Top Asian News 3:58 a.m. GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean presidential delegation arrived in North Korea on Wednesday for talks to arrange a summit planned later this month and help rescue faltering nuclear diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang. It's unclear who the South Korean envoys will meet in the North or whether they will see North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before flying back to the South later Wednesday. South Korean President Moon Jae-in's office said the delegation led by his national security adviser will be carrying a personal letter for Kim. Moon said the envoys are tasked with a crucial role at a "very important time" that could determine the prospects for lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — As North Korea prepares for a massive parade Sunday featuring thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and lots of scary-looking missiles, some potentially capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, worry is rising in South Korea that a tentative, hard-won detente is starting to slip away. An authoritarian nation obsessed with big milestones, North Korea will use the celebration for the 70th anniversary of its national founding to glorify Kim Jong Un as a leader who's standing up for a powerful nation surrounded by enemies. Kim will also welcome a delegate from his most important ally, senior Chinese official Li Zhanshu, the third-ranking official of the country's ruling party and head of its rubberstamp parliament, whose presence at the parade would underscore Beijing's important status in international efforts to solve the nuclear crisis.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in (jah-YIHN') plan to meet later this month in New York. The leaders agreed during a conversation Tuesday to meet while both are attending the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The White House says Trump and Kim discussed developments on the Korean Peninsula, including efforts to achieve the "final, fully verified denuclearization" of North Korea. North Korea agreed to denuclearize following a June summit with Trump in Singapore, but progress has been slow to non-existent. Moon told Trump he was sending a special envoy to Pyongyang on Wednesday to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and promised to report back on the meeting.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The death of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder of Afghanistan's outlawed militant network that bears his name, is unlikely to weaken the group that is considered the most formidable of the Taliban's fighting forces. The Taliban said Haqqani died Monday at age 71 after reports of years of ill health, including Parkinson's disease. Because of his infirmity, stewardship of the organization had been given to one of his 12 sons, Sirajuddin, whose military prowess is credited with plotting and carrying out some of more audacious attacks assigned to the network. The younger Haqqani is also deputy head of the Taliban, who have waged increasingly sophisticated and coordinated attacks against Afghanistan's struggling security forces.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the arrest of his fiercest critic in Congress after revoking the senator's amnesty for involvement in unsuccessful military uprisings years ago. Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV condemned Duterte's move, which was made public Tuesday, as illegal and draconian but said he would not resist arrest. After Senate leaders said they would not allow his arrest in the Senate, Trillanes said he would stay within the building while arresting officers waited outside in a looming standoff. "We're living basically in a de facto martial law environment of the '70s kind," Trillanes told a throng of journalists and followers, referring to the martial law declared by dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1972, which is regarded as a dark chapter in Philippine history.

NAURU (AP) — Pacific leaders meeting in Nauru are expected Wednesday to sign a security agreement that addresses climate change and crimes such as drug smuggling and illegal fishing that cross borders. Leaders at the Pacific Islands Forum have said they consider climate change their nations' biggest security threat, since low-lying Pacific islands would cease to exist as sea levels rise. The signing of the security declaration, which also addresses cybercrime and health concerns such as communicable diseases and pandemics, is the centerpiece of the three-day meeting. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arrived Wednesday to attend an all-day leader's retreat and the signing ceremony.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — The wives of two Myanmar reporters for the Reuters news agency said they were shocked by a sentence of seven years' imprisonment against them on charges of possessing state secrets. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were sentenced Monday in proceedings that were widely decried as unfair. They had reported about the army's brutal counterinsurgency campaign that drove 700,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to Bangladesh. The subject is sensitive in Myanmar because of worldwide condemnation of the military's human rights abuses, which it denies. Wa Lone's wife, Pan Ei Mon, said at a news conference on Tuesday that she never expected such a harsh punishment "because everyone knows that they didn't do anything wrong." The two men testified that they had been framed by the police.

TOKYO (AP) — People stranded at a flooded offshore airport overnight returned by boat and bus to the Japanese mainland Wednesday morning after a typhoon swept across part of Japan's main island. Japanese broadcaster NHK showed aerial footage of the boat and a caravan of buses transporting about 3,000 people from Kansai International Airport across a partially damaged bridge under sunny skies. The airport that serves Osaka, one of Japan's largest cities, remains closed. Typhoon Jebi peeled roofs off buildings, toppled power poles and damaged businesses as it crossed Japan's main island Tuesday. Japanese media tallied at least nine deaths, and the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said more than 200 people were injured.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has named veteran diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad as a special adviser on seeking reconciliation in war-battered Afghanistan. Pompeo made the announcement on Tuesday as Khalilzad joined him on a trip to Pakistan and India. Pompeo was speaking to reporters aboard his plane. An Afghan native, Khalilzad was tapped by President George W. Bush to be his ambassador to Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He then served as ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations. Khalilzad is the fourth such special envoy named in the past month, following Brian Hook, who will handle Iran, James Jeffrey, who will run Syria policy, and Stephen Biegun as special representative for North Korea.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan that killed one American was carried out by a member of the Afghan national police who is now in Afghan government custody, a U.S. official said Tuesday. It was the second so-called insider attack there this summer. Lt. Col. Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that the American was killed in eastern Afghanistan by an Afghan policeman. Another U.S. service member was wounded; O'Donnell said that person's wounds are not life-threatening. On Tuesday evening the Pentagon said the soldier killed was Army Command Sgt.