Prince William and Kate release photo of daughter Charlotte to mark ninth birthday
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
Only a trickle of visitors strolled the pedestrian-only streets Sunday in central Beijing's historic Qianmen district, which normally would be bustling with tourists on what was a national holiday and a sunny spring day.
Many Chinese marked a quiet May Day this year as the government's "zero-COVID" approach restricts travel and enforces lockdowns in multiple cities. Millions remain restricted to their buildings or compounds in Shanghai, China's largest city, under a lockdown that has only slightly eased.
Under an order announced the previous afternoon, all Beijing restaurants were closed to dine-in customers Sunday and can offer only takeout and delivery through the end of the national holiday on Wednesday. Parks and tourist attractions in the Chinese capital are limited to half capacity. The Universal Studios theme park, which opened last year, said it had shut down temporarily.
In Qianmen, the touristy neighbourhood around the street that leads to the imposing gates of the former imperial palace, some people bought food from stalls and ate on outdoor benches. Wang Liying said sales at her noodle and stir-fry restaurant have plunged 98 per cent during the holiday compared to last year.
"The remaining two per cent is very little for us," she said. "There is not much we can do with the pandemic."
The virus situation varies across the vast nation of 1.4 billion people, but the Transport Ministry said last week that it expected 100 million trips to be taken from Saturday to Wednesday, which would be down 60 per cent from last year. Many of those who are traveling are staying within their province as local governments discourage or restrict cross-border travel to try to keep out new infections.
China is sticking to a strict "zero-COVID" policy even as many other countries are easing restrictions and seeing if they can live with the virus. Much of Shanghai -- a finance, manufacturing and shipping hub -- remains locked down, disrupting people's lives and dealing a blow to the economy.
The major outbreak in Shanghai, where the death toll has topped 400, appears to be easing. The city recorded about 7,200 new locally transmitted cases on Saturday, down from a peak of 27,605 on April 13. Outside of Shanghai, only 364 new cases were found in the rest of mainland China.
Beijing, which has tallied 350 cases in the past nine days, is restricting activity to try to prevent a large outbreak and avoid a citywide lockdown similar to Shanghai. Individual buildings and housing complexes with coronavirus cases have been sealed off. Gyms and theatres have been closed for the holiday period. Visitors to many office buildings and tourist sites such as the Great Wall must show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within the previous 48 hours.
Epidemic prevention and control are at the most critical juncture in Beijing, said Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the city's disease prevention centre. While most of the new cases are among people under quarantine, some have been found in the broader community, Peng said. Beijing is conducting repeated rounds of mass testing to find and isolate any infected people.
Online booking agency Ctrip said last week that people were booking travel to cities that were mostly free of the virus, such as Chengdu in Sichuan province and nearby Chongqing. Other popular destinations included Wuhan, where the world's first major outbreak of COVID-19 occurred in early 2020. About half the orders on the Ctrip platform were for travel within a province.
------
Associated Press video producer Olivia Zhang contributed to this report.
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
The makers of Ozempic say their weight-loss drug Wegovy will be available to patients in Canada starting Monday.
Archeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five people, missing their hands and feet, at a former Nazi military base in Poland.
Just days before the seventh anniversary of the day Jack Letts was thrown in prison with thousands of suspected ISIS fighters, his mother, Sally Lane, delivered a small stack of envelopes to the headquarters of Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa.
In an effort to balance the profitability of Mother's Day with the pain it causes some people, some brands are offering customers the choice to opt out of Mother's Day email advertising.
Citizens' Services Minister Terry Beech says 1,200 seniors have already visited a dentist and had their claims processed by the federal government's new dental care plan.
Inspections are underway at more than one Loblaws location in Ottawa after complaints were filed about tall Plexiglass barriers.
Scientists studying a Neanderthal woman's remains have painstakingly pieced together her skull from 200 bone fragments to understand what she may have looked like.
Victims of a Brantford, Ont., woman who was sentenced to house arrest earlier this year for defrauding and deceiving doulas say they’re not surprised she’s been apprehended again on similar charges.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.