Top Asian News 3:51 a.m. GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will hold a two-day summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam to continue his efforts to persuade Kim to give up his nuclear weapons. Trump has said his outreach to Kim and their first meeting last June in Singapore opened a path to peace. But there is not yet a concrete plan for how denuclearization could be implemented. Denuclearizing North Korea is something that has eluded the U.S. for more than two decades, since it was first learned that North Korea was close to acquiring the means for nuclear weapons.

BANGKOK (AP) — Vietnam's selection as the venue for the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is largely a matter of convenience and security, but not without bigger stakes. Washington's goal for the talks Feb. 27-28 is for North Korea to agree give up its nuclear weapons. North Korea frames the issue more broadly, seeking a removal of the "nuclear threat" from U.S. military forces in South Korea. Host Vietnam hopes to boost its diplomatic leverage against its powerful neighbor, China, which contests waters in the South China Sea claimed by Hanoi. But Vietnam's history as a U.S.

NEW DELHI (AP) _ Their offices raided, bank accounts frozen and travel restricted, international aid and rights groups with deep roots in India say they are struggling to operate under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has elevated the role of sympathetic homegrown social organizations while cracking down on foreign charities. Greenpeace India, which has repeatedly pushed the government to address hazardous air quality in cities across India, said this month that it was forced to close two regional offices and sharply reduce its staff after its Benagaluru offices were raided and its bank accounts frozen.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs "remain intact" and its leaders are dispersing missile assembly and testing facilities to prevent "decapitation" strikes, U.N. experts said in a new report. The experts' report to the Security Council, seen Tuesday by The Associated Press, says the country continues to defy U.N. economic sanctions, including through "a massive increase in illegal ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products and coal." The Democratic People's Republic of Korea — the country's official name — also continues to violate an arms embargo, a ban on luxury goods and financial sanctions, the experts said. And the panel said it investigated "the DPRK's sophisticated cyberattacks" against multiple countries "to evade financial sanctions." The report was sent to council members as U.S.

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian soccer authorities have canceled a game in Thailand to protest the continued detention in Bangkok of a refugee player who is fighting extradition to Bahrain. Football Federation Australia announced Wednesday it had scrapped the game against China, a scheduled warmup ahead of next month's qualifiers for the Asian under-23 championships. Former Australia national team captain Craig Foster and the Australian and international players' unions have been leading a campaign for the release of Hakeem al-Araibi, a refugee who lives and plays for a semi-professional club in Australia and has been held in Thailand since November at the request of Bahrain.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban launched a pre-dawn attack on an army base in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing 26 members of the security forces, a provincial official said, the latest brazen assault by insurgents amid stepped-up efforts to resolve the country's protracted war. The raid on the base in northern Kunduz province came as representatives of the Taliban were to hold meetings in Moscow with prominent Afghan figures, including former President Hamid Karzai, opposition leaders and tribal elders — but not Kabul government officials. The insurgents have refused to negotiate with Ghani's government, calling it a U.S. puppet. The Taliban have been staging near-daily attacks, inflicting heavy casualties on the embattled Afghan army and security forces.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — One-third of Himalayan glaciers will melt by the end of the century due to climate change, threatening water sources for 1.9 billion people, even if current efforts to reduce climate change succeed, an assessment warns. If global efforts to curb climate change fail, the impact could be far worse: a loss of two-thirds of the region's glaciers by 2100, said the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment released Monday by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. "Global warming is on track to transform the frigid, glacier-covered mountain peaks of the Hindu Kush Himalayas cutting across eight countries to bare rocks in a little less than a century," said Philippus Wester of the center, who led the report.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — As she pursued her dream of becoming a fashion model, veering for years between extreme dieting and overeating, Park I Seul realized she had a problem: She was not tall and skinny, like typical runway models, nor was she big enough to be a plus-size model. She also realized that the only way to meet South Korea's lofty beauty standards was for her to continuously deny who she truly is. So Park, 25, began calling herself a "natural size model" — a nearly unheard of term in South Korea — which she defines as someone with the same kind of body you see in daily life, as opposed to a difficult-to-attain ideal.

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (AP) — Angelina Jolie on Tuesday urged Myanmar to show a genuine commitment to ending violence and displacement in its Rakhine state, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring Bangladesh for safety. Jolie, a special envoy for the U.N.'s refugee agency, spoke as she visited sprawling camps in Bangladesh that are home to 1 million Rohingya refugees. More than 700,000 have arrived since August 2017, when Myanmar's army led a violent crackdown following attacks on security posts by a Rohingya insurgent group. Jolie is visiting for three days before launching a global appeal for $920 million, chiefly to support the refugees' needs for 2019.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's prime minister and president on Tuesday offered support for rebels in the Indian part of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir as the country staged rallies marking the annual Day of Solidarity with Kashmir. Rallies were also held in the Pakistani-controlled sector of the territory while a Pakistani minister declared the struggle of the rebels in Kashmir a jihad, or Muslim holy war, saying it would go on until Kashmir becomes part of Pakistan. India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety. Rebels have been fighting Indian rule since 1989, demanding Indian-controlled Kashmir be united either under Pakistani rule or established as an independent country.