Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Morning Edition

BEIJING (AP) - Canadian leader Mark Carney met China's Xi Jinping this week. The two statesmen talked. Fractured relationships began to heal. And a third man, though he wasn't in the room, nevertheless made his presence clearly known: Donald Trump. The American president - his policies, his approaches to international relations, his freewheeling and provocative statements about Canada - helped inform meetings 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) away between two nations working to reestablish ties stalled for nearly a decade as they grapple with the same challenge: wondering what Washington might do next. Canada's reengagement with China, its second-largest trading partner behind the U.S., is unfolding in keeping with a term Chinese media have loved this past week - "strategic autonomy." Essentially, it means that a nation like Canada, so intertwined with the United States for so long as unswerving allies, needs other pillars to hold up its international foundations given recent speed bumps in the Washington-Ottawa relationship.

LONDON (AP) - Britain's main opposition leader joined a protest Saturday against China's planned new embassy in London, days before a deadline for the government to approve or block the project. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch urged the Labour government to reject the plans, saying the Chinese government had "harassed and sanctioned" members of Parliament and "abused British nationals connected to China." "We know that we have to stand up to the abuses of China. And what worries me is that we have a government right now that seems to be scared of China," she told hundreds of demonstrators who gathered at the site, chanting "no China mega embassy." Politicians from several opposition parties addressed the rally.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - A passenger aircraft carrying 11 people lost contact with ground control Saturday while approaching a mountainous region between Indonesia's main island of Java and Sulawesi island, officials said. A search and rescue operation has been launched. The turboprop ATR 42-500 operated by the Indonesia Air Transport was on its way from Yogyakarta to the capital city of South Sulawesi when it vanished from radar, said Endah Purnama Sari, a spokesperson for the Transportation Ministry. The plane was last tracked at 01:17 p.m. (0517 GMT) in the Leang-Leang area of Maros, a mountainous district of South Sulawesi province.

The world's first legally binding agreement to protect marine life in international waters took effect Saturday, marking a historic moment for ocean conservation after nearly two decades of negotiations. The High Seas Treaty will govern nearly half the planet's surface - the vast ocean areas beyond any country's control. These waters face mounting threats from destructive fishing practices, shipping, plastic pollution, overfishing and potential deep sea mining, all compounded by climate change. The ocean absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen, making its health critical for addressing the climate crisis. The treaty entered into force 120 days after it reached the threshold of ratification by 60 countries in September.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - Journalists, editors and owners of media outlets in Bangladesh on Saturday demanded that authorities protect them following recent attacks on two leading national dailies by mobs. They said the media industry in the South Asian country is being systematically targeted in the interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. They said the administration failed to prevent attacks on the Daily Star, the country's leading English-language daily, and the Prothom Alo, the largest Bengali-language newspaper, both based in Dhaka, the capital. In December, angry mobs stormed the offices of the two newspapers and set fire to the buildings, trapping journalists and other staff inside, shortly after the death of a prominent Islamist activist.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - A Purple Star Sapphire weighing 3,563 carats which is claimed to be the world's biggest of its kind was unveiled on Saturday in the Sri Lankan capital by the owners, who are ready to sell the precious stone which is estimated to be worth at least $300 million. The round shaped gem named "Star of Pure Land" is the world's largest documented natural purple star sapphire, said Ashan Amarasinghe, a consultant gemologist. "This is the largest purple star sapphire of its kind," he told the media, adding that the gem "shows a well-defined asterism. It has six rays asterism.

ISLAMABAD (AP) - A truck plunged into a canal and a passenger bus overturned, in separate road crashes hours apart in Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 24 people and injuring 45 others, officials said. The first crash happened in Sargodha, a city in the eastern Punjab province, where a truck carrying passengers and cargo skidded off the road and fell into a canal amid heavy fog. Fourteen people were killed and nine others were injured, according to police and rescue officials. In a separate crash, at least 10 people were killed and 36 others were injured when a speeding passenger bus overturned on the Makran coastal highway in the southwestern Balochistan province, senior police official Aslam Bangulzai said.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison Friday in the first verdict from eight criminal trials over the martial law debacle that forced him out of office and other allegations. Yoon was impeached, arrested and dismissed as president after his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024 triggered huge public protests calling for his ouster. The most significant criminal charge against him alleges that his martial law enforcement amounted to a rebellion, An independent counsel has requested the death sentence over that charge, and the Seoul Central District Court will decide on that in a ruling on Feb.

BEIJING (AP) - Breaking with the United States, Canada has agreed to cut its 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday. Carney made the announcement after two days of meetings with Chinese leaders. He said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports coming into Canada at a tariff rate of 6.1%, growing to about 70,000 over five years. China will reduce its total tariff on canola seeds, a major Canadian export, from 84% to about 15%, he told reporters.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention. Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh. "Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state," the country's representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.