Billionaire Elon Musk said on Tuesday he will step down as chief executive of Twitter Inc once he finds a replacement, but will still run some key divisions of the social media platform.

Cases were exploding in China well before the government's decision to abandon its strict "zero-COVID" policy, the director said, quashing suggestions that the sudden reversal caused a spike.

A week after China began dismantling its tough 'zero-COVID' controls, the World Health Organization warned of "very tough" times ahead and state media reported some seriously ill patients at hospitals in Beijing, raising fears of a wave of infections.

China should change its official name for COVID-19 to reflect the virus' mutation, and patients with light symptoms should be allowed to quarantine at home, a leading authority on traditional Chinese medicine was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he was working "at the absolute most amount...from morning til night, seven days a week" when asked about his recent acquisition of Twitter and his leadership of automaker Tesla Inc .

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday touted the need for greater cooperation between China and Germany amid "times of change and turmoil" in a meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the first G7 leader to visit China since the pandemic began.

Wall Street is losing patience over Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg's enormous and experimental bets on his metaverse project that helped drive up the company's overall costs by a fifth in the third quarter.

China's financial hub Shanghai said on Sunday it would reopen all schools including kindergartens, primary and middle schools on Sept. 1 after months of COVID-19 closures.

Alibaba Group is cutting over a third of staff in its in-house deals team, four people with knowledge of the matter said, after Beijing's sweeping regulatory crackdown sharply slowed the Chinese e-commerce behemoth's dealmaking pace.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday signed agreements in Tonga for police equipment and fisheries cooperation on a tour through the Pacific islands region where Beijing's ambitions for wider security ties has caused concern among U.S. allies.