Top Asian News 3:58 a.m. GMT

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A plane from China skidded off a runway at Manila's airport while landing in a downpour near midnight then got stuck in a muddy field with one engine and wheel ripped off before its 157 passengers and eight crew scrambled out through an emergency slide, officials said Friday. Only a few passengers sustained bruises but all those aboard Xiamen Air Flight 8667 were safe and were taken to an airport terminal, where they were given blankets and food before being taken to a hotel, airport general manager Ed Monreal told a news conference. The Boeing 737 from China's coastal city of Xiamen appeared to have "bounced" in a hard landing then veered off the runway shortly after and rolled toward a rain-soaked grassy area with its lights off, officials said.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — More than a thousand Google employees have signed a letter protesting the company's secretive plan to build a search engine that would comply with Chinese censorship. The letter calls on executives to review ethics and transparency at the company. The letter's contents were confirmed by a Google employee who helped organize it but who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the debate. The letter says employees lack the information required "to make ethically informed decisions about our work" and complains that most employees only found out about the project — nicknamed Dragonfly — through media reports.

NEW DELHI (AP) — Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist who set off a nuclear arms race with rival Pakistan but later reached across the border to begin a groundbreaking peace process, died Thursday after a long illness. He was 93. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where Vajpayee had been hospitalized for more than two months with a kidney infection and chest congestion, announced his death. Vajpayee, a leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, had suffered a stroke in 2009. A onetime journalist, Vajpayee was in many ways a political contradiction: He was the moderate leader of an often-strident Hindu nationalist movement.

SHAH ALAM, Malaysia (AP) — Two women accused in the brazen assassination of the North Korean leader's half brother were told Thursday to make their defense after a Malaysian judge found evidence they participated in a "well-planned conspiracy" to kill, extending their murder trial until next year. Indonesia's Siti Aisyah and Vietnam's Doan Thi Huong are accused of smearing VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam's face in an airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 13, 2017. They face the death penalty if convicted. High Court Judge Azmi Ariffin found inadequate proof of a political assassination and said he wasn't persuaded by defense arguments that the women thought they were playing a prank for a hidden-camera show.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — As Afghanistan's Shiites mourned their dead and held funeral services Thursday, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the horrific suicide bombing in Kabul that targeted a Shiite neighborhood the previous day, killing 34 students. Grieving families gathered to bury their dead but even amid the somber atmosphere there was no respite from violence, underscoring the near-daily, persistent threats in the war-battered country. Two gunmen besieged a compound belonging to the Afghan intelligence service in a northwestern Kabul neighborhood early Thursday, opening fire as Afghan security forces moved in to cut them off. The standoff lasted for nearly six hours before police killed the gunmen and secured the area.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The Taliban is likely to keep up its recent surge of violence in advance of scheduled parliamentary elections in October but Western-backed Afghan defenses will not break, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday. In his most detailed comments on the Taliban's assault on the eastern city of Ghazni since it began Aug. 10, Mattis said the Taliban had six objectives in and around the city and failed to seize any of them. He would not specify the six sites. In Ghazni, provincial police chief Farid Mashal said Thursday that roads were being cleared of mines planted by Taliban who temporarily held entire neighborhoods of the city that they had besieged.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — One win into the Asian Games and the bigger picture is already clear for the combined Koreas basketball team. Three North Korean players, including top-scorer Ro Suk Yong, and nine South Koreans combined for a 108-40 win over host Indonesia on the opening night of the women's basketball preliminaries. North Korea Olympic committee vice chairman Won Kul U was asked about the combined basketball squad during his delegation's welcoming ceremony in Jakarta on Thursday. "Isn't it good to have a joint team?" Won was quoted by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. "I think we should have more unified teams in other sports." The Koreas will also be entering combined teams in rowing, canoeing and dragon boat racing in the Asian Games.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Amnesty International says Indonesian police fatally shot dozens of petty criminals in a deliberate campaign of "unnecessary and excessive" force ahead of the Asian Games. The rights group said Friday that 31 of the police killings it recorded from media reports between January and August were directly linked to street-crime crackdowns for the games being hosted in Jakarta and Palembang. It said police shot dead 77 petty criminals across Indonesia during the same period, a large increase from 2017. Police were criticized last month when they said they had killed 11 street thugs in Jakarta in under two weeks.

PERTH, Australia (AP) — A 74-year-old man with terminal cancer said on Thursday he could die happy after reaching a 1 million Australian dollar ($727,000) landmark settlement against a Catholic religious order for sexual abuse he suffered in Australia more than 50 years ago. Paul Bradshaw was to testify on Thursday in the Western Australia state District Court about his ill treatment at Castledare Junior Orphanage and Clontarf Orphanage run by the Irish Chritian Brothers order in the 1950s and '60s. But instead, a settlement was reached with the Trustees of the Christian Brothers for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Brothers Lawrence Murphy, Bruno Doyle and Christopher Angus, who are all dead.

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A court in central Vietnam sentenced an activist to 20 years in prison Thursday after finding him guilty of attempting to overthrow the Communist government, his lawyer said, in a case decried by international rights groups. The court also sentenced Le Dinh Luong, 53, to five years of house arrest, said his lawyer Ha Huy Son. Son said Luong was convicted of encouraging others to join the Viet Tan group in exile in the United States. Vietnam brands the group a terrorist organization. "I think the sentence against Mr. Luong is too harsh," Son said after the half-day trial in Nghe An province.