Top Asian News 3:43 a.m. GMT

HEFEI, China (AP) — The flood of angry anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media was the first sign of how fiercely the suburban middle-class homeowners in this central China city opposed a planned mosque in their neighborhood. It quickly escalated into something more sinister. Soon a pig's head was buried in the ground at the future Nangang mosque, the culmination of a rally in which dozens of residents hoisted banners and circled the planned building site. Then the mosque's imam received a text message carrying a death threat: "In case someone in your family dies, I have a coffin for you — and more than one, if necessary."

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A top national security adviser to President Donald Trump is the latest official heading out in an ongoing shuffle within the National Security Council. K.T. McFarland, who is in line to be U.S. ambassador to Singapore, came into the White House as a deputy to Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Flynn was asked to resign in February amid revelations that he misled senior administration officials about his contacts with Russian government officials. McFarland's impending move was confirmed Sunday by a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement hasn't been made.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea has vowed to bolster its defenses to protect itself against airstrikes like the ones President Donald Trump ordered against an air base in Syria. The North called the airstrikes "absolutely unpardonable" and said they prove its nuclear weapons are justified to protect the country against Washington's "evermore reckless moves for a war." The comments were made by a Foreign Ministry official and carried Sunday by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency. The report did not name the official, which is common in KCNA reports. The airstrikes, announced shortly after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up dinner at a two-day summit in Florida last week, were retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his country's long civil war.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon says a Navy carrier strike group is moving toward the western Pacific Ocean to provide a physical presence near the Korean Peninsula. North Korea's recent ballistic missile tests and continued pursuit of a nuclear program have raised tensions in the region, where U.S. Navy ships are a common presence and serve in part as a show of force. On Saturday, President Donald Trump and South Korea's leader, Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn, spoke by phone. The White House said the two agreed to stay in close contact about North Korea and other issues. The U.S. Pacific Command directed the carrier group to sail north to the western Pacific after departing Singapore on Saturday, according to a Navy news release.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Authorities are searching for poachers who killed a rare one-horned rhinoceros over the weekend in the forests of southern Nepal and cut off the horn, officials said Sunday. Forest officer Nurendra Aryal said it was the first killing of a rhino in the Chitwan National Forest in nearly three years. Soldiers and forest rangers were scouring the forests and nearby areas for the people who shot the rhino. The dead animal was discovered on Saturday. Aryal said it was a stormy night, so forest officers did not hear a gunshot or spot the poachers enter the area.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A horde of foreign fun-runners took to the streets of Pyongyang on Sunday for an annual marathon that has become one of the North Korean capital's most popular tourist events. Officially called the Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon, the race became an instant hit with tourists looking to run in possibly the world's most exotic locale when it was opened up to amateur foreign runners in 2014. Like everything else in North Korea, the race has a political backdrop. First held in 1981, it is part of nationwide festivities leading up to the April 15 "Day of the Sun," a national holiday marking the birthday of the late Kim Il Sung, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's grandfather and the country's "eternal president." Later this week, North Korea is expected to open its doors to foreign journalists to further publicize the holiday and show a new residential area of Pyongyang with several high-rise apartment buildings.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ramon Regalado was starving and sick with malaria when he slipped away from his Japanese captors during the infamous 1942 Bataan Death March in the Philippines, escaping a brutal trudge through steamy jungle that killed hundreds of Americans and thousands of Filipinos who fought for the U.S. during World War II. On Saturday, the former wartime machine-gun operator joined a dwindling band of veterans of the war in San Francisco's Presidio to honor the soldiers who died on the march and those who made it to a prisoner of war camp only to die there. They commemorated the mostly Filipino soldiers who held off Japanese forces in the Philippines for three months without supplies of food or ammunition before a U.S.

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Security forces in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir opened fire Sunday on crowds of people who attacked polling stations where voting for a by-election was taking place, killing five and injuring at least a dozen, officials said. Protesters tried to snatch or damage electronic voting machines in at least a dozen places in the districts of Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal, said Shantmanu, Kashmir's chief electoral officer. The deaths occurred when security forces fired after clashes broke out with protesters who wanted to stop the election for the Srinagar parliamentary constituency. The seat had fallen vacant after a lawmaker resigned to protest the killing of civilians during unrest last year.

NEW DELHI (AP) — People across India are hailing the composure of a television news anchor who learned of her husband's death as she delivered a breaking news report on live TV. Supreet Kaur was reading the morning news bulletin for India's IBC24 channel in Chhattisgarh state on Saturday when a reporter called in a story about a fatal road crash. Although the reporter didn't name the three victims, Kaur realized her husband, Harsad Kawade, was among the dead from the details of the story. "For a moment her voice trembled, but she collected herself and carried on reading the news till the bulletin got over 10 minutes later," Ravikant Mittal, IBC24's editor-in-chief, said Sunday.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Six suspected Islamic militants killed in a standoff with police were planning to attack police officers in Indonesia's East Java province to seek revenge for the arrest of a radical leader, authorities said Sunday. The men were cornered in a village in Tuban district on Saturday after attempting to shoot a traffic police officer who was approaching them when he saw their car stopped at the roadside, said national police spokesman Rikwanto. The six refused appeals to surrender during a standoff that lasted several hours and were fatally shot by police, said Rikwanto, who goes by a single name.