Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Latest Updates

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - A suicide bomber targeted protesters at an antimilitant rally in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing at least 14 people, mostly civilians and police officers, and wounding more than two dozen others, officials said. The attack happened in Kabal, a town in Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where demonstrators had gathered near a police station, chanting antimilitant slogans and demanding peace, district police chief Omar Khan said. According to witnesses, shortly before the attack, speakers at the rally said that ensuring security and eliminating militancy were the state's responsibility. They also accused authorities of failing to act decisively against militants, saying residents wanted to live without fear after years of violence that devastated the region.

SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) - An Indonesian ferry carrying 271 people caught fire in waters off the main island of Java on Sunday, leaving at least five people dead and dozens missing as rescuers and passing vessels evacuated hundreds from the burning ship, officials said. The Mutiara Sentosa 2 ferry was traveling from Indonesia's second-largest city of Surabaya in East Java to the city of Makassar in South Sulawesi, with 232 passengers and 39 crew members, when the fire broke out between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. in waters off Sumenep regency, according to Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, or Basarnas.

ISLAMABAD (AP) - The remains of renowned British-Nepali climber Nirmal Purja and three other climbers have been found by a ground team on Broad Peak, one of the world's highest mountains, where a 10-member international expedition was swept away by an avalanche, officials said Sunday. The Alpine Club of Pakistan identified the recovered climbers as Purja, Wang Zhong, Nima Sherpa and Kili Pemba Sherpa. The club praised military and civilian rescuers and volunteers involved in the recovery effort. On Friday, rescuers located four other bodies but were able to recover only three - Omani Nathira Ahmed, American Mallory Geis and Nepalese Bahadur Gurung - because harsh weather grounded search-and-rescue helicopters.

TOKYO (AP) - An elderly woman who developed heat stroke while taking shelter in a car is the latest fatality from a powerful earthquake that struck Japan's southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto last week, officials said Sunday as concerns over heat-related illnesses grow in an area that is also suffering extreme temperatures. The woman in her 70s with apparent heat stroke was found in a car, Kumamoto officials said, as they raised the death toll from the quake to 36. The magnitude 7.1 hit Kumamoto Prefecture on Japan's southern main island of Kyushu on Tuesday. This latest death was what officials and experts had worried about amid high temperatures.

BEIJING (AP) - China conducted military drills near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Saturday as territorial tensions with the Philippines intensify. The joint naval and air drills near the shoal, which is known as Huangyan Island in China and Panatag Shoal in the Philippines, tested the army's ability to coordinate air and sea operations and provide rapid reinforcements, according to state broadcaster CCTV. The drills came after Beijing criticized Manila's attempts to extend its seabed rights in the South China Sea, a vital global trade route with rich undersea deposits of gas and oil that China claims almost in its entirety.

YATSUSHIRO, Japan (AP) - Thousands of survivors of a powerful earthquake in southwestern Japan spent Friday in crowded shelters or sleeping in cars as they faced shortages of water and fuel and punishing summer temperatures that stoked fears of heat-related illness. The death toll rose to 34, the Kumamoto prefectural government said, as rescuers raced to find those still missing after the quake triggered a mall explosion, toppled a factory chimney and flattened homes. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stressed that authorities must secure water supplies by doing "whatever it takes" and called for close coordination with the military and other relevant agencies.

ISLAMABAD (AP) - Pakistan's military on Friday rejected as "baseless" a recent U.N. report that said Pakistani cross-border military operations killed nearly 500 civilians and wounded over 1,000 in neighboring Afghanistan between October and June. At a televised news conference, military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif Chaudhry said Pakistan had targeted only hideouts and infrastructure used by the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, during that period, and said those killed in the strikes were militants. He said the operations were carried out in self-defense to protect the lives of people in Pakistan. Chaudhry questioned recently released reports by the U.N.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - A Sri Lankan court on Friday sentenced a former police chief and a former top Defense Ministry official to death after finding them guilty of criminal negligence that allowed Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks on Easter Sunday in 2019, which killed more than 260 people. A death penalty in Sri Lanka typically means life in prison because the country has had a moratorium on executions since 1976. Current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake supports maintaining the moratorium. Former Police Chief Pujith Jayasundara and former Defense Ministry Secretary Hemasiri Fernando were convicted and sentenced Friday by the three-member High Court bench.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesian authorities said Friday they have arrested a Malaysia Airlines pilot accused of smuggling of more than 26 kilograms (57 pounds) of ecstasy and a package of methamphetamine shortly after he landed in Jakarta 's international airport. The 39-year-old Malaysian national, identified only by his initial, MS, was also allegedly on duty while under the influence of narcotics, said Eko Hadi Santoso, director of narcotics crimes at the National Police Criminal Investigation Agency. The case was uncovered late Tuesday when customs officers inspecting baggage at the international arrival's terminal of Soekarno-Hatta Airport noticed a suspicious suitcase during an X-ray screening.

PERTH, Australia (AP) - An Australian jury convicted the British social media celebrity and rapper Yung Filly on Friday of assaulting a fan following a music performance two years ago, but did not find him guilty of allegations that he raped and choked her. The 30-year-old entertainer, whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, wept after the verdicts were delivered in the District Court of Western Australia state in Perth. He had pleaded not guilty to six charges of rape, three charges of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of choking in a Perth hotel room in September 2024.