BRICS News

Online entertainment, especially streaming and gaming, has gained significant popularity among hundreds of millions of Chinese in the past few years [Xinhua]
Addressing the growing web population in China, a number of investor groups announced on Sunday a fund to invest $14.6 billion in internet companies.
A third of the amount has already been raised, main investor Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) announced on Sunday.
The ICBC has itself contributed $1.46.

November’s train derailment in Uttar Pradesh, which killed at least 150 and injured 200, was the deadliest in decades [Xinhua]
The death toll from an East India Railways derailment in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh reached 39 early Sunday, officials said, with at least 50 more injured.
At press time, rescue operations were ongoing.
The Hirakhand Express train was traveling from Jagdalpur to Bhubaneswar in the eastern state of Odisha, when it derailed around 11pm local time.

Xi had previously made it clear to Trump that China seeks multilateral approaches to trade and security issues [Xinhua]
Chinese President Xi Jinping sent President Donald Trump a congratulatory message on the occasion of his inauguration, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday.
This comes following often tense weeks of back and forth rhetoric between Trump allies and prospective cabinet nominees, and Chinese officials regarding the One China policy.

Putin will call and congratulate Trump as a matter of “protocol necessity”, Peskov said [PPIO]
A Kremlin spokesperson said on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon speak by phone with US President Donald Trump.
Dmitry Peskov told local news media that Putin will congratulate Trump on the inauguration and likely discuss a meeting between the two to be held in a few months time.
US media had speculated that Trump would meet with Putin as early as a matter of weeks. But Peskov said that no date had yet been scheduled.

UN Special Envoy De Mistura says he hopes the talks in Astana will create positive momentum leading up to the UN-sponsored talks in Geneva in two weeks [Xinhua]
A flurry of diplomatic activity has preceded the anticipated Syria peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana, which begin on January 23.
A number of diplomats and foreign dignitaries participating in the talks, as well as hundreds of journalists, have descended on the city.
UN Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said he supports the Astana initiative.

In some Chinese cities in recent years, the concentration of airborne particles, called PM 2.5, averaged nine times the safe level defined by the World Health Organisation [Xinhua]
In a bid to reduce persistent air pollution, authorities in northern China’s Tianjin municipality passed a regulation on Friday prohibiting the burning of straw outdoors.
Instead, farmers will be encouraged to use straw shredders if they want to receive agricultural subsidies.
Scofflaws will be fined $291, authorities said.

The African Union condemned Jammeh for refusing to step down; it supported a military intervention if need be [Xinhua]
South Africa has officially recognized Adama Barrow as the new president of Gambia following his swearing in at the Gambian embassy in Dakar, Senegal.
The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting Barrow as the legitimate Gambian president and condemned Jammeh for refusing to step down.

The Turkish Stream project was revived after a rapprochement between Presidents Erdogan and Putin in October [Xinhua]
Russia’s Lower House of Parliament, or State Duma, on Friday approved the ratification of an agreement on a Turkish pipeline between to deliver its natural gas to Turkey and European markets through the Black Sea.

The NBS says that industrial output growth slowed for the year, down to 6 per cent from 6.1 percent in 2015 [Xinhua]
Buoyed by increased bank lending, higher government and consumer spending the Chinese economy grew 6.7 per cent year on year in 2016, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.
While the data falls within the 6.5 to 7 per cent growth range forecast by the government, it is nevertheless less than 2015’s 6.9 per cent and is the slowest growth rate in 26 years.

Temer has authorized the armed forces to assist the governors of northern states to bring prisons under control [Xinhua]
Heavily armed police have managed to secure the Alcazuz State Penitentiary in the city of Natal in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte and end a riot which began there last week.
Twenty-six inmates were killed when rival drug gangs on January 14 began battling each other in Alcazuz in a scene that has been repeated a number of times in Brazil’s prison system for several weeks.