Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Latest Updates

A Canadian woman was arrested and accused of espionage while working as an intern in the operational headquarters of the NATO military alliance, Belgian authorities said Saturday. Belgium's Federal Prosecutor's Office said it launched an espionage investigation after being tipped off by NATO's security services. Authorities then detained "a Canadian citizen of Chinese origin" Friday, a day after raiding the suspect's home and workplace inside NATO's vast operational command center. "She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization," the prosecutors said in a statement. Both Canada and Belgium are members of the 32-nation military alliance that in 2021 labeled China a " security challenge ″ alongside active threats in Russia and the Middle East.

NEW DELHI (AP) - India's "Cockroach" movement called off its weeks of protests on Saturday, saying the government had accepted all of its demands after the country's education minister resigned over alleged exam paper leaks and irregularities in the education system. Dharmendra Pradhan announced his resignation in a post on X, handing a major victory to the youth movement that spearheaded nationwide demonstrations, sit-ins and hunger strikes. His resignation marks the first significant concession by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to one of the most visible waves of public dissent it has faced in recent years. The government has rarely yielded to sustained public pressure during Modi's more than 12 years in office.

HONG KONG (AP) - Typhoon Noul is bringing winds and heavy rain to southern China, including Hong Kong, over the weekend, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people in the province of Guangdong with the region on high alert and at least dozens of flights canceled. Hong Kong's Observatory said Noul, which had intensified with maximum sustained winds of 145 kph (90 mph) near its center, was moving on Saturday across the South China Sea and edging closer toward the coast of Guangdong. The city's observatory forecasts Noul could make landfall Sunday morning around the vicinity of the southern Chinese cities of Huizhou and Shanwei and then move inland, bringing strong winds and squally showers to parts of the region.

NEW DELHI (AP) - India's young protesters are mocking their government. And the jokes are landing. As thousands of demonstrators take to the streets in the Indian capital, they are waging a parallel campaign online, flooding social media with memes, parody videos and self-deprecating jokes. In doing so, they are also beating Narendra Modi - the powerful but image-conscious prime minister - at his own game. Modi built his political brand through social media. Now protesters are using that same platform to mock his administration, ridicule pro-government television news coverage, transform confrontation with police into viral content and seize control of the online narrative.

ICHIKAWA, Japan (AP) - Punch, the orphaned monkey at a Japanese zoo that stole many people's hearts by clinging to an orangutan plushie, is marking his first birthday with a flood of well-wishing messages from his fans around the world - even though he now has friends and is no longer holding on to the toy. ____ This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, an ornate 13th-century Buddhist temple in Thailand and tidal flats in western South Korea were among several sites added to the World Heritage List on Saturday at a U.N. committee meeting in South Korea. The UNESCO meetings in Busan, which continue through next Wednesday, are reviewing dozens of other nominations, including the D-Day landing beaches in France, Mount Olympus in Greece and the ancient Japanese capitals of Asuka-Fujiwara. The Okefenokee Swamp is regarded as one of the world's largest freshwater ecosystems, encompassing a vast network of wetlands that supports exceptional biodiversity and serves as the source of two major rivers.

BEIJING (AP) - China said on Saturday it had imposed penalties of nearly 5.2 billion yuan ($765 million) on Trip.com Group, which operates the country's largest online travel platform, over claims of monopolistic conduct. Trip.com, which runs Ctrip and Skyscanner among other brands, was said to be restricting market competition through means such as entering into exclusive partnerships with some hotels and offering prioritized traffic allocation to them, China's State Administration for Market Regulation said in a statement. It prohibited some hotels from collaborating with competing platforms, the regulator added, and had also demanded some hotel operators who were operating on multiple platforms to ensure the rates for their platform were the lowest available online.

ICHIKAWA, Japan (AP) - Punch, the orphaned monkey at a Japanese zoo that stole many people's hearts by clinging to an orangutan plushie, is marking his first birthday with a flood of well-wishing messages from his fans around the world - even though he now has friends and is no longer holding on to the toy. Punch was abandoned by his mother after his birth a year ago Sunday, presumably because of exhaustion. Zookeepers nursed him and gave him the toy to develop his gripping ability, something newborn macaques need to survive. Punch is no longer a plump baby with the plushie and he's hard to distinguish from other monkeys as he mingles and plays with them at an enclosure at the Ichikawa City Zoological and Botanical Garden.

KUMAGAYA, Japan (AP) - The humble blackboard is serving as the canvas, and colorful chalk the paint, for young Japanese artists. "Kokuban Art Koshien " is an annual national chalk art championship for high school students. Combining the word for "blackboard" ("kokuban") and the famous stadium where high school baseball is contested, the contest attracts artworks, all drawn on blackboards, usually over summer break, from about 300 high schools and junior high schools. Each work - many dazzling in their artistry and often dreamlike themes - is a collaborative endeavor bringing together anywhere from one or two youngsters to dozens, all delivering a lesson in creativity and teamwork.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ezra Jin Mingri was inside a detention center in southern China on the morning of July 3, worrying that he would likely spend at least 15 years behind bars. The 57-year-old Chinese Christian pastor had even previously wondered whether he would live to see freedom again. In the span of 24 hours, Jin was 15 time zones away, digging into an In-N-Out hamburger in Los Angeles and watching fireworks with his family on the eve of Independence Day, marking America's 250th anniversary. "It's so dramatic. It's unimaginable," the pastor told The Associated Press outside the nation's capital. He said he was suddenly released after being held since October, then put on a plane to the U.S.