Asian stock markets slumped Tuesday as a SARS-like virus taking hold in China spooked investors, while sentiment suffered a knock also from a credit-ratings downgrade to major financial hub Hong Kong, analysts said.

Asia stepped up its defences Tuesday against a new SARS-like virus, introducing mandatory screenings at airports of arrivals from high-risk areas of China as authorities move to head off a billowing regional health crisis.

China reported Monday a sharp rise in the number of people infected with a new coronavirus, including the first cases in the capital. The outbreak coincides with the country's busiest travel period, as millions board trains and planes for the Lunar New Year holidays.

Health authorities in the central city of Wuhan, where the viral pneumonia appears to have originated, said an additional 136 cases have been confirmed in the city, which now has a total of 198 infected patients. As of the weekend, a third patient had died, bringing the death toll to three.

A South Carolina woman was Thursday sentenced to 25 years in jail after she admitted poisoning her husband by putting eye drops in his drinking water.

A second person has died in China from a mysterious SARS-linked virus that has stricken dozens and appeared in two other Asian countries, officials said.

Sepsis played a direct role in the deaths of 11 million people in 2017, almost twice as many as previously estimated, according to a study published Thursday.

Sex toys are for relaxation. For education. For healing after childbirth. For long-term or long-distance relationships. For women's emancipation. 

A computer programme can identify breast cancer from routine scans with greater accuracy than human experts, researchers said in what they hoped could prove a breakthrough in the fight against the global killer. 

China is investigating an outbreak of atypical pneumonia that is suspected of being linked to SARS, the flu-like virus that killed hundreds of people a decade ago, state media reported Tuesday.

A team of experts from the National Health Commission were dispatched Tuesday to Wuhan, in central China's Hubei province, and are "currently conducting relevant inspection and verification work," state broadcaster CCTV reported.

On a Baltic Sea island once used by the Nazis for biological weapon research, German scientists are developing virus vaccines that could save lives.