Top Asian News 4:53 a.m. GMT

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A tiny young woman crouches just outside the airport, crying softly into her thin shawl. It's cold out, but her sleeping toddler is heavy and warm in her arms. Travelers swarm around: Himalayan trekkers load up expedition backpacks. A Chinese tour group boards a bus. A dozen flight attendants in crisp blue suits and heels click by. Saro Kumari Mandal, 26, covers her head completely, a bundle of grief. Hundreds of young Nepali men excitedly wave final goodbyes to friends and family. On this day 1,500 will fly out of the Kathmandu airport bound for jobs mostly in Malaysia, Qatar or Saudi Arabia — jobs that are urgently needed by the people of this desperately poor country.

BEIJING (AP) — Taiwan on Wednesday condemned the African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe's "abrupt" move to break their diplomatic ties, while rival China welcomed the defection of one of the self-governing island's small number of allies. Just 21 countries and governments now have official ties with Taiwan. Most of the world and the United Nations do not formally recognize Taiwan as a condition of maintaining relations with China, which considers the island a part of its territory. Beijing and Taipei have competed for allies for much of the nearly seven decades since the end of China's civil war in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist government fled across the Taiwan Strait.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian police said they killed three suspected militants in a raid Wednesday on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta and found several bombs which they are trying to defuse. National Police spokesman Rikwanto told MetroTV that the residential neighborhood has been evacuated. Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono said the group was a planning an attack on New Year's Eve. Rikwanto said the three men killed had tried to resist arrest and threw explosives at police as they raided the house, which is in a leafy middle-class residential compound in Tangerang, a Jakarta satellite city. One person was arrested.

SYDNEY (AP) — Ten Chinese nationals were charged on Tuesday with drug smuggling in Australia after officials said they found a stash of cocaine worth more than 60 million Australian dollars ($44 million) on their ship. Last week, the Australian Defense Force intercepted the 50-meter (160-foot) former research vessel off the island state of Tasmania, and escorted the boat to the state capital, Hobart. During a subsequent search, police found 186 kilograms (410 pounds) of cocaine on board, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said in a statement. The 10 crew members, all men aged between 23 and 50, were charged with attempting to import a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug.

SYDNEY (AP) — For two years, a handful of ships have diligently combed a remote patch of the Indian Ocean west of Australia in a $160 million bid to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. On Tuesday, investigators made what was surely a painful admission: They have probably been looking in the wrong place. The latest analysis by a team of international investigators concluded the vanished Boeing 777 is highly unlikely to be in the current search zone and may instead be in a region farther north. But though crews are expected to finish their deep-sea sonar hunt of the current search area next month, the possibility of extending the search to the north appeared doubtful, with Australia's transport minister suggesting the analysis wasn't specific enough to justify continuing the hunt.

SYDNEY (AP) — A look at the progressive searches for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which are the most challenging and expensive undertaken in aviation history. FIRST SEARCH: On March 8, 2014, an air and sea search begins in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea on the assumption that the plane crashed on its way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. Malaysia reveals two weeks later that its military radar had tracked the plane flying far off course to the west. SECOND SEARCH: Analysis of satellite signals emitted by the plane in its final hours suggests that it crashed west of Australia.

BEIJING (AP) — China on Tuesday handed back to the United States an underwater drone it had seized last week in an incident that raised tensions in a relationship that has been tested by President-elect Donald Trump's signals of a tougher policy toward Beijing. Trump has riled the Chinese leadership by saying he might reconsider U.S. policy toward Taiwan, the self-ruled island the mainland claims as its territory. The Chinese navy vessel that seized the drone returned it near where it was seized, and it was received by the USS Mustin about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.

BEIJING (AP) — Thick, gray smog fell over Beijing on Tuesday, choking China's capital in a haze that spurred authorities to cancel flights and close some highways in emergency measures to cut down on air pollution. Beijing and much of industrial northern China are in the midst of a "red alert," the highest level in China's four-tiered pollution warning system. The alert has affected 460 million people, according to Greenpeace East Asia, which calculated that about 200 million people were living in areas that had experienced levels of air pollution more than 10 times above the guideline set by the World Health Organization.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A foreign national was abducted by gunmen in northern Kunduz province in an attack on a Red Cross convoy, an Afghan official said Tuesday. Spain's Foreign Ministry confirmed that the abductee is a Spanish citizen. Mahmood Danish, spokesman for the provincial governor, said Tuesday that armed men stopped a convoy of vehicles from the International Committee of the Red Cross on Monday and snatched the only foreigner, leaving the Afghans behind. No militant group has so far claimed responsibility for the abduction. ICRC's spokesman in Kabul, Ahmad Ramin Ayaz, confirmed the abduction without providing further details. Ayaz says the ICRC staffers were traveling in two vehicles from northern Balkh province toward Kunduz province when the attack happened.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The goal has been to erect the world's tallest artificial Christmas tree, but Sri Lankan organizers now say they'll be lucky to get the tree up in time for the holiday. Hundreds of port workers and volunteers were scrambling Tuesday to build the enormous tree on a popular beachside promenade in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital. Once assembled, the steel-and-wire frame should stand 98 meters (320 feet) high — more than 40 meters (131 feet) taller than the current record-holder. Organizers said they wanted the tree to help promote ethnic and religious harmony in the Buddhist-majority South Asian island nation.