The chief of the European Union’s executive has made ‘a heartfelt apology’ to Italy for the block’s slow response in handling the coronavirus pandemic. Italy suffered more than 21,000 coronavirus-related deaths, the highest toll in Europe, officials say.
A pastor in the Hunan province of China was arrested on April 2 for suspected subversion of state power. Persecution watchdog International Christian Concern (ICC) reports that the pastor was arrested after his church refused to join a government-approved religious organization.
The State Department is concerned China may be conducting small nuclear tests in secret, possibly violating an international agreement banning such tests, Fox News confirmed Wednesday.
China reported that its first-quarter GDP contracted by 6.8% in 2020 from a year ago as the world’s second-largest economy took a huge hit from the coronavirus outbreak, data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China showed.
Hungary has condemned global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for saying that an ‘Orwellian law’ has imposed an ‘information police state’ in the country. RSF urged two United Nations rapporteurs to condemn the governments of Hungary and dozens of other nations for ‘violating the right to information’ about the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is halting payments to the World Health Organization (WHO) over its role in the coronavirus pandemic. “The WHO pushed China’s misinformation about the virus,” he told reporters at the White House.
The Chinese government has ordered new restrictions on studies regarding the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, in a further sign Beijing is hiding details behind the cause of the global pandemic.
The Chinese government has continued its campaign of removing crosses from churches in recent months, citing bizarre reasons in support of the “sinicization” of religion begun by President Xi Jinping.
Britain has pledged 200 million pounds ($248 million) to charities and the World Health Organization (WHO), which has come under U.S. pressure over its handling of the new coronavirus pandemic. Its Easter present came while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has been suffering from the virus COVID-19, said he “owed” his life to British medics.
China’s Communist government has halted online church services despite the coronavirus pandemic forcing many Christians to stay at home this Easter, Worthy News learned Saturday. The online religious rights watchdog Bitter Winter and local Christians said only groups holding state-issued licenses could stream religious services online in China. “We can’t get together because of the pandemic,” an underground house church pastor in the province of Jiangxi told Bitter Winter.
U.S. tech giants Apple and Google have unveiled a plan to track down people who may have been infected by the new coronavirus, despite concerns among rights activists. Their software allows governments to roll out apps for “contact tracing” that will run on smartphones such as iPhones and Android.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he talked to 10,000 U.S. faith leaders about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has led to bans on in-person church services, closed nonessential businesses and killed more than 14,500 Americans.
A new report shows the “dramatic reversal” of a five-year trend as US companies commanded a considerably larger share of manufacturing in 2019 than the 14 Asian exporters that were tracked for the study. According to the seventh annual Reshoring Index report by global manufacturing consulting firm Kearney, Chinese exporters suffered the greatest losses.
Concerns remained Thursday over the whereabouts of a jailed Christian in China after authorities prevented his wife from sending him money and clothes, Christian activists say. Jiang Zhanchun was arrested in China’s capital Beijing last year when he and his wife discussed opportunities to be baptized with Christian leaders of a Beijing house church, according to the letter seen by Worthy News.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) rushed to defend his agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic after President Donald Trump threatened to cut U.S. funding to them. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appealed for unity and a halt to “politicization” of the global health crisis, saying China and the United States should show “honest leadership.”
The World Health Organization said Tuesday it had received assurances from North Korea that it continues testing for the new coronavirus and has more than 500 people in quarantine. The leadership of North Korea, one of the world’s most repressive states, has so far claimed there are no confirmed cases of the virus, known as COVID-19.
China has been appointed to a panel on the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council, where it will help vet candidates for important posts — despite its decades-long record of systematic human rights abuse that the U.S. has said fueled the coronavirus pandemic.
Christians in China have reported ongoing harassment from government authorities during the coronavirus crisis. China is ranked as one of the world’s worst countries in the persecution of Christians, according to the Open Doors USA’s World Watch List.
Global coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million on Thursday with more than 52,000 deaths as the pandemic further exploded in the United States and the death toll climbed in Spain and Italy, according to a Reuters tally of official data.
With roughly half the world in lockdown and many politicians weak or ill, the largest Dutch daily concludes in a headline: “World searching for LEADER.” De Telegraaf (The Telegraph) also expresses that “Nobody takes the lead in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.” Its commentator, Frank van Vliet, complained: “While the world is on fire, international politicians are running in one direction to put out their fire. No leader has taken the lead, and solidarity is lacking. They did not read author Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers because “one for all and all for one” has been replaced by “own people first.”