Top Asian News 4:47 a.m. GMT

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — China's leader Xi Jinping and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traded barbs in speeches to a summit of world leaders Saturday, outlining competing visions for global leadership as trade and other tensions between them simmer. Pence said there would be no letup in President Donald Trump's policy of combating China's mercantilist trade policy and intellectual property theft that has erupted into a tit-for-tat tariff war between the two world powers this year. The U.S. has imposed additional tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods and China has retaliated. Pence reiterated Trump administration threats to more than double the penalties.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has met with the head of Taiwan's delegation to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. The U.S. doesn't have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, but is obliged by an act of Congress to help with the island's military defense. A U.S. official told the media pool traveling with Pence that the vice-president had a "pull-aside" meeting with Morris Chang, the octogenarian founder of a Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing giant. The official didn't give other details. Taiwan is a member of the 21 nation APEC, which is having its annual leaders meeting in Papua New Guinea's capital Port Moresby.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — It's a question that nags at North Korea economy watchers: How has the country been able to maintain stable exchange rates — and avert hyper-inflation — despite intense sanctions, political tensions and a swelling trade imbalance? In a nutshell, North Korea buys a whole lot more than it sells to China and, because of the sanctions, is doing hardly any business with anyone else. Since no one in their right mind would accept the internationally worthless North Korean currency for any significant trade deal, North Korea must be burning up its foreign reserves. And when a country does that, prices generally start to rise — often dangerously so.

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — Papua New Guinea hosts leaders from Pacific Rim countries, including the United States, Russia and China, this weekend in a coming-out party for the jungle-clad nation that is regarded as one of the world's last frontiers for trade and investment. The largely undeveloped South Pacific nation of more than 8 million mostly subsistence farmers hopes the rare world attention generated by its hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Economic Cooperation meetings will highlight its potential and draw more investors and aid. But its deeply entrenched troubles, including widespread poverty, corruption and lawlessness, also stand to be scrutinized.

SYDNEY (AP) — A homeless Australian man who shot to fame after using a shopping trolley to help police thwart last week's militant attack in Melbourne has been charged over a series of burglaries. Michael Rogers was hailed as a hero and dubbed "Trolleyman" on social media after emerging from a crowd with a trolley to try to ram a knife-wielding man who killed one person and wounded two others, as two police officers tried to subdue him. The man, Somali-born Australian Hassain Khalif Shire Ali, was fatally shot in the chest by one officer, with police later saying his actions were terrorism-inspired.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A key U.N. committee overwhelmingly approved a resolution Friday strongly condemning the continuing "gross human rights violations and abuses" against Rohingya Muslims who are treated as outsiders in Myanmar and were victims of a brutal campaign by the country's military. The General Assembly's human rights committee approved the resolution by a vote of 142-10, with 26 abstentions. It is virtually certain to be formally adopted by the 193-member world body in December. Among those voting against the resolution were Myanmar neighbors China, Cambodia and Laos along with Russia. Bangladesh, which hosts 1.1 million Rohingya refugees, voted in favor.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The last surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s, when their reign of terror was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, were convicted Friday by an international tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were top leaders in a regime that forced residents out of the cities into the countryside, where they labored under brutal conditions in giant agricultural cooperatives and work projects. The communist Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of the late Pol Pot, sought to eliminate all traces of what they saw as corrupt bourgeois life, destroying most religious, financial and social institutions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — North Korea on Friday deported an American citizen it says it detained for illegal entry, a U.S. official said, an apparent concession that came even as the reclusive nation announced the test of a newly developed but unspecified "ultramodern" weapon that will be seen as a pressuring tactic by Washington. The two whiplash announcements, which seemed aimed at both appeasing and annoying Washington, suggest North Korea wants to keep alive dialogue with the United States, even as it struggles to express its frustration at stalled nuclear diplomacy. North Korea in the past has held arrested American citizens for an extended period before high-profile U.S.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea says it is expelling American Bruce Byron Lowrance after he slipped unlawfully into the police state known for its anti-U.S. fervor. He is believed to be the same person who was deported by South Korea a year ago after being caught wandering near the mine-strewn border with North Korea, looking for a way to cross over. Sneaking into North Korea has proved to be a powerful temptation for some Americans. Some were driven by religious zeal, others simply were attracted by the mystery of a remote and cloistered country that seems the polar opposite of anything they had experienced.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Lawmakers in Sri Lanka's Parliament supporting disputed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa threw books, chairs and chili powder mixed with water to try to block the proceedings on Friday, a day after a fierce brawl between rival lawmakers worsened political turmoil in the island nation. The lawmakers approved a second vote of no confidence against Rajapaksa but Sirsena refused to accept it, saying his advice was not followed, according to his spokesman, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena. Police who escorted Speaker Karu Jayasuriya into the chamber held boards around him to protect him from being hit by the angry Rajapaksa loyalists, who did not allow him to sit in the speaker's chair.