Google has launched a map search service in China for travelers taking trips during the Lunar New Year holiday season, despite a row over cyber attacks and censorship.
“The service is available online now,” a spokeswoman for Google China, Marsha Wang, said yesterday.
The Google Spring Festival Map is based on the company’s regular map service but has “more features” targeting users’ special needs during this month’s holiday, the busiest travel period of the year in China, she said.
The special map provides information including real-time flight status, train schedules and ticket prices, highway conditions and weather updates, a statement posted on googlechinablog.com said.
About 240 million people are expected to crowd China’s trains and planes for the holiday, government estimates showed.
Chinese traditionally return to their home towns and villages for family reunions with this year’s travel period stretching from Sunday to March 10. The Lunar New Year falls on Feb. 14.
Google last month threatened to abandon its Chinese-language search engine and perhaps end all operations in the country, following hack attacks it says targeted the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
It has also said it is no longer willing to bow to Beijing’s army of Internet censors — and will stop filtering search results soon, a move China says would violate its laws.
US and Chinese officials have discussed the issue at length, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton qualifying her latest talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) as “open and candid.”
But the row is one of an ever-increasing list of issues threatening relations between the US and China.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other