Top Asian News 3:42 a.m. GMT

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — A Christchurch gun shop on Monday acknowledged selling guns online to the 28-year-old white supremacist accused of killing 50 people in mosque shootings that have upturned New Zealand's reputation as among the world's most tolerant and safe nations. At a news conference, Gun City owner David Tipple said the store sold four guns and ammunition to Brenton Harrison Tarrant through a "police-verified online mail order process." The store "detected nothing extraordinary," about the purchaser, he said. None of the guns sold to Tarrant were military style semi-automatic weapons. Calling for gun laws to be tightened, New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said the attacker used five guns, two of them semi-automatic, which were purchased with an ordinary gun license and modified.

Australia is making public grants available to help places of worship bolster security after an Australian white supremacist was accused of a terror attack in New Zealand. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says 55 million Australian dollars ($39 million) in total will be made available to add security video, fencing, lighting and alarms. Morrison says religious freedom has to start with the right to worship and meet safely without fear of violence. Australian Brenton Tarrant was charged with murder over the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch in which 50 people were killed. He grew up in the New South Wales town of Grafton and had lived in New Zealand in recent years.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — He spent just three years on this earth, but in some ways, a friend said, he seemed like an old soul. Before he became the youngest known victim of Christchurch's mass shooting, 3-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim had possessed intelligence beyond his years, and an affinity for his elders. But on Friday, when a gunman stormed into the mosque where Mucaad was sitting with his big brother and father, it was Mucaad's youth that left him so vulnerable. In the chaos that ensued as people fled from the bullets, the tiny boy became separated from his family. On Sunday, his brother Abdi Ibrahim said that police had confirmed the worst: Their beloved little boy was dead.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — Ahmed Tani settled in Christchurch as a refugee in 1999. After his escape from civil war in Somalia, he saw the New Zealand city as a place of peace, a haven. Christchurch was more than just physically distant from the bitter strife he had previously known. With its leafy streets, vibrant gardens and green public parks, the Garden City, as it is known, was even visually a world away from the desolation of Tani's war-scorched past. A teacher in Somalia, he first became a taxi driver in Christchurch, a choice made by many refugees whose qualifications are often not accepted in their new homeland.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — The attributes that helped Jacinda Ardern rise to become New Zealand's leader at age 37 include her optimistic outlook and bright personality. And she became an inspiration to working women around the world last year when she gave birth to a daughter, Neve. But the prime minister is now displaying other qualities to an anxious nation after a gunman on Friday slaughtered 50 people at two Christchurch mosques. She's shown a determination to change gun laws and a deep empathy with the families of the victims and the Muslim community. On Friday afternoon at a simple table laid in a hotel conference room in New Plymouth, a city on New Zealand's North Island, Ardern told the nation about the shootings.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — Three students from Cashmere High School were at the Al Noor Mosque for Friday prayers when a gunman started shooting. When classes resume Monday, none will be there. Two of the students are presumed dead, and the third is in the hospital with gunshot wounds suffered during New Zealand's deadliest shooting in modern history. The father of Sayyad Milne, 14, told the New Zealand Herald that his son was last seen lying on the bloody floor of the mosque bleeding from his lower body. "I've lost my little boy. He's just turned 14. I'll get it together again," he told the newspaper.

An attack on a New Zealand mosque took the lives of 50 worshippers Friday and left dozens more wounded when a white supremacist opened fire and live-streamed the shootings. Here are the stories of some of those killed and wounded. THE DEAD HUSNA AHMED Farid Ahmed refuses to turn his back on his adopted home, despite losing his 45-year-old wife, Husna Ahmed, in the Al Noor mosque attack. They had split up to go to the bathroom when it happened. The gunman livestreamed the massacre on the internet, and Ahmed later saw a video of his wife being shot. A police officer confirmed she died.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — The New Zealand leader's promise of tightened gun laws in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings has been widely welcomed by a stunned population. Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern said her Cabinet will consider the details of the changes on Monday. She has said options include a ban on private ownership of semi-automatic rifles that were used with devastating effect in Christchurch and a government-funded buyback of newly outlawed guns. While curtailing gun owners' rights is a political battleground in the United States, Christchurch gun owner Max Roberts, 22, predicted Ardern won't face serious opposition to her agenda.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Preliminary information from the flight data recorder of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed a week ago and killed 157 people shows "clear similarities" with an earlier disaster involving the same kind of Boeing aircraft in Indonesia, Ethiopia's transport minister said Sunday. The disclosure came as thousands marched in the capital of Addis Ababa, accompanying 17 empty caskets at a funeral for the Ethiopian victims of Flight 302. The caskets were empty because authorities have said that recovering and identifying the remains will take months. The crash of Ethiopian Flight 302 on March 10 and that of a Lion Air plane in Indonesia in October — both of them Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliners — have prompted the United States and other countries to ground the aircraft.

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Italy, France and Monaco from Thursday to March 26, the foreign ministry said Monday. Italy's coalition government has sent mixed signals over whether it will sign a proposed agreement to join China's trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure investment drive. The initiative aims to expand commerce by building ports, railways and other infrastructure across more than 60 countries from the South Pacific through Asia to Europe and Africa. Projects under the initiative have faced complaints that they leave host countries with too much debt, and with too little work going to local companies.