Top Asian News 1:24 a.m. GMT

BEIJING (AP) — China summoned the American ambassador and the defense attache and recalled its navy commander from a U.S. trip to deliver a strong protest against economic sanctions Washington lodged over the purchase of Russian fighter jets and surface-to-air missile equipment. The Defense Ministry said the U.S. had no right to interfere in Chinese military cooperation with Russia. "We demand that the U.S. immediately correct the mistake and revoke the so-called sanctions, otherwise the U.S. must bear the consequences," the Defense Ministry said in a statement. The Foreign Ministry said that it had summoned Ambassador Terry Branstad. The Central Military Commission, which commands the People's Liberation Army, the world's largest standing military, said that Huang Xueping, the commission's deputy head for international military cooperation, had also summoned the acting U.S.

NEW DELHI (AP) — The Maldives is holding its third multiparty presidential elections on Sunday. The Indian Ocean nation of 400,000 has been rife with political turmoil since democracy was introduced just a decade ago. Famed for its white sand beaches and luxury resorts, the Maldives under President Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who is seeking re-election, has seen economic growth and longer life expectancy, according to the World Bank. But Yameen's critics say he has systematically rolled back democratic freedoms, jailing rivals and controlling courts. Like elsewhere in South Asia, China has made fast inroads into the Maldives with aid and investment, challenging India's long-held position as the dominant regional power.

MALE, Maldives (AP) — Police in the Maldives raided the main campaign office of the opposition presidential candidate on Saturday, the eve of an election viewed as a referendum on whether democracy will survive in the country. Police said they had obtained a warrant to search the office based on police intelligence that it may have been used to coordinate vote-buying, opposition spokesman Shauna Aminath told The Associated Press, adding that a senior campaign official had been named as a suspect. The opposition's presidential candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, was not in the office at the time of the raid, Aminath said.

An opposition party spokesman in the Maldives says police obtained a warrant to search the main campaign office of the party's presidential candidate based on police intelligence that the office was being used to coordinate vote-buying. Spokesman Shauna Aminath says police obtained the 14-hour warrant Saturday to search the office for documents or other evidence of bribery ahead of Sunday's Maldives election, which is widely seen as a referendum on the country's democracy. Aminath says the warrant also names senior opposition campaign team member Ahmed Shahid as a suspect. Several calls to Shahid went unanswered. A spokesman for former president Mohamed Nasheed said from Colombo, the capital of neighboring Sri Lanka, that the raid showed that the election would be unfair.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican and China said Saturday they had signed a "provisional agreement" over the appointment of bishops, a breakthrough on an issue that stymied diplomatic relations for decades and aggravated a split among Chinese Catholics. The deal resolved one of the major sticking points in recent years, with the Vatican agreeing to accept seven bishops who were previously named by Beijing without the pope's consent. The development comes nearly seven decades after the Holy See and Beijing severed official relations. Beijing's long-held insistence that it must approve bishop appointments in China had clashed with absolute papal authority to pick bishops.

WASHINGTON (AP) — North Korea's Kim Jong Un is "little rocket man" no more. President Donald Trump isn't a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard." In the year since Trump's searing, debut U.N. speech fueled fears of nuclear conflict with North Korea, the two leaders have turned from threats to flattery. And there's fresh hope that the U.S. president's abrupt shift from coercion to negotiation can yield results in getting Kim to halt, if not abandon, his nuclear weapons program. Trump will address world leaders at the United Nations on Tuesday on the back of an upbeat summit between South and North Korea, where Kim promised to dismantle a major rocket launch site and the North's main nuclear complex at Nyongbyon if it gets some incentive from Washington.

TOKYO (AP) — An unmanned Japanese space capsule is headed to the International Space Station filled with cargo including food, experiments and new batteries. The craft was launched Sunday at 2:52 a.m. from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. It will take 4 ½ days to reach the space station. The launch was delayed for about two weeks because of bad weather and a mechanical problem. The delay has led NASA to postpone two space walks to install the six lithium-ion batteries until new crew members arrive next month. They will replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for the station's electric power, enabling an extension of its operations.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — With rising unilateralism challenging its very existence, the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of world leaders Monday and will try once more to tackle problems together as a community of nations, addressing threats ranging from Mideast conflicts to the effects of global warming — and also encouraging the glimmer of hope over the nuclear standoff in North Korea. This year, 133 world leaders have signed up to attend the General Assembly session, a significant increase from last year's 114. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the expected large turnout "eloquent proof of the confidence of the international community in the United Nations," though other U.N.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong on Saturday opened a new high-speed rail link to inland China that will vastly decrease travel times but also raises concerns about Beijing's creeping influence over the semi-autonomous Chinese region. Costing upward of $10 billion and taking more than eight years to build, the system aims to transport more than 80,000 passengers daily between the Asian financial center of 7 million people and the neighboring manufacturing hub of Guangdong province. The train travels the 26 kilometers (16 miles) through Hong Kong to Shenzhen across the border in China in just 14 minutes, down from about 1 hour currently.

PHNOM PEHN, Cambodia (AP) — An Australian filmmaker was awaiting deportation from Cambodia on Saturday after receiving a royal pardon for his conviction on spying charges for flying a drone over a political rally. A spokesman for immigration police said that James Ricketson will be deported on Saturday morning, a day after being released from prison. "We are now checking a flight for him," Gen. Keo Vanthan told The Associated Press. Ricketson, 69, was sentenced to six years in a trial his sympathizers described as farcical because prosecutors never specified whom he was spying for and failed to present evidence that he possessed or transmitted any secrets.