Top Asian News 2:34 a.m. GMT

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Farmers around the world are feeling the squeeze of the Iran war. Gas prices have shot up and fertilizer supplies are waning due to Tehran's near shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli bombing. The fertilizer shortage is putting the livelihood of farmers in developing countries - already troubled by rising temperatures and erratic weather systems - further at risk, and could lead to people everywhere paying more for food. The poorest farmers in the Northern Hemisphere rely on fertilizer imports from the Gulf, and the shortage comes just as planting season begins, said Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Nuclear power is getting a second look in Southeast Asia as countries prepare to meet surging energy demand as they vie for artificial intelligence-focused data centers. Several Southeast Asian nations are reviving mothballed nuclear plans and setting ambitious targets and nearly half of the region could, if they pursue those goals, have nuclear energy in the 2030s. Even countries without current plans have signaled their interest. Southeast Asia has never produced a single watt of nuclear energy, despite long-held atomic ambitions. But that may soon change as pressure mounts to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change, while meeting growing power needs.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Dozens of people were buried in a Kabul cemetery on Thursday in the second mass funeral of victims killed in an airstrike that hit a drug rehabilitation center in the Afghan capital earlier this month. Bulldozers opened a large pit into which individual graves were dug for the 60 coffins. Afghan officials have said hundreds of people were killed when a Pakistani airstrike hit the 2,000-bed Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital on March 16. The U.N. humanitarian affairs office has said the total death toll is still under verification. Pakistan has denied targeting civilians, saying it struck an ammunition depot.

Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held talks in North Korea's capital on Thursday and signed a friendship and cooperation treaty as the two Russian allies draw closer in the face of their confrontations with the U.S.-led West. Lukashenko, who was in Pyongyang on a two-day official visit, hailed the document as "fundamental," and said that relations between the two countries are "entering a new stage," according to his press service. North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said Friday that the leaders discussed boosting high-level cooperation and visits and exchanged their views on unspecified "international and regional issues of mutual concern."

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Balendra Shah, a structural engineer who rose to fame as a rap artist before becoming Kathmandu's mayor, is poised to become Nepal's next prime minister, after his party swept a parliamentary election earlier this month. Shah, widely known as Balen, leads the Rastriya Swatantra Party, or, RSP, which won about two-thirds of the 275 seats in the bicameral parliament's powerful lower House of Representatives. It is the first time in many years in Nepal that a single party has won such an overwhelming majority. Shah was chosen as the leader by the elected members from his party on Thursday.

TOKYO (AP) - A man brandishing a knife stabbed a woman in a Pokemon store in downtown Tokyo before turning the knife on himself, leaving both dead, Japanese police said Thursday. Officers rushed to the scene in a popular shopping center after receiving an emergency call reporting a rampage by a knife-wielding man. Police said the woman, who was stabbed in the neck, was in her 20s and believed to be an employee at the Pokemon store on the second floor of the Sunshine City building, which houses shops and offices. The attacker then stabbed himself in the neck, Tokyo police said.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Nepal's newly elected members of parliament were sworn in Thursday with nearly two-thirds of them from a political party that is less than four years old. The 275 members of the House of Representatives, the powerful lower chamber of parliament, will be in their positions for the next five years. The election - the country's first since last year's youth-led revolt - was won by the Rastriya Swatantra Party, or RSP, led by rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah. Shah is expected to be chosen as the leader by the elected members from his party later on Thursday and formally inform President Ram Chandra Poudel.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - A man who fled to China after leaving an explosive device outside MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa has been indicted along with his sister in Florida on federal charges, and their mother has been detained pending deportation for overstaying her visa, a federal prosecutor said Thursday. Alen Zheng, 20, and Ann Mary Zheng, 27, were charged Wednesday in separate federal indictments. The sister was arrested upon her return from China, where she had flown with her brother after the threat. Both have U.S. citizenship, U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe said during a news conference. The device didn't detonate, but "could have potentially been very deadly," Kehoe said.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - A bus carrying about 50 people plunged into a major river in central Bangladesh as it was driving onto a ferry, leaving at least 26 people dead, authorities said Thursday. The bus plunged into the Padma River on Wednesday afternoon in Rajbari district, about 84 kilometers (52 miles) from the capital, Dhaka, said fire official Dewan Sohel Rana. Sultana Akhter, local top government administrator, said that at least 26 people were killed in the accident. She said that authorities were handing over the bodies to their families on Thursday. The bus was traveling to the capital from the southwestern district of Kushtia as people return to work after the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's Taliban authorities on Tuesday released American academic Dennis Coyle after holding him for over a year, with the Foreign Ministry saying the release came on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. A statement from the ministry said the academic researcher had been released in Kabul, the country's capital, following an appeal from his family and after Afghanistan's Supreme Court "considered his previous imprisonment sufficient." Coyle was detained in January 2025. Afghan authorities accused him of violating laws, but never specified which ones. U.S.