Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Morning Edition

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Cambodia hopes to shut down all of the country's notorious online scam centers by the end of next month, the head of the Southeast Asian nation's effort to combat the cybercrime said Wednesday. Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, in charge of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, told The Associated Press in an interview that the government since July had targeted 250 locations believed to be carrying out the lucrative criminal activity, and has shut down about 80%, or 200 of them. He said police would carry out suppression activities after April in an attempt to keep the scam centers from reemerging.

TOKYO (AP) - Japan marked the 15th anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster on its northeastern coast Wednesday as the government pushes for more use of atomic energy. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, ravaged parts of the region, caused more than 22,000 deaths and forced nearly half a million people to flee their homes, most of them due to tsunami damage. Some 160,000 people fled their homes in Fukushima because of the radiation spewed from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. About 26,000 of them haven't returned because they resettled elsewhere, their hometowns remain off-limits or they have lingering concerns about radiation.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his teenage daughter observed tests of strategic cruise missiles fired from a warship, state media reported Wednesday, as North Korea threatened responses to U.S.-South Korean military drills. Images sent by the Korean Central News Agency showed the two in a conference room looking at a screen showing weapons being fired from the Choe Hyon, a year-old naval destroyer. Kim Jong Un watched the missiles launches via video on Tuesday and underscored the need to maintain "a powerful and reliable nuclear war deterrent," KCNA reported in a dispatch that did not mention his daughter.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's Taliban government on Tuesday rejected U.S. allegations that it detains foreigners to obtain leverage over other countries, saying Afghan authorities arrest people for violating laws not to make a deal. The U.S. State Department on Monday announced the designation of Afghanistan as a sponsor of wrongful detention, accusing it of engaging in "hostage diplomacy." Afghanistan joined Iran as countries singled out by the U.S. in the past two weeks for detaining Americans in hopes of extracting policy concessions. On Tuesday, Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul called that designation "regrettable." In July, the Taliban delegation to a U.N.-led meeting in Doha said that Afghans detained at the U.S.

BEIJING (AP) - China said Tuesday it will be resuming passenger trains to North Korea after service was halted during COVID. Trains will run between Beijing and Pyongyang, four times a week starting Thursday. Daily train service will also resume at the border town of Dandong in China to Pyongyang, China's railways authority announced. The resumption of the service will "further promote people-to-people exchanges, economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchanges between China and North Korea," the announcement said. Tourism from China into North Korea has stalled since the pandemic. North Korea banned all foreign tourists during COVID but has slowly eased these restrictions, opening the country up to tourism again for the first time in 2024.

GOLD COAST, Australia (AP) - The Iranian women's soccer team left Australia without seven squad members after tearful protests of their departure outside Sydney Airport and frantic final efforts inside the terminal by Australian officials, who sought to ensure the women understood they were being offered asylum. As the team's flight time drew nearer and they passed through security late Tuesday, each woman was taken aside to meet alone with officials who explained through interpreters that they could choose not to return to Iran. Before the team traveled to the airport, seven women had accepted humanitarian visas allowing them to remain permanently in Australia and were ushered to a safe location by Australian police officers.

ODAKA, Japan (AP) - Fifteen years after the 2011 nuclear disaster, color-coded radiation maps hang on the wall of Futabaya Ryokan, the family-run inn Tomoko Kobayashi operates in her near-deserted hometown in northeastern Fukushima. Kobayashi conducted her own radiation surveys before reopening the inn in 2016. Now, she and other monitors share radiation data as part of efforts to rebuild this once-bustling textile town. "These empty lots used to be filled with shops," Kobayashi says of the pre-disaster town as she heads to a radiation monitoring lab, walking past a kindergarten she attended as a child. It's now used as a museum because there are too few children since the nuclear crisis.

Monitors like innkeeper Tomoko Kobayashi share radiation data to revitalize towns people left after the Fukushima earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - As war spreads across the Middle East, U.S. rivals and allies in Asia are preparing for the consequences, which include possible economic shock and long-term security threats. Here's a look at how the fighting in the Middle East is impacting the Koreas, Japan and China. At a major political conference last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un insisted the country's decades-long pursuit of nuclear weapons was the "correct" choice, despite crippling isolation and scarce resources. The U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran will only reinforce that belief. North Korea's leadership likely watched uneasily as the strikes killed Iran's supreme leader.

NEW DELHI (AP) - The United States and Iran have offered sharply different accounts of the sinking of an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean last week, with Washington rejecting Tehran's claim the vessel was unarmed and Iranian officials insisting it was operating in a noncombat role. The United States Indo-Pacific Command on Sunday rejected Iran's claim that the warship IRIS Dena was unarmed when it was sunk in a submarine attack in international waters off Sri Lanka on March 4. In a statement on X, INDOPACOM called Iran's assertion that the vessel was unarmed "false." The response followed strong objections from Tehran, which has repeatedly characterized the warship as defenseless, saying it was returning home after taking part in a naval exercise.