Russia and China are working to develop a coronavirus vaccine and Beijing has handed over the genome of the virus to Moscow, a Russian diplomatic mission in China said yesterday.

Japanese authorities say a man with no recent travel to China has contracted the novel strain of coronavirus -- apparently after driving tourists visiting from Wuhan, where a deadly outbreak began.

The United States and other nations race to get their citizens out of the locked-down Chinese city at ground-zero of a virus epidemic, as the death toll surges to 106 and the number of confirmed infections doubled to over 4,500.

The rapid spread of a deadly virus in China caused growing global alarm yesterday, with Germany advising citizens to avoid the country, Mongolia closing its border and other nations racing to evacuate citizens trapped at the epicentre of the health emergency.

Indian enforcement agencies should be able to break end-to-end encryption to hunt down distributors of child pornography online, a parliamentary panel has urged as the south Asian nation looks to regulate social media.

The Taliban claims a US forces aircraft has crashed in eastern Afghanistan, hours after a plane went down into an area controlled largely by the insurgents.

The Chinese army deploys medical specialists to the epicentre of a spiralling viral outbreak that has killed 41 people and spread around the world, as millions spent their normally festive Lunar New Year holiday under lockdown.

The official death toll from the coronavirus in China jumps on Saturday to 41 from 26 a day earlier, as local media reported a doctor on the frontline of the battle to contain the virus in Wuhan city had died.

Schools in Singapore ask parents to declare overseas holiday plans as authorities screened travellers at air, land and sea checkpoints, to combat the spread of a deadly flu virus that has revived memories of the SARS pandemic in 2003.

Myanmar rejected accusations of “genocide” in a statement by the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding yesterday’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, the Mizzima reports.

China seals off millions more people near the epicentre of a virus outbreak, shutting down public transport in an eighth city in an unprecedented quarantine effort as the death toll climbed to 26.

One of India’s most famous universities is half-empty and some students who are on campus track each other on mobile devices to ensure people are safe, as violent clashes spill on to campuses that are seen as a hotbed of anti-government protests.

In one of the biggest surrenders by militants in Assam, altogether 644 cadres of eight insurgent outfits formally laid down their arms yesterday.

Nearly 100 Indian women politicians faced abuse, including rape and death threats, on social media during elections last year, with researchers yesterday raising concerns over rising online violence against women globally.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan called on Wednesday for the United Nations to help mediate between nuclear armed India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

It’s entirely new: The pathogen appears to be a never-before-seen strain of coronavirus -- a family of viruses that can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed 349 people in mainland China and another 299 in Hong Kong between 2002 and 2003.

China is putting on lockdown a city of 11 million people considered the epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak that has killed 17 and infected nearly 600 people, as health authorities around the world work to prevent a global pandemic.

A Pakistani journalist critical of the government and the army has been detained for five days for having published “anti-state” comments online, his lawyer told AFP yesterday, in a new illustration of shrinking freedoms in Pakistan.

South Korea will send a naval destroyer and 300 troops to the Strait of Hormuz, its defence ministry said yesterday, after pressure from its ally the US in the face of tensions between Washington and Tehran.

“Neighbourhood first” is the main policy of Modi government and improving cross-border connectivity is an important aspect of it, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said.