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After what was only the second publicized conversation since hostilities began between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Kuleba said he was “[g]rateful to my Chinese counterpart for solidarity with civilian victims.” “We both share the conviction that ending the war against Ukraine serves common interests of peace, global food security, and international trade,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter following his phone call with Wang, who thanked his opposite number for Kyiv’s help in evacuating Chinese nationals from the country....

The column, published in the Global Times early on Friday, depicts the meeting of the two world powers as the next step in the nations’ efforts to form a hedge against the West—in particular, the countries aligned with the United Nations and NATO—as the coalition’s members continue to inject money and weapons into Ukraine. Though NATO has repeatedly denied any desire to escalate tensions between its members and Russia, Putin has long cited concerns with its presence in Eastern Europe as a pretext for the country’s invasion of Ukraine....

But fans have seen the last of the dynamic pairing. On Wednesday, the Chiefs traded Hill to the Dolphins, ending the run between star quarterback and star receiver after four years. Mahomes and the Chiefs still have tight end Travis Kelce as a target in the passing game, but the drop-off from Hill to the rest of the wide receiver room is steep. Since Mahomes took over as the Chiefs’ starting quarterback in 2018, only Sammy Watkins, Mecole Hardman and Byron Pringle have recorded more than 500 receiving yards in a season among players not named Hill or Kelce....

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) also said that 98 football clubs have been “impacted”, ranging from amateur teams to those in the Premier League, though this does not mean that all are under investigation by any of the 21 forces that are looking into the matter. Child abuse is football’s worst-kept secret An NSPCC helpline was set up in the aftermath of former Manchester City winger David White and ex-Crewe Alexandra players Andy Woodward and Steve Walters accusing former Crewe employee Barry Bennell of abusing them when they were young footballers....

In late 1991, Zlata Filipovic, 10, a Bosnian girl of mixed ethnic heritage, started a diary of her life in Sarajevo. It soon became a chronicle of horrors. Over the next two years, as the city came under intensifying Serb attack, Zlata grew from a girlish innocent into a precociously wise young teenager. She compared herself to Anne Frank, the Dutch Jewish girl who was killed by the Nazis and left behind a poignant account of her life in hiding....

The U.S. Army and the Department of State gave reporters a tour of the army post Thursday to get a glimpse of where Afghan evacuees are being housed before they are relocated to more permanent homes. According to the Associated Press, children were everywhere. Sidewalks were covered with children’s chalk drawings, and classrooms were filled with kids of all ages learning English. Fort McCoy is one of eight military posts across the country temporarily housing the tens of thousands of Afghan refugees forced to flee their country after U....

China’s People’s Liberation Army has gradually increased numbers to at least 50,000, up from about 15,000 in June last year, Indian intelligence and military officials told the Wall Street Journal. It reported that numbers have mostly increased over the last few months. India has also deployed tens of thousands of troops and heavy artillery has been sent to the region. Much of the military build up has taken place in Eastern Ladakh, which overlaps Kashmir and Tibet, a key strategic area home to several critical rivers that supply vast amounts of waterflow to both China and India....

IOC spokesperson Mark Adams told reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday that the sporting body was looking into the matter—a suspected breach of Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter which prohibits the display of political gestures on the podium. “We have contacted the Chinese Olympic Committee, asked them for a report about the situation,” Adams said at a Tokyo 2020 Olympics press conference, according to The Associated Press. A day earlier, the IOC spokesperson had also confirmed a probe into a gesture by 25-year-old American athlete Raven Saunders, who made an X with her arms at a medal ceremony on Sunday after clinching silver in shot put....

In their first meeting since the final in Dubai, Bencic has been on a run of success that pitted her against the Czech for the fourth time. While Kvitova held the head-to-head lead, she wanted nothing more than to avenge her previous loss to the Swiss star. The world number seven took almost a month off before returning to action and has done well winning four of her last five matches including a win over Kristina Mladenovic....

The two met for the first time on the WTA Tour after a fabulous start to their respective campaigns at this tournament. While the Czech scored a comfortable win in straight sets against China’s Xiyu Wang, Ostapenko edged the second seed Karolina Pliskova in three gruelling sets. The Latvian started the second-round clash with a comfortable service game, drawing errors from the World No. 47 to take a 1-0 lead....

China’s ambassador to Vanuatu was exceptionally busy in December as the tiny Pacific Island nation signed a security deal with America’s key ally Australia. Starting on December 13, when Vanuatu and Australia sealed the agreement, Ambassador Li Minggang hosted three events over three days in Vanuatu - including at the massive Chinese embassy in the capital Port Vila. Li was at pains to highlight China’s extensive involvement in the region with aid and infrastructure and its 40 years of diplomatic ties to a country where the U....

Time and date systems are central components for modern civilization. Many of us are familiar with the Gregorian calendar, which is the most widely accepted civil calendar in the world. It is a solar calendar based on a 365-day year, and makes a distinction between BC and AD, with the birth of Jesus Christ. Timekeeping gets more complicated than that, though, when we need to keep seconds extremely accurately....

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the Washington-based CIUS, which facilitates Chinese language and cultural courses in American universities and schools through the Confucius Institute (CI) programs, as an “entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign.” The order means its staff will have to register and follow similar kinds of restrictions faced by diplomatic missions in what is likely to increase tensions between the U.S. China and spark a response from Beijing....

China will have five WTA tournaments from next year – Shenzhen, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Beijing and Hong Kong – with another three lower-level tournaments, and Asian tennis got a huge boost with the news that the season-ending WTA Championships will move from Istanbul to Singapore from 2014 in a five-year deal. Allaster spoke to the BBC this week in an awkwardly edited interview featuring question lobs such as: “Has the success of China’s Li Na, who won the French Open Championships, helped in the popularity of tennis in Asia?...

October was the busiest month by far, with Taiwan’s Defense Ministry reporting 196 sorties by People’s Liberation Army aircraft flying into its air defense identification zone. An ADIZ extends beyond a nation’s territorial airspace and is used for logging approaching civilian and military aircraft, but it is not regulated under international law. The PLA’s frequent training missions are mostly concentrated within a band of international airspace about 100 to 150 miles southwest of the island, but the message they send is clear....

People’s Daily—the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party—sent the tweet as the city ended its lockdown that began on January 23. COVID-19 has since spread worldwide, infecting more than 1.4 million people and killing more than 82,000. To date, some 275,000 people have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University. People’s Daily came under fire for its tweet, which declared: “Have a taste of Wuhan! Let these mouth-watering specialties in Wuhan satisfy your stomach....

Published in the journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, the team behind the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) has announced its ambitions for the next decade—including the hunt for exoplanets. FAST, as the name suggests, is a 1,600 feet wide telescope. It sits in the Dawodang depression of the Guizhou Province and it achieved its first light in September 2016. One of the main scientific missions of FAST is to listen out for pulsars and other interstellar radio signals—including any coming from hypothetical extraterrestrials....

Five J-16 fighters and four Y-8 reconnaissance planes of different variants were among the People’s Liberation Army Air Force assets to violate Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ), according to the ministry. It illustrated the flight paths on its website and said it had tasked interceptor jets and tracked the Chinese aircraft using missiles. Local enthusiasts monitoring Taiwan’s airwaves told Newsweek that the Republic of China Air Force issued seven radio warnings to China’s warplanes between 08:52 a....

Fresno County Administrative Officer Jean Rousseau apologized to the children after their living conditions were revealed in a report in The Fresno Bee. The children in the building are awaiting new homes after being disowned from their biological and foster families. “When I saw the conditions in the office, when I saw the mats being used as beds, I said, ‘This is unacceptable.’ I should have known earlier, and we’re going to rectify it immediately,” Rousseau said, according to the Associated Press....

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Kristine Johnson filed suit in Marion County Circuit Court on January 3. In 2017, Kristine discovered that her husband had been involved in inappropriate sexual content with their daughter throughout her tween and teen years. Following church doctrine, he confessed before the clergy and the church court at their ward in Stayton, a small town outside of Salem, according to the Salt Lake Tribune....