China's Qingdao city seeing half a million COVID-19 cases a day: Official - CNA

BEIJIING: Half a million people in a single Chinese city are being infected with COVID-19 every day, a senior health official has said, in a rare and quickly censored acknowledgement that the country's wave of infections is not being reflected in official statistics.

China this month has rapidly dismantled key pillars of its zero-COVID strategy, doing away with snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and travel curbs in a jarring reversal of its hallmark containment strategy.

Cities across the country have struggled to cope as surging infections have emptied pharmacy shelves, filled hospital wards and appeared to cause backlogs at crematoriums and funeral homes.

But the end of strict testing mandates has made caseloads virtually impossible to track, while authorities have narrowed the medical definition of a COVID-19 death in a move experts have said will suppress the number of fatalities attributable to the virus.

A news outlet operated by the ruling Communist Party in Qingdao on Friday (Dec 23) reported the municipal health chief as saying that the eastern city was seeing "between 490,000 and 530,000" new COVID-19 cases a day.

The coastal city of around 10 million people was "in a period of rapid transmission ahead of an approaching peak", Bo Tao reportedly said, adding that the infection rate would accelerate by another 10 per cent over the weekend.

The report was shared by several other news outlets but appeared to have been edited by Saturday morning to remove the case figures.

China's National Health Commission said on Saturday that 4,103 new domestic infections were recorded nationwide the previous day, with no new deaths.

In Shandong, the province where Qingdao is located, authorities officially logged just 31 new domestic cases.

China's government keeps a tight leash on the country's media, with legions of online censors on hand to scrub out content deemed politically sensitive.

Most government-run publications have downplayed the severity of the country's exit wave, instead depicting the policy reversal as logical and controlled.

But some outlets have hinted at shortages of medicine and hospitals under strain, though estimates of actual case numbers remain rare.

The government of eastern Jiangxi province said in a Friday social media post that 80 per cent of its population - equivalent to around 36 million people - would be infected by March.

More than 18,000 COVID-19 patients had been admitted to major medical institutions in the province in the two weeks up to Thursday, including nearly 500 severe cases but no deaths, the statement said.

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2022-12-24 05:32:00Z
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Attack on Kurds in Paris revives trauma of unresolved murders - CNA

The victims' families have long pointed the finger at Turkey for masterminding the deaths of the three women, who were shot in the head and neck, and at France for failing to investigate properly.

"You aren't protecting us. We're being killed!" a young man shouted at police at the scene on Friday as he wept in the street.

RACIST VIOLENCE?

Despite the suspicions in the community, there appears to be no evidence that Friday's shooting had political motives or was linked to Turkey.

French authorities have been extremely cautious about suggesting a motive, with early suspicions being racism.

The suspected gunman is a 69-year-old French retired train driver with a history of violence against foreigners.

In December last year, he was charged with attacking migrants living in tents in eastern Paris with a sword, injuring at least two of them.

The man "was clearly targeting foreigners", Interior Minister Darmanin told reporters, while adding it was "not certain" that he was aiming to kill "Kurds in particular".

"We don't yet know his exact motives," he said.

KURDISH ACTIVISM

Some demonstrators could be heard chanting slogans on Friday in support of the PKK, a Kurdish organisation designated as terrorist by Ankara, the European Union and others.

The PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, initially in support of an independent Kurdish state and latterly for greater Kurdish autonomy within Turkey.

Often described as the world's largest people without a state, the Kurds are a Muslim ethnic group spread across Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

Turkey launches regular military operations against the PKK as well as Kurdish groups it accuses of being allies in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

The Kurdish Democratic Council of France, an umbrella Kurdish group headquartered in the cultural centre targeted on Friday, also pointed the finger at Turkey on Friday.

"For us there is no doubt that it is a terror attack which has occurred just before the 10th anniversary of the triple murders of three Kurdish activists in Paris," senior member Agit Polat told AFP.

The group called for a vigil on Friday evening.

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2022-12-23 21:57:39Z
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Twists and turns of Asia's 'Serpent' serial killer Charles Sobhraj - CNA

1944: BORN IN ASIA

Sobhraj is born in Saigon on Apr 6, 1944, to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother who later remarries a Frenchman.

In 1963, he embarks on a life as an international crook, which will take him to Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In 1970, he moves to India, where he is arrested a year later for a jewellery heist. He flees while out on bail and goes to Greece, where he also manages to escape after being arrested.

1975: "BIKINI KILLER"

He arrives in Bangkok in 1975 with his Canadian girlfriend and an Indian associate.

He hangs out with tourists, passing himself off as a trader in precious stones.

In October, the body of a young woman is found on a Thai beach in Pattaya, wearing a bikini. Other victims follow, beaten, strangled or burned to death.

Sobhraj, who will become known as the "bikini killer" allegedly uses his victims' passports for mysterious trips linked to trade in precious stones and drugs.

Under a cloud of suspicion, he flees to India.

1976: ARRESTED IN INDIA

In July 1976, he is arrested in India after trying to drug a group of more than 20 French tourists in a New Delhi hotel.

He is also accused of the murder of another French tourist, Luc Salomon, who had been poisoned in a Mumbai hotel.

In May 1982, he is handed a life sentence by an Indian court for the 1976 murder of Israeli tourist Alan Jacob, but is acquitted on appeal a year later for lack of evidence.

He remains in prison for his other crimes.

1980: THAILAND DEMANDS EXTRADITION

In late 1985, India agrees to Thailand's request to extradite Sobhraj for the murders of a Turkish tourist and a young American woman, Teresa Knowlton.

He risks the death penalty there.

He then escapes from jail in New Delhi in March 1986 by feeding drug-laced sweets to his guards.

He is recaptured three weeks later in a Goa restaurant.

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2022-12-23 18:48:32Z
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'Epic' winter storm wallops US, leaving 1.5 million without power - CNA

The biting cold is an immediate concern for some 1.5 million electricity customers, mainly in the US south and east, who were without power, according to tracker poweroutage.us.

Transportation departments in North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Iowa and elsewhere reported near-zero visibility whiteouts, ice-covered roads and blizzard conditions, and strongly urged residents to stay home.

At least two traffic fatalities were reported in Oklahoma Thursday, Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, confirmed three in his state.

"This is an epic, statewide hazard," New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a press briefing.

"The roads are going to be like an ice skating rink and your tires cannot handle this."

AIR TRAVEL CHAOS

In El Paso, Texas, desperate migrants who had crossed from Mexico huddled for warmth in churches, schools and a civic center, Rosa Falcon, a school teacher and volunteer told AFP.

But some still chose to stay outside in -9 degrees Celsius temperatures because they feared attention from immigration authorities, she added.

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2022-12-23 15:54:00Z
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Charles 'The Serpent' Sobhraj: Serial killer and conman - CNA

KATHAMANDU: Notorious French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, the titular "Serpent" of the hit Netflix drama series, was responsible for a string of murders throughout Asia.

The charismatic conman, 78, was for nearly two decades serving a life sentence for killing two tourists in Kathmandu in the 1970s, before Nepal's top court ordered his release on Wednesday (Dec 22).

After a troubled childhood and several prison terms in France for petty crimes, he began travelling the world in the early 1970s, befriending and robbing young backpackers as he made his way along the drug-fuelled Hippie Trail from Europe to Southeast Asia.

He eventually arrived in Thailand, where he was implicated in his first murder, that of a young American woman whose body was found on a beach in Pattaya in 1975.

"He was cultured, courteous," said Nadine Gires, who befriended Sobhraj when he moved into her Bangkok apartment building that year.

But she soon began to fear her fast-talking neighbour, who masqueraded as a gemstone trader to lure cash-strapped travellers before drugging, robbing and killing them.

"Many people were getting sick in his home," she told AFP last year. "He was not only a swindler, a seducer, a robber of tourists, but an evil murderer."

Sobhraj - a French citizen of Vietnamese and Indian parentage, who spoke several languages - was linked to more than 20 killings in total.

His victims were strangled, beaten or burned, and he often used the passports of his male victims to travel to his next destination.

Sobhraj's sobriquet, "The Serpent", came from his ability to assume other identities in order to evade justice.

His exploits were dramatised in a TV series by the same name, a BBC and Netflix joint production that was watched by millions around the world.

"CRIMINAL HERO"

The law caught up with Sobhraj in 1976 in India, where was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

From his jail cell, Sobhraj sold his story to a publishing house and was interviewed by Australian journalist Julie Clarke, recounting the murders in chilling detail and holding nothing back.

"He despised backpackers, he saw them as poor young drug addicts," Clarke told AFP in 2021.

"He considered himself a criminal hero."

Sobhraj ultimately spent 21 years in jail with a brief 22-day break in 1986, when he managed to slip out of his cell after feeding the guards cakes, cookies and grapes laced with sleeping pills.

He was caught in a restaurant in the Indian coastal state of Goa, where he had reportedly been riding around on a pink motorbike in outlandish disguises.

Later, he would claim the escape was a well-crafted plan to have his sentence extended to avoid extradition to Thailand, where he was wanted for multiple murders and could have faced the death penalty.

The two countries' extradition treaty expired in 1995 and he was released two years later.

"SIR CHARLES" BEHIND BARS

By then in his fifties, Sobhraj retired to Paris, where he led a mostly quiet life - though if journalists came knocking, he would charge thousands of dollars for an interview about his notorious years in Asia.

He resurfaced in 2003 in Nepal, where he was spotted in Kathmandu's tourist district and arrested a few days later in an all-night casino.

A court there handed him a life sentence the following year for killing US tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Her body was found with multiple stab wounds and having been severely burned.

It took Nepal's glacial legal system another decade to also sentence Sobhraj for the murder of her Canadian travelling companion, Laurent Carriere, whose passport he had used to escape Nepal after killing the pair.

In prison, Sobhraj reportedly lived in relative comfort, provided with a foam pillow, mineral water and meals from a Kathmandu restaurant.

He had also managed to extract similar perks from jail officials in India, earning him the nickname "Sir Charles" among other inmates.

In 2008, Sobhraj married Nihita Biswas - 44 years his junior and the daughter of his Nepalese lawyer - in a secret prison ceremony.

On the back of the notoriety brought by the wedding, Biswas starred in India's hugely popular version of the television show "Big Brother" in 2011.

Sobhraj has at least one daughter from a previous relationship who lives in France.

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2022-12-23 09:39:34Z
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Morgues overwhelmed: why China’s new Covid crisis is all of its own making - South China Morning Post

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1. Morgues overwhelmed: why China’s new Covid crisis is all of its own making  South China Morning Post
2. Shanghai hospital warns of "tragic battle" as COVID cases surge across China  CNA
3. Shanghai hospital readies for 'tragic battle' with Covid-19  The Straits Times
4. Inside an overcrowded Beijing hospital struggling with Covid surge in China  South China Morning Post
5. Shanghai hospital warns of 'tragic battle' as COVID-19 spreads  CNA
6. View Full coverage on Google News

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2022-12-23 04:00:18Z
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Elderly COVID-19 patients fill hospital beds in China's Chongqing - CNA

CHONGQING: Attached to a breathing tube under a pile of blankets, an old man racked with COVID-19 lay groaning on a stretcher in the emergency department of a hospital in central China on Thursday (Dec 22).

In Chongqing, and across the country, the virus is surging. Authorities say the number of cases is impossible to keep track of after the abrupt abandonment of years of mass testing, lockdowns and travel restrictions.

A paramedic at Chongqing Medical University First Affiliated Hospital who confirmed the old man was a COVID-19 patient said he had picked up more than 10 people a day, 80 to 90 per cent of whom were infected with coronavirus.

"Most of them are elderly people," he said.

"A lot of hospital staff are positive as well, but we have no choice but to carry on working."

The old man waited half an hour to be treated, while in a nearby treatment room, AFP saw six other people in sick beds, surrounded by harried doctors and relatives.

They too were mostly elderly, and when asked if they were all COVID-19 patients, a doctor said: "Basically."

Five were strapped to respirators and had obvious breathing difficulties.

Millions of elderly across China are still not fully vaccinated, raising concerns that the virus will kill the country's most vulnerable citizens in huge numbers.

But under new government guidelines, many of those deaths would not be blamed on COVID-19.

Previously, people who died of an illness while infected with the virus were counted as a COVID-19 death, but now only those who directly die of respiratory failure caused by the virus will be counted.

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2022-12-22 09:32:00Z
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