Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Morning Edition

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - The death toll from a devastating fire at a shopping plaza in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi jumped to 67 on Thursday after police and a hospital official confirmed that the remains of dozens more people had been found. Police surgeon Dr. Summaiya Syed said rescue teams were still searching the severely damaged Gul Plaza in the Karachi, where the blaze erupted on Saturday. Most remains were discovered in fragments, making identification extremely difficult, but the deaths of 67 people have been confirmed, she said. Asad Raza, a senior police official in Karachi, also confirmed the death toll.

HONG KONG (AP) - Two organizers of Hong Kong's long-running vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown pleaded not guilty Thursday, while a third pleaded guilty before the trial brought under a national security law that has largely erased dissent in the city. Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were charged with inciting subversion in September 2021 under the China-imposed national security law. Prosecutors allege "ending one-party rule," what the group had long called for, was against China's constitution. Lee and Chow pleaded not guilty and a hearing for arguments over defense witnesses was scheduled to resume Friday.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - Campaigning began Thursday for Bangladesh's first national elections since the 2024 uprising that ousted longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The major political parties held campaign rallies in the capital, Dhaka, and elsewhere ahead of Feb. 12 election, which is seen as the most consequential in Bangladesh's history as it follows Hasina's ouster and is being held under an interim government with voters also deciding on proposed political reforms. The interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has pledged to hold a free and fair election, but questions were raised after his administration banned Hasina's former ruling Awami League party.

BANGKOK (AP) - A massive fire this week destroyed hundreds of makeshift homes and displaced more than 2,000 people in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, prompting calls Thursday from relief agencies for more funding to build safer housing and help provide emergency aid. The fire broke out in the early morning hours of Tuesday in Camp 16, one of more than 30 camps in the Cox's Bazar district that make up the world's largest refugee center, housing more than 1 million Rohingya who have fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar. The United Nations' International Organization for Migration said it had created a new crisis for families already struggling to survive.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Landslides hit a house and a campground in New Zealand on Thursday, leaving at least two dead while emergency crews were trying to rescue others buried in rubble, officials said. The first hit a house in the community of Welcome Bay on New Zealand's North Island at 4:50 a.m., police said. Two people escaped the house, and the bodies of two who were trapped inside were recovered hours later, Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell said. Later the same morning, emergency services were called to a second slide at the base of nearby Mount Maunganui. The rubble hit Beachside Holiday Park in a town named after the extinct volcano.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Dozens of South Koreans detained in Cambodia for alleged involvement in online scams will be sent home this week to face investigations, officials said Thursday, in what would be the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won ($33 million), according to a South Korean government statement. The suspects, 65 men and eight women, were among about 260 South Koreans detained in a crackdown in Cambodia in recent months. Public outrage over scam centers in Southeast Asia flared in South Korea when a Korean student was found dead last summer after reportedly being forced to work at a scam compound in Cambodia.

TOKYO (AP) - A reactor at the world's largest nuclear power plant that restarted for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is now being shut down again Thursday due to a glitch that occurred hours after the unit's resumption, its operator said. The No. 6 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in north-central Japan reactivated Wednesday night for the first time in 14 years, as plant workers started removing neutron-absorbing control rods from the core to start stable nuclear fission. But the process had to be suspended hours later due to a malfunction related to control rods, which are essential to safely starting up and shutting down reactors, the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - A gunman was at large after a shooting in a town in Australia's New South Wales state on Thursday left three people dead and another wounded, police said. Emergency services were called to two locations at Lake Cargelligo, a town of around 1,500 people, after 4 p.m. Two couples, a man and woman, had been shot in each location within minutes, Police Assistant Commissioner Andy Holland said. Both women and a man died. Another man was taken to hospital in serious but stable condition, he said. Police knew the identity of a suspect, but did not know his relationship with the victims, who were all Lake Cargelligo locals, Holland said.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was taken to a hospital for an abdominal ailment that he ascribed to stress and age, but insisted he's fine in a video released on Thursday, laughing off rumors of his demise. The 68-year-old leader was observed by his doctors and was released back home, attending two private meetings Thursday, according to Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro. "I'm fine," a smiling Marcos in a white long-sleeve office shirt said in a video released by Castro. "I'm feeling very, very different from the way I was feeling before, but the problem has been fixed." Marcos added that he has diverticulitis, a "common complaint amongst, apparently people who are heavily stressed and people who are, I have to admit, growing old." The condition involves inflammation of small pouches in the digestive tract, usually in the colon, that causes pain, fever, nausea or constipation.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - A Philippine court Thursday found a Filipina journalist guilty of financing terrorism in a verdict that was condemned by press freedom watchdogs but welcomed by anti-communist insurgency officials. Presiding Judge Georgina Perez of the Regional Trial Court in central Tacloban city convicted Frenchie Mae Cumpio and human rights missionary Marielle Domequil - who have been jailed for nearly six years - of financing terrorism charges. They were acquitted on separate charges of illegally possessing firearms and explosives, court officials said. Prison terms of 12 years to 18 years were imposed on Cumpio and Domequil, who could appeal the verdicts, Ailene Balatay, the lawyer for the clerk of court, said.