The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should show some urgency regarding China’s latest actions in the South China Sea and hold a virtual meeting with member states to discuss this matter.Amid the spread of the COVID-19 virus in Southeast Asia, ASEAN member states are busy battling the virus while China is actively building its presence in the occupied territories.In March, China launched two new research stations on the Chinese-built artificial islands at Fiery Cross Re

“This is not a discrete one-off episode,” Wellcome Trust head Jeremy Farrar has warned. “This is now an endemic human infection.”COVID-19, as Farrar suggests, knows no boundaries, geographic, political, or otherwise. Nor must our efforts to defeat it.

Running parallel to the global battle against the coronavirus pandemic is a tug of war between two competing narratives about how the world ought to be governed. Although addressing the pandemic is more urgent, which narrative prevails will have equally far-reaching consequences.The first narrative is straightforward: a global health crisis has further demonstrated the need for multilateralism and exposed the fallacy of go-it-alone nationalism or isolationism.

A novel coronavirus vaccine has for the first time "largely protected" monkeys from infection during an animal trial, data from a Chinese pharmaceutical giant showed.It is among a slew of vaccines being developed around the world as countries race to stop an outbreak that has infected around 2.7 million people globally and killed more than 190,000.Nasdaq-listed Sinovac Biotech said it injected two different doses of its vaccine into eight rhesus macaque monkeys and exposed them to t

Muslims across the world began marking the holy month of Ramadan under unprecedented coronavirus lockdowns on Friday as the United States (US) added another half a trillion dollars to its already-massive support package to help its pandemic-ravaged economy.The virus has upended life around the planet as nations try to stop the spread of the disease that has so far claimed nearly 190,000 lives, infected close to 2.7 million people and hammered the global economy.Ramadan spirits have been dampe

The COVID-19 pandemic, much like a major war, is a defining moment for the world – one that demands major reforms of international institutions. The World Health Organization (WHO), whose credibility has taken a severe beating of late, is a good place to start.The WHO is the only institution that can provide global health leadership. But, at a time when such leadership is urgently needed, the body has failed miserably.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent the world into perilous, uncharted territory from which no country will emerge unscathed. Over half of the global population is under some form of lockdown. All economies, rich and poor, are falling into recession and can limit the fallout only by working together.China – the pandemic’s first epicentre – offers insight into the need to work together.

With the coronavirus continuing its brutal global rampage, it takes a particular sort of malign genius to put the United States (US) in the political dock as the death toll mounts and economic devastation spreads. Yet, that is what President Donald Trump is doing.But first things first. In every country, medical workers and support staff have been on the front line fighting the pandemic on behalf of the rest of us.

A laboratory in the Chinese city at ground zero of the global coronavirus outbreak has rejected United States (US) theories that it spawned the pandemic, as President Donald Trump warned Beijing of consequences if it was "knowingly responsible".The denial came as world governments were debating how and when to ease lockdowns that have kept more than half of humanity - 4.5 billion people - confined to their homes and crippled the global economy.Many of the world's 260 million Or

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently declared a state of emergency for the coronavirus pandemic and unveiled a massive stimulus package to help the economy overcome the crisis.The rescue package, which at JPY108 trillion (US$992 billion) or about 2.7 times Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is the biggest in Japan’s history.