Travellers register at a COVID-19 testing site after arriving at the arrival hall at Toronto International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, on Feb. 1, 2021. Canada's Ontario required all international arriving passengers to take a COVID-19 test upon arrival starting on Monday to stop the spread of COVID-19 variants. (Photo: Xinhua)   

China and Japan will hold the 12th round of high-level consultations on maritime affairs via video link on Wednesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.

* The Security Council will discuss the Myanmar situation on Tuesday, following the detention of political leaders by the military in the country.

* A team of investigators led by the World Health Organization arrived on Tuesday at an animal health facility in China's central city of Wuhan in the search for clues about the origins of the pandemic.

* The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said on Monday that the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, paid a two-day visit to Tehran that aimed at supporting Iraq's stability.

* A total of 10 million doses of raw materials for COVID-19 vaccine from the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Indonesia's city of Tangerang on Tuesday, an official said.

* Moderna Inc said it is proposing filling vials with additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to ease a crunch in manufacturing as the company approaches the manufacturing of almost a million doses a day.

* China reported the fewest new COVID-19 cases in a month as imported cases overtook local infections, official data showed on Tuesday, suggesting the country's worst wave since March 2020 is being stamped out ahead of a key holiday.

* Russia has extended a ban on flights to and from Britain until Feb. 17 due to the new coronavirus variant detected in the UK.

* After meeting with Republican senators at the White House on Monday, US President Joe Biden appeared poised to push forward with his US$1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan even if it fails to draw Republican support.

* The European Union tightened its rules for visitors from outside the bloc, specifying that they would only be allowed in freely from countries with very few coronavirus cases and almost none of the more transmissible variants.

* Britain begins door-to-door COVID-19 testing of 80,000 people on Tuesday in a bid to stem the spread of a new highly infectious so called South African variant of the novel coronavirus.

* Thailand reported 836 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, taking its total infections to 20,454. The COVID-19 taskforce said two new deaths were confirmed, taking total fatalities to 79 since the country's first cases in January last year.

* Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide on Tuesday said he will extend the state of emergency for Tokyo and other regions hard hit by COVID-19 by one month until March 7. Japan reported 1,792 new COVID-19 infections on Monday evening, bringing the nation's tally of cases to almost 400,000, with the death toll approaching 6,000.

* Republic of Korea's ruling party plans to prepare a fourth round of COVID-19 cash handouts and an extra budget of sufficient scale to support those affected by the nation's tough social distancing measures, its leader Lee Nak-yon said.

* Chicago Public Schools and the city's teachers union said progress was made on Monday in talks on a COVID-19 safety plan, putting on hold a threatened confrontation over the district's plan to resume in-person classes for thousands of students.

* South African President Cyril Ramaphosa hailed the arrival of the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Monday as a chance to "turn the tide" on a disease that has devastated the country.

* The United Arab Emirates' ambassador to Washington said he was confident the sale of F-35 jets to his country would go through after a review by President Joe Biden's administration of some pending arms sales to US allies.

Xinhua, Reuters