PETALING JAYA, Malaysia, June 18, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Eostre Berhad, a majority-owned subsidiary of Toga Limited (OTC: TOGL), has been officially appointed by China’s Shenzhen Shengquan Biotechnology Co., Ltd., as its exclusive worldwide distributor for its product, the “H2O Energy Bottle”.
Eostre is now tasked with developing a world-wide market for the “H2O energy bottles”.
“We are pleased to establish this collaboration between Shenzhen Shengquan Biotechnology and Eostre. This collaboration will further grow Eostre’s product range and customer base globally,” said Eostre Berhad General Manager, Ms. Low Kah Fong.
“We anticipate both companies will jointly expand the awareness and demand for the H2O energy bottle. This is also seen as being in line with Eostre’s vision of becoming an international brand with world-leading innovative healthcare products” said Ms Low.
Contact:
Alexander D. Henderson
TOGA LIMITED, 515 S. Flower Street, 18th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90071
(949) 333-1603 info@togalimited.com
Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical fact (including, but not limited to, statements to the effect that Toga Limited or its management (the “Company”) “anticipates,” “plans,” “estimates,” “expects,” or “believes,” or the negative of these terms and other similar expressions) should be considered forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Company’s guidance, outlook, growth, opportunities and long-term strategy. These statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations as of the date of this release. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks associated with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; the Company’s ability to execute on its long-term strategy; the Company’s ability to successfully compete in its intensely competitive industry; the Company’s ability to manage its growth; the Company’s ability to maintain or improve its operating margins; the Company’s ability to identify and react to trends in consumer preferences; product supply disruptions; general economic conditions; accounting standard changes; and other factors as set forth from time to time in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including, without limitation, the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. The Company intends these forward-looking statements to speak only as of the time of this Press Release and does not undertake to update or revise them as more information becomes available, except as required by law.
Twenty-five men found dead last week at a bridge building site near Myanmar’s border with Thailand were spies for the military junta, not construction workers as claimed by authorities, a Karen rebel group spokesman said Friday while the political wing of the ethnic group said it would investigate the case.
The Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), an armed group under the Karen National Union (KNU), detained 47 people, including women and children, who were working on a bridge construction site in eastern Kayan state, near the border with Thailand, on May 31, an official military newspaper reported Monday.
According to the military-run Myawaddy newspaper, 22 of the group, including six women and 10 children, were released on June 1 and 9, while the bodies of the 25 remaining captives were found near the Uhu Chaung Bridge on June 11 and 12. One body was burned and six of the men had their hands tied behind their backs, the report said.
A KNDO spokesman released a video Friday saying the slain men were not ordinary construction workers, but military intelligence officers who came to collect evidence of Myanmar youths undergoing military training in KNU territory. Thousands of citizens opposed to the junta that overthrew the government on Feb. 1 have fled to rebel territories on Myanmar’s periphery to receive military training.
“We have a lot of evidence, together with photos, that the group that came to build the bridge near Kanelay village was a military intelligence group. We also have videos,” said the spokesman in the video.
“If we didn’t take action against the military agents, all the information about the young Generation Z people and the urban youth who had come to us for training would be exposed. We had to detain these agents to protect the young people,” said the spokesman.
The Irrawaddy, an independent online news outlet, quoted the spokesman for the KNDO chief of staff Major General Nerdah Bo Mya as saying the slain men wore military dress and were from infantry and engineering units.
“We shot some of them dead. But some were killed in shelling by the military,” spokesman Saw Wah Nay Nu was quoted as saying.
“They were not road workers. They had military uniforms and badges. They had military equipment. We seized it all,” he told The Irrawaddy.
“They sent drones every night for a month. We said we could not accept that. But they continued and we have had to do what we are supposed to do as we are fighting a war. It was because they didn’t listen to us,” added Saw Wah Nay Nu
“They always want to carry out area clearance operations. In fact, they have killed a lot of people. They (the victims) belonged to the engineering unit,” said the KNDO spokesman.
The junta’s Southeast Military Command sent a letter to KNU on June 13 urging an investigation and the announced on June 16 that it would investigate the matter, reported the local KIC Karen News outfit.
Padoh Saw Taw Ni, KNU’s foreign affairs officer, told RFA that in cases when innocent civilians are killed, KNU follows international and local laws.
“I do not know the details yet. As the statement says, we follow the Geneva Conventions because we work with international organizations,” he said.
Aung Myo Min, human rights minister for the National Unity Government and a longtime human rights activist, says the killing of detainees without a fair trial is unacceptable.
“From a human rights point of view, even if it was during a war, killing without trial is completely unacceptable to us. Civilians should not be killed at all,” he said.
“Inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment for a person is absolutely unacceptable in the eyes of any human rights group,” added Aung Myo Min.
According to The Irrawaddy, heavy clashes between the KNDO and junta troops in the area of the killings from May 31 to the first week of June had driven more than 200 villagers to flee to Thailand.
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Paul Eckert.
Six bombs exploded in three different locations in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon today, including at the headquarters of a political party backed by the country’s military, witnesses told RFA.
A Yangon rescue official told Reuters that two of the bombs killed two people and injured five others.
Bomb attacks have occurred frequently as people across Myanmar continue to resist the military junta that deposed the country’s democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party on Feb. 1, citing unsupported election fraud claims.
Anti-junta forces have attacked targets associated with the military in what the junta describes as acts of terrorism by those aligned with the NLD.
One of the six blasts in Yangon Friday occurred near a bus stop in front of the offices of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), an army proxy party that fared badly in 2020 elections and supported the coup, witnesses said.
Witnesses told RFA’s Myanmar Service that a car bomb exploded near a military vehicle parked in front of the office, in Yangon’s Tamwe township.
“It was very loud. I was near my sisters, and even the houses shook a little. We found out that some people were injured. I also heard the sound of ambulances,” a woman living nearby, who declined to be named, told RFA.
Several other Tamwe residents told RFA that the military vehicle had been parked near the bus stop in front of the USDP offices since June 14, during an anti-junta protest by youth on the occasion of Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara’s birth anniversary.
The residents said they had seen at least 10 soldiers on board the military vehicle previously, but they did not know if there were any soldiers on it during the bombing.
They said they believed that there were casualties because ambulances arrived at the scene.
RFA is still investigating whether anyone was injured in the blast.
Two other bombs went off on a nearby Yangon street on Friday, injuring two civilians, according to residents.
The Reuters report said that according to Win Thu, vice chairman of the Yangon Rescue Committee, the first of the two explosions killed a soldier and the second killed a passenger riding in a taxi. The explosions also injured five members of the security forces and the taxi driver.
Another Yangon resident told RFA that four more bombs exploded near the town hall in Hlaing Thayar township in the western part of the city.
Junta statement denied
In the country’s central Magway region, people who witnessed the burning of Kin Ma village on Tuesday told RFA that the junta misrepresented events in statements and a video it had released.
RFA reported Wednesday that four elderly villagers were killed when a fire tore through Kin Ma, destroying about 250 houses and sending 1,000 people fleeing to safety in nearby mountains.
According to a statement by the junta on Wednesday, security forces patrolling the village were ambushed by gunmen who had taken a position inside the houses, and it was the gunmen who started the fire as they fled.
Junta-controlled TV said troops were trying to clear “terrorists” from Kin Ma and found the village burning. The report said troops helped extinguish the fire.
On Thursday, the junta said that reports that conflicted with their version of events were untrue. They blamed a local people’s defense force (PDF), one the many fighting forces that have sprung up across Myanmar to fight junta troops after the coup, for starting the fire at the house of USDP member Kyaw Htay.
Witnesses told RFA that the junta’s statement was false.
“There’s a school in the eastern part of the village. The fire started in the house behind the school. It was not a USDP member’s house. She is one of my neighbors and I knew her,” a Kin Ma resident who lived near the house told RFA.
“Before you reach the eastern part of the village, there is a little creek, and the soldiers first had a shootout there with the local PDF. There was a lot of gunfire and the soldiers set fire to a small hut nearby,” she said.
The witness said that when the PDF retreated, the junta soldiers entered the village.
“After they entered the village, they were cursing and challenging the PDF members to fight. The PDF leader was near the school and another shootout broke out. He was no match for them because they were so many. After that they set fire to the first house they came upon,” she said.
This file photo shows the aftermath of the burning of Kin Ma village, Magway region, Myanmar. Credit: RFA
Another resident said many others witnessed the military torching houses.
“The video we saw did not show that the villagers set fire to their own village. We don’t have electricity or phone lines in Kin Ma, but the video put out by the junta clearly shows lampposts and electric wires,” the second Kin Ma resident said.
“The military never dares to speak the truth. They never tell the truth. We have many eyewitness accounts of their arson attack,” said the second resident.
It was not immediately clear to RFA which video the second villager was referring to.
The day after the fire, the villagers returned to their burnt houses in the village and cleared the debris and then fled again when soldiers came back, the witnesses said.
Another Kin Ma resident told RFA Friday that people there are now homeless and in need of shelter and medical assistance.
“The problem is getting food, clothes and medicine. It’s because this village is almost completely destroyed. A few have returned but they… are still very scared. There are currently not many people living in the village,” the third villager said.
The junta has said that NLD party members, extremists and some of the members of the media have deliberately accused security forces of setting the fire in an attempt to mislead the public and the international community.
RFA was unable to reach the junta’s Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment.
The parallel National Unity Government (NUG) said Thursday that the incident showed that the military’s leader Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and the armed forces under his command are unwilling to comply with international calls to stop violence.
The U.S. embassy in Yangon Thursday condemned the burning of Kin Ma on Twitter Thursday.
“These horrific acts are consistent w/ past atrocities committed against ppl of all ethnicities & religions. The military cont to demonstrate a complete disregard for human life,” the embassy said.
Two dozen die in detention
Data compiled by RFA and by the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) show that since the Feb. 1 coup, 24 people have died while in custody of the junta forces, who continue to arrest NLD members, their supporters, and civilians.
The latest two victims are Chit Ko and Sein Win from Kun Site village in the central Mandalay region’s Myingyan township, whose bodies were discovered Wednesday near the village. Sources said the police and the military took the bodies away.
The two men were tortured to death during interrogations, the AAPP said in its daily coup briefing on Friday.
The two were part of a group of 38 betel growers arrested and detained at the Myingyan No. 2 police station on Tuesday after two unidentified men in Kun Site stabbed the township’s former USDP chairman Myint Kyaw.
A resident of Myingyan who declined to be named for security reasons told RFA that the police did not return the bodies to the community.
“The village abbot went to ask for the dead bodies. Police said the bodies had already been buried,” said the Myingyan resident.
“The others arrested along with Win Sein and Chit Ko said they did not know what happened because the two were not killed in front of them. I want the world to know about the unlawful arrests and inhumane torture of the military,” the Myingyan resident said.
Another resident who declined to be named told RFA that the stabbers remain at large.
“The guilty people admitted what they did and ran away. Chit Ko and Win Sein were taken to the police station for interrogation. The bodies can now be confirmed as theirs, but the bodies were not given back. The army has taken them away,” the second Myingyan villager said.
Myint Kyaw, the USDP member who was stabbed, is currently undergoing treatment at Mandalay hospital, residents said. Chit Ko was the son of the village NLD party chairman. Sources said his father went into hiding as the troops are currently stationed in the village.
“The actions of the military are not acceptable under both domestic and international law. The killing of innocent people should no longer be tolerated by the international community,” an AAPP member told RFA.
“The junta has openly committed crimes against humanity and war crimes. The international community as well as the people should make efforts to bring the military regime to justice.”
Chit Ko and Sein Win are the latest of seven people who died at interrogation centers within a day of their arrest since Feb. 1.
Aung Myo Min, the NUG’s human rights minister, said that torture violated international human rights.
“No one should ever be tortured… Unlawful persecution and torture to the point of death are unacceptable. If there is a violation, the perpetrator has to be prosecuted accordingly as a deterrent so that such incidents can be prevented from happening again,” said the minister.
As of Friday 870 people have been killed and 4,983 have been arrested and are still detained since Feb. 1, according to AAPP figures.
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun and Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
The U.N. General Assembly on Friday adopted a resolution calling on Myanmar’s military to restore democratic rule, and urging member states to “prevent the flow of arms” to the country, where security forces have killed more than 800 people – mostly protesters – since a Feb. 1 coup.
Four of 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand – abstained from the vote, again showing divisions within the bloc on how to deal with the Burmese junta that overthrew an elected government on Feb. 1.
The resolution “calls upon the Myanmar armed forces to respect the will of the people as freely expressed by the results of the general election of 8 November 2020, to end the state of emergency, to respect all human rights of all the people of Myanmar and to allow the sustained democratic transition of Myanmar.”
It also called for the release of President Win Myint, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, and “all those who have been arbitrarily detained, charged or arrested” – some 4,880 people, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
Myanmar’s U.N. ambassador, who speaks for the civilian shadow government, said the resolution “falls short of our expectations” because it “did not include the imposition of an arms embargo” on the country, where the military ousted an elected government on Feb. 1.
A total of 119 countries voted in favor of the resolution. Thirty-six U.N. member-states abstained, and 37 were not present for the vote. Belarus was the only country that voted no.
China abstained from the vote, saying it opposes country-specific resolutions, and Russia also abstained, saying the resolution would not contribute to resolving the crisis in Myanmar.
Myanmar’s Kyaw Moe Tun said he was disappointed that “it took three months to adopt this watered-down resolution.”
Still, Myanmar’s civilian representative “voted yes because it will to some extent put pressure on the military to stop inhumane acts in Myanmar.”
‘Risk of large-scale civil war’ in Myanmar
A vote on the resolution, which was introduced by Liechtenstein, was postponed last month, as the U.N body tried to garner more support for it, especially from ASEAN, which wanted the arms embargo clause dropped from the draft.
A revised version was adopted on Friday.
The resolution urges U.N. member-states “to prevent the flow of arms into Myanmar” in accordance with a Security Council resolution from July 2020 calling for a global ceasefire and de-escalation of violence amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The adoption of the resolution is a significant step, because it “send[s] a message that there can be no business as usual with a military junta that murders its own people,” said Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, via Twitter.
Meanwhile, U.N. Special Envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener told the assembly that “the opportunity to reverse the military takeover [in Myanmar] is narrowing.”
She was speaking after the vote on the resolution, to brief the assembly about her weeks-long trip to Southeast Asia in the wake of the Myanmar coup. She was not allowed into Myanmar, but observed the situation mostly from neighboring Thailand.
She said “the risk of a large-scale civil war is real” and warned that half the country’s population could sink into poverty by 2022 if the violence continued.
4 ASEAN member-states abstain from vote
The resolution said ASEAN had a central role to play in engaging with Myanmar and facilitating a peaceful solution “in the interest of the people of Myanmar and their livelihoods.”
Still, ASEAN member-states Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand abstained from the vote, showing how divided the regional bloc is.
The U.N. body in it resolution also called on Myanmar to “swiftly implement” the five-point consensus ASEAN hammered out with the Burmese junta chief on April 24.
But ASEAN has made no progress on any of the five points, one of which was the appointment of a special envoy to Myanmar and a visit by an ASEAN delegation to the crisis-ridden country, headed by that envoy.
Aung Thu Nyein, director of the Yangon-based Institute of Strategy and Policy Myanmar, said that ASEAN member states don’t have a unified position on Myanmar issues, “given the fact that most [of its member-] states are not even democratic states.”
Still, the regional bloc can play a part, Aung Thu Nyein told Radio Free Asia (RFA), a sister entity of BenarNews.
“I think ASEAN still has a central role in handling the Myanmar crisis. Many countries support ASEAN’s five-point consensus,” Aung Thu Nyein told RFA.
“I think the ASEAN way is not adequate but as many countries are now supporting the five-point consensus … we should stick to that path.”
Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
SYDNEY – Researchers in Australia are starting clinical trials of a new type of COVID-19 vaccine — a nasal spray. Scientists at Brisbane’s Nucleus Network believe that the treatment could be more effective against the virus than the AstraZeneca and Pfizer drugs and that it would allow patients who are afraid of needles to be inoculated.
Despite concerted public health campaigns, the vaccination program in Australia has been slow compared with those of other countries. There have been supply problems, complaints about poor planning by the government and, with the country’s relatively low level of coronavirus cases, complacency and hesitancy in the community.
Australia is accelerating its inoculation rollout. In the future, vaccines could be administered more easily — as a nasal spray designed to “attack the virus” as it enters the body.
Dr. Paul Griffin, medical director at the Nucleus Network, a research organization that’s beginning trials of the nasal therapy, said that while other drugs mostly protect against developing severe symptoms of COVID-19, this one aims to reduce the risk of infection.
“The main benefit is, when we give the vaccine via the same route that the pathogen or the virus gets in through, then hopefully the response will be more adept at actually stopping the virus getting in,” he said. “So, we will get a response that is particularly active at that site, which will hopefully mean that people are much less likely to get infected, which is something that we really want to see with vaccines for this virus.”
An independent ethics committee has approved the Australian trial. Researchers say the nasal spray could be available in a year or two.
Two COVID-19 vaccines — AstraZeneca and Pfizer — are currently approved for use in Australia. This week, health authorities said the AstraZeneca drug would now be recommended for use in people 60 and older, after they received new advice from the country’s vaccine experts about the risk of rare blood clots.
The government plans to vaccinate every Australian who wants to be inoculated by the end of 2021. Australia has recorded about 30,000 coronavirus cases. More than 900 people have died.
BANGKOK – Thailand has begun human trials with two of four homegrown vaccine candidates local scientists are developing against COVID-19, as the country scrambles to secure shots from abroad amid its worst wave of infections since the pandemic began.
The homegrown vaccines will not be ready for mass production in time to help Thailand fight off the latest wave. Officials and developers are hoping, though, that they will arrive in time to give Thailand — and maybe its neighbors — booster shots tailored to the main variants of the novel coronavirus by next year.
“The vaccine will be against the variants like the South African variant and the Indian variant and others, so that will be our strategy,” said Kiat Ruxrungtham, who is spearheading development of one of the most anticipated candidates at Chulalongkorn University’s Vaccine Research Center in Bangkok.
A shot in the arm
For now, Thailand is relying on a mix of vaccines from foreign drugmakers to reach herd immunity by the end of the year.
Having kept infection rates low through 2020 with tight border controls and strict social distancing, Thailand secured relatively few doses early in the pandemic. It bought a few million shots from China’s Sinovac for the most vulnerable and struck a deal with AstraZeneca that lets local drugmaker SiamBioscience manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine in the country.
Then came the third wave in April, sending death and infection rates to record highs, and authorities on a vaccine shopping spree, striking deals with Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Sinopharm. The government says it has now locked in 105.5 million doses, enough to cover over 70% of Thailand’s 69 million people, and is looking for more.
Thai authorities and developers, though, still see a crucial role for the homegrown vaccines.
Tanarak Plipat, deputy director-general of disease control at the Public Health Ministry, said the new vaccines will help keep Thailand safe once the effects of the first full round of doses start wearing off.
“There [is] growing evidence that very soon we may need the booster dose of the vaccine, I mean the third or the fourth or the fifth. We don’t exactly know about that, and we don’t know how frequent we need to boost the antibodies,” he said.
“So in the long run, I think we are going to need a constant supply,” he said.
He said some of the vaccines Thailand is developing may also prove better at fending off infection from some of the more contagious variants sweeping the globe. The alpha variant, first identified in Britain, is already the dominant strain in Thailand. The Health Ministry’s medical sciences department recently warned that the even more contagious delta variant, first found in India, could soon take over.
Self-reliance
Tanarak said the difficulties most countries have had securing not just vaccines, but masks and ventilators as well, have taught Thailand that it still needs to try to rely on itself for what it needs when it needs it.
“To secure [the] health for our people, we need to be able to rely on ourselves in the time of [the] pandemic,” he said. “No matter how much money you have, we are not going to get the most important supplies of medical device or medicine or vaccines if you are not being able to produce it yourself.”
If all goes well, he said Thai laboratories could be producing tens of millions of doses of the country’s own COVID-19 vaccines by around the middle of next year.
The Government Pharmaceutical Organization, a state drugmaker, started Phase 1 human trials in March of its candidate using an inactive Newcastle disease virus, which mainly infects birds, and has moved on to Phase 2 with more volunteers.
Chulalongkorn’s Vaccine Research Center started Phase 1 human trials on Monday with what could be the first vaccine against COVID-19 developed in Southeast Asia using messenger RNA, the same technique pioneered by U.S. drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna.
BioNet-Asia, an established local drugmaker, and Baiya Phytopharm, a startup, have yet to begin human trials with their own vaccine candidates.
The Vaccine Research Center had been hoping to start human trials in late 2020. Instead, it says, it had to wait for slots to open at the U.S. labs making their vaccine for the trials, and that government funding — while generous — took longer to arrive than expected.
With human trials of their first-generation vaccine now under way, Kiat and his team are already making plans to do the same in a few months with a second-generation candidate targeting the virus’s variants, a relatively simpler feat with the mRNA technique than with others.
“The same technology, the same formulation, you just change the [gene] sequence,” he said. “If you have more data [from] the first generation, you can use that data to support your second generation. So, second generation we don’t have to [try] too many doses because we learn from the first generation what dose will be the best.”
In the neighborhood
If and when approved, Kiat said BioNet-Asia was lined up to start making 50 million to 80 million shots per year.
Beyond targeting the dominant global variants of the novel coronavirus, mastering the mRNA technique could also let Thailand quickly tailor vaccines to strains, or combinations of strains, specific to the region or the country, said Lorenz von Seidlein, a vaccine expert at Thailand’s Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.
“So, if there’s a combination of strains which is particular to Thailand, there would be probably a niche then for them to say, this new variant — which we don’t know yet but may pop up next year — we quickly can address this in combination with the variants that were here before,” he said.
The benefits could spill over to Thailand’s neighbors, some of which are also battling their worst waves of infection since the start of the pandemic, including Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Kiat said a few other Southeast Asian countries have expressed interest in joining late-stage Phase 2 human trials of his team’s vaccines if the results from Phase 1 are promising. He said they were especially interested in the second-generation vaccines they are working on and may consider placing orders.
“Our intention is that if we have efficient production and good-quality vaccine … we should be able to supply neighborhood countries either through COVAX or whatever,” he said, referring to an international plan for supplying poorer countries with free or subsidized COVID-19 shots.
