BEIJING, June 15 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
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BEIJING -- China is ready to strengthen cooperation with Laos in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic, said General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday.
In a verbal message sent to Bounnhang Vorachith, general secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Central Committee and president of Laos, Xi said he believes that with joint efforts of China and Laos as well as the international community, a final victory will surely be achieved in the battle against the pandemic.
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SYDNEY -- Qantas is planning to sell its minority stake in the Vietnamese airline Jetstar Pacific amid COVID-19 pandemic.
Qantas Group executive and Jetstar Group CEO Gareth Evans said on Monday the group will cease being a shareholder in the coming month.
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MOSCOW -- Russia added 8,246 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking its total to 537,210, the country's coronavirus response center said in a statement Monday.
The death toll rose by 143 to 7,091, while 284,539 people have recovered, including 4,489 over the last 24 hours, said the statement.
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SINGAPORE -- The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced in a report on Monday that economists and analysts polled in the survey of professional forecasters expect Singapore's 2020 economic growth to come in at -5.8 percent.
This is the second time for the respondents to downgrade the whole-year forecast within this year. In the survey report that the MAS released in March, they revised downward Singapore's estimated GDP growth for 2020 from 1.5 percent to 0.6 percent.
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WELLINGTON -- The number of people crossing New Zealand's border in April 2020 fell to levels last seen in the late 1960s, the country's statistic department Stats NZ said on Monday.
There were a combined 38,200 arrivals and departures in April 2020, compared with nearly 1.2 million in April 2019, Stats NZ said.
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BEIJING -- China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, further expanded in May as factory activities continued to pick up pace amid COVID-19 control, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Monday.
The value-added industrial output went up 4.4 percent year on year in May, extending the rebound and up 0.5 percentage points from April, NBS data showed. Enditem
