Top Asia Pacific Breaking News: Latest Updates

Recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump that arms sales to Taiwan are a "very good negotiating chip" in the United States' dealings with China are heightening anxieties on the island democracy that Beijing claims as its own. Trump made the comment in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier that aired right after the U.S. president wrapped up a high-stakes visit to China on Friday. China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, to be retaken by force if necessary. The U.S., like all countries that have formal ties with Beijing, doesn't recognize Taiwan as a country but has been the island's strongest backer and arms supplier.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy - with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America's escalating inflation rate. Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president's own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on a two-day trip to Beijing next week, the Kremlin said Saturday. The announcement comes less than 24 hours after U.S. President Donald Trump finished his own state visit to China, where he also met Xi to discuss trade and the U.S. and Israel's war in Iran. In a statement, the Kremlin said that Putin's trip, planned for May 19-20, had been scheduled to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship. It said that the two leaders would discuss bilateral relations as well as "key international and regional issues" and economic cooperation.

BANGKOK (AP) - A train crashed into a public bus on Saturday in Thailand's capital, Bangkok, killing at least eight people. Thai news reported the crash happened in the late afternoon near an airport railway station in the central area. The city's emergency services, Erawan Medical Center, said at least eight people were killed and more than 20 others were injured. Footage of the moment of the crash shared on social media showed a line of vehicles had stopped at a railway crossing when a cargo train struck an orange bus. The impact also dragged several nearby vehicles along the tracks before the bus was engulfed in flames.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Maldivian authorities on Saturday suspended the search for the bodies of four Italian divers believed to be deep inside an underwater cave, after a military diver died during a perilous mission to try to reach them. The group of five Italian divers is believed to have died while exploring a cave at a depth of about 50 meters (160 feet) in Vaavu Atoll on Thursday, according to Italy's Foreign Ministry. The recreational diving limit in the Maldives is 30 meters (98 feet). Maldives presidential spokesman Mohamed Hussain Shareef said the search was suspended after Mohamed Mahudhee, a member of the Maldivian National Defense Force, died of underwater decompression sickness after being transferred to a hospital in the capital.

BEIJING (AP) - For three days in China, President Donald Trump was unusually quiet, not speaking to reporters much and even mostly staying off social media. Then he got on his plane home and unloaded. Trump's trip was unexpectedly dominated by discussions about Taiwan and the notion that Washington and Beijing could adopt a new framework for managing their complicated relationship. Chinese President Xi Jinping kicked off the whirlwind visit with a warning: If Washington mishandles its relations with the self-governing island of Taiwan, the U.S. and China could end up clashing or even in open conflict. Trump did not respond publicly, refraining from mentioning Taiwan while in Beijing.

HONG KONG (AP) - U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping of releasing a prominent detained pastor and imprisoned Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai, and quoted Xi as saying he'd consider the pastor but that Lai's case is a "tough one." Speaking to reporters as he flew back from a trip to China, Trump said Xi told him he would give serious consideration to the case of Ezra Jin Mingri, pastor of an underground church detained in China in October in what observers have called an escalating crackdown on religious freedom. "He said he's gonna strongly consider the pastor," Trump said.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - A shark fatally mauled a diver off an Australian tourist island on Saturday, police said. The 38-year-old man had been spearfishing with a friend when he was attacked on a coral reef off Rottnest Island near Australia's southwest coast, Western Australia Police Sergeant Michael Wear said. The victim was near a dive boat when he was bitten on the legs, Wear said. He was then taken by that boat one kilometer (1,100 yards) to the island, where paramedics could not resuscitate him. Lifeguards reported a five-meter (16-foot) white shark had been seen in the vicinity before the attack.

PHOENIX (AP) - Beginning in the 1970s, just about every Filipino household in America was either hauling balikbayan boxes in person or mailing them to relatives back in the Philippines. These care packages that held goodies from the U.S. were seen as an expression of support during hard economic times - as well as one of pure love. "Balik" and "bayan," Tagalog for "return" and "homeland," respectively, was what President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. called the tourism initiatives he established in 1973. After declaring martial law a year earlier, he wanted to compel Filipino immigrants to come back and visit and further "legitimize his new dictatorial regime," says Adrian De Leon, an assistant professor of history at New York University and author of "Balikbayan: A Revenant History of the Filipino Homeland." The balikbayan program proved "incredibly profitable" for the government as middle-class Filipino Americans came and spent capital.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) - At a monastery in the Himalayan foothills, a teenage Buddhist lama blesses thousands. One by one, he taps bowed heads with a ritual vase and a peacock feather, sprinkling holy water for protection, purification, wisdom. He stops to smile at children who eye him with curiosity, reverence and awe. He tries to keep pace with others who, like him, are among the few chosen to give the final blessing. Just six months earlier, thousands of miles away, this same young man was pulling all-nighters to play Madden NFL on his Xbox at his home near Minneapolis. Sometimes he'd pause to snack on pizza rolls and Diet Coke, or check his texts for the next hangout at TopGolf or Buffalo Wild Wings.