Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Monday during the highest-level visit by an American Cabinet official since the break in formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei in 1979.

Tsai said to reporters at the Presidential Office Building that said she looked for “even more breakthroughs and fruits of cooperation“ in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and other issues to “jointly contribute to the sustained peaceful development of the Indo-Pacific region.”

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong police arrested media tycoon Jimmy Lai and raided the publisher’s headquarters Monday in the highest-profile use yet of a new national security law Beijing imposed on the city in June.

“Jimmy Lai is being arrested for collusion with foreign powers at this time,” Mark Simon, an executive of Lai’s media group and his aide, wrote on Twitter.

BEIJING, August 9 (APP): As many as 270 Chinese technicians to be airlifted from Chengdu, the capital of China’s southwest Sichuan province, by a special chartered plane to resume work on the Suki-Kinari hydropower project being build under China Pakistan Corridor (CPEC) framework.

The Civil Aviation Agency (CAA) of Pakistan has accorded special permission for the Air China Chartered flight CA-555/6 to transport these technicians to Islamabad on August 12, according to a breport of China Economic Net (CEN) on Sunday.

PHNOM PENH, Aug 9 (NNN-AKP) – Cambodia said, the Chikungunya virus outbreak (CHIKV) spread to 15 provinces, affecting 2,047 people, Health Ministry’s secretary of state and spokeswoman, Or Vandine, said.

“About 72.4 percent of the patients were tested positive for CHIKV,” she said in a statement. CHIKV re-emerged in the Southeast Asian country last month, after having disappeared for a decade.

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Aug 9 (NNN-ANN) – Brunei resumed direct flights with Hangzhou, China on Tuesday, marking its first direct flights with the Chinese mainland, after COVID-19 pandemic cut air connection between the two countries.

According to travel agencies and the Chinese embassy in Brunei, the round-trip direct flights between Bandar Seri Begawan and Hangzhou, will be carried out by Royal Brunei Airlines (RB), the sultanate’s national carrier, with Boeing 787 or Airbus 320.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar arrived in Taiwan on Sunday as the highest-level U.S. official to visit in four decades, a trip condemned by China which claims the island as its own, further irritating Sino-U.S. relations.

Washington broke off official ties with Taipei in 1979 in favour of Beijing. The Trump administration has made strengthening its support for the democratic island a priority, and boosted arms sales.

NUR-SULTAN, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) has combined the PCR-negative pneumonia cases with clinical signs of COVID-19 infection in Kazakhstan into the total coronavirus tally on its website.

Since Aug. 1, Kazakhstan's Health Ministry has registered the pneumonia cases with coronavirus-like symptoms on a daily basis. But confirmed COVID-19 cases and pneumonia with coronavirus-like symptoms are identified in two categories on the official website coronavirus2020.kz.

HANOI, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) released a statement on Saturday, marking the bloc's 53rd anniversary.

The statement recalled the aspirations of the 1967 ASEAN Declaration to promote regional cooperation in the spirit of equality and partnership, and contribute towards peace, progress and prosperity in the region.

Noting the achievements made by the ASEAN in the past 53 years, the ministers reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring the effective implementation of the ASEAN Community Vision 2025.

HONG KONG, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Office of the Commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Saturday expressed strong indignation over and protested against the so-called sanctions announced by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on officials in charge of Hong Kong affairs of the Central People's Government and the HKSAR government, stressing that such sanctions will only be self-defeating.

BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of China's State Council on Saturday strongly condemned the so-called U.S. sanctions against heads of Chinese central government agencies responsible for Hong Kong affairs and officials of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).