Reuters World News Summary

Malaysia's opposition gearing up for snap polls, says potential PM candidate Malaysia's opposition is preparing for early elections after a crucial vote in the lower house this week showed Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin may lack a parliamentary majority, said Mohd Shafie Apdal, a potential rival for the premiership.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Asia ramps up coronavirus curbs as new clusters erupt

Australian states tightened borders and restricted pub visits on Tuesday, while Disney prepared to close its Hong Kong theme park and Japan stepped up tracing as a jump in novel coronavirus cases across Asia fanned fears of a second wave of infections. Many parts of Asia, the region first hit by the coronavirus that emerged in central China late last year, are finding cause to pause the reopening of their economies, some after winning praise for their initial responses to the outbreak. U.S. rejects China's claims in South China Sea, adding to tensions

The United States on Monday rejected China's claims to offshore resources in most of the South China Sea, drawing criticism from China which said the U.S. position raised tension in the region, highlighting an increasingly testy relationship. China has offered no coherent legal basis for its ambitions in the South China Sea and for years has been using intimidation against other Southeast Asian coastal states, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. Record floods raise questions about China's Three Gorges Dam

As China counts the costs of its most punishing flood season in more than three decades, the role played by the massive and controversial Three Gorges Dam - designed to help tame the Yangtze river - has come under fresh scrutiny. Amid some of the heaviest rainfall on record, the Chinese government says the world's biggest hydroelectric plant has reduced flood peaks, minimised economic losses and slashed the number of deaths and emergency evacuations. India's tech hub, other towns back in lockdown amid COVID-19 surge

India's high-tech hub of Bengaluru will go back into a coronavirus lockdown for a week on Tuesday after a surge of infections, threatening to derail government efforts to revive a stuttering economy. Places of worship, public transport, government offices and most shops will close again from the evening, and people will be confined to their homes, only allowed out for essential needs. Death toll rises in border clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia

Seven Azeri soldiers and a civilian, and two Armenian servicemen were killed on Tuesday in the third day of border clashes between countries that fought a war in the 1990s over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region. The international community worries about clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan in part because of the threat to instability in the South Caucasus, a region that serves as a corridor for pipelines taking oil and gas to world markets. Greece says Turkey is being 'petty' over Hagia Sophia

Greece on Tuesday described Turkey's decision to convert the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to a mosque as "unnecessary and petty" and called for tougher European Union action over Ankara's gas exploration activities in the Mediterranean. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's move to switch the status of Hagia Sophia to a mosque has struck a raw nerve with many Greeks, who revere the sixth century building as a focal point of their Orthodox Christian faith. Ukraine: it's too early to blame human error for downing of passenger plane in Iran

Ukraine's foreign minister said on Tuesday it was soon to blame human error for the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger airliner near Tehran in January, challenging the findings of Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO). The CAO said in an interim report that the plane was accidentally downed, killing 176 people on board, because of a misalignment of a radar system and lack of communication between the air defence operator and his commanders. Malaysia's opposition gearing up for snap polls, says potential PM candidate

Malaysia's opposition is preparing for early elections after a crucial vote in the lower house this week showed Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin may lack a parliamentary majority, said Mohd Shafie Apdal, a potential rival for the premiership. Muhyiddin on Monday succeeded in his bid to replace the speaker of parliament's lower house by a margin of two votes. But he fell one vote short of a simple majority with only half of the 222 lawmakers in the house voting for his motion. 'They needed people': Brazil volunteers step up to test COVID-19 vaccine

Luiz Augusto Rizzo, 29, is no specialist in infectious diseases, but he is part of perhaps the most important scientific endeavor in the world today: the hunt for a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. The pediatric surgeon is one of 2,000 volunteers in Brazil's largest city of Sao Paulo taking part in mass human trials for the experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L). It is one of the brightest hopes in the global bid to contain the virus. More fighting as Taiwan opposition again occupies parliament

Taiwan's main opposition party again occupied parliament on Tuesday to protest against the nomination of a close aide to the president to a top-level watchdog, after fighting with ruling party lawmakers to get into the building. Violence and protests inside the chamber are not unusual in Taiwan, a spirited democracy where passions often run over.