Extravehicular mission

Taikonauts Zhai Zhigang and Wang Yaping have completed their extravehicular activities (EVAs) and returned to the space station core module Tianhe, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said on Monday.

The event was the third extravehicular mission conducted during the construction of the country’s space station and the first by the Shenzhou-13 crew. It also marks the first EVAs in Chinese space history involving a female taikonaut, said the agency, which has declared Monday’s EVAs a complete success. The pair returned to the core module at 1:16 a.m. after 6.5 hours of extravehicular activities. They completed a series of extravehicular tasks.

Blizzard grounds flights

Following two days of red alerts for blizzards, meteorological authorities in Northeast China’s Liaoning Province on Monday lowered the blizzard alert to orange.

The Taoxian International Airport in the provincial capital of Shenyang closed from Sunday midnight to 10 a.m. on Monday. As of Monday, the airport had carried out de-icing operations on the runway, taxiway and apron. It gave the green light to six outbound flights while canceling all incoming flights on Monday.

High-level opening up

President Xi Jinping said on Thursday that China will steadfastly advance high-level opening up.

Xi made the remarks while addressing the opening ceremony of the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE) via video. Pledging further efforts to shorten the negative list for foreign investment, Xi said that China will expand opening up of the service sectors, such as telecommunications and medical care, in an orderly manner.

China will revise and broaden the catalog of industries where foreign investment is encouraged, channeling more foreign investment into areas including advanced manufacturing, modern services, new- and high-tech, and energy conservation and environmental protection, and directing foreign investment to the central, western and northeastern regions of China, Xi said.

Personal data collection

The Chinese Government has ordered 38 apps from a number of companies including social media giant Tencent Corp. to rectify the excessive collection of personal information.

The order arrives days after China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) went into full effect. In a statement posted on a social media account of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the regulator found that the apps in question collected unnecessary personal information. It ordered the apps to rectify their practices before yesterday or face administrative penalties. The apps listed included a news app and music streaming app from Tencent, as well as the beauty-oriented social network Xiaohongshu.

(SD-Agencies)