Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Malaysian PM quarantines after minister tests positive for COVID-19

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on Monday said he will self-quarantine for 14 days after a minister who attended a high-level government meeting to discuss coronavirus developments on Saturday tested positive for COVID-19. The Southeast Asian country has seen a steady climb in cases in the past week in the aftermath of an election in the state of Sabah in Borneo on Sept 26.

Russia calls for examining U.S. moves ‘against the WHO’

Russia called on Monday for an evaluation of the legal and financial repercussions of the Trump administration announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) next July. Russia’s delegation, addressing a two-day meeting of WHO’s Executive Board, said: “We need to analyse legal procedures and administrative and financial procedures regarding steps taken by the United States against the WHO.”

Police in Belarus detained 317 people at protests on Sunday: ministry

Police in Belarus detained 317 people during protests in Minsk and across the country on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said on Monday. Tens of thousands of people marched through the centre of Minsk to demand that the authorities free political prisoners, prompting police to turn a water cannon on them.

UK must be hard-headed in relationship with China: Sunak

Britain must take a hard-headed, transactional approach to its relationship with China, British finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Monday. “I think with China we also need to be realistic and hard-headed and I’d say probably transactional in our approach to that relationship, rather than being starry-eyed about it,” Sunak told the Conservative Party’s annual conference.

Scientists who helped identify Hepatitis C virus win 2020 Nobel Medicine Prize

Two Americans and a Briton won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for work in identifying the Hepatitis C virus, which causes cirrhosis and liver cancer. The discoveries by scientists Harvey Alter, Charles Rice and Briton Michael Houghton meant there was now a chance of eradicating the Hepatitis C virus completely, the award-giving body said.

Britain opens investigation into coronavirus test and trace glitch

Britain’s government has launched an investigation into why a technical issue with its test and trace programme had not been identified sooner, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday. Britain reported a jump in COVID-19 cases after a technical issue meant that more than 15,000 test results had not been transferred into computer systems on time, including for contact tracers, a response that is seen as key to controlling the virus.

U.S. calls for WHO reforms, timely information on outbreaks

The United States, in apparent criticism of China, said on Monday that it could not tolerate the “failure” of a member state of the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide accurate, complete and timely information about disease outbreaks. U.S. assistant health secretary Brett Giroir, speaking to the WHO Executive Board, also called for acting on proposed WHO reforms by countries including the United States, Germany, France, and Chile.

Armenians, Azeris accuse each other of striking civilian areas

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Monday of attacking civilian areas on a ninth day of fighting, the deadliest in the South Caucasus region for more than 25 years. Hundreds of people have been killed in the latest outbreak of war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain enclave that belongs to Azerbaijan under international law but is populated and governed by ethnic Armenians.

One in 10 may have caught COVID, as world heads into ‘difficult period’: WHO

Roughly 1 in 10 people may have been infected with the novel coronavirus, leaving the vast majority of the world’s population vulnerable to the related COVID-19 disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergency expert, told the agency’s Executive Board that outbreaks were surging in parts of southeast Asia and that cases and deaths were on the rise in parts of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean region.

Canada karaoke bar lets customers sing in the shower during a pandemic

A Canadian karaoke bar is letting its customers sing in the shower during the pandemic – to keep people safe, they’ve constructed a shower stall, complete with curtains and tubular piping, on stage. Tracie’s Place Karaoke Bar and Restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario, 70 km south of Toronto, closed during the COVID-19 pandemic in March. It reopened three months ago amid strict protocols set out by the government for how they could operate.