Ukraine’s military said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson city, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south..

* Spain has stepped up security at public and diplomatic buildings after a spate of letter bombs, including one sent to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and another to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, where an official suffered minor injuries.

* Air raid alerts were issued across all of Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone strikes. “An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” country’s border service wrote on Telegram messaging app.

* Ukraine’s military said it had found fragments of Russian-fired nuclear-capable missiles with dud warheads in west Ukraine, and that their apparent purpose was to distract air defences.

* The recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson has lost its power supply after heavy shelling by Russian forces, the regional governor said.

* European Union governments tentatively agreed on a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil, with an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap at 5% below the market price, an EU diplomat said.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make it a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

* Lavrov said that discussions with Washington about potential prisoner exchanges were being conducted by the two countries’ intelligence services, and that he hoped they would be successful.

* The European Union needs patience as it sanctions Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as most measures will only have an impact in the medium and long term, Lithuania’s prime minister said in an interview at  the  Reuters NEXT conference.

* Switzerland has frozen financial assets worth 7.5 billion Swiss francs ($7.94 billion) as of Nov. 25 under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said.

* Russia said the German parliament’s move to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian provocation and an attempt by Germany to whitewash its Nazi past.

* Ukraine sacked a top engineer at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, accusing him of collaborating with Russian forces, and urged other Ukrainian staff at the plant to remain loyal to Kyiv.

* Russia must withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia plant if the U.N. atomic watchdog’s efforts to create a protection zone are to succeed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

* In a grim sign of the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid, nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resorted to emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes after power outages.

* “Remember one thing – the Russians are afraid. And they are very cold and no one will help them, because they do not have popular support,” – Andriy Yermak, chief of Ukrainian presidential staff.

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China reported its first COVID-related deaths in weeks on Monday amid rising doubts over whether the official count was capturing the full toll of a disease that is ripping through cities after the government relaxed strict anti-virus controls.

Monday’s two deaths were the first to be reported by the National Health Commission (NHC) since Dec. 3, days before Beijing announced that it was lifting curbs which had largely kept the virus in check for three years but triggered widespread protests last month.

Though on Saturday, Reuters journalists witnessed hearses lined up outside a designated COVID-19 crematorium in Beijing and workers in hazmat suits carrying the dead inside the facility. Reuters could not immediately establish if the deaths were due to COVID.

A hashtag on the two reported COVID deaths quickly became the top trending topic on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform on Monday morning.

“What is the point of incomplete statistics?” asked one user. “Isn’t this cheating the public?,” wrote another.

The NHC did not immediately respond to questions from Reuters on the accuracy of its data.

Officially China has suffered just 5,237 COVID-related deaths during the pandemic, including the latest two fatalities, a tiny fraction of its 1.4 billion population and very low by global standards.

But health experts have said China may pay a price for taking such stringent measures to shield a population that now lacks natural immunity to COVID-19 and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.

Some fear China’s COVID death toll could rise above 1.5 million in coming months.

Respected Chinese news outlet Caixin on Friday reported that two state media journalists had died after contracting COVID, and then on Saturday that a 23-year-old medical student had also died. It was not immediately clear which, if any, of these deaths were included in official death tolls.

“The (official) number is clearly an undercount of COVID deaths,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a U.S. think tank.

That “may reflect the lack of state ability to effectively track and monitor the disease situation on the ground after the collapse of the mass PCR testing regime, but it may also be driven by efforts to avoid mass panic over the surge of COVID deaths,” he said.

The NHC reported 1,995 symptomatic infections for Dec. 18, compared with 2,097 a day earlier.

But infection rates have also become an unreliable guide as far less mandatory PCR testing is being conducted following the recent easing. The NHC stopped reporting asymptomatic cases last week citing the testing drop.

China’s stocks fell and the yuan eased against the dollar on Monday, as investors grew concerned that surging COVID-19 cases would further weigh on the world’s second largest economy despite pledges of government support.

The virus was also sweeping through trading floors in Beijing and spreading fast in the financial hub of Shanghai, with illness and absence thinning already light trade and forcing regulators to cancel a weekly meeting vetting public share sales.

Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp (6723.T) said on Monday it had suspended work at its Beijing plant due to COVID-19 infections.

China’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou on Saturday said the country was in the throes of the first of three COVID waves expected this winter, which was more in line with what people said they are experiencing on the ground.

“I’d say sixty to seventy percent of my colleagues…are infected right now,” Liu, a 37-year-old university canteen worker in Beijing, told Reuters, requesting to be identified by his surname.

While top officials have been downplaying the threat posed by the new Omicron strain of the virus in recent weeks, authorities remain concerned about the elderly, who have been reluctant to get vaccinated.

Officially, China’s vaccination rate is above 90%, but the rate for adults who have received booster doses of the vaccine drops to 57.9%, and to 42.3% for people aged 80 and above, according to government data.

In the Shijingshan district of Beijing, medical workers have been going door-to-door offering to vaccinate elderly residents in their homes, China’s Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

But it is not just the elderly that are wary of vaccines.

“I don’t trust it,” Candice, a 28-year-old headhunter in Shenzhen told Reuters, citing stories from friends about health impacts, as well as similar health warnings on social media. Candice spoke on condition that only her first name be used.

Overseas-developed vaccines are unavailable in mainland China to the general public, which has relied on inactivated shots by local manufacturers for its vaccine rollout.

While China’s medical community in general doesn’t doubt the safety of China’s vaccines, some say questions remain over their efficacy compared to foreign-made mRNA counterparts.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin heads to Belarus on Monday, fuelling Ukrainian fears he intends to pressure his ally to join a new offensive, as Russian drones attacked Kyiv in the latest assault targeting key infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said.

Officials in Kyiv have warned for months that neighbouring Belarus could join Russian forces and serve as a launching pad for a renewed ground attack on the Ukrainian capital.

“Protecting our border, both with Russia and Belarus – is our constant priority,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after a meeting on Sunday of Ukraine’s top military command. “We are preparing for all possible defence scenarios.”

Putin heads to Belarus on Monday for his first visit in 3-1/2 years with the Kremlin describing it as a broad “working visit” with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarus – one of Russia’s closest allies – allowed its territory to be used as a launchpad for Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, but has not joined the fighting directly. Lukashenko has said repeatedly he has no intention of sending his country’s troops into Ukraine.

Russian troops that were moved to Belarus in October will conduct battalion tactical exercises, the Russian Interfax news agency reported, citing the Russian defence ministry.

It was not immediately clear when and where in Belarus the latest in a flurry of recent exercises will be conducted.

On Monday, Russian air raids hit “critical infrastructure” in and around Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said. Air defence systems destroyed about 15 of 20 drones directed at the capital, they said. Private homes were also damaged in the wider Kyiv region, its governor said.

“Air defence systems are at work in the region,” Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram. “Stay in shelters and safe places until the alarm is over. Take care of yourself and loved ones.”

Several loud blasts were heard, but it was not immediately clear whether they were air defence systems destroying the drones or drones hitting their targets.

Emergency power cuts were re-introduced in Kyiv after the attacks, electricity provider YASNO said.

Zelenskiy on Sunday again called for Western nations to beef up Ukraine’s air defences after weeks of Russian air strikes targeted the country’s energy network as a freezing winter settles in.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

Zelenskiy told Ukrainians the armed forces were holding firm in the town of Bakhmut – scene of the fiercest fighting in the country for many weeks as Russia attempts to advance in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

“The battlefield in Bakhmut is critical,” he said. “We control the town even though the occupiers are doing everything so that no undamaged wall will remain standing.”

Denis Pushilin, Russian-installed administrator of the portion of the Donetsk region controlled by Moscow, said that Ukrainian forces shelled a hospital in the Donetsk city, killing one person and injuring several others.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.

Putin casts what he calls Russia’s “special military operation” as a watershed moment when Moscow finally stood up to a Western bloc, led by the United States, seeking to capitalize on the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by destroying Russia.

Kyiv and the West say Putin has no justification for what they have decried as an imperial-style war of occupation that has resulted in Russia now controlling around a fifth of Ukraine.

Henry Kissinger, an architect of the Cold War policy of detente towards the Soviet Union as secretary of state in the 1970s, said the time was approaching for a negotiated peace.

“The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation,” Kissinger wrote in The Spectator magazine.

Ukraine rejected the proposal, saying it amounted to appeasing the aggressor by sacrificing parts of Ukraine.

“All supporters of simple solutions should remember the obvious: any agreement with the devil – a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territories – will be a victory for Putin and a recipe for success for autocrats around the world,” Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said on Telegram.

Kremlin officials were not available for comment late on Sunday.

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Scientists working on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have successfully trialled a new method for freezing and storing coral larvae they say could eventually help rewild reefs threatened by climate change.

Scientists are scrambling to protect coral reefs as rising ocean temperatures destabilise delicate ecosystems. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered four bleaching events in the last seven years including the first ever bleach during a La Nina phenomenon, which typically brings cooler temperatures.

Cryogenically frozen coral can be stored and later reintroduced to the wild but the current process requires sophisticated equipment including lasers. Scientists say a new lightweight “cryomesh” can be manufactured cheaply and better preserves coral.

In a December lab trial, the world’s first with Great Barrier Reef coral, scientists used the cryomesh to freeze coral larvae at the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS). The coral had been collected from the reef for the trial, which coincided with the brief annual spawning window.

“If we can secure the biodiversity of coral … then we’ll have tools for the future to really help restore the reefs and this technology for coral reefs in the future is a real game-changer,” Mary Hagedorn, Senior Research Scientist at Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute told Reuters from the AIMS lab.

The cryomesh was previously trialled on smaller and larger varities of Hawaiian corals. A trial on the larger variety failed.

Trials are continuing with larger varieties of Great Barrier Reef coral.

The trials involved scientists from AIMS, the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, the Great Barrier Reef foundation and the Taronga Conservation Society Australia as part of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program.

The mesh technology, which will help store coral larvae at -196C (-320.8°F), was devised by a team from the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering, including Dr Zongqi Guo, a postdoctoral associate, and Professor John C. Bischov. It was first tested on corals by PHD student Nikolas Zuchowicz.

“This new technology that we’ve got will allow us to do that at a scale that can actually help to support some of the aquaculture and restoration interventions,” said Jonathan Daly of the Taronga Conservation Society Australia.

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China is planning to ramp up flight volumes next year.

Luo Yunfei/China News Service via Getty Images

• China plans to restore passenger flight volumes to 88% of the 2019 daily average by end-January, per Caixin financial.
• The country is shifting away from its COVID-zero stance and is rolling back restrictions. 
• But the number of cases and deaths have reportedly been surging — even though China reported 1,918 new local cases and two deaths on Sunday.

China plans to restore passenger flight volumes to nearly 90% of the 2019 pre-pandemic level by the end of January, as the country reopens its economy after three years of lockdowns, news outlet Caixin financial reported Friday.

The planned bump in flight numbers will coincide with the peak of the Chinese New Year season, when travel typically spikes as people return to their hometowns for the official week-long holidays beginning January 21, 2023.

Last week, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, or CAAC, released a three-stage plan to gradually increase flight numbers, following a shift in the country’s COVID-zero stance earlier in December.

Under the plan, daily passenger flights are expected to rise to 70% of the 2019 daily average by January 6, 2023, according to Caixin. This will rise to about 88% of the 2019 levels between January 7 to January 31.

The final phase of the plan through March 25 will see the sector in a stable recovery mode, Caixin reported, citing the CAAC.

The CAAC did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

China’s soft reopening is clashing with surging COVID-19 cases

The CAAC’s plan to ramp up flight volumes comes just as COVID-19 cases surge in China after the restrictions were loosened. The country reported 1,918 new local COVID-19 cases on Sunday, down from 2,028 on Saturday, according to China’s National Health Commission. There were two deaths on Sunday and none on Saturday, according to the authority.

Sunday’s reported cases was down sharply from 8,838 cases a week ago — but this number included asymptomatic cases, which China has since stopped counting. Anecdotal accounts also suggest much larger infection and fatality numbers than what is officially reported.

Crematoriums and funeral homes in Beijing and Shanghai are processing a rising number of people who have died from COVID-19, the Associated Press, Reuters, and Financial Times reported over the weekend. 

An employee at the state-owned Beijing Dongjiao Funeral Home told the FT that it cremated 150 bodies last Wednesday, and that about 30 or 40 of them had COVID-19. “We’re cremating them the same day they are brought in,” the employee added to FT. China officially reported zero deaths last Wednesday.

“We’re burning from morning until 10pm,” an unnamed employee at the Tongzhou funeral home in Beijing told the FT. “The furnaces can’t take it.”

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Twitter CEO Elon Musk launched a poll on the social media platform on Sunday asking users whether he should step down as head of the company, adding that he would abide by the poll results.

As of 0557 GMT, almost 12 million users had participated in the poll, with 56.3% voting in favor of him stepping down and about five hours remaining before the poll closed on Monday.

The billionaire did not give details on when he would step down if the poll results said he should. Replying to one Twitter user’s comment on a possible change in CEO, Musk said “There is no successor”.

Musk had told a Delaware court last month that he would reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the company.

The poll comes after Twitter’s Sunday policy update, which prohibited accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social media firms and content that contains links or usernames for rival platforms.

Minutes before that poll, Musk apologized and tweeted “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes.”

A few hours later, an official Twitter account started a separate poll asking users if the platform should have a policy preventing accounts that advertise other social media platforms on Twitter.

The policy update would impact content from social media platforms like Meta Platforms’ (META.O) Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post while allowing cross-content posting, Twitter support said in a tweet.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently invested in social media platform Nostr, replied to the Twitter support post with one word: “Why?”. In a reply to another user posting about the Nostr promotion ban, Dorsey said, “doesn’t make sense”.

Short video-platform TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd, was not included in the list.

Last week, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group formed in 2016 to advise the social media platform on site decisions.

The policy change follows other chaotic actions at Twitter since Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O), bought the social network. He fired top management and laid off about half of its workforce, while seesawing on how much to charge for subscription service Twitter Blue.

Musk on Saturday reinstated the Twitter accounts of several journalists that were suspended for a day over a controversy on publishing public data about the billionaire’s plane.

His decision to lift that suspension followed the results of a Twitter poll he had issued, in which the majority of respondents voted for the journalists’ accounts to be restored immediately.

The initial suspension of those accounts was heavily criticized by government officials, advocacy groups and several journalism organizations, with some saying Twitter was jeopardizing press freedom.

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