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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema