Top Asian News 4:47 a.m. GMT

Philippine Vice President Duterte impeached over Marcos assassination remark and other allegations

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte was impeached Wednesday 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. The move by legislators in the House of Representatives, many of them allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., deepens a bitter political rift between the two highest leaders of one of Asia’s most rambunctious democracies. Marcos has boosted defense ties with his country’s treaty ally, the United States, while the vice president’s father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, nurtured cozy relations with China and Russia during his stormy term that ended in 2022.

More than 100 Indian migrants deported by the US arrive home

AMRITSAR, India (AP) — A U.S. military plane carrying 104 deported Indian migrants arrived in a northern Indian city on Wednesday, the first such flight to the country as part of a crackdown ordered by the Trump administration, airport officials said. The Indians who returned home had illegally entered the United States over the years and came from various Indian states. The move came ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington, which is expected next week. U.S. President Donald Trump and Modi discussed immigration in a phone call last week and Trump stressed the importance of India buying more American-made security equipment and fair bilateral trade.

Inside the operations that took captive 2 North Korean soldiers fighting Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — When Ukrainian soldiers captured two North Korean prisoners of war last month, it provided the first undeniable proof of Pyongyang’s direct involvement in the war against Ukraine. It also shed some light on the mindset and training of the conscripted North Korean soldiers sent to fight Russia’s war a continent away from their home. Highly disciplined, ready to die but also very young and with little battlefield experience they elicited curiosity and even some pity from the Ukrainian soldiers who captured them during two separate missions on Jan. 9. Their capture confirmed what Ukraine, South Korea and the U.S.

Protesters storm and destroy a family home of Bangladesh’s ousted Prime Minister Hasina

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Thousands of protesters in Bangladesh took out their anger at exiled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday by destroying a family home that came to symbolize the country’s independence — and now, they say, the authoritarianism they believe she led. The attack was sparked by a speech Hasina planned to give to supporters from exile in neighboring India, where she fled last year during a deadly student-led uprising against her 15-year rule. Critics had accused her of suppressing dissent. The house in the capital, Dhaka, had been home to Hasina’s late father and Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who declared the country’s formal break from Pakistan there in 1971.

Parked Delta plane apparently clipped by Japan Airlines plane that was taxiing at Seattle airport

SEATTLE (AP) — A Japan Airlines plane that was taxiing on the tarmac of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport apparently clipped the tail of a parked Delta aircraft on Wednesday morning, airport authorities said. Authorities responded to the incident around 10:17 a.m., the airport said on X. All passengers from Japan Airlines flight 68 and Delta Air Lines flight 1921 were deplaned with no reported injuries, and response crews were working to move the aircraft off the ramp taxiway, the airport said. While taxiing upon arrival from Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, the right wing of Japan Airlines’ Boeing 787 came into contact with the Delta plane’s tail, Japan Airlines said in an emailed statement.

India PM Modi’s party seeks to regain control of New Delhi region in state elections

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party was trying to regain power in the federal territory that includes New Delhi on Wednesday as residents voted in a state legislature election. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party hasn’t won the territory that includes India’s capital of 20 million people in over a quarter-century. The BJP is up against the Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal, which runs New Delhi and has built widespread support with its welfare policies and anti-corruption movement. But Kejriwal, a popular anti-corruption crusader, suffered a setback after he and other AAP leaders faced graft allegations.

Rahim Al-Hussaini is named the new Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Rahim Al-Hussaini was named Wednesday as the new Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the world’s millions of Ismaili Muslims, following the death of his father. The 53-year-old was designated as the Aga Khan V, the 50th hereditary imam of the Ismaili Muslims, in his father’s will. His father died Tuesday in Portugal. The Aga Khan is considered by his followers to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and is treated as a head of state. The Aga Khan Development Network and the Ismaili religious community announced earlier that His Highness Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV and 49th hereditary imam of the Shiite Ismaili Muslims, died surrounded by his family.

UN agencies raise alarm over Pakistan’s move to deport thousands of Afghans waiting to go to the US

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The U.N. refugees and migration agencies on Wednesday expressed their concern over Pakistan’s decision to deport thousands of Afghan refugees awaiting relocation to the United States and elsewhere. The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, and the International Organization for Migration in a statement said they were seeking clarification from Pakistan, which said last week it would deport the refugees back to Afghanistan unless their cases were processed quickly by the countries that had agreed to take them in. About 20,000 Afghans were approved for resettlement in the U.S. under a program that helps people at risk because of their work with the American government, media, aid agencies and rights groups.

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.

Pakistan’s president says extremist attacks won’t end friendship with China

BEIJING (AP) — Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari said Wednesday that his country’s friendship with China has “gone through ups and downs” but it won’t be broken down by extremist attacks that have killed Chinese nationals. “Pakistan and China will always be friends, all-weather friends,” he said at the opening of talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “No matter how many terrors, how many issues crop up in the world, I will stand, Pakistan people will stand, with the people of China.” Thousands of Chinese work in Pakistan on road and other infrastructure projects under China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to improve trade routes and deepen China’s ties with the rest of the world.