President Xi replies to letter from young foreign participants at Global Young Leaders Dialogue

Chinese President Xi Jinping is encouraging foreign participants in the Global Young Leaders Dialogue program to enhance exchanges and mutual learning.

36 young leaders from 28 countries have written to the president, sharing their experiences about a recent tour around China.

Xi Jinping called on young people from China and abroad to better understand each other through exchanges.

The Global Young Leaders Dialogue is a program initiated by Chinese think tanks. It was launched in December last year.

One-China principle tolerates no distortion: FM spokesperson

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson says the meaning of the one-China principle brooks no distortion.

Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying says Lithuania's decision to allow the Taiwan authorities to open a "representative office" under the name of "Taiwan" brazenly violates the principle.

The spokesperson says China has the right to make a legitimate and reasonable response.

Hua says China urges the Lithuanian side to earnestly honor its commitment to the one-China principle, and create conditions for the sound and steady development of China-Lithuania relations.

Hua's remarks came one day after China said it decided to recall its ambassador to Lithuania and demanded the Lithuanian government recall its ambassador to China.

Michael Spavor sentenced to 11 years for espionage

A Chinese court has convicted Canadian national Michael Spavor of espionage and sentenced him to 11 years in prison.

He will also be deported.

Spavor was arrested in 2019.

A spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry says the case involved state secrets.

Over 1.8 bln doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in China

The National Health Commission says over 1.8 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in China.

This comes a week after the commission reported that over 1.7 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered across the country.

China has stepped up efforts to prevent hospital-acquired COVID-19 infections and strengthen nucleic acid testing, as the country is working to rein in a resurgence of locally transmitted cases.

Staff member in China's port tests positive for COVID-19

A dock staff member at the Port of Ningbo Zhoushan in east China's Zhejiang Province tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Wednesday morning.

Operations at the site have been suspended and the area has been disinfected.

On Tuesday, 16 crew members of a ship stranded in the port tested positive for COVID-19. Eleven of them were later diagnosed as confirmed cases.

This comes after nine crew members of the ship reported to local authorities that they were running a fever on August 3.

The ship, with 20 Chinese nationals on board, had been docked in Indonesia and the Philippines, and left the Philippines on July 30.

U.S. Senate passes $3.5t budget plan

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed a 3.5 trillion-dollar budget plan that will help address climate change and launch several new domestic social programs.

The vote to approve the resolution follows Senate passage of a 1 trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill Tuesday.

The U.S House of Representatives must next take up and pass the budget resolution.

Indigenous nations to investigate residential school in Vancouver

Three Canadian indigenous tribes will work together to investigate the former St. Paul's Indian Residential School in Vancouver.

The investigation will look at the more than 2,000 children that were housed at the school, as well as what happened to them.

After attending St. Paul's, many of them were sent to the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where the remains of more than 200 children were discovered in May.

The school was funded by the Canadian Government and ran from 1889 to 1959.

China's NEV sales more than double in first seven months

Official figures show sales of new energy vehicles in China more than doubled in the first seven months of the year as production and demand continue to recover.

In the January-July period, NEV sales totaled nearly 1.5 million units, double the figure from the same period last year.

China's Tibetan antelopes no longer endangered as population grows

The status of Tibetan antelopes in China has been downgraded from "endangered" to "near threatened" amid the country's active anti-poaching and biodiversity protection efforts.

The National Forestry and Grassland Administration says the population of the species has grown from less than 70,000 during the 1980s-1990s to around 300,000 at present.