Top Asian News 3:39 a.m. GMT
TUGUEGARAO, Philippines (AP) — Typhoon Mangkhut roared toward densely populated Hong Kong and southern China on Sunday after ravaging across the northern Philippines with ferocious winds and heavy rain that left at least 28 dead in landslides and collapsed houses. The strongest storm so far this year in the world sliced across the northern tip of Luzon Island on Saturday, a breadbasket that is also a region of flood-prone rice plains and mountain provinces with a history of deadly landslides. More than 5 million people were in the path of the typhoon, equivalent to a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane when it hit the Philippines.
Philippine officials say the death toll from Typhoon Mangkhut has risen to 28, mostly due to landslides in northern mountain provinces. Police Director General Oscar Albayalde told The Associated Press that 20 had died in the Cordillera region, four in Nueva Vizcaya province and another outside of the two regions, as the typhoon battered the rice-growing and mountain area on Saturday. Three more deaths have been reported in northeastern Cagayan province, where the typhoon made landfall. On Sunday morning, Mangkhut is barreling toward densely populated southern China and Hong Kong, where authorities raised the highest storm warnings and moved nearly half a million people to shelter from seven cities.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nature expresses its fury in sundry ways. Two deadly storms — Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut — roared ashore on the same day, half a world apart, but the way they spread devastation was as different as water and wind. Storms in the western Pacific generally hit with much higher winds and the people who live in their way are often poorer and more vulnerable, Princeton University hurricane and climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi said Saturday. That will likely determine the type of destruction. Mangkhut made landfall Friday on the northeastern tip of Luzon island in the Philippines with top-of-the-scale Category 5 winds of 165 mph.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The shine is starting to come off South Korean President Moon Jae-in's engagement strategy with the North. The liberal politician, who reversed nearly a decade of conservative hard-line policy toward North Korea after his election last year, is preparing for a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amid growing public skepticism about his approach. Moon, who goes to Pyongyang on Tuesday, has seen his approval rating fall to 49 percent in a recent Gallup Korea survey, the first time it dipped below 50 percent since he took office in May 2017 promising better ties with North Korea and political reform.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The first inter-Korean summit of 2018, a sunny spectacle in late April, reduced war fears on the peninsula. The second, an emergency one in May, helped ensure a historic meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump came off. Now, at his third summit with Kim next week in Pyongyang, South Korean President Moon Jae-in faces his toughest challenge yet: delivering something substantive that goes beyond previous vague statements on denuclearization and helps get U.S.-North Korea talks back on track. Negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have sputtered in recent weeks, raising doubts about whether Kim is truly willing to relinquish his nuclear arsenal and putting pressure on Moon to broker progress once again.
SINGAPORE (AP) — Malaysia's designated prime minister-in-waiting, Anwar Ibrahim, said Saturday that he has no reason to doubt his former political nemesis will hand over the leadership position within two years as planned after sorting out deep-seated issues like corruption. Anwar and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad put aside their 20-year feud to help their four-party alliance win elections in May, leading to the country's first change of power since independence from Britain in 1957. Anwar, 70, was convicted of sodomy in 2015 in a case that he said was politically motivated. He was freed and pardoned by the king shortly after the recent elections.
NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian court has ruled there is enough evidence to send former U.N. climate chief Rajendra Pachauri to trial on sexual harassment charges in a case filed by a former female colleague in New Delhi. Ashish Dixit, a lawyer who represented Pachauri before the magistrate on Friday, said there was no case against Pachauri and he will fight the charges during the trial, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Magistrate Charu Gupta set Oct. 20 for pretrial proceedings. Police registered the case against Pachauri after the 29-year-old female colleague accused him three years ago of sexual harassment and criminal intimidation.
NEW DELHI (AP) — Police on Saturday were hunting for three men who allegedly drugged, kidnapped and raped a teenage girl while she was on her way to a test-preparation course in northern India, the latest incident of violence against girls and women in the country. Police officer Ashwini Kumar said the 19-year-old victim was in stable condition in a hospital in Haryana state following the attack earlier in the week. Violent crime against women has been on the rise in India despite tough laws that were enacted five years ago. The Press Trust of India news agency cited the girl's father as saying she named three suspects who abducted her from a bus stop on Wednesday, but believed that eight to 10 people could have been in the village home where she was raped.
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — A young man was killed and more than a dozen other people were injured on Saturday when government forces fired at anti-India protesters in Indian-controlled Kashmir after soldiers killed five rebels in fighting, police and residents said. Indian troops surrounded a village in the Qazigund area overnight on a tip that militants were hiding there, police said. A fierce gunbattle erupted early Saturday, and hours later, five local Kashmiri rebels were killed. Residents said troops blasted at least one residential house with explosives. The slain rebels belonged to the region's largest rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen, police said.
TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) — Filipinos are facing the powerful Typhoon Mangkhut with the memory of another devastating storm still fresh in their minds. Nearly five years ago, Typhoon Haiyan left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages, swept ships inland and displaced more than 5 million in the central Philippines — well to the south of Mangkhut's path. Haiyan demolished about a million houses and displaced more than 4 million people in one of the country's poorest regions. The Associated Press is republishing this Nov. 13, 2013, story written by Todd Pitman in Tacloban, the city hardest hit by the typhoon.
