Top Asian News 3:58 a.m. GMT

New Zealand’s Māori King dies after 18-year reign

NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga (AP) — New Zealand’s Māori King, Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, died Friday at age 69, days after the celebration of his 18th year on the throne. He was the seventh monarch in the Kiingitanga movement, holding a position created in 1858 to unite New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori tribes in the face of British colonization. Tuheitia died in hospital after heart surgery, said Rahui Papa, a spokesperson for the Kiingitanga, the Māori King Movement, in a post on Instagram. The movement’s primary goals were to end the sale of land to non-Indigenous people, stop inter-tribal warfare, and provide a springboard for the preservation of Māori culture, the Waikato-Tainui tribe website said.

The first election in a decade is planned in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Here’s what to know

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Residents of Indian-controlled Kashmir are gearing up for their first regional election in a decade that will allow them to have their own truncated government, also known as a local assembly, instead of remaining under New Delhi’s direct rule. Muslim-majority Kashmir is divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan and claimed in its entirety by both. The Indian-administered part has been on edge since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ended its special status in 2019 and also scrapped its statehood. The three-phased polls will take place amid a sharp rise in rebel attacks on government forces in parts of Hindu-dominated Jammu areas that have remained relatively peaceful in the three decades of armed rebellion against Indian rule.

Chinese leader Xi meets US national security adviser as the two powers try to avoid conflict

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Thursday as the latter wound up a three-day visit with the stated aim of keeping communications open in a relationship that has become increasingly tense in recent years. Sullivan, on his first trip to China as the main adviser to President Joe Biden on national security issues, earlier met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a top general from the Central Military Commission. Starting with a trade war that dates back to 2018, China and the United States have grown at odds over a range of issues, from global security, such as China’s claims over the South China Sea, to industrial policy on electric vehicle and solar panel manufacturing.

Former national police chief in Thailand charged in alleged cover-up of Red Bull heir’s deadly crash

BANGKOK (AP) — Prosecutors in Thailand on Thursday indicted a former national police chief in connection with an alleged cover-up of a 2012 Ferrari crash involving an heir to the Red Bull energy drink fortune that killed a police officer. Former Police Chief Gen. Somyot Poompanmoung, former Deputy Attorney General Nate Naksuk and six other people were arraigned at a Bangkok court on charges alleging they conspired to alter the recorded speed of the Ferrari driven by Vorayuth “Boss” Yoovidhya to help him evade a speeding charge. Vorayuth escaped justice by fleeing abroad in a case widely held up as an example of how the rich and well-connected enjoy impunity in Thailand.

A Hong Kong court convicts 2 journalists in a landmark sedition case

HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court on Thursday convicted two former editors of a shuttered news outlet in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of media freedoms in a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia. The trial of Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam was Hong Kong’s first involving the media since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Stand News, which closed in December 2021, had been one of the city’s last media outlets that openly criticized the government as it waged a crackdown on dissent following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Foreign governments criticize Hong Kong’s convictions of journalists in sedition case

HONG KONG (AP) — The convictions of two Hong Kong journalists who led a now-shuttered online news outlet have deepened concerns of media groups and foreign governments over the city’s press freedom, though local officials say there are no restrictions when journalists stick to the facts. Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam were found guilty of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications, with the judge saying their outlet had become a tool for smearing the government. Their sedition trial was Hong Kong’s first involving media since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Putin to travel to Mongolia next week despite an ICC warrant for his arrest

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Mongolia next week, the Kremlin said Thursday, despite the country being a member of the International Criminal Court, which last year issued a warrant for his arrest. The visit, scheduled for Sept. 3, will be Putin’s first trip to an ICC member state since the warrant was issued in March 2023 over suspected war crimes in Ukraine. Under the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, ICC members are bound to detain suspects for whom an arrest warrant has been issued by the court, if they set foot on their soil. But the court doesn’t have any enforcement mechanism.

US forces ready with a ‘range of options’ to deal with South China Sea aggression, US admiral says

BAGUIO, Philippines (AP) — American forces are ready with a “range of options” to deal with increasing acts of aggression in the disputed South China Sea if ordered to carry them out jointly and after consultations with treaty ally the Philippines, a U.S. admiral said Thursday. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Paparo, who heads the biggest number of combat forces outside the U.S. mainland, refused to provide details of the contingency options. Paparo’s comments came when asked at a news conference what the longtime treaty allies could do to deal with China’s so-called gray-zone tactics in the disputed waters. The “gray-zone tactics” refer to types of assault, like water cannon fire and the blocking and ramming of rival ships in the disputed waters, that are under the threshold of an actual armed attack and wouldn’t allow the Philippines to invoke its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the U.S.

A Spanish YouTube chef gets life in prison for murder in Thailand

BANGKOK (AP) — A court in Thailand on Thursday found Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a member of a famous Spanish acting family, guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced him to life in prison, in a lurid case that involved the victim being dismembered. The Koh Samui Provincial Court issued an initial sentence of death for Sancho but commuted it to life imprisonment due to his cooperation during the trial, said Police Col. Paisan Sangthep, deputy commander of the Surat Thani Provincial Police, who attended the hearing. Sancho, a 30-year-old chef with a YouTube channel, had been charged with the murder of Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, a 44-year-old plastic surgeon from Colombia, when both were vacationing on the Thai holiday island of Koh Pha-ngan in August last year.

Bangladesh’s government led by Yunus signs UN convention involving enforced disappearance

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh’s interim government on Thursday signed the instrument of accession to an international convention of the United Nations aiming at preventing enforced disappearances as a state party, authorities said. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who took over this month as head of the government after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down and fled the country to India amid a mass uprising, signed the accession to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, his press department said in a statement. The signing took place during a weekly meeting of the interim government’s advisory council amid applause from the council members, the statement said.