Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump pledged to boost win-win cooperation in a variety of areas and develop a constructive China-US relationship during a phone conversation on Friday, Beijing time. Xi said he appreciated that the US government was willing to adhere to the One China policy, adding that the policy was the political basis of the relation between the two nations. This was the first time the two leaders spoke after Trump assumed office on January 20. 

US intelligence has gathered information suggesting Russia is considering handing over Edward Snowden to the US as a “gift”, according to NBC News. Citing a senior US official who has analyzed the intelligence reports, NBC News reported that the handover was a move to “curry favor” with President Donald Trump. "Finally: irrefutable evidence that I never cooperated with Russian intel,” Snowden responded on Twitter. Trump has called Snowden a “traitor” for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency. He has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and has been living in an undisclosed location in Moscow since 2013. 

The White House said the US-Japan alliance was the “cornerstone of peace, prosperity, and freedom in the Asia-Pacific region,” in a joint statement from US President Donald Trump and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The two leaders discussed trade, security and other bilateral issues. Trump was also scheduled to host Abe at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida later. 

A man has been detained for allegedly using a Molotov cocktail to set a metro train on fire in Hong Kong, injuring at least 17 people. Videos shared across social media platforms showed flames and smoke in the train compartment and commotion in the station as a man struggled to douse the fire from his clothes. Police were investigating the motives of the suspect, believed to be about 60, an officer told media outside the station. 

More than 1.5 million people have fled South Sudan since a conflict broke out in the African nation in December 2013, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said Friday. The UN agency said it was “extremely alarmed at the ongoing pace of displacement,” adding that an additional 2.1 million people have been internally displaced. Many of them, who are caught in the crossfire between President Salva Kiir and his rival Riek Machar, are continuing to cross the borders to neighboring countries. UNHCR has also reported that many children are showing alarming levels of malnutrition.  

China plans to build 800,000 charging points, including 100,000 public ones, for electric vehicles this year to meet increasing demand, the National Energy Administration (NEA) has announced. A total of 100,000 public charging points were installed nationwide in 2016, bringing the number of public charging points in China to 150,000, according to the NEA. A total of 14,000 kilometers of highway have also been equipped with inter-city fast-charging stations, with an average spacing of 48.6 kilometers. Electric vehicles consumed more than 1.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in China last year, saving about 400,000 tonnes of fuel, according to the NEA.

China will overtake the US to become the world's largest aviation market by 2024, according to a report from the International Air Transport Association.  The Montreal-based trade association also stated that China is set to almost double its number of air trips, with almost 930 million trips expected by 2025. In comparison, the current number one in the aviation market, the US, will have a little over 900 million air journeys by end 2025.

China reported better-than-expected trade data for January as demand picked up both at home and abroad, which was seen as an encouraging start to 2017 for the world's second largest economy. China's exports in yuan-denominated terms rose 15.9 percent year-on-year in January, while imports increased 25.2 percent, customs data showed on Friday. Foreign trade volume reached 2.18 trillion yuan (about 316.8 billion US dollars) in January, up 19.6 percent year on year. That left the country with an initial trade surplus of 51.35 billion US dollars for the month, the General Administration of Customs said.