Top Asian News 3:22 a.m. GMT

BEIJING (AP) — "Both ignorant and malicious" was how the official China Daily newspaper recently described comments by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, offering a stinging insight into the current bitter tone of discourse between the two countries. The White House's move to expand Washington's dispute with Beijing beyond trade and technology and into accusations of political meddling has sunk relations between the world's two largest economies to the lowest level since the Cold War. A major speech by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Oct. 4 was the clearest, highest-level sign that U.S. strategy was turning away from engagement to confrontation.

ZHUHAI, China (AP) — China has opened the world's longest sea-crossing bridge linking Hong Kong to the mainland in a feat of engineering that carries major economic and political significance. Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the ceremony in the city of Zhuhai to cut the ribbon on the 55-kilometer (34-mile)-long bridge linking it to the semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The $20 billion bridge took almost a decade to build. It includes an undersea tunnel allowing ships to pass through the Pearl River delta, the heart of China's crucial manufacturing sector. It's opening will cut travel time across the delta from several hours to just 30 minutes.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A prominent lawyer and newspaper publisher who is tied to Bangladesh's political opposition has been arrested on a defamation charge amid concern the government is acting tough on dissent ahead of national elections. Dhaka Metropolitan Police official Mahbub Alam said early Tuesday that detectives arrested Moinul Hosein after raiding an opposition leader's home in Dhaka, the nation's capital. Alam said Hosein was arrested after a court in northern Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant on Monday in a case involving a recent comment in a television talk show where Hosein called a female journalist "characterless" after she asked him if he represented the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Investigators say excessive speed was the main cause of the derailment of a train in Taiwan that killed 18 people and injured scores. The official Central News Agency says a Cabinet task force found the train entered a curve at 140 kph (87 mph), almost twice the speed limit for the section. CNA said the train's driver has been placed under investigation for negligence, including disabling the automatic train protection system that would have caused it to brake. The 6-year-old trains were built to travel at 150 kph (93 mph) to ease transportation on rugged parts of the mountainous island's east coast.

SYDNEY (AP) — Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered a formal apology Monday to Australia's victims of child sex abuse, saying the nation must acknowledge their long, painful journey and its failure to protect them. Morrison's emotional speech given in Parliament before hundreds of survivors followed the conclusion of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the nations' highest level of inquiry. "Today as a nation we confront our failure to listen, to believe, and to provide justice," he said, adding: "We say sorry." Abuse survivors gathered in Parliament's Great Hall cried, yelled and applauded as Morrison read the apology.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The two Koreas have completed removing land mines planted at their shared border village as part of efforts to disarm the area located inside the world's most heavily fortified border, South Korean officials said Monday. The announcement came following a meeting among military officers from the Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command at the border's Panmunjom village earlier Monday. It's the second such trilateral meeting to examine efforts to demilitarize Panmunjom, the most well-known place inside the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long Demilitarized Zone that bisect the two Koreas. Disarming the village was among a set of tension-reduction agreements signed by the Koreas' defense chiefs on the sidelines of their leaders' summit in Pyongyang last month.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon says two U.S. Navy warships have passed through the politically sensitive Taiwan Strait without incident. The 100 mile-wide (160 kilometer-wide) strait divides the island nation from mainland China. Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway Chinese province and objects to U.S. defense support for self-governing Taiwan. A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Rob Manning, says the USS Curtis Wilbur and the USS Antietam sailed in international waters in what he calls a routine transit Monday. The Curtis Wilbur is a destroyer. The Antietam is a cruiser. Another Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Chris Logan, says the most recent previous U.S. Navy transit of the Taiwan Strait was in July.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan soldier opened fire on coalition forces on Monday, killing a Czech soldier and wounding two others. The Czech military said their car was attacked at a base in the western Herat province, without providing further details. NATO said in a statement that "initial reports" indicate the attack was committed by a member of the Afghan security forces. No one immediately claimed the attack, which was the second deadly attack by Afghan forces against allied NATO and U.S. forces in less than a week. On Thursday, an elite guard of the governor of Kandahar killed two senior Afghan officials, including Kandahar's powerful police chief, Gen.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Philippine court on Monday rejected a petition by President Rodrigo Duterte's administration to have his fiercest critic in the Senate arrested, in a legal setback for Duterte that the senator called a victory for democracy. Regional Trial Court Judge Andres Bartolome Soriano denied the government's petition to have opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV arrested after Duterte voided his 2011 amnesty for his role in past mutinies as a former navy officer. Soriano debunked Duterte's premise that Trillanes never formally applied for amnesty and acknowledged guilt for his role in the failed coup attempts. "The rule of law won and democracy won," a beaming Trillanes told a news conference at the Senate, adding that he was prepared to be arrested.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — With the sun bearing down, Norm and Kathy Daviess stood in the shade of a prison wall topped with coiled razor wire, waiting for three immigrants to come out. It's become an oddly familiar routine for the Air Force veteran and his wife, part of an ad hoc group of volunteers that formed in recent months after the Trump administration transferred 124 immigrants to the federal prison in rural Oregon, a first for the facility. The detainees were among approximately 1,600 immigrants apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border and then transferred to federal prisons in five states after President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy left the usual facilities short of space.