Top Asian News 3:23 a.m. GMT

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.

TUGUEGARAO, Philippines (AP) — Typhoon Mangkhut slammed into the Philippines' northeastern coast early Saturday, its ferocious winds and blinding rain ripping off tin roof sheets and knocking out power, and plowed through the agricultural region at the start of the onslaught. The typhoon made landfall before dawn in the coastal town of Baggao in Cagayan province on the northern tip of Luzon Island, a breadbasket of flood-prone rice plains and mountain provinces often hit by landslides. More than 5 million people were at risk from the storm, which the Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center downgraded from a super typhoon but still punching powerful winds and gusts equivalent to a category 4 Atlantic hurricane.

The Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center has downgraded Mangkhut from a super typhoon to an equivalent of a category 4 hurricane, after making landfall in the northeastern Philippines before dawn Saturday. The Philippine government has reported no casualties so far as the typhoon continued to pummel Luzon with heavy rains and gusts. Transportation has ground to a halt as many roads are flooded and airports closed. According to JTWC, Mangkhut is packing maximum sustained winds of 115 knots, or 212 kilometers (130 miles) per hour. The Philippine weather agency has slightly lower numbers.

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.

NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian court ruled there is enough evidence to send India's former U.N. climate chief Rajendra Pachauri to trial on charges of stalking and sexual harassment in a case filed by a former female colleague in New Delhi. Magistrate Charu Gupta set Oct. 20 for pretrial proceedings. Lawyer Ashish Dixit, who represented Pachauri before the magistrate on Friday, said there was no case against him and he will fight the charges during the trial, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. "Chuffed to bits. This has not been easy. This is a big big leap towards the truth.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A Japanese supply run to the International Space Station has been delayed again. The countdown was halted Saturday local time in Japan, with only a few hours remaining before liftoff. Earlier in the week, a typhoon delayed the launch. The Japanese space agency said there was an issue with the propulsion system. No new launch date has been set. The cargo ship — the seventh to be launched by Japan — contains new batteries needed for a pair of NASA spacewalks. NASA says the delay will cause the spacewalks — which had been scheduled over the next two weeks — to slip even further.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States has called an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council for Monday in response to what it says are efforts by some countries "to undermine and obstruct" sanctions against North Korea. The U.S. Mission announced Friday evening that the meeting will "discuss the implementation and enforcement of U.N. sanctions on North Korea." The mission didn't name any countries, but U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Russia on Thursday of pressuring an independent panel of U.N. experts to alter a report on North Korea sanctions that included alleged violations "implicating Russian actors." Haley said the panel should release the original report, which cited "a massive increase in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products" for North Korea in violation of U.N.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The rival Koreas on Friday opened their first liaison office near their tense border to facilitate better communication and exchanges ahead of their leaders' summit in Pyongyang next week. The office's opening in the North Korean border town of Kaesong is the latest in a series of reconciliatory steps the Koreas have taken this year. The office is the first of its kind since the Koreas were divided at the end of World War II in 1945. The Koreas so far have been using telephone and fax-like communication channels when they want to arrange talks and exchange messages.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Get ready for Trump-Kim Part Two. In recent weeks it's become clear that Donald Trump wants to meet with Kim Jong Un again, and the North Korean leader has told the White House he'd like more face-to-face talks with the American president. Could that meeting happen, as some in Seoul have pushed for, on the sidelines of a U.N. gathering of world leaders in New York later this month? Getting Kim, the brutal, authoritarian leader of the most sanctioned country on the planet, to the home of the Yankees might seem a fantastic fever-dream. But it's useful to remember that no analysts predicted that Trump's surprise June summit with Kim in Singapore would be possible — until suddenly it was.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea strongly denied claims by the United States that a computer programmer working for the North Korean government was involved in the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the spread of the WannaCry ransomware virus. In a statement Friday, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official said that the person named by U.S. is a "non-entity," and warned that the allegations, which he called a smear campaign, could harm talks between the two countries following the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. U.S. federal prosecutors allege the programmer, identified as Park Jin Hyok, conspired to conduct a series of attacks that also stole $81 million from a bank in Bangladesh.