Top Asian News 3:45 a.m. GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — Three protest leaders and six others went on trial Monday for their involvement in the "Occupy Central" demonstration that paralyzed Hong Kong's financial district for more than two months in 2014. Fanned by more than 100 supporters, some holding the yellow umbrellas that came to symbolize the movement, the nine defendants pumped their fists in the air and chanted "Shame to political prosecution!" before entering the West Kowloon courthouse. Two university professors and a pastor, who together spearheaded the campaign to press for free elections of Hong Kong's top leader, are charged with conspiracy to commit a public disturbance and incitement to commit public nuisance.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Shareholders on Monday gave final approval to the merger of television network Nine Entertainment and newspaper publisher Fairfax Media into an Australian media giant to be known only as Nine despite one shareholder's late bid to stop the deal. Antony Catalano, a former chief executive of the online real estate listings portal Domain Group which is majority-owned by Fairfax, said he will ask the Federal Court on Nov. 27 to stop the merger. Catalano, who owns shares in both Domain and Fairfax, wrote to Fairfax chairman Nick Falloon late Sunday offering to buy 19.9 percent of Fairfax and asking for Monday's Fairfax shareholders meeting to be delayed.

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto turned to his country's masters for inspiration for his latest work, "Killing," his first samurai movie. But he also emulated the way Martin Scorsese gave free rein to his actors, a technique Tsukamoto learned when he was cast in "Silence" as a Christian martyr. "Killing," a poetic but brutal story about the horrors of violence, premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year and opens in Japan on Nov. 24. Overseas release dates have not been announced. "This film is the total antithesis to the heroism depicted in usual samurai films," Tsukamoto, who wrote, directed and edited "Killing," said at a recent preview screening at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Tokyo.

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Landslides due to rains from a tropical storm have killed 13 people and left four others missing in south-central Vietnam. A disaster official in Khanh Hoa province says some 600 soldiers have been mobilized to search for the missing and evacuate people from high-risk areas. He said the landslides from heavy rains triggered by Tropical Storm Toraji collapsed several houses and buried the victims in some villages in the resort city of Nha Trang on Sunday. The storm weakened to a tropical depression at sea off the south central coastal province of Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan on Sunday night, the Vietnam Disaster Management Authority said in a statement Monday.

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — An acrimonious meeting of world leaders in Papua New Guinea failed to agree Sunday on a final communique, highlighting widening divisions between global powers China and the U.S. The 21 nations at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Port Moresby struggled to bridge differences on the role of the World Trade Organization, which governs international trade, officials said. A statement was to be issued instead by the meeting's chair, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill. "The entire world is worried" about tensions between China and the U.S., O'Neill told a mob of reporters that surrounded him after he confirmed there was no communique from leaders.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia has reiterated it intends to end the work of the U.N.-backed tribunal that last week convicted the last two surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said the tribunal's work had been completed and there would not be any additional prosecutions for acts that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people in the 1970s. The only other person convicted was the regime's prisons chief. He cited the terms under which the tribunal, staffed jointly by Cambodian and international prosecutors and judges, had been established, limiting its targets to senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that was in power from 1975 to 1979.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban have held three days of talks with U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in the Gulf state of Qatar, where the Afghan insurgent group has a political office, a Taliban official and another individual close to the group said Sunday. Without referring explicitly to the talks in Qatar, Khalilzad told a news conference Sunday in the Afghan capital Kabul "I am talking to all interested parties, all Afghan groups... and I think there is an opportunity for reconciliation and peace." "The Afghan government wants peace," he said. "The Taliban are saying they do not believe they can succeed militarily, that they would like to see the problems that remain, resolved by peaceful means, by political negotiations." Peace efforts have accelerated since Khalilzad's appointment as Washington's peace envoy to Afghanistan aimed at eventually winding down America's longest war.

AMRITSAR, India (AP) — Three people were killed and over a dozen injured on Sunday when two men on a motorbike targeted a prayer hall with a grenade in northern India, police said. The two masked men threw the grenade toward the hall belonging to a sect of the Sikh faith at a village on the outskirts of Amritsar city in Punjab state, said police officer Dinesh Singh. He said the grenade exploded away from the main congregation in the compound, where hundreds of devotees were praying. Singh said the 15 injured people were hospitalized. Authorities have not yet blamed anyone for the attack.

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — The U.S., Japan, New Zealand and Australia said they'll bring electricity to 70 percent of Papua New Guinea's people by 2030, boosting the West's response to growing Chinese influence in the South Pacific. The four countries and Papua New Guinea signed the electricification agreement Sunday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting behind held in the capital Port Moresby. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said it shows how strongly the U.S. and its allies are committed to the region. "The commitment of the United States of America to this region of the world has never been stronger," he said.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Police chiefs from around the world gathered in Dubai on Sunday for Interpol's general assembly to select a new president after the agency's former official in the post was detained in China. Meng Hongwei_ who was China's vice minister of public security while also leading Interpol _ went missing while on a trip to China in September. It later emerged that the long-time Communist Party insider with decades of experience in China's security apparatus was detained as part of a sweeping purge against allegedly corrupt or disloyal officials under President Xi Jinping's authoritarian administration.