Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Malaysian court on Monday jailed a teenager for killing 23 people in a fire that he started at a religious boarding school in 2017, national news agency Bernama reported, in what was one of the worst such tragedies in two decades.

The defendant was 16 at the time of the fire bit.ly/3iOnqoV, which killed 21 teenage boys and two teachers in the capital Kuala Lumpur and sparked calls for tougher regulation over safety in privately-run schools.

Tokyo, Aug 17 (AP/PTI) Japan's economy shrank at annual rate of 27.8% in April-June, the worst contraction on record, as the coronavirus pandemic slammed consumption and trade, according to government data released on Monday.

The Cabinet Office reported that Japan's preliminary seasonally adjusted real gross domestic product, or GDP, the sum of a nation's goods and services, fell 7.8% quarter on quarter.

Seoul, Aug 16 (AP/PTI) The United States and South Korea will begin their annual joint military exercises this week, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday. But a spreading coronavirus outbreak has apparently forced the allies to scale back an already low-key training program mainly involving computer-simulated war scenarios.

LONDON/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has resigned from an honorary fellowship at a college at Britain’s Cambridge University after it questioned her commitment to the protection of human rights and freedom of expression.

Lam said the accusations made by Wolfson College were “groundless” and said she was “deeply disappointed by the college smearing a person on the basis of hearsay instead of facts”.

BEIJING, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- An inactivated COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by China is safe and generates an immune response, according to data from clinical trials published in The Journal of the American Medical Association this week.

The research paper provided an interim analysis of the phase-1 and phase-2 clinical trials of an inactivated COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products under the China National Biotec Group (CNBG), affiliated to Sinopharm, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States and South Korea will begin their annual joint military exercises this week, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday. But a spreading coronavirus outbreak has apparently forced the allies to scale back an already low-key training program mainly involving computer-simulated war scenarios.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said on Saturday, the 75th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War Two, that his government was always ready to talk with Tokyo about disputes over history that continue to divide the two neighbours.

Moon was speaking at an anniversary celebration marking the Korean peninsula’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonisation.

In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged never to repeat the tragedy of war.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan’s main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT), which traditionally favours close ties with China, was routed in a key mayoral by-election on Saturday, a vote overshadowed by turmoil in Hong Kong and tensions with Beijing.

The KMT, under its youthful new leader, Johnny Chiang, has been trying to reinvent itself since being trounced by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in January’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan on Saturday marked the 75th anniversary of its surrender in World War II, with Emperor Naruhito expressing “deep remorse” over his country’s wartime actions at a somber annual ceremony curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Naruhito pledged to reflect on the war’s events and expressed hope that the tragedy would never be repeated. There was no word of apology from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who gave thanks for the sacrifices of the Japanese war dead but had nothing to say about the suffering of Japan’s neighbors.

SINGAPORE, Aug 14 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Two Malaysian inmates on death row failed in their appeals for a stay of execution pending a probe on allegations that “brutal and unlawful methods” used in judicial executions in the republic.

“We dismiss the appeals,” according to judges of Singapore’s Apex Court, Andrew Phang, Judith Prakash, and  Woo Bih Li in their written judgment released in the Supreme Court’s website.

A. Gobi and K. Datchinamurthy were convicted for drug-related offences and sentenced to the death penalty.