Top Asian News 4:48 a.m. GMT

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An Indonesian man arrested in Bali this week for suspected links to the Islamic State group after traveling to Turkey was an Australian-educated former Finance Ministry official, authorities said Friday. The Ministry of Finance said Triyono Utomo resigned from his job in the ministry's fiscal policy office in February last year because he wanted to focus on managing an Islamic boarding school in West Java. At the time he was in line to be appointed as a division head within the office. National Police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said Utomo, aged about 40, was well educated and studied for his master's degree in Australia.

BEIJING (AP) — China has released a new list of items banned for export to North Korea, ranging from wind tunnels to plutonium, following a new round of United Nations sanctions and complaints from U.S. President Donald Trump that Beijing was not doing enough to pressure its communist neighbor. The step was seen by one leading expert on North Korea as an attempt to show that China is fully meeting its commitments, and to pre-empt any moves by the U.S. to punish Chinese companies that deal with the North. However, the expert questioned whether the ban would have much effect in slowing a North Korean nuclear weapons program that is already well advanced and gathering momentum.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A lawyer for the jailed woman at the center of the biggest South Korean political scandal in decades said Thursday that prosecutors threatened to "annihilate" her family and used other abusive language during questioning. Prosecutors denied the accusations and expressed strong regret over them. The woman, Choi Soon-sil, a longtime friend of President Park Geun-hye, has been arrested for allegedly interfering in state affairs and extorting money from businesses. Park was impeached last month over the scandal and the Constitutional Court is reviewing whether to formally end her rule. Choi created a stir Wednesday by shouting out accusations about prosecutors when she was brought to the office of prosecutors.

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing residents concerned about breathing the capital's thick gray air are adapting, inventing and even creating businesses to protect the health of their families and others. Some of their efforts could help people around the world. Already this year, the smog-shrouded capital has suffered particularly hazardous bouts of pollution caused mainly by coal burning and vehicle emissions. Like other Chinese cities, Beijing is trying to tackle the problem: City authorities say they will spend $2.7 billion this year to help replace coal with natural gas, close heavily polluting factories and take older vehicles off the road. Official figures show improvement since 2013, but Beijing has a long way to go.

BEIJING (AP) — In China, Twitter is blocked but fake tweets by @realdonaldtrump look set to become the latest internet sensation. Users are flocking to websites that let them generate images of fake tweets that look just like those sent from U.S. President Donald Trump's distinctive personal Twitter account — replete with his avatar and a real-time timestamp. — @realdonaldtrump would like to wish you a Happy Chinese New Year, says one, referencing the holiday that falls this year on Saturday. — @realdonaldtrump thinks Shanghai Jiaotong University is better than its crosstown rival. — @realdonaldtrump wants to buy a jianbing (typical Chinese street food) and wants Mexico to pay for it.

NEW DELHI (AP) — A nonprofit running schools for children from India's lowest caste may run out of money to pay teachers in just months. A health institute in Bangalore is taking the government to court so it can continue its work, including anti-tobacco campaigns. A lawyers' group wanted to know why it lost its license to receive foreign donations, only to be told the government wasn't obliged to explain why. The government has canceled such licenses for more than 200 nonprofits, accusing them of engaging in "anti-national" activities. But the nonprofits see the removal of their funding mainstay, as well intimidation and harassment by government agencies, as attempts to suppress dissenting voices.

SYDNEY (AP) — A 69-year-old seaplane that crashed, killing the pilot and his passenger, in front of thousands of onlookers during an aerial display above the city of Perth had flown from the United States to Australia in recent years, an official said Friday. Owner and pilot Peter Anthony Lynch, 52, and his Indonesian partner Endah Cakrawati, 30, were alone in the 1948 Grumman G-73 Mallard flying boat when it crashed into the Swan River on Thursday to the horror of up to 60,000 witnesses who were gathering to watch an annual fireworks display. The fireworks to celebrate Australian Day were cancelled.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan on Thursday took a TV host off the air over incitement, after he said five human rights activists who recently went missing and other liberal Pakistanis should be killed for blasphemy and sedition, officials said. The state media regulator said that Amir Liaqat, a self-styled religious scholar, could no longer appear on the pro-military BOL TV, where he hosted a daily program, or any other local broadcast. In case Liaqat violates the ban, the broadcaster would face legal actions, said Mohammad Tahir, an official with the state regulator. "Liaqat cannot call anyone an infidel or traitor," Tahir's statement said, adding that hate speech is a crime under Pakistani law.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A 10-year-old surfer has had a close encounter with a photo-bombing shark that shared a wave with him off an Australian beach. Chris Hasson said Thursday that he was taking photos of his son Eden riding a wave off Samurai Beach at Port Stephens, 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of Sydney, on Tuesday when something unexpected and indistinct caught his eye. He discovered he had photographed the face of a twisting shark just below the surface with his son on an apparent collision course. "I saw the second photo and (thought) — no way," Hasson told the AP.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A survivor of a Philippine police raid that killed four other drug suspects asked the Supreme Court Thursday to stop such operations and help him obtain police records to prove his innocence in a test case against the president's bloody crackdown. Lawyer Romel Bagares said his client Efren Morillo and other petitioners also asked the court to order police to stop threatening witnesses. More than 7,000 drug suspects have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in June and ordered the crackdown, alarming human rights group and Western governments. Four policemen shot Morillo and four other men in impoverished Payatas village in metropolitan Manila in August.