A member of a council that advises Iran's supreme leader died on Monday after falling sick from the new coronavirus, state radio reported, becoming the first top official to succumb to the illness that is affecting members of the Islamic Republic's leadership.

South Korea reported nearly 500 new coronavirus cases Monday, sending the largest national total in the world outside China past 4,000.

China has reported 42 new fatalities from the novel coronavirus outbreak, taking the death toll in the country to 2,912, Chinese health officials said on Monday, as the rapid spread of the epidemic wreaks havoc globally causing over 3,000 deaths and infecting more than 88,000 people.

Afghanistan's president on Sunday said he will not free thousands of Taliban prisoners ahead of all-Afghan power-sharing talks set for next week, publicly disagreeing with a timetable for a speedy prisoner release laid out just a day earlier in a US-Taliban peace agreement.

A moderate intensity earthquake of magnitude 3.2 shook Himachal Pradesh's capital Shimla on Sunday morning, the Meteorological Department said.

Iran's health ministry raised on Sunday the nationwide death toll from the new coronavirus to 54 as the number of infected cases jumped overnight to 978 people.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani pushed back Sunday against a key component of the US-Taliban deal signed a day earlier, saying he had not committed to releasing any insurgent prisoners.

A former interior minister was sworn in as Malaysia's premier on Sunday, marking the return of a scandal-mired regime to power after the last government's collapse but ex-leader Mahathir Mohamad slammed the move as illegal.