Shenzhen

SHENZHEN - Serbia's top-ranked female tennis player Jelena Jankovic has suffered an early exit at the Shenzhen WTA tournament after losing 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 to Romania's Simona Halep in the first round.

World number four Halep, who won after an hour and 49 minutes of play, will next face Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic.

Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria has defeated Galina Voskoboeva of Kazakhstan in the Shenzhen tournament in China.

Bulgaria's highest-ranking female tennis player has won 6:4, 5:7, 6:3, thus making it into the tournament's second round, local sports media report.

Chinese shoppers spent more than $1 billion in the first five minutes of Singles Day on Nov. 11, e-commerce giant Alibaba said in the world's biggest online shopping promotion.

Investors from the Chinese city of Shenzhen are willing to erect a new "economic city" near Plovdiv in Bulgaria, daily 24 Chasa reports.

China stocks swung wildly early Jan. 8 before staying in positive territory and ending the day up 2 percent, after regulators suspended a newly-minted circuit breaker mechanism in a bid to calm panicky investors.

There is great concern among the investors and analysts who talk about a second financial crisis like the one of 2008, after Chinese stock markets shutting down for a second time within a week.

About 2.5 trillion dollars are estimated to have been lost in 2016 (until yesterday) from global equity markets without counting the current fall.

Chinese markets were suspended Jan. 7 for the second day this week after they fell more than seven percent, leading an Asia-wide sell-off as Beijing weakened the value of the yuan currency by the most since August.
 

Trading on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges was ended early on Jan. 4 after shares fell 7 percent, the first time China's new "circuit breaker" intervened to curb market volatility.

Chinese stock markets tumbled 7 percent in their opening session  of 2016 on Jan. 4 as weak factory activity surveys and falls in the yuan added to concerns about the struggling economy, forcing exchanges to suspend trade for the first time.

Early losses quickly snowballed in the afternoon, with trading suspended around 0530 GMT, about 90 minutes before the regular close. 

A government official in southern China killed himself a week after a landslide from a huge pile of construction waste in his city left scores missing and presumed dead, police said Dec. 28.