Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Latest Updates

BEIJING (AP) - China on Monday announced sanctions on 10 American military-related companies in response to a recent U.S. move that bars some leading Chinese tech companies from defense contracts. The Commerce Ministry said that Chinese companies would be blocked from exporting "dual-use" items to the 10 companies, which include military drone makers and some involved in rare earth mining. Dual use refers to goods that can have military as well as non-military applications. The ministry said the export ban was both to safeguard China's national security and in response to what it called the U.S. government's "wrongful expansion of its so-called List of Chinese Military Companies." George Chen, partner for Greater China at the advisory firm The Asia Group, said the ban was an unsurprising and proportionate response to the U.S.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Two students armed with hand guns opened fire in a high school in the central Philippines on Monday, killing three fellow students and wounding another seven, police said. The suspects, aged 14 and 15, were arrested. The suspects and the victims were students of the San Jose National High School in Tacloban city, where the mid-morning shooting happened, regional police chief Brig. Gen. Jason Capoy said. An investigation was underway to determine the cause of the shooting in the government-run school, which has more than 1,500 students. Capoy said that the suspects, who were close friends, said in initial questioning that they were bullied in school.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A former South Korean justice minister was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Monday after a court found him guilty of helping ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol carry out his brief declaration of martial law in 2024. The Seoul Central District Court said it was clear Park Sung-jae played a key role in Yoon's attempted power grab following the declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, including ordering ministry officials to assess detention capacities at correctional facilities to prepare for arrests of politicians. Park also instructed officials to consider sending prosecutors to Yoon's martial law command to support possible investigations into the former conservative leader's political opponents and his unsubstantiated claims about liberal-led election fraud.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan kicked off a five-day set of military drills on Monday aimed at boosting the island's combat readiness in case of a Chinese military attack. In the city of Taoyuan, home to the island's largest international airport, tanks drove down city streets and highways, videos and photos of the exercise showed, as armored vehicles from the Army's 269th Infantry Brigade conducted combat readiness patrols morning. The Immediate Combat Readiness Exercises are meant to test how rapidly military units can deploy, especially in the face of a possible sudden escalation of Chinese grey-zone warfare. Grey-zone tactics refer to a range of aggressive tactics that vary from navy ship patrols to drone flights, but fall short of direct combat.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Police found 2.7 metric tons (3 tons) of cocaine on a property on Sydney's outskirts in Australia's largest-ever seizure of the drug, officials said Monday. The drug was found on June 19 in plastic tubs buried in underground bunkers hidden beneath three shipping containers on a semirural property in the suburb of Londonderry on Sydney's western edge, the Queensland Joint Organized Crime Taskforce said in a statement. The containers had false floors that provided access to the cocaine, which police estimate had a street value of 816 million Australian dollars ($572 million). Two Sydney residents, men aged 21 and 25, were arrested at the property and charged with possessing a commercial quantity of an illicit drug.

LUCKNOW, India (AP) - A fire tore through a commercial building in the northern Indian city of Lucknow on Monday, killing at least 14 people, most of them students, officials said. The blaze broke out in the Aliganj neighborhood in a building that housed a pet shop and veterinary clinic on the lower floors and a study center and an animation studio above. Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak said 14 bodies had been recovered at the site. At least 10 people were rescued and taken to a hospital for treatment, officials said. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Australia and Canada signed a $1.75 billion export agreement on Monday to build an Australian-designed long-range radar system in Canada. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and Canadian Secretary of State (Defense Procurement) Stephen Fuhr signed the first phase of a pact to provide early warning radar coverage from the Canada-United States border into the Arctic. "What this really means is that Australia and Canada are now partners in terms of the future development of the Over-the-Horizon Radar," Marles told reporters at the Australian Parliament House in the capital Canberra. "There is now a very strategic dimension to the relationship," Marles added.

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan sentenced two leaders of a Baloch human rights group Monday to life in prison over the death of a paramilitary soldier during a rally in 2024. Mahrang Baloch and Sibghatullah Shah, leaders of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), which is accused by authorities of having links to an outlawed militant group, were convicted of terrorism, sedition and murder in the killing of Shabbir Baloch during a BYC-led protest in the port city of Gwadar, in Balochistan. The prosecution said the two activists had incited a mob that subsequently attacked a security vehicle, seized the soldier and beat him to death with sticks and bricks.

DILI, East Timor (AP) - Francisco Guterres, a former president of East Timor and a leading figure in the country's independence movement, has died. He was 71. Guterres, widely known by his nom de guerre "Lu Olo," died on Sunday at Prince Court Medical Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he had been in intensive care, his family said on the late president's official Facebook account. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed. Guterres served as president from 2017 to 2022, capping decades of involvement in the political and armed struggle that led to independence for Southeast Asia's youngest nation in 2002.

Yoga enthusiasts gathered in different parts of the world on Sunday to mark the International Day of Yoga. This year, the annual tribute to yoga coincided with the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.