The United Kingdom officially joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), one of the world's largest free trade deals, on Sunday, becoming the 12th member state of the bloc.
Upon its accession to the CPTPP, Britain became the first European nation to join the major trans-Pacific trading bloc, in what has been hailed as the country's biggest trade deal accession since Brexit.
This is also the first time a new country has joined the bloc since the agreement came into effect in 2018.
The CPTPP trade deal involves 11 countries, namely Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, covers a market of about 500 million people, and generates more than 13 percent of the world's income.
The United Kingdom formally applied to join the CPTPP on Feb. 1 2021, and on the last day of March 2023, the country announced that it had completed the relevant negotiations and reached an agreement to join the bloc.
On July 16 last year, the CPTPP Ministerial Meeting formally approved the UK's accession.
UK officially joins CPTPP
UK officially joins CPTPP
UK officially joins CPTPP
The three astronauts aboard China's Shenzhou-23 spaceship have entered the country's Tiangong space station and met with their astronaut colleagues early Monday morning, as they now begin an in-orbit crew handover.
Mission commander Zhu Yangzhu and fellow astronauts Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying successfully entered the station's core module Tianhe after the spaceship made a fast automated rendezvous and docked with the Tianhe module at 02:45 (Beijing Time) on Monday.
The three Shenzhou-21 crew members opened the hatch at 05:13 (Beijing Time) and greeted the new arrivals, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
The six astronauts then took group pictures for the eighth in-orbit get-together in China's aerospace history.
Notably, one of the Shenzhou-23 crew members is set to undertake a year-long stay aboard the space station, double the usual duration of previous Shenzhou missions.
The Shenzhou-23 spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 23:08 (Beijing Time) on Sunday.
Shenzhou-23 marks the 40th flight of China's manned spaceflight program and the seventh manned flight mission since the Tiangong space station entered its application and development phase in late 2022.
Shenzhou-23 astronauts enter Tiangong space station, meet Shenzhou-21 crew
