Briefly

CHINA

Special envoy to attend Erdogan's inauguration

Ding Zhongli, President Xi Jinping's special envoy and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, will attend Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's inauguration ceremony in Ankara on Saturday, according to the Foreign Ministry. China and Turkiye established diplomatic relations in 1971 and a strategic cooperative relationship in 2010. Bilateral trade exceeded $38.5 billion last year, with a 12.6 percent increase year-on-year.

MIDDLE EAST

Toddler critically wounded in West Bank

A 3-year-old Palestinian boy was in critical condition at an Israeli hospital on Friday morning after being shot by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank. The army opened an investigation into what it said was an unintentional shooting. In a statement, the military said that gunmen opened fire late on Thursday toward the West Bank settlement of Neve Tzuf. It said soldiers at a guard post returned fire. The shooting was the latest bloodshed in a more than yearlong surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. That fighting has picked up since Israel's new government took office in December.

UNITED NATIONS

WMO set to have first woman leader

The World Meteorological Organization voted on Thursday for Argentina's Celeste Saulo to become its first woman leader and steer the WMO's critical global role in tracking climate change. Saulo, a WMO vice-president who has headed Argentina's weather service since 2014, won a landslide vote at the UN climate and weather agency's congress in Geneva. The WMO's role in climate change has become increasingly prominent and Saulo, 59, will likely become a well-known advocate on this pressing world issue. She will take over from the outgoing Secretary-General Petteri Taalas on Jan 1.

JAPAN

ChatGPT's maker warned on user data

Japan's privacy watchdog said on Friday it had warned OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed startup behind the ChatGPT chatbot, not to collect sensitive data without people's permission. OpenAI should minimize the sensitive data it collects for machine learning, the Personal Information Protection Commission said in a statement, adding it may take further action if it has more concerns. Japan is the third-largest source of traffic to OpenAI's website, according to analytics firm Similarweb.

China Daily - Agencies