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The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress has met and approved a draft decision on postponing the national legislature's annual session.
This year's session was originally scheduled to open in Beijing on March 5.
An earlier statement said it was necessary to postpone the annual legislative session to allow efforts to be concentrated on containing the novel coronavirus epidemic.
The top legislature will decide on when to hold the annual meeting at another time.
The top legislature also approved a draft decision on banning the wildlife trade.
The draft aims to completely ban the eating of wild animals and crackdown on illegal wildlife trade.
The decision takes effect today.
A team of experts from China and the World Health Organization says China's public health response to the novel coronavirus outbreak has yielded notable results in blocking the virus' human-to-human transmission.
WHO assistant director-general Bruce Aylward made the remarks after the team conducted a nine-day field study trip in China.
"Our assessment is that this approach, what we call an 'all of government', an 'all of society' approach, with very old-fashioned tools in some ways, has probably definitely averted and probably prevented at least tens of thousands but probably hundreds of thousands of cases of COVID-19 here in China, which is an extraordinary achievement and so important."
The team also speaks highly of China's role in providing the international community with experience in prevention and control work.
It calls on all countries to strengthen exchanges to jointly deal with the challenges brought by the epidemic.
Chinese tech firm Huawei has unveiled the latest version of its foldable smartphone — the Mate Xs — in Spain.
Huawei unveiled the new device in a video prepared for the now-cancelled Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The Congress has been called off amid fears of spreading the Coronavirus.
The Mate Xs is an updated version of Huawei's Mate X which was unveiled last year. It is the same size as its predecessor but has a higher quality display screen and Huawei's new Kirin 990 processor with 5G connectivity.
The Chinese tech giant also launched its Sound X speaker developed in partnership with a French company.
German official says a man intentionally drove a car into a crowd at a Carnival parade in a small town in central Germany, injuring around 30 people including children.
Peter Beuth is the Interior Minister for the state of Hesse.
"It is a sad day for Volkmarsen, the region and the whole of Hesse. We are shocked because of this terrible act that happened here in Volkmarsen this afternoon during a Carnival parade. We have about 30 victims, partly badly injured and among those children."
The driver is a 29-year-old German citizen who lived locally. He was arrested at the scene.
The victims were taken to surrounding hospitals, some with life-threatening injuries.
A court in London will begin a legal hearing to decide whether the founder of WikiLeaks should be extradited to the United States.
Jennifer Robinson is the lawyer for Julian Assange.
"We heard nothing but generalised assertions of harm with no evidence. In response, our defence case is very strong. This is an unprecedented use of the Espionage Act against a publisher. These publications were of widespread and important public interest and significance around the world and WikiLeaks, in fact, contrary to the indictment, implemented harm-minimisation techniques which respected sources. This was responsible journalism."
Facing up to 18 charges of attempted hacking and breaches of the Espionage Act, the 48-year-old Australian could face as many as 175 years in prison if found guilty on all charges in the United States.
U.N. official Mark Cutts says the U.N. is in talks with Turkey to double cross-border aid flows into northwest Syria and allow more evacuations of those in need of urgent medical help.
"We have been talking with the Turkish authorities about ways of increasing the capacity of aid crossing at the border from Turkey into northwest Syria."
The U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator says fighting is now coming "dangerously close to the area where more than a million are living in tents and makeshift shelters."
He says currently about 50 trucks are going across two authorized border crossings and they are seeking to increase it to 100.
About 3 million people are trapped in northwest Syria between the Syrian army and the Turkish border which is closed to new refugees.
