JAKARTA: Indonesia will lift a ban on the Boeing 737 MAX, the Southeast Asian country's transportation ministry said on Tuesday, three years after local carrier Lion Air lost one of the planes in a fatal cash during a routine domestic flight.

A woman driver was arrested and 600,000 methamphetamine pills seized after her pickup crashed into a roadside house while she was being chased by police in Kosom Phisai district, Maha Sarakham province, on Tuesday.

The Philippines signed a deal to purchase two corvettes from Hyundai Heavy Industries Co Ltd, beefing up its defence capabilities in a region that has become more militarised due to competing claims in the South China Sea.

The naval chief and the commander of a naval base have undergone self-punishment to uphold discipline and show responsibility after one of their subordinates committed a serious misconduct.

BEIJING: Hundreds of thousands more people were ordered to stay home in northern China Tuesday, joining millions under strict lockdown as authorities raced to contain a surge in Covid cases that have reached a 21-month high.

DAMASCUS: An Israeli air strike hit Syria's Latakia port on Tuesday, the second such attack on the key facility this month, according to Syrian state media.

JAKARTA: Indonesian health authorities were conducting contact tracing on Tuesday after detecting the Southeast Asian country's first case of the Omicron coronavirus variant in the community, health ministry official Siti Nadia Tarmizi said.

KANCHANABURI: Twenty-four Myanmar nationals were arrested after illegally crossing the border into Sangkhla Buri district of this western border province late on Monday night, police said.

There were 32 more Covid-19 fatalities and 2,305 new cases registered during the previous 24 hours, the Public Health Ministry said on Tuesday morning.

KALASIN: This northeastern province logged 54 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours as local officials conducted mass testing in a bid to contain infection clusters.