Top Asian News 4:58 a.m. GMT

42,000 crowd New Zealand’s Parliament grounds in support of Māori rights

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — As tens of thousands of marchers crowded the streets in New Zealand’s capital Wellington on Tuesday, the throng of people, flags aloft, had the air of a festival or a parade rather than a protest. They arrived to oppose a law that would reshape the county’s founding treaty between Indigenous Māori and the British Crown. But for many, it was about something more: a celebration of a resurging Indigenous language and identity that colonization had once almost destroyed. “Just fighting for the rights that our tūpuna, our ancestors, fought for,” Shanell Bob said as she waited for the march to begin.

New Zealand’s founding treaty is at a flashpoint. Why are thousands protesting for Māori rights?

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A proposed law that would redefine New Zealand’s founding treaty between the British Crown and Māori chiefs has triggered political turmoil and prompted more than 35,000 people to show up in protest at the country’s Parliament on Tuesday. The bill is never expected to become law. But it has become a flashpoint on race relations and a critical moment in the fraught 180-year-old conversation about how New Zealand should honor its promises to Indigenous people when the country was colonized -– and what those promises are. Tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital, Wellington, on Tuesday morning for the final stretch of a weeklong protest that has spanned the length of the country — a march through the city streets to Parliament.

45 activists get 4 to 10 years in prison in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case

HONG KONG (AP) — Forty-five ex-lawmakers and activists were sentenced to four to 10 years in prison Tuesday in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case under a Beijing-imposed law that crushed a once-thriving pro-democracy movement. They were tried under the 2020 national security law for their roles in an unofficial primary election. Prosecutors said their aim was to paralyze Hong Kong’s government and force the city’s leader to resign by aiming to win a legislative majority and using it to block government budgets indiscriminately. Legal scholar Benny Tai, who was widely seen as the organizer of the unofficial primary, received the longest sentence of 10 years.

India’s capital chokes as air pollution levels hit 50 times the safe limit

NEW DELHI (AP) — Authorities in India’s capital shut schools, halted construction and banned non-essential trucks from entering the city on Monday after air pollution shot up to its worst level this season. Residents of New Delhi woke up to thick, toxic smog enveloping the city of some 33 million as the air quality became increasingly hazardous. It rose further into the severe category, according to SAFAR, the country’s main environmental agency, which measures tiny particulate matter in the air that can enter deep into the lungs. The deadly haze covered monuments and high-rise buildings in the capital, with visibility so low that airlines warned of delays.

Sri Lanka’s Marxist-leaning president appoints Cabinet after election win

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s new Marxist-leaning president swore in a 22-member Cabinet on Monday after his party secured a two-thirds parliamentary majority in last week’s election. The margin of victory will allow President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to make sweeping reforms, including a campaign promise of a new constitution, without needing support from other parties. Sri Lanka is struggling to emerge from the worst economic crisis in its history, having declared bankruptcy after defaulting on its external debt in 2022. Dissanayake’s National People’s Power Party won 159 of the 225 seats in Thursday’s vote. He kept a pledge to have fewer than 25 Cabinet members, and a majority of the new ministers are first-time lawmakers.

Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, master of modern free verse, dies at 92

TOKYO (AP) — Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, poignant but conversational in its divergence from haiku and other traditions, has died. He was 92. Tanikawa, who translated the “Peanuts” comic strip and penned the lyrics for the theme song of the animation series “Astro Boy,” died Nov. 13, his son Kensaku Tanikawa said Tuesday. He said his father died at a Tokyo hospital due to old age. Shuntaro Tanikawa stunned the literary world with his 1952 debut “Two Billion Light Years of Solitude,” a bold look at the cosmic in daily life, sensual, vivid but simple in its use of everyday language.

G20 summit calls for more aid to Gaza and an end to the war in Ukraine

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Leaders of the world’s 20 major economies called for a global pact to combat hunger, more aid for war-torn Gaza and an end to hostilities in the Mideast and Ukraine, issuing a joint declaration Monday that was heavy on generalities but short of details on how to accomplish those goals. The joint statement was endorsed by group members but fell short of complete unanimity. It also called for a future global tax on billionaires and for reforms allowing the eventual expansion of the United Nation Security Council beyond its five current permanent members. At the start of the three-day meeting which formally ends Wednesday, experts doubted Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could convince the assembled leaders to hammer out any agreement at all in a gathering rife with uncertainty over the incoming administration of U.S.

Pakistani security forces raid a militant hideout in the northwest and 10 insurgents are killed

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani security forces raided a militant hideout in northwest Pakistan on Monday, sparking an hourslong shootout in which at least 10 insurgents were killed and several others were wounded, police said. The raid occurred in Tirah, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police official Azmat Khan said. He said insurgents were members of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Islam militant group. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties among the security forces. Also on Monday, insurgents raided a police station in northwestern Bannu district and kidnapped seven officers, district police chief Ziauddin Ahmed said. No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, who often target security forces.

45 pro-democracy activists face sentencing in Hong Kong. Here’s who some of them are

HONG KONG (AP) — Dozens of prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday in the largest case under a national security law that critics say crushed political activism in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. The convictions of the 45 activists under the Beijing-imposed law are widely seen as part of a crackdown by China that destroyed hopes for a more democratic Hong Kong. They face sentences of up to life imprisonment. The activists were among 47 people charged with conspiracy to commit subversion in 2021 for their involvement in an unofficial primary election to pick opposition candidates. They were accused of agreeing to veto government-proposed budgets indiscriminately after securing a legislative majority to force a dissolution of the legislature and then the ouster of the city’s leader.

Numerous children injured by a vehicle at a school gate in central China

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Numerous children were injured by a vehicle at the gate of an elementary school in central China’s Hunan province on Tuesday morning, reports said. Students were arriving for classes around 8 a.m. at Yong’an Elementary School in the city of Changde when the incident occurred. Few details were immediately available, and it wasn’t clear whether the vehicle had lost control or whether it was a deliberate attack. The official Xinhua News Agency said several adults were also injured and identified the vehicle as a small white SUV. It said the driver was subdued by parents and security guards, and some of the injured were sent to the hospital immediately, with the total casualty count still unknown.