China

China and Russia have vetoed a US attempt to impose new UN sanctions on North Korea over its renewed ballistic missile launches, publicly splitting the organization's Security Council for the first time since the body began imposing sanctions on Pyongyang in 2006, Reuters reported.

China's premier has sounded an unusually stark warning about the world's second-largest economy, saying it must return to normal as the country's zero-Covid strategy bites into growth.    

China is the last major economy welded to a policy of mass testing and rapid lockdowns to eliminate virus clusters, but the strict curbs have battered businesses.    

Mothers hosting playdates near cordoned-off parks, mahjong maestros huddled in streets and youngsters slugging night-time beers on barricaded sidewalks -- Beijingers are making the most of the small spaces available as China's coronavirus controls close in.

Grotesque, crude and clearly insulting, the puppets are designed to grab attention and burst despotic bubbles. Meanwhile, Central European populists serving Moscow and Beijing's interests, like Czech President Milos Zeman and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, metamorphosise into giant slugs eating the lettuce leaf of democracy.

Turkey's crude steel production increased by 1.6 percent on an annual basis to 3.4 million tons in April, data from the World Steel Association have shown.

In January-April, Turkey, which is the world's eighth-largest producer of steel, produced a total of 12.8 million tons of steel, which marked a 3.2 percent decline from the same period of last year.

"The invasion may be the beginning of World War III and our civilization may not survive it." This was stated by the American billionaire George Soros in his traditional evening speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain town of Davos on the occasion of the war in Ukraine.

Billionaire George Soros (91) says Russia's invasion of Ukraine has "rattled Europe to its core" and could lead to the next world war.

"Protecting our values is more important than making a profit," Jens Stoltenberg told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

NATO's Secretary-General said the war in Ukraine had shown "how economic relations with authoritarian regimes can create vulnerabilities".

In a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, he highlighted trade with Russia and China.

These measures were taken to "warn the United States", according to a statement from the Combat Command of the Eastern Zone of the People's Liberation Army of China.

Australia's new government has urged China to lift trade sanctions if it wants to reset a bilateral relationship that plumbed new depths under the previous administration.