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A person crosses an empty street on the first day of a five-day lockdown implemented in the state of Victoria in response to a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, February 13, 2021. REUTERS/Sandra Sanders

Australia's second most populous state Victoria entered a five-day lockdown on Saturday (Feb 13) as authorities raced to prevent a third wave of COVID-19 cases sparked by the highly infections UK variant.

One new locally acquired case was confirmed in the past 24 hours, Victoria health authorities said on Saturday, taking the number of active cases in the state to 20.

"A lot of people will be hurting today. This is not the position Victorians wanted to be in but I can't have a situation where in two weeks' time, we look back and wish we had taken these decisions now," Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters on Saturday. 

Andrews said Prime Minister Scott Morrison had agreed to stop all international flights to Melbourne through Wednesday, after five en-route, with about 100 passengers, land on Saturday.

The cluster that triggered the renewed restrictions stemmed from a quarantine hotel at Melbourne airport.

Among the "essential" work, play at the Australian Open, the year's first Grand Slam tennis event which runs to Feb 21, continued, but fans were banned through Wednesday. Thousands were forced to leave mid-matches before midnight on Friday.

The lockdown, which has shut restaurants and cafes for all but takeaway, hit just as Melbourne had geared up for the biggest weekend in nearly a year, with Lunar New Year celebrations, Valentine's Day and Australian Open crowds.More broadly, Australia is rated among the world's most successful countries in tackling the pandemic, largely because of decisive lockdowns and borders sealed to all but a trickle of travellers. With a population of 25 million, there have been around 22,200 community cases and 909 deaths//CNA

Feb. 12 - The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on Myanmar’s acting president and several other military officers and warned the generals there could be more economic punishment as Washington responds to the military coup.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it targeted eight people, including the defense minister, three companies in the jade and gems sector, and updated sanctions on the top two military officials, accusing them of playing a leading role in overthrowing Myanmar’s democratically-elected government.

But Washington stopped short of including the entire Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), the military’s conglomerates that are prevalent throughout Myanmar’s economy.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday approved an executive order for new sanctions on those responsible for the coup in Myanmar, also known as Burma, that ousted the civilian-led government and detained elected leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

“The February 1 coup was a direct assault on Burma’s transition to democracy and the rule of law,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

“We are also prepared to take additional action should Burma’s military not change course. If there is more violence against peaceful protesters, the Burmese military will find that today’s sanctions are just the first,” Yellen added.

Thursday’s action designated Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar military Min Aung Hlaing and Deputy Commander-in-Chief Soe Win under Biden’s executive order. Both were previously hit with sanctions in 2019 over allegations of abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities.

Others listed were six members of the National Defense and Security Council and four military officials announced as members of the State Administration Council, including Defense Minister Mya Tun Oo.

The three companies named by Washington - Myanmar Ruby Enterprise, Myanmar Imperial Jade Co, LTD, and Cancri (Gems and Jewellery) Co, LTD - were identified by a U.N. mission on Myanmar in 2019 as part of the MEHL conglomerate.

The White House said the sanctions do not need to be permanent, urging Myanmar’s military to “immediately restore power to the democratically elected government, end the state of emergency, release all those unjustly detained, and ensure peaceful protesters are not met with violence.”

The Biden administration has been working to form an international response to the crisis.

John Lichtefeld, vice president at Washington-based strategic consultancy The Asia Group, said Thursday’s announcements were an “opening salvo putting the military on notice,” adding that sanctions against the MEHL and MEC conglomerates may still occur.

“I think this is a signal to the military that the United States is serious and has a very wide range of tools at its disposal. The range of actors potentially implicated by this order is exceptionally broad, even though the order itself does not directly sanction any individual or entities,” he said.

Suu Kyi’s party won a 2015 election but the transition to democracy was brought to a halt by the coup that ousted her government as it was preparing to begin its second term after her National League for Democracy (NLD) swept a Nov. 8 election.

The military cited election fraud as justification for its takeover. The electoral commission dismissed accusations of fraud.

Also on Thursday, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said it was immediately redirecting $42.2 million of assistance away from work that would have benefited Myanmar’s government.

The aid agency said it would continue to support the people of Myanmar with approximately $69 million in bilateral programs.

Protesters have taken to the streets in cities and towns in the largest demonstrations in Myanmar for more than a decade, reviving memories of almost half a century of direct army rule, punctuated with bloody crackdowns, until the military began relinquishing some power in 2011. (Reuters)

Feb. 11 - India and China have agreed to pull back troops from a bitterly contested lake area high in the western Himalayas, the Indian defence minister said on Thursday, in a breakthrough after a months-long standoff on the disputed border.

Rajnath Singh told parliament the accord over Pangong Tso, a glacial lake at 14,000 ft (4,270 metres), had been reached after several rounds of talks between military commanders and diplomats from the nuclear-armed neighbours.

“Our sustained talks with China have led to agreement on disengagement on the north and south banks of the Pangong lake,” he said.

China’s defence ministry said frontline troops from the two countries had begun to pull back from the shores of the lake on Wednesday.

The standoff began in April last year when India said Chinese troops had intruded deep into its side of the Line of Actual Control or the de facto border in the Ladakh area in the western Himalayas.

China said its troops were operating in its own area and accused Indian border guards of provocative actions.

In June, 20 Indian soldiers were killed when the two sides clashed with iron rods and stones in the Galwan Valley, the first combat losses on the border in 45 years. China also suffered an unspecified number of casualties.

Since then the two countries, who fought a war in 1962, had moved thousands of troops, tanks, artillery guns and combat jets close to the border.

Singh said the Indian government had told Beijing that peace and tranquility had been seriously disturbed by the actions of Chinese troops and bilateral ties had suffered.

“To ensure disengagement in friction points along the LAC, it was our view that troops of both sides, who are now in close proximity, should vacate the forward deployments made in 2020 and return to the permanent and accepted bases,” he said.

Pangong lake is a finger of water extending from China’s Tibet Autonomous Region in India’s Ladakh region.

In August, Indian troops occupied heights on the southern banks of the lake in retaliation against Chinese troops advancing further along the north bank.

Singh said the two sides had agreed to dismantle defence structures they had built on the two sides of the lake, two-thirds of which China controls.

Once the disengagement has been completed at the lake, military commanders will meet within 48 hours to discuss pull back from other areas, Singh said.

India and China have not been able to agree on their 3,500 km (2,200 mile) long border since the war in 1962. (Reuters)

Feb. 11 - China called on the United States on Wednesday to invite the World Health Organization to investigate origins of the COVID-19 outbreak there, as sparring over the pandemic continued after the WHO wrapped up its field work in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Hours after the WHO team revealed preliminary findings at a Wuhan news conference on Tuesday, Washington said it wants to scrutinize data used by the team, which concluded that the virus causing COVID-19 did not originate in a laboratory in Wuhan, and that bats remain a likely source.

“We wish that the U.S. side can, like China, uphold an open and transparent attitude, and be able to invite WHO experts to the U.S. to conduct origin tracing research and inspection,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular daily briefing, repeating a call it has been making recently.

The origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, are highly politicized, with China pushing the idea that the virus has roots outside its borders.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday that the Biden administration had not been involved in the “planning and implementation” of the WHO investigation and wants to take an independent review of its findings and underlying data.

“The U.S. independently examining the WHO’s data? It’s the WHO who should examine the U.S. data,” said Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, on social media platform Weibo.

“Did we all mishear, or is this spokesperson really so shameless?”

Peter Ben Embarek, who heads the WHO-led team that spent four weeks in China - two of them in quarantine - said that the investigation had not dramatically changed its picture of the outbreak, although the virus could have crossed borders before arriving in Wuhan.

In addition to ruling out a lab leak, he said that frozen food could possibly be a means of transmitting the virus, which would support a thesis backed by Beijing, which has blamed some case clusters on imported food packaging.

The WHO’s conclusion “completely refutes the conspiracy theory raised by some anti-China hawks, like former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who has been accusing the Wuhan Institute of Virology of leaking the virus,” the Global Times wrote.

Pompeo had said there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory.

Chinese officials have stressed in recent months that the virus could have emerged in multiple regions outside China. (Reuters)