and infected cases from the virus outbreak.

“On late Saturday evening, the Tencent, which runs popular social media APP weChat showed confirmed cases of the Wuhan virus in China as standing at 154,023, ten times the official figure at the time…Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day,” the report claimed.

Yuan inches lower, set for losing week on anxiety over virus impact on economy

China’s yuan eased against the dollar on Friday as it staggered towards a feeble end to a week that saw no end in sight to the country’s coronavirus epidemic even as Beijing stepped up containment efforts and support measures for the economy. While investors have been comforted by China’s moves to restore calm to battered markets, confidence remains fragile as the death toll from the outbreak continued to climb sharply to over 600, leaving policymakers fretting over the potential drag on global growth..