BEIJING (AP) — China on Wednesday expressed “serious concerns and dissatisfaction” with the United States over reports of an internal State Department request to allow the departure of diplomats and their families from China amid tightening anti-pandemic measures. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China’s anti-virus regulations were in line with international treaties governing the treatment of diplomatic personnel and that the nation was “undoubtedly the safest country in the world at the moment.”

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LONDON (ABC NEWS) - The U.S. Navy has begun to make plans to recover the F-35C fighter jet that crashed Monday after striking the deck of an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. The jet is the most advanced stealth fighter jet in the world. “The U.S. Navy is making recovery operations arrangements for the F-35C aircraft involved in the mishap aboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) in the South China Sea Jan. 24.,” said Brenda Way, a spokesperson for the Navy’s Pacific Fleet. An earlier Navy statement had said that as the F-35 was attempting to land on the aircraft carrier Monday, “It impacted the flight deck and subsequently fell to the water during routine flight operations.” The crash is the second involving an F-35 and an aircraft carrier in just over two months.

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SEVASTOPOL (TASS) - Over 20 combat ships and vessels of the Russian Black Sea Fleet departed from their naval bases in Sevastopol and Novorossiysk for drills in the Black Sea waters, the Fleet’s press office reported on Wednesday. “The drills of combined-arms task forces, naval strike and amphibious assault groups in the Black Sea involve frigates, guard ships, missile corvettes and missile boats, amphibious assault ships, small anti-submarine warfare ships and also minesweepers,” the press office said in a statement.

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LIMA (AFP) - Peru’s Prime Minister Mirtha Vásquez has said on that the government was looking at sanctioning a major local refinery owned by Spanish energy firm Repsol after an oil spill last week, and did not rule out suspending operations at the facility. Vásquez said some political parties were calling for the government to cancel the Pampilla refinery’s contract or even expropriates it over the disaster, but said options were still being looked at. “We are evaluating the legal aspects, we still cannot say whether a license is going to be suspended or not,” she told local radio station RPP.

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MIAMI (AP) — Search crews have continued to scan the ocean off Florida for any sign of 39 people missing from a capsized boat, the Coast Guard said Wednesday. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy crews on at least four ships and five aircraft covered a vast area about the size of Rhode Island on Tuesday after a solitary survivor was rescued from the overturned hull.