Here are a few stories from around Asia you may have missed this week.

Pakistan’s newly formed parliament elected Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday as prime minister for a second time, three weeks after national elections returned a hung parliament, where no one party got a clear majority. He was sworn in the next day. Sharif, 72, is the younger brother of three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who leads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party.

The South Korean government announced on Thursday that it would spend 188 billion won ($141 million) from the state health insurance fund for a month to address the medical care gap left by trainee doctors’ collective walkouts, which began three weeks ago. The provision of the funds will start Monday, and the same amount will be spent in the following month if the medical crisis continues. Meanwhile, the health minister said on Monday that authorities will start inspecting hospitals in order to take legal action against trainee doctors who have ignored an ultimatum to end their walkout over government plans to increase medical school admissions. The Korean Herald newspaper reported that "A total of 11,219 junior doctors at 100 training hospitals, or 91 percent of the total, had left their workplaces as of Wednesday, according to the Health Ministry…Also, nurses will be permitted to perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and administer medication to patients starting Friday, as they have been filling the void left by trainee doctors since February 27,”.

The Indian economy's GDP growth in the current fiscal year ending in March could be "very close" to 8 percent, India’s Central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das said in an interview with a television channel on Wednesday. In India, the government's financial year runs from  April 1 to March 31 the following year. Reuters reported that, “India's economy grew at 8.4 percent, its fastest in 18 months, in the last three months of 2023, led by strong manufacturing and construction activity. Following this data, the government revised its growth estimate for the 2024 fiscal year to March 31 to 7.6 percent from 7.3 percent,”

The streets of Vietnam's capital city Hanoi were enveloped in thick smog on Monday which critically reduced visibility due to air pollution caused by high levels of particulates from vehicle emissions and dust from construction. Levels of hazardous small particles known as PM2.5 in the air in Hanoi were at 187 micrograms per cubic meter on Monday, the highest among a list of most polluted international cities, according to data from AirVisual, which provides independent global air pollution information. Nearly 100 flights to and from the international airport in Hanoi were delayed or diverted to other cities last month due to heavy fog and worsening air pollution. A Reuters report said, “According to a 2021 World Bank report, emissions from Hanoi's 8 million vehicles made up 30 percent of air pollution, and industry emissions another 30 percent.

Crowds of South Koreans queued up for hours to say goodbye to giant panda Fu Bao on March 3, the last day of public viewing at the Everland Resort, a theme park in the city of Yongin. Thousands of visitors came to see her, queuing up before sunrise. According to media reports, the last public viewing day saw over 8,000 people visit Everland’s Panda World. The beloved bear was presented with two bamboo dolls and a bouquet packed with flowers, bamboo leaves and carrots. Fu Bao was born in South Korea on July 20, 2020, to mother Hua Ni (Ai Bao) and father Tian Tian (Le Bao) who went to South Korea from China in 2016 on a 15-year lease for a research program. Under the conservation agreement, all pandas born outside of China must be returned before the age of four. Next month, Fu Bao will be transferred to the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Sichuan Province, after spending a month in quarantine.

( Cover: Pakistan's new Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif (second from left) was sworn in at the Presidential Palace in Islamabad, and Pakistani President Arif Alvi (second from right) presided over the ceremony. March 4, 2024. /CFP)