Top Asian News 4:57 a.m. GMT

Volcanic eruption burns houses in Indonesia, killing at least 6 people

MAUMERE, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said Monday that at least six people have died as a series of volcanic eruptions widens on the remote island of Flores. The eruption at Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki just after midnight on Monday spewed thick brownish ash as high as 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) into the air and hot ashes hit a nearby village, burning down several houses including a convent of Catholic nuns, said Firman Yosef, an official at the Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki monitoring post. The Disaster Management Agency lowered the known death toll from an earlier report of nine, saying it had received updated information from local authorities.

Pakistan shuts primary schools for a week in Lahore due to dangerous air quality

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Dangerously poor air quality on Monday forced Pakistani authorities in the cultural capital of Lahore to close primary schools for a week, government officials said. The measures were part of a larger effort to protect children from respiratory-related and other diseases in the city of 14 million people. Toxic gray smog has sickened tens of thousands of people, mainly children and elderly people, since last month when the air quality started worsening in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province bordering India. The government has also banned construction work in certain areas and fined owners of smoke-emitting vehicles.

Japanese nuclear reactor that restarted 13 years after Fukushima disaster is shut down again

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese nuclear reactor that restarted last week for the first time in more than 13 years after it had survived a massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that badly damaged the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant was shut down again Monday due to an equipment problem, its operator said. The No. 2 reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant on Japan’s northern coast was put back online on Oct. 29 and had been expected to start generating power in early November. But it had to be shut down again five days after its restart due to a glitch that occurred Sunday in a device related to neutron data inside the reactor, plant operator Tohoku Electric Power Co.

US flies long-range bomber in drill with South Korea, Japan in reaction to the North’s missile test

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States flew a long-range bomber in a trilateral drill with South Korea and Japan on Sunday in response to North Korea’s recent test-firing of a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to strike the U.S. mainland, South Korea’s military said. North Korea on Thursday tested the newly developed Hwasong-19 ICBM, which flew higher and stayed in the air longer than any other missile it has fired. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called it “an appropriate military action” to cope with external security threats posed by its rivals. On Sunday, the U.S. flew the B-1B bomber to train with South Korean and Japanese fighter jets near the Korean Peninsula, demonstrating the three countries’ firm resolve and readiness to respond to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programs, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

A grenade explosion in a busy market in Indian-controlled Kashmir wounds 9

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — An assailant threw a grenade at a marketplace bustling with shoppers in the main city of Indian-controlled Kashmir on Sunday, wounding at least nine people, police said. The attack comes a day after a suspected militant was killed in a daylong gunbattle in Srinagar, a rare occurrence in the city where security is tight. Police said an unidentified attacker hurled a grenade from a flyover bridge, apparently targeting a stationed paramilitary vehicle, in the main business center of Srinagar, where Sunday’s flea market is visited by thousands of people. The grenade exploded in the midst of shoppers and vendors, wounding at least nine, police said.

India protests Ottawa’s allegation its home minister ordered targeting of Sikh activists in Canada

NEW DELHI (AP) — India officially protested on Saturday the Canadian government’s allegation that the country’s powerful home minister Amit Shah had ordered the targeting of Sikh activists inside Canada, calling it “absurd and baseless.” Relations between the two countries soured after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last year there were credible allegations the Indian government had links to the assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. India has vehemently rejected the accusation. New Delhi — long anxious about Sikh separatist groups — has increasingly accused the Canadian government of giving free rein to separatists from a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan, in India.

Indian troops kill 3 suspected rebels in disputed Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Three suspected militants were killed Saturday in separate gunbattles in Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said Saturday. India’s military in a statement said soldiers intercepted a group of militants in a forested area in southern Anantnag district on Saturday, leading to a gunbattle that killed two rebels. In a separate incident in the disputed region’s main city of Srinagar, police and paramilitary soldiers killed a militant in an exchange of gunfire after troops cordoned off a neighborhood on a tip that he was hiding in a house. Police said two soldiers and two police were injured in the fighting.

Japan has grounded its V-22 Osprey fleet again after flight incident

WASHINGTON (AP) — Japan has grounded its fleet of V-22 Osprey aircraft again after an incident last Sunday where one of the hybrid helicopter-aircraft tilted unexpectedly and hit the ground while trying to take off. The V-22 was taking part in the joint U.S. military exercise Keen Sword and carrying 16 passengers, including three U.S. service members. During takeoff it “became unstable as it swayed from side to side, and the left wing, the lower part of the aircraft came into contact with the ground and part of the aircraft was damaged, so the flight was aborted,” Japan’s Ground Self Defense Forces said in a statement.

Japan plans automated cargo transport system to relieve shortage of drivers and cut emissions

TOKYO (AP) — Japan is planning to build an automated cargo transport corridor between Tokyo and Osaka, dubbed a “conveyor belt road” by the government, to make up for a shortage of truck drivers. The amount of funding for the project is not yet set. But it’s seen as one key way to help the country cope with soaring deliveries. A computer graphics video made by the government shows big, wheeled boxes moving along a three-lane corridor, also called an “auto flow road,” in the middle of a big highway. A trial system is due to start test runs in 2027 or early 2028, aiming for full operations by the mid-2030s.

A robot retrieves the first melted fuel from Fukushima nuclear reactor

TOKYO (AP) — A remote-controlled robot has safely returned with a tiny piece of melted fuel it collected from inside one of three damaged reactors at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for the first time since the 2011 meltdown. The Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which manages the plant, said Saturday that the extendable fishing rod-like robot successfully clipped a gravel as big as 5 millimeters (2 inches), the size of a tiny granola bit, from the top surface of a mound of molten fuel debris that sits on the bottom of the No. 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel.