Top Asian News 1:05 a.m. GMT

The great-grandson of Wong Kim Ark, the Chinese American at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case that established the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, called Tuesday's ruling a victory for all Americans, saying it reaffirmed that precedent. "I don't consider this stuff a personal victory," Norman Wong told The Associated Press. "It's an obligation and a duty for every American to care about this because ultimately we're not fighting for the rights of Chinese or Japanese or whatever. We're fighting for rights for all Americans because these are fundamental rights." Wong, 76, has become an unexpected public face of the movement to protect birthright citizenship.

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) - A roof collapse at a tutoring center under construction in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday killed at least 14 schoolchildren, police and rescue officials said. Eight other children were injured and being treated at a hospital, senior police official Faisal Kamran said, adding that the owner of the tutoring center and another person have been arrested. Kamran said rescuers were searching through the rubble after receiving reports that more children could be trapped beneath the debris. He said the tutoring center was housed in an aging building and that the roof of an unfinished second floor apparently collapsed because of poor construction quality.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesia's anti-graft court on Tuesday sentenced one of the co-founders of ride-hailing and payments giant Gojek to 10 years in prison after finding him guilty in a high-profile corruption case stemming from his time as education minister. Nadiem Anwar Makarim was convicted of pushing his ministry to buy Google Chromebook laptops for schools during the COVID-19 pandemic as the American tech giant was considering an investment in Gojek's parent company. Makarim denied wrongdoing. A panel of five judges at Jakarta's Corruption Court ordered Makarim to repay 809 billion rupiah (about $45.2 million) - a figure prosecutors said represented the value to him of Google's investment in PT Aplikasi Karya Anak Bangsa - and imposed a fine of 1 billion rupiah (about $55,870).

The instructions were clear: He had four days to make each victim fall in love. And there were a lot of victims. Online, Safeer Mohammed Koorimannil, who was trafficked to a scam center in Myanmar, impersonated a 28-year-old Singaporean woman named Ella. On a typical shift, he said, he chatted with more than 100 people across dozens of profiles at the same time, as supervisors prowled among the desks with electric batons. In just a month, Koorimannil targeted some 50,000 victims from at least 17 countries, according to records he smuggled out to The Associated Press. His "clients" included a widowed tailor in Kurdistan, a pastry chef in Turkey, a sheep farmer in Kyrgyzstan, soldiers in Iraq, an engineer in Russia, a building painter in Germany, a port officer in Argentina, a student in Indonesia, a security guard in Poland and a dairy farmer in the Republic of Georgia.

One thought he was getting to know "Eliza" and was robbed of his life savings. The other was trafficked to a scam compound, beaten and forced to become "Ella" online. Separated by thousands of miles, Chris Colocousis and Safeer Mohammed Koorimannil inhabited opposite sides of the global cyberscam industry. An AP/"FRONTLINE" investigation has found that American technology is present all along the digital supply chains that connect people like Colocousis and Koorimannil. Most public scrutiny has focused on the social media platforms victims see. But the infrastructure exploited to commit fraud begins much farther upstream, from AI models baked into powerful new tools to optimize workflow and create more perfect fakes, to satellite dishes that enable scammers to evade internet crackdowns, to internet service providers that carry traffic from the lawless borderlands of Myanmar to the phones and computers of millions of victims.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Abdul Ahad Momand, Afghanistan 's first citizen in space, has died at age 67, his family and friends said. A national hero, Momand died from cancer on June 21 in a hospital in Stuttgart, Germany, where he had lived since leaving Afghanistan in 1992 during the civil war. "I am deeply saddened by the sudden death of Afghanistan's first and only astronaut, Abdul Ahad Momand," former President Ashraf Ghani wrote on X. "I pray to God to grant Momand a high place in heaven, and I extend my deepest condolences to his wife, children, and other family members." In 1988, Momand - then a 29‑year‑old air force pilot - was selected to join a Soviet space program designed to send representatives from aligned nations into orbit, at a time when Afghanistan was under Soviet control.

KAMAKURA, Japan (AP) - Eiko Kadono, the author behind Japan's most famous - and almost certainly most beloved - literary witch, has a little trouble going up the stairs these days. At 91, she's still writing every day and hasn't stopped loving the color pink, dressing up or believing in the magic of books. "Kiki's Delivery Service," which was first published in 1985 and turned into a 1989 animation film by Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, is among 200 books she has written. "I never tire of writing," she told The Associated Press at her home in the picturesque seaside town of Kamakura, south of Tokyo.

SRINAGAR, India (AP) - Every morning, long, narrow wooden boats called shikaras move elegantly across expansive Dal Lake in a postcard-perfect scene framed by the Himalayan mountains. But all is not perfect in one of South Asia's best-known lakes. Pollution from local buildings, invasive plant species that threaten biodiversity and declining water levels, in part due to climate-driven heat, are threatening the long-term existence of Dal Lake and hundreds of other lakes in Indian-controlled Kashmir. It takes constant effort by workers employed by the local government to keep Dal Lake's weeds at bay, and they must take precautions to avoid skin irritation from the polluted water.

ISLAMABAD (AP) - Pakistan's government Tuesday warned that any attempt by India to deprive Pakistan of its share of water under the Indus Waters Treaty would amount to the "weaponization of water" and could have serious consequences for regional peace and security. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and other government officials made the remarks at an international seminar on the 1960 World Bank -brokered treaty, which governs the sharing of water from the Indus River system between the nuclear-armed neighbors. The treaty has come under renewed strain after India suspended its participation in the agreement following the killing of 26 tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir in April.

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Police in Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Tuesday arrested the leader of an outlawed political group that has led weeks of protests over legislative seats reserved for refugees, officials said. Shaukat Nawaz Mir, head of the banned Joint Awami Action Committee, or JAAC, was arrested during a raid on a house, government administrator Munir Qureshi said. He said Mir faces sedition charges for allegedly inciting violence during protests earlier this month that left at least four security officers and three civilians dead. Mir's arrest came weeks after authorities announced a reward of 10 million rupees (about $35,000) for information leading to his arrest and that of three other wanted members of the group, promising to keep the identities of informants confidential.