Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

BEIJING (AP) — Reports Wednesday said 39 people are missing more than 24 hours after a Chinese fishing boat operating in the Indian Ocean capsized.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said the accident happened around 3 a.m. Tuesday. The report said the crew includes 17 from China, 17 from Indonesia and five from the Philippines.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Qiang have ordered Chinese diplomats abroad, as well as the agriculture and transportation ministries, to assist in the search for survivors.

BEIJING, May 16 (APP):Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Wang Wenbin on Tuesday said that the upcoming China-Central Asia Summit to be held in Xian, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, will further build the consensus of China and Central Asian countries on the joint building of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with high quality.

BEIJING, May 16. /TASS/: China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will thwart any attempts by Taiwanese separatists to isolate themselves from China by means of buying weapons from Washington, Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesperson Senior Colonel Tan Kefei said on Tuesday.

The PLA will ramp up its preparations for war, he added.

HIROSHIMA, Japan, May 16 (Reuters) - Standing at the front of a dimly lit room in the basement of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Teruko Yahata's voice broke as she recalled the morning her world changed, on August 6, 1945.

"All of a sudden, the entire sky flashed and was illuminated in bluish-white, as if the heavens had become one huge, fluorescent light," the 85-year-old, speaking in English, told an audience of British tourists on a recent Tuesday.

"I immediately fell to the ground and lost consciousness."

BEIJING, May 16 (Reuters) - Two Chinese warships have ventured into the Western Pacific for live-fire exercises, the military said on Tuesday, shortly after one of China's two aircraft carriers returned from a patrol, in its latest projection of force into more distant waters.

The destroyer Dalian and guided-missile frigate Huangshan sailed to an unidentified area of the West Pacific "not long ago" and conducted attack and defence drills, the Southern Theatre Command of the People's Liberation Army said in a statement.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived in South Korea on Tuesday for a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at which they are expected to discuss expansion of trade and challenges posed by North Korea.

Trudeau, the first Canadian leader to visit South Korea in nine years, will meet with Yoon on Wednesday, hours after he delivers a speech at the National Assembly in Seoul.

BANGKOK (AP) — Pacific Island leaders are criticizing rich countries for not doing enough to control climate change despite being responsible for much of the problem, and for profiting from loans provided to vulnerable nations to mitigate the effects.

Leaders and representatives from Pacific Island nations demanded at a U.N. climate change conference Monday in Bangkok that the world make more effort to put aside differences in combating the environmental impact, especially as their countries emerge from the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

HONG KONG (AP) — The life sentence imposed by China on a 78-year-old U.S. citizen, who was also a Hong Kong permanent resident, on spying charges shows the city should “stay vigilant” to security risks, its leader said Tuesday.

Chief Executive John Lee answered none of the lingering questions about why John Shing-Wan Leung was prosecuted. The sentence was announced Monday but neither the Hong Kong government nor the court in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou that tried Leung have released details of the charges.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court on Tuesday ordered the country’s biggest adoption agency to pay 100 million won ($74,700) in damages to a 48-year-old man for mishandling his adoption as a child to the United States, where he faced legal troubles after surviving an abusive childhood before being deported in 2016.

TOKYO (AP) — Amid the high-level efforts to deal with a raft of global emergencies, this weekend’s Group of 7 summit of rich democracies will also see an unusual diplomatic reconciliation as the leaders of Japan and South Korea look to continue mending ties that have been marked for years by animosity and bickering.