Top Asian News 3:20 a.m. GMT
SYDNEY (AP) — Australian police say a knife attack in Sydney that wounded a bishop and a priest during a church service as horrified worshippers watched online and in person, and sparked a riot was an act of terrorism. Police arrested a 16-year-old boy Tuesday after the stabbing at Christ the Good Shepherd Church that injured Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and a priest. Both are expected to survive. New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb said the suspect’s comments pointed to a religious motive for the attack. “We’ll allege there’s a degree of premeditation on the basis that this person has travelled to that location, which is not near his residential address, he has travelled with a knife and subsequently the bishop and the priest have been stabbed,” Webb said.
SINGAPORE (AP) — Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Monday that he will step down on May 15 after two decades at the helm, and hand power to his deputy Lawrence Wong. Lee, 72, will formally advise the city-state’s president to appoint Wong, who is currently deputy prime minister and finance minister, to succeed him, his office said in a brief statement. Wong, who has the unanimous support of lawmakers in the long-ruling People’s Action Party, will be sworn in at the national palace later the same day, it said. Lee has served as prime minister and head of the PAP since August 2004.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Lightning and heavy rains have killed at least 49 people across Pakistan in the past three days, officials said Monday, as authorities in the country’s southwest declared a state of emergency. Some deaths occurred when lightning struck farmers harvesting wheat. Rains caused dozens of houses to collapse in the northwest and in eastern Punjab province. Arfan Kathia, a spokesman for the provincial disaster management authority, said 21 people had died in Punjab, where more rains were expected this week. Khursheed Anwar, a spokesman for the disaster management authority in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, said 21 people died there.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The country in which China has gained most influence in the South Pacific, Solomon Islands, goes to the polls on Wednesday in an election that could shape the region’s future. Current Prime Minister Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who switched the Solomons’ allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and ignited fears of China gaining a naval foothold in the South Pacific, is seeking an unprecedented second consecutive term at the government’s helm. Even if Sogavare fails, observers suspect China will be backing more than one pro-Beijing candidate in the murky contest for the Solomons’ top job in an effort to cement Beijing’s growing influence.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine president said Monday his administration has no plan to give the United States access to more Philippine military bases and stressed that the American military’s presence in several camps and sites so far was sparked by China’s aggressive actions in the disputed South China Sea. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in 2022, allowed American forces and weapons access to four additional Philippine military bases, bringing to nine the number of sites where U.S. troops can rotate indefinitely under a 2014 agreement. The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of security alliances in the region to better counter China, a move that dovetails with Philippine efforts to shore up its external defense, especially in the South China Sea.
NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government are increasingly wielding strong-arm tactics to subdue political opponents and critics of the ruling Hindu-nationalist party ahead of the nationwide elections that begin this week. A decade into power, and on the cusp of securing five more years, the Modi government is reversing India’s decadeslong commitment to multiparty democracy and secularism. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has brought corruption charges against many officials from its main rival, the Congress Party, but few convictions. Dozens of politicians from other opposition parties are under investigation or in jail. And just last month, Modi’s government froze the Congress party’s bank accounts for what it said was non-payment of taxes.
TANA TORAJA, Indonesia (AP) — Rescuers recovered the bodies of a 3-year-old girl and her mother who were the last victims still missing after landslides on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island that killed 20 people, authorities said Tuesday. Both of them were found close to each other, local rescue chief Mexianus Bekabel said. Mud loosened by torrential rain poured from surrounding hills onto four houses Saturday at South Makale village in the Tana Toraja district of South Sulawesi province, said local police chief Gunardi Mundu. He said a family gathering was being held in one of the houses when the landslide hit. Fog and rain had hampered the search for the victims.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister on Monday led a high-level delegation on a two-day visit to Pakistan, which is seeking help in overcoming one of its worst economic crises. Prince Faisal bin Farhan’s visit comes a week after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, one of Pakistan’s closest allies and a a leading supplier of oil to Islamabad. Prince Faisal is expected to meet with Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardari. According to Pakistani officials, Prince Mohammed told Sharif that Saudi Arabia would invest $5 billion in Pakistan. Last year, Saudi Arabia deposited $2 billion into Pakistan’s central bank to boost its foreign exchange reserves.
Vietnamese journalist-turned-filmmaker Phanxinê remembers exactly when he decided to make movies in his native country rather than Hollywood. It was in 2008 but it could have been a satirical scene out of the Vietnam Era-novel “The Sympathizer.” Someone from a movie studio visiting his University of Southern California film class told him his story pitch about a Vietnamese American woman traveling the U.S. would only work if the heroine was white. Having a white star would give the film “a broader audience,” Phanxinê recounts being told. “It is the moment I realized that if I want to stay in America, I have to do a movie about Caucasian people,” said Phanxinê, who goes by a one-name moniker professionally.
That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old. Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.” The researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, found that the species emerged around 600,000 years ago through natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species. “In other words, prior to any intervention from man,” said Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who co-led the study.