Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Latest Updates

PARIS (AP) - Activists worldwide held May Day rallies and street protests Friday, calling for peace, higher wages and better working conditions as many workers grapple with rising energy costs and shrinking purchasing power tied to the Iran war. May 1 is a public holiday in many countries to mark International Workers' Day, or Labor Day, when workers' unions traditionally rally around wages, pensions, inequality and broader political issues. Demonstrations were held from Seoul, Sydney and Jakarta to many European capitals. In the U.S., activists opposing President Donald Trump's policies also were holding marches and boycotts. "Working people refuse to pay the price for Donald Trump's war in the Middle East," the European Trade Union Confederation, which represents 93 trade union organizations in 41 European countries, said.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - An angry crowd rioted outside an Australian Outback hospital where a man accused of killing a 5-year-old girl was treated for a vigilante beating. The suspect, Jefferson Lewis, allegedly abducted the girl at an Indigenous community near Alice Springs in the central Australia at the weekend. The body of the girl, who is now known as Kumanjayi Little Baby because of an Indigenous ban on naming the dead, was found on Thursday. Lewis had been beaten unconscious by a mob before police arrested him at an Indigenous community later Thursday, police said. He was taken to Alice Springs Hospital, where hundreds of people late Thursday demanded he face so-called payback under customary law, which can involve spearing or beating.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - A body found in Tampa Bay has been identified as the second missing University of South Florida doctoral student from Bangladesh, a sheriff said Friday. He described their killings as "a monstrous crime." Nahida Bristy's remains were found Sunday in a garbage bag discovered by a kayaker whose fishing line got snagged, said Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister. The positive identification on the badly decomposed body was eventually made using DNA and dental records, he said. The body of her friend, fellow USF doctoral student Zamil Limon, was in another garbage bag found two days before that on a bridge over the bay.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - The kiwi, New Zealand's sacred national bird, vanished from the hills around Wellington more than a century ago. Now the capital's residents are waging an improbable citizen campaign to return the endangered flightless birds to the city. "They are a part of who we are and our sense of belonging here," said Paul Ward, founder of the Capital Kiwi Project, a charitable trust. "But they've been gone from these hills for well over a century and we decided as Wellingtonians that wasn't right." On a hill wreathed in mist above the dark sea that runs between New Zealand's North and South Islands, Ward and others crossed rugged farmland late on Tuesday night, carrying seven crates in silence by dim red torchlight.

A look at everyday moments across countries, cultures and communities worldwide. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

People across Asia kicked off May Day with large marches and protests as many workers grapple with rising energy costs and shrinking purchasing power tied to the Iran war. Also known as International Workers' Day or Labor Day, the holiday highlights the struggles and achievements of workers worldwide. Thousands are taking to the streets from Asia to Europe and beyond calling for stronger labor protections, higher wages and greater equality while drawing attention to stagnant incomes and the rising cost of living. __ This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan's government expressed concern on Friday hours after a call between China and the United States' top diplomats in which Beijing stressed that self-ruled Taiwan was the biggest risk in relations. "Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is concerned about the press release issued by China ... which again unilaterally made threatening remarks on the Taiwan issue," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. In a call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged the United States to "make the right choices" on Taiwan in order to safeguard "stability" between the two nations, according to a statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

BANGKOK (AP) - Former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest and her sentence has been reduced as part of a prisoner amnesty for a Buddhist holiday. Accompanying the announcement was a photo of the 80-year-old leader dressed in a traditional white blouse and skirt and sitting on a bench behind a low table facing unidentified men who wear military and police uniforms. Myanmar's military information office and state television disclosed the move and shared the photo of her Thursday night, but when and where the photo was taken was not clear. Suu Kyi was detained Feb.

BANGKOK (AP) - A little more than a year ago, the government's military was on the back foot in Myanmar 's bloody civil war, pushed out of great swaths of the country's north by an alliance of seasoned militias, and forced into defensive action around the rest of the country by other established groups and new pro-democracy guerrillas. Today the picture has changed. With its ranks swollen by tens of thousands of new conscripts, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has reversed some of its losses and appears poised to resume the offensive, while some opposition groups have left the fight and infighting and supply issues have weakened others.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - The white supremacist who shot and killed 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, lost an attempt to undo his guilty pleas in a Court of Appeal ruling Thursday. The panel of three judges dismissed Brenton Tarrant's claim that harsh prison conditions prompted him to make an involuntarily admission to terrorism, murder and attempted murder charges. His bid to withdraw his guilty pleas and seek a trial was "utterly devoid of merit," they wrote. The Australian man, who is now 35, killed 51 worshippers and injured dozens more in March 2019 when he drove to two Christchurch mosques and opened fire with semiautomatic weapons during Friday prayers.