Top Asian News 3:32 a.m. GMT

Marxist Dissanayake wins Sri Lanka’s presidential election as voters reject old guard

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Marxist lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake won Sri Lanka’s presidential election, the Election Commission announced Sunday, after voters rejected the old political guard that has been widely accused of pushing the South Asian nation into economic ruin. Dissanayake, whose pro-working class and anti-political elite campaigning made him popular among youth, secured victory over opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and incumbent liberal President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over the country two years ago after its economy hit bottom. Dissanayake received 5,740,179 votes, followed by Premadasa with 4,530,902, Election Commission data showed. The election held Saturday was crucial as the country seeks to recover from the worst economic crisis in its history and the resulting political upheaval.

India Prime Minister’s U.S. visit brings him to New York and celebration of cultural ties

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (AP) — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, continuing a multiday U.S. visit, addressed a cultural celebration on Long Island Sunday, where he praised the United States’ return of nearly 300 antiquities to India and relayed news of his country’s dual win at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, to an enthusiastic crowd. “I just got some very good news,” Modi told an estimated 13,000 people inside Nassau Veterans Coliseum for an event billed as a celebration of cultural ties between India and the United States. “In the Chess Olympiad, in both the men’s and women’s tournament, India has won gold medals,” he said to applause in a speech that was translated into English for an online audience.

Bomb targeting foreign diplomats’ convoy kills policeman in Pakistan’s restive northwest

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A roadside blast caused by an improvised explosive device, targeting a convoy of foreign diplomats, killed a policeman and injured four others, an official said Sunday. The diplomats were traveling to a tourist area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan and is a base for militant groups, including the Pakistani Taliban. The blast occurred at the tourist spot and hill station of Malam Jabba, one of Pakistan’s two ski resorts, some 250 km (155 miles) north of the provincial capital Peshawar. The diplomats in the convoy were from Indonesia, Portugal, Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Iran, Russia and Tajikistan.

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.

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.

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.

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.