DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — The writer, a thin young man who fears the growing interweaving of religion and politics in Bangladesh, knows his turn could come next. What happened earlier this week, when the second secularist blogger in less than a month was hacked to death in the streets of the capital, made it clear he wasn’t safe. “Anytime they can hit me or my like-minded friends,” said Ananya Azad, a 25-year-old blogger who has written pieces that were critical of Islamic fundamentalism and politics driven by religion. He quit his job as a newspaper columnist and stopped writing blogs in recent months after receiving numerous threats, but still posts critical comments on Facebook.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine weather bureau on Saturday downgraded Typhoon Maysak into a storm as thousands of people were told to leave the country’s northeastern coastline where it was headed from the Pacific after killing four people and destroying hundreds of homes in Micronesia. The weather bureau said winds and rains will start lashing the eastern seaboard of the main island of Luzon late Saturday before the storm makes landfall early Sunday.
BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese-born American geologist was released from prison in China after serving more than eight years on charges of procuring state secrets, a human rights group said Saturday. Xue Feng returned to his family in Houston, Texas, on Friday after being deported immediately following his release, the San Francisco-based Dui Hua foundation said.
BENJINA, Indonesia (AP) — At first the men filtered in, by twos and threes, hearing whispers of a possible rescue. Then, as the news rippled around the island, hundreds of weathered former and current slaves streamed out, many with long, greasy hair and tattoos. They came from trawlers and villages, even out of the jungle, running toward what they had only dreamed of for years: Freedom.
PANAJI, India (AP) — Indian police arrested four people Friday following a federal government minister’s complaint that a niche boutique in the southwestern resort of Goa had a closed-circuit TV looking into a changing room where she was trying out clothes. Police officer Umesh Gaonkar said the four boutique employees face charges of insulting a woman and outraging her modesty, which carry a maximum prison sentence of two years. They will be formally charged in a court at the end of the police investigation.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Thousands of anti-Islam and anti-racism protesters clashed in angry rallies around Australia on Saturday. The most violent clash was in Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, where police struggled to separate 3,000 opposing demonstrators.
SAN PEDRO CUTUD, Philippines (AP) — Screaming in pain, Filipino devotees had themselves nailed to wooden crosses to mimic the suffering of Jesus Christ on Good Friday in Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation. Church leaders have spoken against the annual practice mixing Catholic devotion with folk belief, but it continues to draw big crowds, particularly in northern Pampanga province.
BEIJING (AP) — Prosecutors charged former national security chief Zhou Yongkang with corruption and leaking of state secrets, setting the stage for him to become the highest-level politician to stand trial in China in more than three decades. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced the long-expected indictment on its website Friday following a lengthy investigation that also scrutinized Zhou’s former allies in government and the oil industry, but gave no new substantial details of the accusations against him.
BEIJING (AP) — The indictment of China’s former security boss Zhou Yongkang marks the latest chapter in the Communist Party’s history of purging itself of leaders who’ve fallen out of favor politically or whose alleged crimes appear too serious to go unnoticed. Zhou is charged with corruption and the leaking of state secrets. As a former member of the party’s all-power Politburo Standing Committee, he would be the highest-ranking Chinese official, sitting or retired, to go before a court since the 1980-1981 treason trial of Mao Zedong’s wife and other members of the “Gang of Four” who persecuted political opponents during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired short-range projectiles into the sea for a second consecutive day Friday in an apparent protest against ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, South Korean officials said. Four projectiles with a range of 140 kilometers (87 miles) were fired into waters off North Korea’s west coast on Friday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said North Korea also fired the same type of short-range projectile on Thursday.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian cartoonist known for lampooning the ruling coalition was charged Friday with nine counts of sedition over a series of tweets criticizing the country’s judiciary. The charges against Zulkiflee Anwar Alhaque, better known as Zunar, came amid a widening government crackdown on opposition politicians and the media slammed by critics as a move to stifle freedom of expression.
A man plays with his son after being flagellated on Good Friday to atone for sins in the northern Philippines. Hundreds of barefoot devotees walked the streets whipping their bare backs with bamboo sticks dangling from a rope in the village of San Pedro Cutud in Pampanga province. Flagellation rituals and crucifixion re-enactments are held in several places in the predominantly Roman Catholic country each year. Church leaders have spoken against the crucifixion practice mixing Catholic devotion with folk belief, but it continues to draw big crowds.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan official says a roadside bombing has killed seven people in a province east of Kabul. Din Mohammad Darwish, spokesman for the Logar provincial governor, says the attack happened on Friday morning in Baraki Barak district when a vehicle that two families were riding in struck a roadside bomb.
SENDAI, Japan (AP) — Mankind is powerless to prevent calamities such as typhoons and earthquakes, but in Japan where the devastating 2011 tsunami still looms large, there’s a flourishing industry in devising ways to cope with catastrophe. Some of the products on display at an exhibition on the sidelines of a recent United Nations disaster conference in the northeastern city of Sendai featured high-tech innovations and new materials. But many were just inventive, practical solutions for challenges such as quickly getting people out of harm’s way.
BANGKOK (AP) — Vijay Joshi, a veteran foreign correspondent and news leader for The Associated Press who has spent three decades covering Asia and the Middle East, has been named the cooperative’s director of news for Southeast Asia. Joshi, 53, currently the assistant Asia-Pacific editor, will continue to be based in Bangkok. From there he will oversee day-to-day operations of more than three dozen AP journalists in 12 countries in the region, which contains nations from Myanmar to Papua New Guinea.
