Top Asian News 3:39 a.m. GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — A committee dominated by pro-Beijing elites cast ballots Sunday to choose Hong Kong's next leader in the first such vote since 2014's huge pro-democracy protests. The election committee's 1,194 members voted at a downtown exhibition center, with the city's former No. 2 official Carrie Lam widely expected to win after getting the backing of China's communist leaders. Ballot boxes were being taken to the counting area to be tallied after the morning vote. Pro-Beijing and pro-democracy groups held competing rallies outside the election venue, and were kept apart by police hundreds of police officers. The pro-democracy crowd chanted "I want genuine democracy," the usual slogan for opponents of the current system.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. counterterrorism airstrike earlier this month in Afghanistan killed an al-Qaida leader responsible for a deadly hotel attack in Islamabad in 2008 and the 2009 attack on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team, the Pentagon said Saturday. In confirming the death of Qari Yasin, U.S. officials said Yasin was a senior terrorist figure from Balochistan, Pakistan, had ties to the group Tehrik-e Taliban and had plotted multiple al-Qaida terror attacks. The airstrike that led to his death was conducted March 19 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. Yasin plotted the Sept. 20, 2008, bombing on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad that killed dozens, officials said.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Days after South Korea's president was removed from office, a ferry was lifted slowly from the waters where it sank three years earlier — a disaster that killed more than 300 people, mostly schoolchildren, and ignited public fury against Park Geun-hye and became a nationally polarizing issue. The ferry's recovery has raised the question of whether that process can bring closure to a country that was roiled and split by the ferry sinking. The quick answer would be: "Not completely." And the ship's recovery is now political fodder ahead of a May election to choose a new president.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Salvage crews towed a corroded 6,800-ton South Korean ferry and loaded it onto a semi-submersible transport vessel Saturday, completing what was seen as the most difficult part of the massive effort to bring the ship back to shore nearly three years after it sank. Government officials say it will take a week or two to bring the vessel to a port 90 kilometers (55 miles) away so investigators can search for the remains of nine missing people who were among the 304 who died when the Sewol capsized on April 16, 2014. Most of the victims were students on a high school trip, touching off an outpouring of national grief and soul searching about long-ignored public safety and regulatory failures.

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — Supporters of a jailed former lawmaker tried to break through a police cordon outside the national security agency's headquarters in Kyrgyzstan's capital, but police turned them back with flash grenades. Dozens were arrested. About 250 people had gathered Saturday in Bishkek, the Central Asian nation's capital, to demand the release of Sadyr Jarapov, who was arrested when trying to enter the country earlier in the day. It was not clear why he was arrested. Japarov had lived the past few years in Cyprus after serving a prison sentence for organizing a 2013 protest that turned violent. The protest was connected to disputes over the Canadian-owned Kumtor gold mine that is one of the country's main industries.

CHICAGO (AP) — A blogger from Singapore who was jailed for his online posts blasting his government was granted asylum to remain in the United States, an immigration judge ruled. Amos Yee, 18, has been detained by federal immigration authorities since December when he was taken into custody at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Attorneys said he could be released from a Wisconsin detention center as early as Monday. Judge Samuel Cole issued a 13-page decision Friday, more than two weeks after Yee's closed-door hearing on the asylum application. "Yee has met his burden of showing that he suffered past persecution on account of his political opinion and has a well-founded fear of future persecution in Singapore," Cole wrote.

SYDNEY (AP) — China's premier attended an Australian football game with the country's prime minister on Saturday, wrapping up a visit Down Under aimed at boosting bilateral ties and expanding trade between the two nations. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took a break from trade discussions to kick back at the Australian Football League match in Sydney. Turnbull and Li have spent the past several days speaking out against protectionism and touting the benefits of free trade at a time when President Donald Trump is proposing an "America First" overhaul of global trade. China is Australia's biggest trading partner, with bilateral trade exceeding $107 billion and bilateral investment exceeding $100 billion.

NEW DELHI (AP) — Two civilians and a policeman were killed in explosions in Bangladesh on Saturday as troops raided a suspected military hideout in the country's east, police said. Golam Kibria, a senior police official in Sylhet city, said 25 people were also wounded in the explosions, which took place on a road near an Islamic religious school. Since Friday, paramilitary troops have been engaged in an operation to flush out a group of Islamist radicals holed up in a nearby building with a large cache of ammunition. Police said that earlier Saturday, 78 civilians were rescued from the building as troops broke through a boundary wall.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Hazardous, heavily polluting tanneries, with workers as young as 14, supplied leather to companies that make shoes and handbags for a host of Western brands, a nonprofit group that investigates supply chains says. The report by New York-based Transparentem, released to The Associated Press on Friday, didn't say leather from the tanneries ends up in American and European companies' products, only that the manufacturers of some of those goods receive it. Some companies say they're certain the leather used to make their products was imported from outside Bangladesh, and the manufacturers concur. Still, in response to the report most brands had switched factories, banned Bangladesh leather or demanded improvements and audits.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong's next leader will be chosen Sunday by an election committee stacked with pro-Beijing elites who heed the wishes of China's communist leaders rather than the semiautonomous region's voters. The candidates are front-runner Carrie Lam, a career civil servant who is widely seen as Beijing's favorite, chief rival John Tsang and retired judge Woo Kwok-hing. A closer look at each potential replacement to unpopular incumbent Leung Chun-ying, whose term ends in June: ___ THE FRONTRUNNER — A lifelong civil servant who rose to Hong Kong's second-highest office, former Chief Secretary Carrie Lam is Beijing's preference. She's seen as loyal to China's Communist leaders yet without the polarizing persona of her former boss Leung, whose initials inspired Lam's nickname of C.Y.