The Health Ministry today reported 1,116 new Covid-19 cases and five deaths.

The Klang Valley accounted for 50.71 percent of new cases followed by Sarawak (11.1 percent) and Penang (7.9 percent). 

Malaysians comprised 64.7 percent of new cases while non-citizens comprised 35.3 percent.

• Active cases: 14,134
• Patients in ICUs: 156
• Intubated: 60

Deaths

The five new deaths were reported in Kuala Lumpur, Sabah, Penang, Pahang and Negeri Sembilan respectively. 

The national death toll has now risen to 1,238. The Klang Valley region has reported 440 deaths.

Those who died were aged between 44 and 84. For a detailed breakdown of the reported deaths today, please refer to our Covid-19 tracker site.

Clusters

The Health Ministry today reported that there were 411 active Covid-19 clusters, down from 504 a month ago. 

Notably, the Health Ministry reported that the Jalan Harapan cluster – related to the Sungai Buloh prison and classified in November last year – had 55 new cases being reported. 

The Health Ministry today reported 10 new clusters of which only two were detected through mass targeted testing at workplaces.

Notably there were two clusters – Taman Tunku and Jalan Kemajuan – that involved restaurants.

Another cluster – Rajang – involved a funeral in Mukah and the cluster has spread to Sarikei and Kuching districts.

Taman Tunku cluster
District(s): Kepong and Titiwangsa, Kuala Lumpur
Locality/Source: Restaurant in Taman Tunku, Bukit Tunku
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 19, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 7 out of 64 screened

Tapak Bina Jalan Usahawan cluster
District(s): Titiwangsa, Kuala Lumpur
Locality/Source: Construction site in Jalan Usahawan 6, Setapak, Titiwangsa
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 20, targeted screening
Total infected: 73 out of 278 screened

Batu 22 cluster
District(s): Kulai, Johor
Locality/Source: Factory in Batu 22, Jalan Air Hitam, Taman Wawasan, Kulai
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 18, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 13 out of 123 screened

Jalan Tenteram cluster
District(s): Johor Bahru, Johor
Locality/Source: Educational institute in Jalan Tenteram, Tanjung Puteri
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 18, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 10 out of 38 screened

Jalan Kemajuan cluster
District(s): Labuan
Locality/Source: Customers and workers at a restaurant in Jalan Kemajuan
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 22, index case screened while signing off from a vessel
Total infected: 9 out of 31 screened

Jalan Helang cluster
District(s): Kuala Langat, Selangor
Locality/Source: Factory in Jalan Helang, Telok Panglima Garang, Kuala Langat
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 13, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 13 out of 22 screened

Jalan Gambang cluster
District(s): Kuantan, Pahang
Locality/Source: Supermarket in Jalan Gambang
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 19, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 24 out of 111 screened

Industri Permata cluster
District(s): Seremban, Negeri Sembilan
Locality/Source: Factory in Jalan Permata 1/5, Arab Malaysian Industrial Park, Nilai
Cluster category: Workplace
First case: March 20, targeted screening
Total infected: 28 out of 73 screened

Rajang cluster
District(s): Sarikei, Tanjung Manis and Kuching, Sarawak
Locality/Source: Funeral in Kampung Rajang, Tanjung Manis, Mukah
Cluster category: Community
First case: March 9, close contact
Total infected: 29 out of 271 screened

Jalan Belimbing cluster
District(s): Kulai, Johor
Locality/Source: Jalan Belimbing, Kampung Sri Paya
Cluster category: Community
First case: March 11, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 10 out of 20 screenedhttps://newslab.malaysiakini.com/covid-19/embed/en/states-chart

Source:Malaysiakini

ATLANTA: Mothers, grandmothers and a brother. They loved to cook, dance, sing and travel. They worked long hours, sometimes in settings their children little understood. 

These are the eight people killed by gunfire at three Atlanta-area massage businesses. Seven of the slain were women, and six of them were of Asian descent. 

Police charged a 21-year-old white man with the killings, saying he was solely responsible for the deadliest US mass shooting since 2019. 

In the days since the shooting, fuller pictures of almost all the victims have emerged. The exception is 44-year-old Daoyou Feng, an employee at Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock about whom little is known.

YONG AE YUE

Sunday should have seen 63-year-old Yong Ae Yue buying groceries and cooking Korean food for her family. Instead those relatives are mourning her death on Tuesday at the Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta.

“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved mother, and words cannot adequately describe our grief,” her sons said in a statement released by attorney BJay Pak.

Yue immigrated from South Korea to the United States, and was married for a time to Mac Peterson of Columbus, who once served at the Army’s Fort Benning in that Georgia city.

“Mom was an amazing woman who loved to introduce our family and friends to her home-cooked Korean food and Korean karaoke,” said Rob Peterson, one of Yue’s sons, who described her as an “amazing woman” in a fundraising appeal. 

“Will miss joining mom on her weekly Sunday routine to the grocery store and traditional Korean dinner. She was always kind-hearted and willing to help everyone she encountered.”

Yue was a licensed massage therapist in Georgia who owned a home in the suburb of Peachtree Corners. Relatives reached there declined comment.

READ: Hundreds rally in Atlanta to support Asian American community after fatal shootings

SUNCHA KIM

A granddaughter lauds Suncha Kim’s love and mourns that she would not be able to “watch her children and grandchildren live the life she never got to live”.

The 69-year-old Kim was one of three women killed at the Gold Spa in Atlanta.

Regina Song wrote that her grandmother was born in Seoul and came to the United States speaking little English, working multiple jobs to provide for her husband, son and daughter.

“This took immense courage and my grandmother was a fighter,” Song wrote.

Family members told The Washington Post that Kim was a Catholic and naturalised American citizen who volunteered her time and helped raised money for various causes. Relatives said Kim won the President’s Volunteer Service Award for her efforts to help feed the homeless in the Washington, DC, area.

“She was pure hearted and the most selfless woman I knew,” her granddaughter wrote. “She represented everything I wanted to be as a woman, without an ounce of hate or bitterness in her heart.”

“She never forgot to call me once a week to say ‘Stay strong in life … when you’re happy, I’m happy.’”

SOON CHUNG PARK

Soon Chung Park had spent much of her life in New York and northern New Jersey before moving to Atlanta, son-in-law Scott Lee told The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In Atlanta, the 74-year-old Park settled in a corridor that included Korean businesses in the Gwinnett County suburb of Duluth. Though she had family members in the New York area, she made a new life here, with 38-year-old Gwangho Lee telling The Daily Beast that he accepted Park’s marriage proposal after the two met in 2017.

Park was the day manager at the Gold Spa, cooking for employees. Lee, a ride-hailing service driver, told The Daily Beast he was already on the way to Gold Spa when he got texts about an apparent robbery, and tried to resuscitate Park while a police officer stood by after he arrived.

She was described as unusually youthful-looking for her age, fit and active, a former dancer and a hard worker.

“She just liked to work,” Scott Lee told The New York Times. “It wasn’t for the money. She just wanted a little bit of work for her life.”

READ: Biden, Harris offer solace to Asian-Americans, denounce racism in Atlanta visit

READ: Asian-Americans grieve, organise in wake of Atlanta attacks

HYUN JUNG GRANT

Hyun Jung Grant loved disco and club music, often strutting or moonwalking while doing household chores and jamming with her sons to tunes blasting in the car.

The single mother found ways to enjoy herself despite working “almost every day” to support two sons, said the older son, 22-year-old Randy Park.

“I learnt how to moonwalk because, like, I saw her moonwalking while vacuuming when I was a kid,” Park said.

On Tuesday night, Park was at home playing video games when he heard a gunman had opened fire at the Gold Spa where his mother worked. He rushed to the scene and then to a police station to find out more information. But it was through word of mouth that he learned his mother was dead.

Her job was a sensitive subject, Park said, noting the stigma often associated with massage businesses. She told her sons that they should tell others she worked doing makeup with her friends.

Ultimately, Park said, he didn’t care what she did for work.

“She loved me and my brother enough to work for us, to dedicate her whole life,” he said. “That’s enough.”

XIAOJIE “EMILY” TAN

An entrepreneur who built multiple businesses after arriving in the United States knowing little about the country, Xiaojie “Emily” Tan is remembered for being devoted to her work and her family.

The 49-year-old owned Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock, where she was shot dead two days short of her 50th birthday. She leaves a daughter who is a recent University of Georgia graduate, Jami Webb. 

Tan had been married twice, first to Michael Webb, who she met in her native city of Nanning, according to USA Today. Later, she married Jason Wang. She also owned Wang’s Feet and Body Massage in Kennesaw when she died.

“She worked a lot, and she was the kind of lady that she wanted to depend on herself,” Wang told The Washington Post. Tan had earlier worked in and owned a nail salon.

Tan frequently visited her mother and other relatives in China.

“She’d always say, ‘we family,’” Michael Webb told USA Today. “Even when we got divorced, she’d say that: ‘We family.’ Because that’s how she was.”

PAUL ANDRE MICHELS

Paul Andre Michels owned a business installing security systems, a trade he learned after moving to the Atlanta area more than 25 years ago.

He’d been talking about switching to a new line of work, but never got the chance. He was fatally shot at Youngs Asian Massage on Tuesday along with three others.

“From what I understand, he was at the spa that day doing some work for them,” said Michels’ younger brother, John Michels.

Paul Michels also might have been talking with the spa’s owner about how the business operates, his brother said, because he had been thinking about opening a spa himself.

“His age caught up to him. You get to a point where you get tired of climbing up and down ladders,” John Michels said. “He was actually looking to start his own massage spa. That’s what he was talking about last year.”

Paul Michels grew up in Detroit in a large family where he was the seventh of nine children. His brother John was No. 8.

Though they were born two-and-a-half years apart, “he was basically my twin,” John Michels said. Both enlisted in the army after high school, with Paul Michels joining the infantry.

A few years after leaving the military, Paul Michels followed his brother to the Atlanta area in 1995 for a job installing phones and security systems. He also met his wife, Bonnie, and they were married more than 20 years.

“He was a good, hard-working man who would do what he could do to help people,” John Michels said. “He’d loan you money if you needed it sometimes. You never went away from his place hungry.”

DELAINA ASHLEY YAUN

The day before she was killed, Delaina Ashley Yaun dropped by Rita Barron’s boutique to say hello and show photos of her eight-month-old daughter.

“She told me, ‘I’m happy. I want another baby,’” said Barron, who had gotten to know the 33-year-old Yaun from eating at the Waffle House where the new mother worked.

Yaun and her new husband returned on Tuesday to the shopping centre where Gabby’s Boutique is located, only this time they headed next door to Youngs Asian Massage. They had planned it as a day for Yaun to relax while a relative watched their baby girl.

Barron and her husband, Alejandro Acosta, heard gunshots from inside the boutique and later noticed that a bullet had gone through the wall. She called 911, and after police arrived Acosta watched them bring people out of the business, some bleeding and wounded. 

Among those who walked out was Yaun’s husband, unhurt but distraught. His wife had been killed. “As you can imagine, he’s totally destroyed, without strength, doesn’t want to talk with anybody,” said Acosta, who added that he had spoken twice with Yaun’s husband since the shootings.

Family members said Yaun and her husband were first-time customers at Youngs, eager for a chance to unwind.

“They’re innocent. They did nothing wrong,” Yaun’s weeping mother, Margaret Rushing, told WAGA-TV. “I just don’t understand why he took my daughter.” Source: AP

ISTANBUL: US and European leaders denounced what they called Turkey’s baffling and concerning decision to pull out of an international accord designed to protect women from violence, and urged President Tayyip Erdogan to reconsider.

Erdogan’s government on Saturday (Mar 20) withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, which it signed onto in 2011 after it was forged in Turkey’s biggest city. Turkey said domestic laws, not outside fixes, would protect women’s rights.

The Council of Europe accord pledged to prevent, prosecute and eliminate domestic violence and promote equality. Killings of women have surged in Turkey in recent years and thousands of women protested on Saturday against the government’s move in Istanbul and other cities.

The United States, Germany, France and the European Union responded with dismay – marking the second time in four days that Europe’s leaders have criticised Ankara over rights issues, after a Turkish prosecutor moved to close down a pro-Kurdish political party.

US President Joe Biden said Turkey’s withdrawal from the accord was “deeply disappointing” and a step backward in efforts to end violence against women globally.

“Around the world, we are seeing increases in the number of domestic violence incidents, including reports of rising femicide in Turkey,” Biden said in a statement on Sunday. 

“Countries should be working to strengthen and renew their commitments to ending violence against women, not rejecting international treaties designed to protect women and hold abusers accountable.”

“We cannot but regret deeply and express incomprehension towards the decision of the Turkish government,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said late on Saturday.

It “risks compromising the protection and fundamental rights of women and girls in Turkey (and) sends a dangerous message across the world”, he said. “We therefore cannot but urge Turkey to reverse its decision.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – who spoke with Erdogan a day before Turkey ditched the pact – tweeted on Sunday: “Women deserve a strong legal framework to protect them,” and she called on all signatories to ratify it.

The convention had split Erdogan’s ruling AK Party (AKP) and even his family. Officials floated pulling out last year amid a dispute over how to curb domestic violence in Turkey, where femicide has tripled in 10 years according to one monitoring group.

​​​​​​​

But many conservatives in Turkey and in Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AKP say the pact undermines family structures, encouraging violence. Some are also hostile to its stance against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

“The Istanbul Convention, originally intended to promote women’s rights, was hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalise homosexuality – which is incompatible Turkey’s social and family values. Hence the decision to withdraw,” Turkey’s presidential communications director, Fahrettin Altun, said in a statement.

Paris said Turkey’s withdrawal marked a new regression in respect for human rights, while Berlin said neither culture, religion nor tradition could “serve as an excuse for ignoring violence against women”.

The diplomatic strain comes after Europe and the United States this past week said the move to close down parliament’s third-largest party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), undermined democracy in Turkey.

In their video call on Friday, Erdogan, Von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel discussed a dispute, which has cooled, over offshore resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

An EU summit this week will address relations with Ankara.

Source: Reuters/zl

The Health Ministry reported 1,671 new cases of Covid-19 and four deaths today.

There was a spike of cases in Selangor, Sabah, and Penang.

Selangor reported 652 new cases today, almost double from yesterday and bucking a downtrend in new cases. The increase is partly due to a surge in cases from the Tapak Bina Persiaran Freesia (134) cluster in Kuala Langat.

Meanwhile, Sabah had 102 new cases, the first time the state reported triple digits since March 1. There was an increase in cases from close contact tracing and other forms of screening.

Penang had 328 new cases, the highest in 16 days and the second-highest on record during the third wave. This spike is mostly due to the DTI Juru immigration centre cluster which had 206 new cases.

The number of active cases also went up by 82, the first increase since Feb 24. The previous increase before that was on Feb 10.

• Active cases: 14,442
• Patients in ICUs: 151
• Intubated: 64

Deaths

Two of the deaths today were from Selangor and one each in Kedah and Sabah.

The youngest fatality was 47.

Details of the victims are on Malaysiakini’s Covid-19 tracker page.

Clusters

The Health Ministry is currently tracking 421 active clusters including 53 that recorded new cases today.

Two clusters, DTI Juru and Tapak Bina Periaran Freesia, recorded triple-digit new cases.

There were four new clusters of which details are:

Teluk Air Tawar cluster
District(s): Seberang Perai Utara and Seberang Perai Tengah, Penang
Locality/Source: Teluk Air Tawar, Butterworth, Seberang Perai Utara
Cluster category: Workplace (education centre)
First case: March 12, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 33 out of 335 screened

Perindustrian Pekan Nanas cluster
District(s): Pontian, Johor
Locality/Source: Taman Perindustrian Pekan Nanas
Cluster category: Workplace (factory)
First case: March 20, targeted screening
Total infected: 39 out of 212 screened

Tanjung Genting cluster
District(s): Meradong, Sarawak
Locality/Source: Tanjung Genting
Cluster category: Community
First case: March 13, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 22 out of 66 screened

Pulau Pisang cluster
District(s): Perak Tengah, Perak
Locality/Source: Kampung Pulau Pisang, Bota
Cluster category: Community
First case: March 7, index case with symptoms
Total infected: 15 out of 41 screenedhttps://newslab.malaysiakini.com/covid-19/embed/en/states-chart

Source：Malaysiakini