KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia's Health Ministry on Thursday reported 31 new COVID-19 infections after three straight days of single-digit new cases, pushing the total number to 8,369.

Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said at a press briefing that of the new cases, 11 are imported and of the local transmissions, 19 are foreign nationals and one is a Malaysia citizen. (Malaysia-COVID-19)

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DHAKA -- Bangladesh Thursday reported 37 more deaths and 3,187 new COVID-19 cases, a senior health ministry official told a television media briefing.

Professor Nasima Sultana, additional director general of Directorate General of Health Services under the Ministry of Health, said the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh has reached 78,052. (Bangladesh-COVID-19)

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JAKARTA -- The COVID-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 979 within one day to 35,295, with the death toll adding by 41 to 2,000, Health Ministry official Achmad Yurianto said at a press conference on Thursday.

He said 507 more people have been discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 12,636.

The pandemic has spread to all the 34 provinces in the archipelagic country. (Indonesia-COVID-19)

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MANILA -- The number of coronavirus cases in the Philippines surged to 24,175 after the Department of Health (DOH) reported 443 more infections on Thursday.

The DOH said in a daily bulletin that the number of recoveries further climbed to 5,165 after 270 more patients recovered.

The death toll also increased to 1,036 after nine more patients died, the DOH added. (Philippines-COVID-19)

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SEOUL -- South Korea's presidential Blue House said on Thursday that the country will sternly deal with any act to scatter leaflets criticizing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) across the inter-Korean border.

Kim You-geun, first deputy director of the Blue House National Security Office (NSO), told a press briefing that the government will thoroughly clamp down on the dispersion of anti-DPRK leaflets and materials, saying any violation will be sternly dealt with according to domestic law. (South Korea-DPRK-Leaflets)

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SYDNEY -- Australian scientists have developed a method to turn harmful carbon dioxide into useful industrial products like fuel and plastics, potentially giving the world room to breath as it transitions towards a greener economy.

In the paper published Thursday, Rahman Daiyan and Emma Lovell from the University of New South Wales School of Chemical Engineering assert that their method is cheaper and more scalable to the requirements of industry than what is available today. (Australia-Carbon Dioxide)