ROLLER COASTER The CEO of Ctrip, China’s leading travel agency, has predicted that China will resume international travel within around half a year. Speaking at a forum on Thursday, December 9, Liang Jianzhang added that some other Asian countries would likely do the same within three months, as reported by Global Times . Due to COVID-19, China’s borders have remained closed to most foreign nationals since March 2020. Those who enter the country from abroad must undergo centralized quarantine of up to 21 days, as well as a series of nucleic acid tests. For now, China has made clear that it will continue its ‘zero-COVID’ strategy. Whether or not this happens within the next half a year as the Ctrip CEO has predicted remains to be seen.
MILE HIGH
Engineer Claims He’s Found Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 British aeronautical engineer Richard Godfrey told the BBC that he may have found the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The flight, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew, is one of the world’s biggest aviation mysteries after it disappeared from radar signals during a flight in March 2014. The tragedy was of high interest in China as 122 Chinese nationals were on board. Using different data sets, Godfrey calculated that the Boeing 777 crashed into the Indian Ocean 2,000 km west of Perth, Australia. Thanks to Godfrey’s research, a proposal for a new search within a 40 nautical miles radius has been submitted. This search is far smaller than any previous attempt to find the aircraft, which was supposed to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Some experts claim that debris from the flight could be as far as 4,000 meters under water.
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