Top Asian News 2:37 a.m. GMT

Opposition lawmakers protest alleged mistreatment of Indian deportees by US

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s Parliament was disrupted Thursday as opposition lawmakers protested the alleged mistreatment of 104 Indian immigrants deported by the United States. A U.S. military plane carrying Indian migrants arrived Wednesday in a northern Indian city, the first such flight to the country as part of a crackdown ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration. Renuka Chowdhury, a lawmaker in the Congress party, said the deportees were “handcuffed, had their legs chained and even struggled to use the washroom.” Her colleague, Gaurav Gogoi, called it “degrading.” Parliament adjourned as the opposition chanted slogans and demanded a discussion about flights.

US service member, 3 contractors killed in surveillance mission plane crash in southern Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — One U.S. service member and three defense contractors were killed Thursday when a plane contracted by the U.S. military crashed in a rice field in the southern Philippines, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said. The aircraft was conducting a routine mission “providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support at the request of our Philippine allies,” the command said in a statement. It said the cause of the crash was under investigation. The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines also confirmed the crash of a light plane in Maguindanao del Sur province. It did not immediately provide other details. The bodies of the four people were retrieved from the wreckage in Ampatuan town, said Ameer Jehad Tim Ambolodto, a safety officer of Maguindanao del Sur.

Baseball star Shohei Ohtani’s ex-interpreter is sentenced to nearly 5 years in sports betting case

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The former interpreter for baseball star Shohei Ohtani was sentenced Thursday to nearly five years in prison for bank and tax fraud after he stole nearly $17 million from the Los Angeles Dodgers player’s bank account. Ippei Mizuhara, who was supposed to bridge the gap between the Japanese athlete and his English-speaking teammates and fans, was sentenced in federal court in Santa Ana to four years and nine months after pleading guilty last year. He was ordered Thursday to pay $18 million in restitution, with nearly $17 million going to Ohtani and the remainder to the IRS.

Protests and a New Zealand leader’s absence overshadow a day marking the founding treaty with Māori

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — It’s often a day marked by spirited politics and at times boisterous protest. But Thursday’s anniversary of New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, passed in muted fashion with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon absent from the main commemorations, amid rancor over an unpopular proposed law redefining the treaty’s promises. On Feb. 6 1840, representatives of the British Crown and 500 Māori tribal leaders signed a treaty at Waitangi, in New Zealand’s far north, agreeing to the terms of their relationship. In modern times, annual events attended by lawmakers and Indigenous leaders at the treaty grounds have allowed the groups to speak face to face, even at times of racial discord.

Hong Kong’s post office continues to suspend packages for US as it seeks clarification over tariff

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s post office announced late Thursday it would continue to suspend shipping items containing goods to the United States until further notice, despite its American counterpart having reversed its ban on packages from the city and other parts of China. The Hong Kong government said in a statement that Hongkong Post was in talks with the U.S. postal administration but further clarification was still needed on certain matters, including over a tariff. It reiterated its strong disapproval over the U.S. imposition of additional duty on Hong Kong products, urging the U.S. to take “urgent actions to rectify its wrongdoing.”

China’s Xi and Thailand’s leader vow to crack down on scam networks that plague Southeast Asia

BANGKOK (AP) — China’s leader Xi Jinping and visiting Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra vowed to crack down on the scam networks that plague Southeast Asia as the two leaders met on Thursday in Beijing. Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, which are south of China and share borders with Thailand, have became major centers of online scam operations where people lured by false advertising of well-paid jobs are trafficked to secretive compounds where they are forced to work by criminal groups that run online scams targeting people all over the world. That has impacted Thailand’s reputation, as multiple high-profile stories of Chinese people being lured to work in Bangkok only to be trafficked into a scam compound in Myanmar have surfaced, with Chinese actor Wang Xing being the latest such victim.

Turbulence in Bangladesh as new government grapples with aftermath of Sheikh Hasina’s ouster

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh’s new government is struggling to deal with a host of issues, including a stumbling economy and human rights violations, left behind by the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina six months ago. Hasina fled to India in August after a student-led uprising ended her 15-year rule, and an interim government led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus took the helm, backed by the influential military. Hasina’s Awami League recently announced plans for protests in February, including a general strike. This infuriated student activists and anti-Hasina groups, who on Wednesday stormed and demolished the historic home of her father, Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Philippine vice president’s impeachment trial will start after Congress reopens in June

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine Senate president said Thursday the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte will begin after Congress reopens in June and vowed to avoid a repeat of stalled 2001 impeachment proceedings that sparked massive protests and forced a president to step down. The previous day, the House of Representatives impeached Duterte, daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, on a range of accusations that include plotting to assassinate the president, large-scale corruption, and failing to strongly denounce China’s aggressive actions against Filipino forces in the disputed South China Sea. At least 215 of the House’s more than 300 legislators signed the complaint — significantly more than the required number — allowing it to be transmitted immediately to the Senate, which will serve as the impeachment court.

How a wave of antisemitic attacks roiled Australia and provoked claims of foreign influence

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A wave of antisemitic attacks has roiled Australia, with a dozen arrests for vandalizing or setting homes, schools, and synagogues on fire since October and hundreds more charged in just over a year with crimes targeting Jews. The attacks in areas where Jewish people live have provoked an outpouring of condemnation — and a fraught and complicated debate about who’s to blame. But in a rare moment of unity, Australia’s federal lawmakers on Thursday advanced hate crime laws almost unanimously. “We want people who are engaged in antisemitic activities to be caught, to be charged and to be put in the clink,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.

The sea was once a blessing for the Pakistani city of Gwadar. But it’s become a curse

GWADAR, Pakistan (AP) — There was a time when few people in the coastal Pakistani city of Gwadar understood what climate change was. After a decade of extreme weather, many more do. Rain battered Gwadar for almost 30 consecutive hours last February. Torrents washed out roads, bridges, and lines of communication, briefly cutting the peninsula town off from the rest of Pakistan. Homes look like bombs have struck them and drivers swerve to avoid craters where asphalt used to be. Gwadar is in Balochistan, an arid, mountainous, and vast province in Pakistan’s southwest that has searing summers and harsh winters. The city, with about 90,000 people, is built on sand dunes and bordered by the Arabian Sea on three sides, at a low elevation that makes it vulnerable to climate change in a country that has already seen its share of catastrophe from it.