Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

PHNOM PENH, Feb 23 (NNN-AKP) – Cambodia said, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), is fully confident in China’s capacity to control and contain the spread of COVID-19.

“ASEAN Foreign Ministers expressed full confidence in the government and people of China, to overcome the epidemic and, in return, their Chinese counterpart extended his appreciation to ASEAN Member States for sympathy, support and assistance,” said a Cambodian foreign ministry statement.

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, Feb 23 (NNN-BERNAMA) – Senior officials from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies, concluded the First Senior Officials Meeting (SOM1) here on Saturday, after deliberating on several key topics for the agenda this year.

Hairil Yahri Yaacob, an official from Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry Ministry, who chaired the meeting, said, delegates held robust discussions in key areas of trade, economic inclusivity and sustainability.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s president has put his country on its highest alert for infectious diseases, saying Sunday that officials should take “unprecedented, powerful” steps to fight a viral outbreak.

President Moon Jae-in made the comments at the start of a government meeting as South Korean authorities reported 123 more cases on Sunday, raising the country’s total to 556 with five deaths.

PETALING JAYA, Feb 21 (NNN) — Charges against 12 Malaysians on their alleged links to Sri Lanka’s defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) will be dropped immediately, says Attorney General Tan Sri Tommy Thomas.

In a 11-page statement today, Thomas said there were no realistic prospect of conviction for any of the 12 accused on any of the 34 charges against them.

He said the common factor among the 12 was that all had the pictures of the slain leaders of the former terrorist group in their phones or Facebook accounts.

22 February 2020; AFP: Police in Kazakhstan detained dozens of activists Saturday after two opposition groups announced plans to hold anti-government protests in the oil-rich Central Asian country.

An AFP correspondent saw police detain at least ten activists from the unregistered Democratic Party who were attempting to hold a protest in the largest city Almaty.

Eyewitnesses said that police had detained up to 70 people, who were en route to the site where the group said it would hold a protest.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea on Saturday reported a six-fold jump in viral infections in four days to 346, most of them linked to a church and a hospital in and around the fourth-largest city where schools were closed and worshipers and others told to avoid mass gatherings.

BEIJING, Feb. 21 (APP): There is no other thing that could ease the string of the Chinese nation than the alleviation of the encroachment of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) now.

More than 16,000 patients contracting the COVID-19 have been discharged from hospitals in China up to February 19, with new cured cases increasing for 6 days. The new confirmed cases outside Hubei Province, the epicenter of the epidemic, has been in continued decline for 16 days in straight since February 3, according to an article published by China Economic Net.

BEIJING, Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — China had 889 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Thursday, the National Health Commission said on Friday, up from 394 cases a day earlier.

That brings the total accumulated number of confirmed cases in mainland China so far to 75,465.

The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China reached 2,236 as of the end of Thursday, up by 118 from the previous day.

The central province of Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak, reported 115 new deaths, while in the provincial capital of Wuhan, 99 people died. 

HANOI, Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Police in Vietnam have charged seven people in connection with the deaths of 39 migrants whose bodies were discovered in the back of a truck near London last year.

The victims, who included two 15-year-old boys, were mostly from two provinces in north-central Vietnam, where poor job prospects, encouragement by authorities, smuggling gangs and environmental issues have fuelled migration.

BEIJING, Feb 21 (NNN-BERNAMA) — The number of people, who have been infected with a new coronavirus across mainland China has reached 75,465, with 2,236 patients having died, Sputnik news agency quoted the National Health Commission as saying on Friday.