U.S. airstrikes on southern Iran late Thursday night and early Friday killed eight people and wounded 19, according to the deputy governor of Hormozgan Province, whose capital Bandar Abbas was the main target of the strikes.
Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported Thursday that U.S. strikes hit residential areas, communications towers, and bridges in many locations, including Bandar Abbas, Sirik Port, and Qeshm Island.
Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani strongly condemned the U.S. attacks on non-military infrastructure in a letter sent to UN on Thursday.
He said the military actions were a serious breach of international humanitarian law and constituted war crimes, Iranian media reported on Friday.
Separately, Hossein Kermanpour, head of the Public Relations and Information Center at Iran's Ministry of Health, said on Friday that at least 38 people had been killed and more than 400 injured across the country since the fighting with the United States resumed on June 22, with 47 still hospitalized.
U.S. strikes on southern Iran kill eight, damage infrastructure: local official
China's postal sector handled a total of 108.89 billion parcels in the first half of the year, up 4.2 percent year on year, according to data released by the State Post Bureau on Friday.
Express delivery accounted for the lion's share, with a volume reaching 100.38 billion, up 5 percent year on year.
As demand for their services booms, delivery companies have continued to deepen their collaborative development with advanced manufacturing firms, exploring innovative solutions.
Jiajiang County in Leshan City, southwest China's Sichuan Province, is China's primary production area for calligraphy and painting paper, accounting for more than 60 percent of the nation's output. Distributing these products across the country requires significant logistical resources.
Express delivery providers have integrated warehousing centers into Jiajiang's paper production facilities, equipping them with smart shelving and barcode-scanning outbound systems to achieve an ultra-fast response from order placement to goods dispatch. The collaboration has streamlined the entire supply chain from production, warehousing, e-commerce, and packaging to shipping and after-sales service.
It has also effectively resolved the efficiency and cost bottlenecks previously caused by the fragmented operations of manufacturing enterprises.
"In the past, we had to repeatedly travel back and forth between merchants and clients to pick up and deliver goods, which increased transportation costs and damage rates. Now, we provide one-on-one service directly to the express sorting center, completing the day's workload on the spot," said Huang Chao, general manager of ZTO Express Co., Ltd in Jiajiang County.
Since the express service was integrated into the factories, companies in the sector have seen their average daily shipment volume double from around 4,000 pieces to around 8,000, significantly reducing transportation costs and damage rates.
This year, the county plans to replicate this model in specialty industries such as ceramics, tea, and poultry and eggs, further unleashing the synergistic potential of industrial collaboration.
Wang Yuehan, director of the Industrial Economics Department at the Development Research Center of the State Post Bureau, said industry upgrading has helped bolster the efficiency and development the sector.
"In the first half of the year, industrial integration continued to deepen. The industry optimized and upgraded its delivery service offerings to precisely meet the differentiated needs of various consumer groups, effectively driving steady growth in express delivery volumes and providing a positive boost to the development of the real economy. In the second half of the year, as consumer potential is released and service areas are expanded, the industry's momentum is expected to accelerate, and its overall development will continue to maintain a positive trend of steady progress and improving performance," she said.
China's postal delivery volume up 4.2 pct in H1
