Air China announced on the 6th that the CA988 flight from Los Angeles to Beijing will be fused for nearly three months from January 9 to March 6, and all eight flights will be cancelled. (File picture from World Journal)

Overseas Chinese now want to go back to China and it is likely that the Winter Olympics will be over! Air China announced on the 6th that the CA988 flight from Los Angeles to Beijing will be cut off for nearly three months from January 9 to February 27, and all eight flights will be cancelled. Some Chinese boarded a plane from Florida to Los Angeles on the 6th, preparing to fly from Los Angeles to Beijing. Only when they landed did they know that flight CA988 had been cancelled.

Air China flight CA988 suddenly announced on the 6th that it would cut off flights on January 9, 16, 23, and 30, and February 6, 18, 20, and 27. This means that there will be no planes flying from Los Angeles to Beijing from January to February. The reason is that there are too many people diagnosed on the plane, which triggers the cancellation. According to China's cancellation standards, five to nine people are diagnosed with partial cancellation, and ten to 29 people are full cancellation. The operation will be suspended for four weeks from the fourth week after entry.

The flight cancellation came out as a shock. In fact, a few days ago, the number of people diagnosed on Air China flight CA988 had triggered a full cancellation, but no one expected the full cancellation occurred so quickly, and the predication was it would take two months to completely cancel the flight. Some air ticketing operators were too busy on the 6th and kept making phone calls to help customers change their tickets. To make matters worse, someone just got on the plane from Florida to Los Angeles and received the news of the cancellation of the ticket on January 9th. The news of Air China's flight cancellation was given too late, and the ticket money was spent in vain.

The airline ticket operator, Mr. Yan, pays close attention to the number of confirmed cases in the Chinese destination cities of the flight, and he probably predicted which flight will be cancelled, and he corrected it before the news came out. He said that there are fewer and fewer flights from Los Angeles to China. Although Air China's flights from Los Angeles to Shenzhen are not officially cancelled, there are basically no flights before March. China Southern Airlines' flights from Los Angeles to Guangzhou are also expected to be cancelled for four weeks every Sunday.

Some netizens also joked that when the first resumed flight of Air China CA988 could take off, the Winter Olympics had just ended, which perfectly spanned the Spring Festival and the Winter Olympics. The implication is, don't come back for the New Year and don't come back to watch the Winter Olympics.

According to people familiar with the matter, the recent series of new policies on flight cancellation and dual detection by the Chinese government are mainly due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. After this wave of epidemics, there should be more flights after the Winter Olympics.

(Source: Compiled from World Journal)

Chinese skating female athlete Liu Meixian missed the Beijing Winter Olympics because of the new crown. The picture shows her excellent rotation in the short song project. (Associated Press)

The U.S. Figure Skating announced on the 7th that Chinese athlete Liu Meixian (Alysa Liu) has been diagnosed with new crown pneumonia and will withdraw from the National Skating Championships, but still has a chance to compete in the Beijing Olympics.

Liu Meixian, who is only 16 years old, is known as one of the most promising players in the United States. She has won the 2019 and 2020 national championships; before the diagnosis, Liu Meixian won the third place in the short program on the 6th. She immediately went to Nashville, Tennessee to participate in the Free Skate championship.

Liu Meixian was also the second major player to be forced to withdraw from the national competition. Another pair of duo Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier were forced to withdraw from the competition on the evening of the 5th, because Frazier did.

This week, all athletes must present a negative test certificate for new crown pneumonia on arrival before they can enter the competition. However, the Skating Association also required a second quick screening during the competition, and Liu Meixian's quick screening result on the 7th showed positive.

Liu Meixian wrote on her personal social platform Instagram: "I have completed the vaccination, and I wear an N95 mask wherever I go; before I left Nashville, my two screening results were negative. Unfortunately, it happened. I am very grateful to the organizer for careful prevention of the epidemic, so that every player can compete in a safe environment. I am in a good psychological condition now, and I wish all the girls who participated in the competition all the best! Thanks for your support."

Even if the diagnosis is confirmed, Liu Meixian's chance of entering the Olympic team is still very high; according to the rules of the Skating Association, athletes who do not perform well in the national competitions can still petition the US Figure Skating's International Committee and state that they are healthy Situation; Knierim and Fraser are likely to adopt the same approach, and the chances of selection are very high.

The American Figure Skating Association will announce the list of three women participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics on the afternoon of the 8th.

(Source:  Compiled from World Journal)

The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has surpassed 300 million today. Getty Images

The number of global cases of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) has surpassed 300 million today, according to official figures from Agency France-Presse. (Photo from World Journal)

Since the outbreak of the epidemic was reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) China branch in late December 2019, the cumulative number of cases worldwide has reached 342,439.

Omicron, a new variant of COVID-19 that was first discovered in Botswana and South Africa, has been spreading rapidly since the end of last year.

Omicron brings 4th wave of coronavirus, with many countries reporting new highs of infections.

In the past week, there were 13.5 million new cases of infection worldwide, a 64% increase from the previous week, with an average of 1,938,395 new cases per day.

Thirty-four countries in the world recorded new infections in a single week, of which eight were in Europe, seven in Africa, and six in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The U.S., Canada, and Australia also all have record highs

(Source: Compiled from online information)

Zillow's real estate speculation plan failed, and many buyers took advantage of the price cut. (World Journal Reporter Li Xue/Photography)

In recent months, Zillow, an online real estate company, has failed to use an artificial intelligence system to "house flipping", selling thousands of houses at low prices in many parts of the United States, including hundreds of houses in Los Angeles and Orange County. In the real estate market where buyer competition is so fierce today, there are lucky Chinese buyers who have "picked up" and bought Zillow's low-priced homes.

Ms. Mai decided to buy a house in Irvine at the end of 2021 due to factors such as career development and children's schooling. However, in the Irvine housing market, competition is fierce, and the experience of house inspections is horrible. Ms. Mai said that her budget had to go from $850,000 to $900,000, and then to $950,000, but found that it was impossible to buy suitable independent houses in Irvine, and all houses had to be purchased at a higher price. For example, for a two-bedroom house listed for $870,000, there were 33 offers in less than a week, and the last $960,000 was sold in cash. Ms. Mai didn't even have the opportunity to bid.

Ms. Mai said: "The more I look at the house, the more frustrated I am." At that time, after understanding Ms. Mai's budget, an agent kindly "persuaded her to leave" and said that she would wait for a while.

Things turned around on the Sunday afternoon when Ms. Mai was euphemistically persuaded by the broker. That day, while she was walking in the nearby park, accidentally she saw a nearby independent house on the Internet with a price tag of $928,000. She came to this house with the attitude of giving it a try.

Ms. Mai came to the door and found that there was a sign "Zillow owned property" at the door. Only then did she know that it was the house Zillow was selling. Fortunately, a man in a suit happened to open the door at this time. After inquiring, it turned out that this man was the real estate agent. After understanding Ms. Mai’s intentions, the agent agreed to show Ms. Mai the house. After looking at it, Ms. Mai was very satisfied and asked whether it was possible to buy the house at the asking price of $950,000. She did not expect that the broker responded very positively, saying that it should be okay.

According to Spectrum News, Zillow used artificial intelligence systems to "turn over houses" and purchased more than 13,000 houses in the past two quarters and sold about 3,000 houses in recent months, including more than 120 in Los Angeles County and Orange County. According to the "California Regional Multiple Listing Service", a real estate agent query system, as of November 30, 2021, there are still 135 Zillow houses for sale in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties.

Ms. Mai said that generally houses are listed for sale on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but Zillow’s houses are generally sold on Sundays. And the real estate agent is not very active in showing buyers, as long as the price is about the same, they will sell. She said that later she saw another Zillow house in Irvine, and the final transaction price was sold at the same price as the original price without any increase.

It is reported that online real estate companies have relatively low commissions to brokers, causing brokers to not be interested in introducing buyers, making Zillow often unable to sell when it is refurbished and listed for sale.

After buying a house for renovation, put it on the market and sell it, which is called "renovation." Some websites estimate that Zillow has lost $300 million in this wave of buying high and selling low. Zillow announced not long ago that it would withdraw from the home refurbishment business. The company stated that its algorithm and model for fast buying and selling of houses failed to work as planned. Due to the failure of real estate speculation, nearly half of the houses bought earlier were sold at a price cut.

(Source: Compiled from on line information)

Wu Chengyuan, a lecturer in the International Course of the National Real Estate Association, analyzed that people often rely on Zillow's house appraisal when looking at a house, but Zillow's appraisal is often inaccurate and requires real estate agents to re-evaluate. He believes that during the epidemic, the cost of decoration materials and labor increased, causing Zillow's capital chain to break, which may have led to this wave of low-priced housing sales operations. But Zillow is not a big player in the real estate market after all, and this batch of sold houses will not change the shortage of house inventory and the booming real estate market.