Top Asian News 3:33 a.m. GMT

Biden tells Quad leaders that Beijing is testing region at turbulent moment for Chinese economy

CLAYMONT, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden told Indo-Pacific allies on Saturday that he believes China’s increasing military assertiveness is an effort to test the region at a turbulent moment for Beijing. Biden’s comments were caught by a hot mic after he and fellow leaders of the so-called Quad delivered opening remarks before the press at a summit he’s hosting near his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. He said his administration sees Beijing’s actions as a “change in tactic, not a change in strategy.” China is struggling to pull up its economy that was pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic and has seen an extended slowdown in industrial activity and real estate prices as Beijing faces pressure to ramp up spending to stimulate demand.

Vote count underway in Sri Lanka’s presidential election after years of turmoil

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Voting ended in Sri Lanka’s presidential election Saturday as the country seeks to recover from the worst economic crisis in its history and the resulting political upheaval. The election, contested by 38 candidates, was largely a three-way race among incumbent liberal President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Marxist-leaning lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa. There were no major incidents reported during the vote but authorities declared a countrywide curfew until Sunday morning as a precaution, police said. There are 17 million eligible voters, and final results are expected Sunday. They will show whether Sri Lankans approve of Wickremesinghe’s leadership of a fragile recovery, including restructuring Sri Lanka’s debt under an International Monetary Fund bailout program after it defaulted in 2022.

Sri Lanka has more women voters than men but no female presidential candidates

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Women make up more than half of the voters in Sri Lanka, but not a single one will be on the ballot in Saturday’s presidential election. The island nation of more than 22 million people is voting for a president to take its economy forward after it went through an unprecedented financial crisis two years ago that led to the ouster of its head of government. The election will allow more than 17 million eligible voters to choose from a record 38 candidates. But women — who account for nearly 9 million voters — will have no gender representation.

A New Zealand pilot is freed after 19 months in rebel captivity in Indonesia’s Papua region

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A New Zealand pilot held hostage for more than a year in the restive Papua region of Indonesia was freed Saturday by separatist rebels. Phillip Mark Mehrtens, a 38-year-old pilot from Christchurch, was working for Indonesian aviation company Susi Air when he was abducted by rebels from a remote airport on Feb. 7, 2023. “Today I finally got out. I am so happy to be back home with my family soon,” Mehrtens told reporters in a news conference in the mining town of Timika. “Thank you to everyone who helped me get out safety and healthy.” Television news earlier showed an emaciated, long-haired Mehrtens, wearing a dark-green shirt and black shorts, sitting in a room surrounded by police officers and local officials.

Rescue workers search for at least 6 people missing after heavy rain pounds Japan’s Noto region

TOKYO (AP) — Rescue workers searched for at least six people missing Sunday after heavy rain pounded Japan’s northcentral region of Noto, triggering landslides and floods and leaving one person dead in a region still recovering from a deadly Jan. 1 earthquake. The Japan Meteorological Agency on Saturday issued the highest alert level for heavy rain across several cities in the Ishikawa prefecture, including hard-hit cities Suzu and Wajima on the northern coast of the Noto peninsula. The agency has since downgraded the heavy rain alert, and kept landslide and flooding warnings in place. In Suzu, one person died and another was missing after being swept in floodwaters.

Cambodia pulls out of a regional development pact after protests

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said he was pulling his country out of a development agreement with neighboring Vietnam and Laos following protests that it was benefiting foreign interests. Critics on social media have focused on land concessions in border areas particularly with Vietnam, a highly sensitive issue because of Cambodia’s historical antagonism toward its larger eastern neighbor. Authorities had arrested at least 66 people ahead of a planned August rally to condemn the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Area — or CLV-DTA. Most were later released but leaders are facing charges. The agreement, formalized in 2004, intended to facilitate cooperation on trade and migration in four northeastern provinces of Cambodia and border areas in Laos and Vietnam.

Western nations were desperate for Korean babies. Now many adoptees believe they were stolen

Yooree Kim marched into a police station in Paris and told an officer she wanted to report a crime. Forty years ago, she said, she was kidnapped from the other side of the world, and the French government endorsed it. She wept as she described years spent piecing it together, stymied at every turn to get an answer to a simple question: How was she, a bright, diligent schoolgirl, with known parents whom she loved, documented as an abandoned orphan in South Korea in 1984 and sent to strangers in France? She believes the government of France — along with many Western nations — allowed families to “mail order children” through international adoption, and did nothing to protect them.

Takeaways from AP’s story on the role of the West in widespread fraud with South Korean adoptions

Western governments eagerly approved and even pushed for the adoption of South Korean children for decades, despite evidence that adoption agencies were aggressively competing for kids, pressuring mothers and bribing hospitals, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found. Now adults, many of those children have since discovered that their adoption paperwork was untrue. Their quest for accountability has spread far beyond Korea’s borders to the Western countries that claimed them, and is upending international adoption. The AP, in collaboration with Frontline (PBS), spoke with more than 80 adoptees in the U.S., Australia and Europe and examined thousands of pages of documents to reveal evidence of kidnapped or missing children ending up abroad, fabricated names, babies switched with one another and parents told their newborns were gravely sick or dead, only to discover decades later they’d been sent to new parents overseas.

Protests ousted Sri Lanka’s last president. Ahead of new election, many are still waiting for change

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Two years ago, tens of thousands of Sri Lankans rose up against their president and forced him to flee the country. As the country prepares for its first election since then, many say they’re still waiting for change. As Sri Lanka sank into economic collapse in 2022, people from various walks of life rallied to change a long-entrenched government they saw as responsible. The unprecedented island-wide public uprising they led was a moment of hope for the country long been fatigued by war and economic instability. Days ahead of Saturday’s presidential election, many still complain of corrupt leaders, economic mismanagement, and the entrenched power of the political old guard, but former protesters are having a hard time coming together behind a candidate.

Japan and China reach deal over Fukushima water release and move closer to resolving seafood ban

TOKYO (AP) — Japan and China announced Friday that they have reached a deal resolving their disputes over the discharge of treated radioactive wastewater from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean and Beijing’s subsequent ban on Japanese seafood. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that the two sides have reached “a certain level of mutual understanding” that China will start working toward easing the import ban and will join the expanded monitoring of wastewater discharges from Fukushima Daiichi under the framework of the United Nations’ atomic agency. On Aug. 24, 2023 Japan began discharging treated radioactive wastewater from the plant, which suffered a nuclear meltdown in 2011.