Top Asian News 2:47 a.m. GMT

Chinese scientist who first published COVID sequence stages protest after being locked out of lab

SHANGHAI (AP) — The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China staged a sit-in protest outside his lab after authorities locked him out of the facility — a sign of Beijing’s continuing pressure on scientists conducting research on the coronavirus. Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post Monday that he and his team had been suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since the virologist published the sequence in January 2020 without state approval. When Zhang tried to go to the lab over the weekend, guards barred him from entering.

To fend off tourists, a town in Japan is building a big screen blocking the view of Mount Fuji

FUJIKAWAGUCHIKO, Japan (AP) — The town of Fujikawaguchiko has had enough of tourists. Known for a number of scenic photo spots that offer a near-perfect shot of Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji, the town on Tuesday began constructing a large black screen on a stretch of a sidewalk to block the view of the mountain. The reason: misbehaving foreign tourists. “Kawaguchiko is a town built on tourism, and I welcome many visitors, and the town welcomes them too, but there are many things about their manners that are worrying,” said Michie Motomochi, owner of a cafe serving Japanese sweets “ohagi,” near the soon-to-be-blocked photo spot.

Kazakhstan arrests a former interior minister over crackdown on unrest that left 238 dead

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Authorities in Kazakhstan have arrested a former interior minister in connection with a deadly police crackdown on unrest that gripped the country in 2022, local media reported Tuesday. The prosecutor general’s office announced on Monday that Erlan Turgumbayev was detained on charges of “abuse of power and official authority resulting in grave consequences” in the crackdown. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is in charge of the police force. Turgumbayev was relieved of duty a month after the unrest. In Almaty, the country’s largest city, protests turned violent and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev issued shoot-to-kill orders as demonstrators stormed government buildings.

G7 nations commit to phasing out coal by 2035 but give Japan some flexibility

MILAN (AP) — Energy and environment ministers of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations committed Tuesday to phase out coal power by 2035, marking the first time the G7 has explicitly referenced a phase-out, but left flexibility for countries heavily reliant on coal. The final communique of the meeting in the Italian city of Turin included language that could extend the 2035 deadline to a “timeframe consistent with limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius” above pre-industrialized levels. Italy’s environment and energy security minister, Gilberto Picchetto Fratin, emphasized the significance of targeting coal, “the source of most emissions.” The communique puts a timeline to countries’ commitments made at the COP 28 conference last year in Dubai, which called for accelerating the phase-down of so-called unabated coal power, where emissions have not been captured.

The Taliban are working to woo tourists to Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Around 30 men are crammed into a Kabul classroom, part of the debut student cohort at a Taliban-run institute training tourism and hospitality professionals. It’s a motley crew. One student is a model. Another is 17 and has no job history. The students vary in age, education level and professional experience. They’re all men — Afghan women are banned from studying beyond sixth grade — and they don’t know anything about tourism or hospitality. But they are all eager to promote a different side of Afghanistan. And the Taliban are happy to help. Afghanistan’s rulers are pariahs on the global stage, largely because of their restrictions on women and girls.

Chinese astronauts return to Earth after 6 months on space station

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese spacecraft returned to Earth on Tuesday with three astronauts who completed a six-month mission aboard the country’s orbiting space station. The Shenzhou-17 craft carrying Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin landed at the Dongfeng site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the Gobi Desert shortly before 6 p.m. It comes roughly four days after the Shenzhou-18 mission docked with the station with their three-member replacement crew. China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely because of U.S. concerns over the Chinese military’s total control of the space program amid a sharpening competition in technology between the two geopolitical rivals.

A gunman kills 6 worshippers inside a Shiite mosque in western Afghanistan, the Taliban say

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A gunman stormed a mosque in western Afghanistan, opening fire and killing six people as they were praying, a Taliban official said Tuesday. Local media reports and a former president of Afghanistan said the mosque was targeted because it was a place of worship for the country’s Shiite Muslim minority. The attack happened on Monday night in the district of Guzara in Herat province, said Abdul Mateen Qani, a spokesman for the Taliban Interior Ministry. He said in a post on the social media platform X that an investigation was underway. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded another worshipper while the attacker fled.

Indonesia’s Mount Ruang erupts again, spewing ash and peppering villages with debris

MANADO, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s Mount Ruang volcano erupted Tuesday for a second time in two weeks, spewing ash almost 2 kilometers (more than a mile) into the sky, closing an airport and peppering nearby villages with debris. The alert level of the volcano on Sulawesi Island was again raised to the highest level by the Indonesian geological service, after sensors picked up increasing volcanic activity. The agency urged residents and climbers to stay at least 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the volcano’s crater. The 725-meter (2,378-foot) volcano in North Sulawesi province is about 95 kilometers (59 miles) northeast of Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado, the provincial capital.

Chinese coast guard fires water cannons at Philippine vessels in the latest South China Sea incident

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannons at two Philippine patrol vessels Tuesday near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, damaging both in the latest flare-up in an increasingly tense territorial conflict. There were no immediate reports of injuries in the incident off Scarborough Shoal, one of two hotly disputed areas where confrontations between China and the Philippines have flared on and off since last year. A Philippine coast guard ship and an accompanying fisheries vessel were patrolling the waters off Scarborough Shoal when four Chinese coast guard ships, backed by six suspected militia ships, executed dangerous blocking maneuvers, Philippine coast guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela said.

A massive Powerball win draws attention to a little-known immigrant culture in the US

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Cheng “Charlie” Saephan wore a broad smile and a bright blue sash emblazoned with the words “Iu-Mien USA” as he hoisted an oversized check for $1.3 billion above his head. The 46-year-old immigrant’s luck in winning an enormous Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier this month — a lump sum payment of $422 million after taxes, which he and his wife will split with a friend — has changed his life. It also raised awareness about Iu Mien people, a southeast Asian ethnic group with origins in China, many of whose members fled from Laos to Thailand and then settled in the U.S.