Beijing

"Prime Minister Marape will now abort the French leg of this trip due to COVID-19 restrictions, having returned a positive test result upon arrival in Beijing last Thursday evening," the prime minister's office said in statement on its Facebook page.

The office added Marape was due to return to PNG on Sunday but would not disclose any further details about his condition.

According to a statement posted on the website of the PNG's National Control Centre for COVID-19, Marape received his booster vaccination against the coronavirus on Jan. 24th.

The city has seen more than 100 new cases in the fresh outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

For more than seven weeks Beijing had only registered cases from people travelling in from abroad.

New clusters of coronavirus are "always a concern", said Mike Ryan, the WHO's emergencies programme head.

"But what we do like to see is an immediate response to that and comprehensive set of measures," he added.

What do we know about the new cases?

The fresh outbreak has been linked to city's largest wholesale market, Xinfadi.

AIIB is based in Beijing, China, and is a multilateral development bank that aims to support the building of infrastructure in the Asia Pacific region.

The bank has 52 member states while another 18 are prospective members as of March 2017 and was proposed as an initiative by the government of China.

Head of communication and development at AIIB, Laurel Ostfield, said AIIB is yet to fund infrastructure projects in the Pacific region.

Fiji and Samoa are the only members from the Pacific region, Samoa recently joined this month.

A commentary in the state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun vowed North Korea would not give up its nuclear program. It accused China of "dancing to the tune of the US" and providing Washington excuses to deploy more military assets to the Korean Peninsula.

The women, usually retirees, meet at dusk and dawn in public squares, plazas or parks and perform synchronized dance routines to deafeningly-loud music -- often with costumes or props.

Public dancing has exploded in popularity in China as these women -- and a few men -- look for low-cost ways to stay fit and socialize.

"Our main purpose is to get some exercise," said Ma Lijun, 56, a square dancer. Since 2012, she has shown up religiously at 8 p.m. in the square in front of Beijing's Raffles shopping mall.

The call comes after the entire province of Henan banned the practice.

Authorities have been under pressure to stop the heavy pollution blanketing the capital and other parts of China.

The Chinese tradition of setting off fireworks and firecrackers to ring in the new year is considered auspicious and an essential part of celebrations.

The Spring Festival, as it is also known, starts on Saturday and is China's biggest holiday period.

It follows a product recall from the Chinese electronics firm Hangzhou after its web cameras were used in a massive web attack last week.

The attack knocked out sites such as Reddit, Twitter, Paypal and Spotify.

The Chinese government blamed customers for not changing their passwords.

When Beijing's air was forecast to reach hazardous levels for three straight days earlier in December, the government issued a smog red alert. The result: Half the city's cars were off the roads within hours, schools were closed and construction sites shut down. Less than three days later, pollution levels had dropped by 30 percent.

Beijing's Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection warned that severe pollution would cloak the Chinese capital for several days, starting Tuesday morning.

According to the US Embassy in Beijing, the air quality index stood at 250, classed as "very unhealthy" and 10 times higher than World Health Organization recommended levels.

City authorities issued a rare orange alert, the second highest of four danger levels. Schools suspended outdoor activities and polluting factories were required to reduce production.