SOUTH KOREA
Arrivals to be quarantined
Every person arriving from overseas would be required to undergo two weeks of quarantine to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said yesterday. The country confirmed 105 new cases as of Saturday, bringing the total to 9,583, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday. Of the new cases, 41 were travelers arriving from overseas, including 40 South Korean citizens and one foreigner, the agency said. The new mandatory isolation for all arrivals would go into effect on Wednesday, Chung said at a government meeting. The policy would also apply to South Korean citizens.
SINGAPORE
Man’s passport canceled
The city-state canceled the passport of one of its citizens who was found to have breached a requirement to quarantine himself after returning from overseas. The man arrived by ferry from Batam, Indonesia, on March 19, and left again for Indonesia the same day, despite being issued a notice to stay home for 14 days, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said in an e-mail. He returned on Tuesday last week and was issued a second notice.
CAMBODIA
Entry rules tightened
The country yesterday reported one new case of COVID-19, bringing the total to 103 as it prepares to tighten entry requirements for foreign nationals to try to curb the spread of the virus. The new case is a 30-year-old woman who worked in a karaoke club in the northwestern Banteay Meanchey Province, the Ministry of Health said in a statement. A total of 21 patients have recovered since January, it said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said that it would cancel visas on arrival for foreign nationals for one month, effective midnight today, to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
VIETNAM
Hospital locked down
Officials ordered one of the nation’s largest medical centers to be locked down and demanded that thousands of employees and people who recently visited Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital be tested for COVID-19 after nurses and food workers contracted the disease. The country, which has 179 confirmed cases and no reported deaths from the virus, has tied most recent infections to people arriving from Europe and other countries. The government, which is isolating foreigners and Vietnamese citizens entering the country from abroad, has quarantined or placed under monitoring 75,085 people. It has also suspended most international flights, restricted domestic travel and closed the majority of businesses across the country.
THAILAND
Virus cases reach 143
The country has 143 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 1,388, the spokesman of the government’s Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration said yesterday. The country also recorded one new fatality, bringing the total deaths to seven. The latest victim was a 68-year-old man from Nonthaburi Province who had attended a crowded boxing match in Bangkok, where there had been a cluster of infections, the spokesman said. Authorities have imposed a lockdown in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, while authorities on the resort island of Phuket have asked people to stay home between 8pm to 3am in a new restriction on movement to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
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