Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Latest Updates

BEIJING (AP) - A senior official has been expelled from China's ruling Communist Party, state media said Tuesday, the latest to fall in Chinese leader Xi Jinping's long-running anti-corruption campaign. Ma Xingrui is one of three members of the current Politburo, the 24-member body made up of top party leaders, to be purged in the campaign. The other two are military generals. Analysts see the campaign as an important tool to enforce loyalty to Xi as well as root out corruption. "Xi's ability to expel a sitting Politburo member underscores his continued dominance ahead of next year's 21st Party Congress" said Neil Thomas, an expert on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

BANGKOK (AP) - Victims of this week's flash fire at a Bangkok music ba r that took more than 30 lives included four of the six core members of the band playing when the blaze broke out. The fate of the Totsakan band has been a key focus in Thailand's coverage of the blaze, and as residents expressed their sadness, confusion, outrage and demands for compensation on Wednesday, the sister of the group's late keyboard player struck a particular note of grace. "If I can be his representative, I think he would say he doesn't want to see everyone sad and cry," said Chanyanuch Pudmon, the sister of keyboard player Preutthipong Pudmon, as she and other family members retrieved his body from Bangkok's Institute of Forensic Science.

HONG KONG (AP) - An independent committee investigating the cause of Hong Kong's deadliest fire in decades began hearing final arguments Wednesday as the inquiry moves toward a conclusion. The November fire engulfed seven buildings of an apartment complex, killing 168 people and shattering the close-knit community of Wang Fuk Court, which housed thousands of people in the suburban Tai Po district. Former residents and relatives of the deceased have been waiting for answers from the committee, which was established in December by the Hong Kong city government with an expectation that the work would take nine months. Lawyers representing residents, the government and the committee are expected to lay out their arguments before the hearings conclude Friday.

HONG KONG (AP) - Hong Kong authorities have raided two bookstores and arrested five people on suspicion of selling allegedly seditious publications, local media reported Wednesday, in the latest step targeting independent booksellers. Videos and photos from multiple media outlets showed officers wearing vests marked with "Police" seizing boxes from the building housing Have A Nice Stay, a bookshop founded by former journalists. A bookseller was seen being taken away. A few streets away a similar scene played out, with boxes taken from the building housing Greenfield Book Store, according to a video by online news outlet The Collective. Police later said they raided two stores in Mong Kok district, without identifying them.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A China-born American seismologist has been detained in China without trial for nearly two years, an advocacy group advising the family said Tuesday, a revelation that came a couple of months before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit the U.S. The relatives of Youlin Chen of Boston broke their silence this week, apparently after they saw no sign from the Chinese government that it was planning to release Chen - even after President Donald Trump brought up the case when meeting Xi in Beijing in May, according to Global Reach, a Washington-based nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing home Americans wrongly detained abroad.

HONG KONG (AP) - China's economy slowed sharply to a 4.3% annualized pace of growth in the April-June quarter, the government said Wednesday, the weakest in over three years. The official data fell short of forecasts and was far below the economy's strong 5% pace of growth in January-March, despite a surge in exports driven partly by the boom in artificial intelligence, and by robust global demand for Chinese electric vehicles. China has largely shrugged off wider economic impacts from the Iran war as soaring energy prices pushed up global inflation. Exports rose 17.6% in the first half of the year from a year earlier, and 27% in June, according to customs data.

SYDNEY (AP) - The United Nations refugee agency is investigating reports that two boats carrying members of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority have capsized in the Bay of Bengal. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement Tuesday that the boats reportedly departed Myanmar's western state of Rakhine in late June before sinking. "We are deeply concerned by the potential loss of life and are working to verify further details," the UNHCR said. The agency declined to release additional details, including how many Rohingya were believed to be on board or the approximate location where the boats sank. Around 1.2 million stateless, predominantly Muslim Rohingya remain trapped in squalid, overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh after fleeing waves of violence by Myanmar's security forces.

BEIJING (AP) - One arm raised and the other lowered, hundreds of people move every morning like birds spreading their wings at the heart of Beijing's Temple of Heaven. It's a movement in tai chi, a physical and philosophical practice developed more than 300 years ago that continues to resonate in China today. "The environment is great and the air is good too," said Ye Guirong, 64. "You can see we're surrounded by trees." Most practitioners are retirees in their 60s and beyond. Some exercise in groups while a speaker plays relaxing music in the background. Others move silently on their own.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - Eleven people were killed overnight when heavy rain caused the roof of a mud-brick house to collapse in northwest Pakistan, police and rescue officials said Tuesday. The accident occurred in Kohat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to Bilal Faizi of the provincial emergency service. Rescuers recovered 11 bodies, mostly women and children, and handed them over to relatives for burial, Faizi said. Heavy monsoon rains also lashed the Gilgit-Baltistan region on Monday, triggering landslides that blocked several roads and damaged homes, according to a statement from regional emergency services. The government advised tourists to avoid travel to northern Pakistan because of the risk of landslides and flash flooding.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - A distinguished American marine biologist has been shot dead by three men who entered his house in the central Philippines, police said on Tuesday. Kent Carpenter, 73, was with his Filipina companion in a house in the coastal town of Sibulan, in Negros Oriental province, on Sunday night when the masked men forced their way in. One drew a gun and shot Carpenter in the head, killing him instantly, police said his companion told them. The men took a laptop, an unspecified amount of cash and a backpack before fleeing, national police spokesperson Col. Allen Rae Co told reporters.