Top Asian News 4:56 a.m. GMT
SADO, Japan (AP) — Japan held a memorial ceremony on Sunday near the Sado Island Gold Mines despite a last-minute boycott of the event by South Korea that highlighted tensions between the neighbors over the issue of Korean forced laborers at the site before and during World War II. South Korea’s absence at Sunday’s memorial, to which Seoul government officials and Korean victims’ families were invited, is a major setback in the rapidly improving ties between the two countries, which since last year have set aside their historical disputes to prioritize U.S.-led security cooperation. The Sado mines were listed in July as a UNESCO World Heritage site after Japan moved past years of disputes with South Korea and reluctantly acknowledged the mines’ dark history, promising to hold an annual memorial service for all victims, including hundreds of Koreans who were mobilized to work in the mines.
NEW DELHI (AP) — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party headed for a victory Saturday in state elections in politically significant Maharashtra while the opposition won mineral-rich Jharkhand state. Polling in the two states are seen as a test of Modi’s popularity after his party returned to power in June national elections but was forced to form a coalition government with help from regional partners. India’s Election Commission said Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies have already won 183 of 288 seats and were leading in another 48 seats in Maharashtra, India’s wealthiest state and home to the country’s financial and entertainment capital, Mumbai.
VANG VIENG, Laos (AP) — A little town known as a backpacker paradise in northern Laos has come under spotlight for a mass poisoning case that has killed at least six tourists and potentially injured scores of others. News broke earlier this week that two Australian teens became critically ill after a night out drinking in the town of Vang Vieng. They died in Thai hospitals, with one confirmed case of methanol poisoning. A British woman was also confirmed dead. An American and two Danes also died, though their exact causes of death have not been released. A New Zealander has been sickened.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Fighting between armed Sunni and Shiite groups in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 37 people and injured 25 others, a senior police officer from the region said Saturday. The overnight violence was the latest to rock Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and comes days after a deadly gun ambush killed 42 people. Shiite Muslims make up about 15% of the 240 million people in Sunni-majority Pakistan, which has a history of sectarian animosity between the communities. Although the two groups generally live together peacefully, tensions remain, especially in Kurram. The station house police officer in Kurram, Saleem Shah, said armed men in Bagan and Bacha Kot torched shops, houses and government property.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the House of Representatives speaker if she herself is killed, in a brazen public threat that she warned was not a joke. Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin referred the “active threat” against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to an elite presidential guards force “for immediate proper action.” It was not immediately clear what actions would be taken against the vice president. The Presidential Security Command boosted Marcos’ security and said it considered the vice president’s threat, which was “made so brazenly in public,” a national security issue.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan has sealed off the capital, Islamabad, ahead of a planned rally by supporters of imprisoned former premier Imran Khan. It’s the second time in as many months that authorities have imposed such measures to thwart tens of thousands of people from gathering in the city to demand Khan’s release. The rally is planned for Sunday. The latest lockdown coincides with the visit of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to Islamabad on Monday. Local media reported that the Interior Ministry is considering a suspension of mobile phone services in parts of Pakistan in the coming days. On Friday, the National Highways and Motorway Police announced that key routes would close for maintenance.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Myanmar’s desperate military junta is ramping up attacks on villages that have fallen to opposition groups, carrying out beheadings, gang rapes and torture, with women, children and the elderly among the victims, the U.N. independent human rights investigator for Myanmar said in a new report. Thomas Andrews, a former U.S. congressman from Maine, said in the report to the U.N. General Assembly circulated Friday that the junta has responded to military defeats and the loss of territory by using sophisticated weapons against civilians and seeking to destroy towns that it cannot control. Calling Myanmar “an invisible crisis” because the world’s attention is focused elsewhere, he said, “Escalating atrocities against the people of Myanmar are being enabled by governments that allow, or actively support, the transfer of weapons, weapons materials, and jet fuel to junta forces.” Andrews didn’t name the governments.
TOKYO (AP) — Police thought a shoe thief was on the loose at a kindergarten in southwestern Japan, until a security camera caught the furry culprit in action. A weasel with a tiny shoe in its mouth was spotted on the video footage after police installed three cameras in the school in the prefecture of Fukuoka. “It’s great it turned out not to be a human being,” Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada told The Associated Press Sunday. Teachers and parents had feared it could be a disturbed person with a shoe fetish. Japanese customarily take their shoes off before entering homes.
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping developing nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations. The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring.
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — In the wee hours Sunday at the United Nations climate talks, countries from around the world reached an agreement on how rich countries can cough up the funds to support poor countries in the face of climate change. It’s a far-from-perfect arrangement, with many parties still deeply unsatisfied but some hopeful that the deal will be a step in the right direction. World Resources Institute president and CEO Ani Dasgupta called it “an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” but added that the poorest and most vulnerable nations are “rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake.” The summit was supposed to end on Friday evening but negotiations spiraled on through early Sunday.