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Day: October 23, 2023
The sixth China International Import Expo (CIIE), scheduled for Nov. 5-10 in Shanghai, will be a grand gathering of global trade and cooperation, with participants from 154 countries, regions and international organizations, said Vice Minister of Commerce Sheng Qiuping on Monday.
At a press conference in Beijing, Sheng said that the CIIE has become a major platform for promoting high-quality development and high-level opening up in China, as well as a public good for the whole world.
The exhibition area of the expo will be around 367,000 square meters, and 289 Global Fortune 500 companies and industry-leading enterprises are poised to attend the expo, both exceeding the previous levels, Sheng said.
A total of 69 countries and three international organizations have confirmed their participation in the country exhibitions, of which 11 countries will make their debuts and 34 will participate in offline exhibitions for the first time.
Sheng said that over 1,500 enterprises from Belt and Road partner countries are gearing up to participate in the sixth CIIE, with their exhibition area totaling nearly 80,000 square meters, an increase of 30 percent from last year’s event.
He added that an array of new products in areas of high-end equipment manufacturing, environmental protection and biotechnology will be initiated at the year’s CIIE, while exotic agricultural products such as yellow dragon fruit from Ecuador and pineapples from Benin will enter the Chinese market via the expo.
The previous five expos have seen about 350 billion U.S. dollars’ worth of tentative deals, contributing to stabilizing foreign trade and investment, Sheng said, adding that 322 CIIE exhibitors will be organized to make business trips in China in a bid to attract foreign investment.
At this year’s Hongqiao International Economic Forum, an important part of the CIIE, the World Openness Report 2023 and the latest World Openness Index will be released, Sheng said.
He also said that the CIIE will continue to implement strict epidemic prevention and control measures to ensure the safety and health of all participants.
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NPR News: 10-23-2023 11PM EDT
Yocheved Lifshitz, an Israeli grandmother released by Hamas militants on Monday, is a peace activist who together with her husband helped sick Palestinians in Gaza get to hospital for years, her grandson told Reuters.
The Palestinian militants said they released Lifshitz, 85, and a second woman, Nurit Cooper, 79, on health grounds, after taking them and more than 200 others hostage during an Oct. 7 gun rampage in Israel in which the militants killed 1,400 people.
Lifshitz and her 83-year-old husband, Oded, were kidnapped from their home at the Nir Oz kibbutz, close to the border with Gaza in southern Israel, the Israeli prime minister’s office said late on Monday. Oded remained captive, it added.
“They are human rights activists, peace activists for all their life,” grandson Daniel Lifshitz told Reuters in Tel Aviv before the release was confirmed.
“For more than a decade, they took … sick Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, not from the West Bank, from the Gaza Strip every week from the Erez border to the hospitals in Israel to get treatment for their disease, for cancer, for anything,” he added.
Hamas posted a video on its Telegram page appearing to show Lifshitz being handed over to workers with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which said it helped transport them out of Gaza.
In the video, a man carrying a long gun and wearing a bulletproof vest emblazoned with a Hamas flag escorts Lifshitz to a white ICRC van. Before entering the van, she reaches her hand out to the man and tells him “salam,” Arabic for peace.
Reuters could not immediately verify the video.
In a message passed to Reuters by a family friend, Lifshitz’s daughter Sharon in London wrote: “While I cannot put into words the relief that she is now safe, I will remain focused on securing the release of my father and all those — some 200 innocent people — who remain hostages in Gaza.”
The two women were the third and fourth hostages to be freed. On Friday, Hamas released an American woman and her daughter.
At least 5,087 Palestinians have been killed in two weeks of Israeli strikes, including 2,055 children, the Hamas-run health ministry said.