Thousands of police were deployed in Hong Kong on Friday and the organiser of the territory’s now-banned annual vigil of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown arrested, as the authorities tried to prevent people from gathering for any kind of remembrance of the events of 1989.Hong Kong usually holds a mass vigil to remember those killed when soldiers stormed the square, which was packed with protesters calling for democracy, but police have banned the events for the past two years blaming the co

Envoys from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) arrived in Myanmar Thursday for talks with junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, as the coup-stricken nation enters its fifth month of crippling unrest.Myanmar has been in chaos and its economy paralysed since the February coup, with more than 800 people killed in a brutal military crackdown on dissent, according to a local monitoring group.Erywan Pehin Yusof, Brunei's second minister for foreign affairs, and ASEAN Secretary-General

President Joe Biden outlined his plan Thursday for the first of 80 million coronavirus vaccine doses that the United States (US) will distribute globally, with 75 percent of shots disbursed via the COVAX program.In a fact sheet the White House said that for the doses shared through COVAX, Washington would prioritise countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa as it aims to help stave off fresh surges of infections."We are sharing these doses not to

A National Institutes of Health specialist with a career spanning seven United States (US) presidents, Dr Fauci, 80, became the face of America’s COVID-19 response and has since been the subject of both effusive praise and ferocious criticism.The over 3,000 pages of emails, obtained by the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News and CNN through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, date from January to June, 2020.His conversations offer a glimpse into the early days of the US COVID outbreak and

The COVAX vaccine programme secured another US$2.4 billion from donors on Wednesday, but underlined it was still struggling to get enough doses to help poorer countries fight the COVID-19 pandemic.The scheme is trying to get enough vaccines for 30 percent of the population in 92 of the poorest participating territories – 20 percent in India – with donors covering the cost.But despite raising more than the US$2 billion it was looking for; the programme's leaders said the major challenge w

Vietnam will resume international flights to its two biggest cities, officials said Wednesday, reversing a short-lived ban imposed over fears of a new coronavirus wave.The country's COVID-19 cases have more than doubled in the past month, prompting bars, restaurants and schools to close and a rush to secure vaccines.As the country struggled to contain a virus outbreak in more than half of its territories, the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam on Monday announced a temporary suspen

The chair and secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plan to travel to Myanmar this week even as the 10-nation group remains divided on how to respond to the military coup there, four diplomatic sources have said. Myanmar is a member of ASEAN which has a policy of non-interference in the affairs of members, but it has led the main diplomatic effort to resolve the crisis that has engulfed the country since 1 February when the military staged a

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday approved the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use – the second Chinese jab to receive the WHO's green light.The United Nations (UN) health agency signed off on the Beijing-based firm Sinovac's two-dose vaccine CoronaVac, which is already being deployed in several countries around the world."I'm happy to announce that the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine has been given WHO emergency use listing after being found to be safe, effe

Malaysia scrambled jets to intercept 16 Chinese military aircraft off the country's coast in the South China Sea, a rare incident that the foreign minister angrily denounced Tuesday as an "intrusion".It took place Monday off the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo over the fiercely contested waters, where China and Malaysia have overlapping territorial claims.The Chinese air force transport planes approached Malaysian airspace in "tactical formation" and flew to wi

China reported the world's first human infection of the H10N3 bird flu strain on Tuesday but said the risk of it spreading widely among people was low.A 41-year-old man was admitted to hospital with fever symptoms in the eastern city of Zhenjiang on April 28 and was diagnosed with H10N3 a month later, China's National Health Commission (NHC) said in an online statement."The risk of large-scale spread is extremely low," the NHC said, adding that the man was in a stable cond