Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Morning Edition

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - An independent counsel on Tuesday demanded the death sentence for former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on rebellion charges in connection with his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024. Yoon, who was removed from office last April and is in jail, faces eight trials over various criminal charges related to his martial law debacle and other scandals that flared during his time in office. Charges that he directed a rebellion are the most significant ones. Independent counsel Cho Eun-suk's team requested the Seoul Central District Court to sentence Yoon to death, according to the court, which is expected to deliver a verdict in February.

NARA, Japan (AP) - South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi agreed Tuesday to step up cooperation in areas including economic security, defense and searching for the remains of Korean forced laborers. The two neighbors are both longtime U.S. allies, but their relations have frequently been strained by issues including disputes over their wartime history. "I believe cooperation between Korea and Japan is now more important than ever and anything else, as we have to continue moving forward to a new, better future amid this complex, unstable international order," Lee said at the outset of the summit.

HONG KONG (AP) - A Hong Kong court heard sentencing arguments Tuesday for former publisher Jimmy Lai's co-defendants as it moved closer to sentencing the prominent democracy advocate whose conviction under a national security law could land him in prison for life. The jail term's potential length remained unclear. Former executives of the now-defunct, pro-democracy newspaper founded by Lai finished pleading for lighter sentences Tuesday afternoon in the landmark case widely seen as a barometer of media freedom in a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia. The former journalists pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security.

BEIJING (AP) - As Canadian leader Mark Carney arrives in China on Wednesday, his hosts see an opportunity to peel the longtime U.S. ally away from their rival, at least a bit. China's state media is calling on the Canadian government to set a foreign policy path independent of the United States - what it calls "strategic autonomy." Canada has long been one of America's closest allies, geographically and otherwise. But Beijing is hoping that President Donald Trump's economic aggression - and, now, military action - against other countries will erode that longstanding relationship. The government bristled at former U.S. President Joe Biden's efforts to strengthen relations with Europe, Australia, India, Canada and others to confront China.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Organizers of Australia's largest free literary festival canceled the event Tuesday after more than 180 writers and speakers withdrew over the scrapping of an appearance by an Australian-Palestinian writer and academic. The uproar began when the board of the Adelaide Festival, which runs Adelaide Writers Week, announced on Jan. 8 that they had disinvited Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the event "given her previous statements" and citing cultural sensitivities "at this unprecedented time so soon after" an antisemitic mass shooting at Sydney's Bondi Beach. There was no suggestion that Abdel-Fattah or her writings "have any connection with the tragedy," the board members added.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Malaysian authorities said Tuesday they will take legal action against Elon Musk's social media platform X and its artificial intelligence unit xAI, accusing the companies of failing to ensure the safety of users of its Grok chatbot. The move came just days after Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block access to Grok, as concerns grow that it is being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said in a statement that it has identified the misuse of Grok to generate and distribute harmful content including sexually explicit, indecent, extremely offensive as well as non-consensual manipulated images.

GUWAHATI, India (AP) - The Indian fishing community of Jalikhora is celebrating the end of the harvest season, known as the Bhogali Bihu, on the east side of Guwahati. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

BEIJING (AP) - A leader of Canada is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild the country's fractured relations with the world's second-largest economy - and reduce Canada's dependence on the United States. The push by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the U.S. - the world's No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far. Carney aims to double Canada's non-American exports in the next decade in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and the American leader's musing that Canada could become "the 51st state." "At a time of global trade disruption, Canada is focused on building a more competitive, sustainable and independent economy," Carney said in a statement.

NEW DELHI (AP) - The U.S. and India are actively engaged on a bilateral trade agreement to deepen economic and strategic partnership, the U.S. ambassador-designate to New Delhi said Monday. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, India has emerged as the second biggest buyer of Russian crude after China, upsetting the Trump administration, which criticized the purchases as helping fuel Moscow's war machine. In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to place an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, bringing the combined tariffs imposed by the United States to a steep 50%.

HONG KONG (AP) - A Hong Kong court heard arguments Monday about the sentencing of democracy advocate and onetime-media magnate Jimmy Lai, whose conviction under a national security law could land him in prison for the rest of his life. Lai founded the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper and was an outspoken critic of China's ruling Communist Party. He was arrested in 2020 under the law imposed by Beijing following massive anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong the year before. In December, he was found guilty of conspiring with others to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious articles. His conviction raised concerns about the curtailing of press freedom in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.