Health & Environment

The cold snap affected road conditions as dozens of passenger cars and trucks were stranded for more than a day on the Shin-Meishin Expressway.

Low cost, short waiting times, world-class infrastructure and skilled practitioners are some push factors for Chennai as a medical tourism hub, even as critics highlight neglect of services for lower-income citizens.

Pre-departure testing was a reasonable condition to impose on travellers from China as there was ‘very little information’ about the spread of Covid in the country, Australian Health Minister Mark Butler told reporters.

The 41-year-old passenger, who tested positive for Covid on arrival, fled from a quarantine hotel on Yeongjong Island off the west coast of Incheon, South Korean police said.

Australia’s top health official and Chinese-Australians are slamming the government’s decision to require visitors arriving from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau to test negative for Covid-19, calling the move ‘racist’.

Malaysians question rush to allow Chinese tourists to enter, worried the influx will push country back into lockdown.

Travellers from China will only be screened for fever, Malaysia’s health minister said, but waste water from their inbound flights will be tested.

While Pyongyang often looks to its neighbour Beijing, in this instance it does not have China’s medical facilities, vaccine doses, testing equipment – or enough food and medicine.

The city state says its ‘back in business’, hosting a flurry of major events and rebuilding itself as a global aviation hub, even as some doctors voice concern about Covid complacency.

Places like Singapore and Taiwan have also seen similar trends, with customers bulk-buying fever and pain relief medications to be shipped to China, forcing pharmacies to roll out measures to curb the practice.

Sand mining is eating away at the foundations of the Mekong Delta, with a recent report finding that the practice had done more to alter sediment flows in the river than even the controversial hydropower dams upstream.

Once found, the 11-year-old pupil of a Chinese primary school in Kuala Lumpur will become the 31st victim of a landslide that tore through a hillside campsite in Batang Kali last week as the campers slept.

Medicine stocks are vanishing from pharmacy shelves in Singapore as worried Chinese nationals hoover up supplies to send home to their loved ones. It’s sparked a debate on limiting sales – as some entrepreneurs seek to cash in.

Malaysian internet users are divided between blaming an absent state leader and east coast residents who voted for Malay nationalist and Islamist faction Perikatan Nasional in last month’s watershed national election.

Latest safety lapse to hit construction of Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, which has suffered delays, massive cost overruns and series of accidents.

Public toilets in two Tokyo parks – that use ‘smart glass’ to instantly turn opaque once the door is locked from the inside – left users exposed after the glass panels malfunctioned.

Potential mutation of virus could be milder but more transmissible, experts say, urging Asian countries to guard against fresh respiratory viruses in winter.