Top Asian News 3:40 a.m. GMT

NEW DELHI (AP) — A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday evening, killing at least 60 people and injuring dozens more, police said. The train failed to stop after the accident on the outskirts of Amritsar, a city in Punjab state, said the state governing Congress party politician, Pratap Singh Bajwa. Railway police officer Sukhwinder Singh said Saturday morning that the death toll had risen to 60. Another 50 people have been injured and hospitalized. The Press Trust of India news agency said two trains arrived from the opposite direction on separate tracks at the same time, giving little opportunity for people to escape.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Tens of thousands of Afghan forces fanned out across the country as voting began Saturday in parliamentary elections that followed a campaign marred by relentless violence. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani marked his ballot at the start of voting. In a televised speech afterward, he congratulated Afghans on another election and praised the security forces, particularly the air force, for getting ballots to Afghanistan's remotest corners. He also reminded those elected to Parliament that they are there to serve the people and ensure the rule of law. The Independent Election Commission registered 8.8. million people. Wasima Badghisy, a commission member, called voters "very, very brave" and said a turnout of 5 million will be a success.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan is holding parliamentary elections on Saturday despite deep security concerns and ongoing fighting in as many as 20 out of the country's 34 provinces. A look at the elections, the figures and key issues: ___ HOW MANY SEATS, HOW MANY CANDIDATES AND POLLING STATIONS? There are 2,565 candidates vying for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament, including 417 women candidates. Voters will be able to cast ballots at more than 19,000 polling stations in 33 provinces. Of those, the elections commission says as many as 11,667 polling stations are reserved for men and 7,429 for women, while 46 will serve Afghan nomads, known as Kochis, and 22 will serve minority Sikhs and Hindus.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A brazen attack that the Taliban says targeted the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is a stark reminder of the formidable task the Trump administration faces as it tries to extricate America from its longest war. The commander, Army Gen. Scott Miller, escaped unharmed from Thursday's attack. Elections for the lower house of parliament are still expected to be held as scheduled Saturday in much of the country. And administration officials said U.S. resolve is unshaken. "We remain absolutely committed to an Afghan-led Afghan reconciliation," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Friday on the sidelines of an Asian security conference in Singapore.

SINGAPORE (AP) — The United States and South Korea are scrapping another major military exercise this year, a Pentagon official said Friday, citing a push for diplomatic progress with North Korea. The top Pentagon spokeswoman, Dana W. White, said Washington and Seoul are suspending an air exercise known as Vigilant Ace "to give the diplomatic process every opportunity to continue." It was the latest move aimed at trying to nudge North Korea, which despises such U.S.-South Korean exercises, into negotiating about giving up its nuclear weapons in a way that can be verified. Vigilant Ace is an annual exercise last held in December 2017.

TOKYO (AP) — European and Japanese space agencies say an Ariane 5 rocket has successfully lifted a spacecraft into orbit for a joint mission to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. The European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency say the BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and was sent into orbit from French Guiana early Saturday to begin a seven-year journey to Mercury. The mission is complicated by the intense gravity pull of the sun, forcing the spacecraft to take an elliptical path that involves two fly-bys of Venus and six of Mercury itself. Once the spacecraft arrives in late 2025, it will release two probes that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury.

BEIJING (AP) — China reported economic growth sank to a post-global crisis low as finance officials launched a media blitz Friday to shore up confidence in its sagging stock market. Growth in the quarter that ended in September slipped to 6.5 percent over a year earlier from the previous quarter's 6.7 percent, official data showed. It was the slowest rate since early 2009. The world's second-largest economy already was cooling before a tariff war between Beijing and President Donald Trump erupted. Beijing tightened controls on lending last year to rein in a debt boom. That has weighed on housing sales and consumer spending.

LYON, France (AP) — The wife of the former Interpol president who is being detained in China on bribery charges says she's been contacted by Chinese diplomats, who have told her they're holding a letter from him for her. Grace Meng says, however, that she'll only agree to meet Chinese officials if a lawyer and reporters are present. She says Chinese officials haven't responded since she told them that condition. She says she also asked that the letter from her husband, Meng Hongwei, be given to French police, so they can give it to her. She has been living under French police protection in the French city of Lyon, where Interpol is headquartered, since she reported that her husband went missing while on a trip to China in late September.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations asked the government of Sri Lanka on Friday to immediately repatriate the commander of its 200-strong contingent assigned to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Mali following a review of his human rights background. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced Friday that the request for Lt. Col. Kalana Amunupure to leave the troubled West African nation was made "based on recently received information." He gave no details. A report in The Guardian newspaper in July quoted a confidential report that claimed the Sri Lanka commander in Mali — who was not named — is alleged to have committed war crimes during the finale of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels that ended in 2009.

BRUSSELS (AP) — Europe and Asia presented a united front Friday in support of free trade based on international rules and cooperation, starkly underscoring their differences with U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" policy. That support for free trade "is the most important signal from this summit, especially valid in the current geopolitical context," EU Council President Donald Tusk said at the end of a two-day Europe-Asia summit in Brussels. The meeting comes at a time when Trump is increasingly distancing the United States from global organizations like the United Nations. Trump told the U.N. general assembly last month: "We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism." Those at the summit — 30 European leaders, their counterparts from 21 Asian nations as well as top officials from the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — have the economic clout to stand up to that kind of rhetoric from Trump.