Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Morning Edition

Taipei, TAIWAN (AP) - China executed four people found guilty of causing the deaths of six Chinese citizens and running scam and gambling operations out of Myanmar worth more than $4 billion, authorities said on Monday. The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court in south China announced the executions in a statement Monday morning, though it was not clear when they had been carried out. The executions of 11 other people accused of running scam centers in Myanmar were announced last week. The Shenzhen court had sentenced five people, including members of the notorious Bai family, accused of running a network of scam centers and casinos, to death in November.

HONG KONG (AP) - China has been flooding Latin American markets with low-priced exports, especially autos and e-commerce goods, as its exporters adjust to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and geopolitical moves. The world's second-largest economy has become a major trading partner for many Latin American nations, seeking access to their abundant natural resources and growing markets while expanding its influence in a region Trump views as America's Backyard. Chinese businesses face slow demand at home. They need new markets for their products as the country ramps up production in many industries. Exports to Latin America, a market of more than 600 million people, and other regions have climbed while exports to the U.S.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Koreans celebrated on Monday as the song "Golden" claimed K-pop's first Grammy Award, a milestone that critics say highlights the genre's global appeal and signals broader acceptance in the American mainstream. The Grammy win for "Golden" - from the Netflix animated film "KPop Demon Hunters" - which also contended for song of the year, could help strengthen K-pop's U.S. foothold and boost the genre's prospects at future awards, music critic Lim Hee-yun said. The win for best song for visual media capped a highly visible night for K-pop at the Grammys - an institution where the genre has long been undercelebrated despite its massive international following.

O'SMACH, Cambodia (AP) - In the town of O'Smach, along Cambodia's northern border with Thailand, stands a compound of abandoned buildings that were battered by shelling during recent weeks of armed clashes. The site, now occupied by Thai troops, had served as one of Cambodia's notorious scam centers, according to Thai officials. A six-story building, shown to journalists and international observers on Monday during a trip organized by the Thai military, is scattered with documents, equipment and personal belongings, likely abandoned in haste. "They are well-organized. They have good infrastructure and systems, and also the workflow and many, many tactics and techniques to do the scams," said Lt.

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani security forces killed about two dozen militants overnight in multiple raids in the insurgency-hit southwest bordering Afghanistan, raising the militant death toll to 177 in the past 48 hours, officials said Monday. The announcement follows a wave of coordinated insurgent attacks that killed 50 people, mostly civilians, including women and children. Police backed by the military have been conducting raids in several areas against members of the outlawed separatist Baloch Liberation Army since early Saturday, after nearly 200 militants in small groups carried out simultaneous suicide bombings and gun attacks on police stations, civilian homes and security facilities across Balochistan province.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesia allowed Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to resume operations in the country on a conditional basis and under strict supervision, weeks after banning it for explicit sexual content. Musk's social platform X Corp made a written commitment to service improvements and compliance with applicable laws, the communications ministry said in a statement Sunday. The company told the ministry it had taken steps to address the misuse of Grok services, including restricting access to certain features, according to the statement. Indonesia and Malaysia were the first two countries that blocked access to Grok in January over concerns it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Authorities in Nepal have arrested six travel and mountain rescue executives accused of conducting fake rescues on the Himalayan nation's high mountains to scam millions of dollars from international insurance companies, officials said Monday. Nepal's Central Investigation Bureau arrested six people from three different travel and mountain rescue operators last week, accusing them of submitting fake claims for close to $20 million between 2022 and 2025 and receiving the money in their accounts. All six are Nepali nationals. Bureau spokesperson Shiva Kumar Shrestha said Monday that authorities are still investigating. Fake documents including passenger and cargo manifests for helicopter rescue flights, medical invoices and hospital reports were sent to insurance companies, the bureau said.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Activists filed two impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte Monday, accusing her of large-scale corruption after an initial attempt to unseat her a year ago was shot down by the Supreme Court on a legal technicality. The new impeachment bids filed before the House of Representatives are the latest episode in the stormy political life of Duterte, a 47-year-old lawyer and former city mayor who has been touted by supporters as a potential presidential contender in 2028. She is the daughter of ex- President Rodrigo Duterte, who oversaw bloody anti-drug crackdowns while in office from 2016 to 2022.

As a teenager in southern India, Susai Jesu led 4:30 a.m. prayer services in his small Catholic village before the farmers went into the fields. He directed the choir, helped at Mass and soon began training for the priesthood. Little did he know that this dedication would take him halfway around the world on a vast cross-cultural journey - ministering among Canada's Indigenous Catholics, learning their language, culture and historical traumas. He hosted Pope Francis at his Edmonton parish when the late pontiff visited Canada in 2022 to apologize for the Catholic Church's collaboration with the "catastrophic" system of Indigenous residential schools.

TOKYO (AP) - Japan said Monday it has successfully drilled and retrieved deep-sea sediment containing rare earth minerals from the seabed near a remote island, as the country seeks to reduce its reliance on China. The deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu successfully gathered the sediment at a depth of nearly 6,000 meters (19,700 feet) near the island of Minamitorishima, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in a statement on X. The test retrieval of the rare earths from that depth is a world first, she added. "It is a first step toward industrialization of domestically produced rare earth in Japan," Takaichi said. "We will make effort toward achieving resilient supply chains for rare earths and other critical minerals to avoid overdependence on a particular country." China controls most of the global production of heavy rare earths, which are used for making powerful, heat-resistant magnets in industries such as defense and electric vehicles.