Top Asian News 3:53 a.m. GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea confirmed Tuesday that leader Kim Jong Un will soon visit Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin in a summit that comes at a crucial moment for tenuous diplomacy meant to rid the North of its nuclear arsenal. North Korea has so far not gotten what it wants most from the recent flurry of high-level summitry between Kim and various world leaders — namely, relief from crushing international sanctions. There are fears that a recent North Korean weapon test and a series of jibes at Washington over deadlocked nuclear negotiations mean that Pyongyang may again return to the nuclear and long-range missile tests that had many in Asia fearing war in 2017.

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar's Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the final appeal of two Reuters journalists and upheld seven-year prison sentences for their reporting on the military's brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslims. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo earlier this month shared with their colleagues the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, one of journalism's highest honors. The court did not given a reason for its decision. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who are being held in a prison in Yangon, were not present for the ruling, but their wives were. Kyaw Soe Oo's wife broke down in tears when the ruling was read.

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indians are voting Tuesday in the third phase of the general elections with campaigning by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party and the opposition marred by bitter accusations and acrimony. People lined up outside voting station at several places even before the polling started at 7 a.m. The voting for 117 parliamentary seats in 13 states and two Union Territories on Tuesday means polls are half done for 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament. The voting over seven phases ends May 19, with counting scheduled for May 23. The election is seen as a referendum on Modi's five-year rule.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The deadly Easter attacks in Sri Lanka are a bloody echo of decades past in the South Asian island nation, when militants inspired by attacks in the Lebanese civil war helped develop the suicide bomb vest. Government ministers have said seven Sri Lankans from a little-known local group carried out the six near-simultaneous bombings at churches and hotels that killed at least 290 people and wounded over 500. While little else was known about the group or their motives, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger fighters used suicide bombing in the country's 26-year civil war before being wiped out by government forces.

NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The seaside Sri Lankan fishing town of Negombo has long been called "Little Rome," a reference to its abundance of churches and its place at the center of the country's small Catholic community. On Monday, it was a town in mourning. Small white flags flew in house after house near St. Sebastian's Church, a sign that someone who lived there had died. Groups of people visited, paying their respects. On Easter Sunday, a bomb blast ripped through St. Sebastian's, one of a half-dozen coordinated attacks on churches and high-end hotels that killed nearly 300 people. At least 110 were killed at St.

NEW YORK (AP) — Viji Devadas hasn't heard from her nephew in Sri Lanka on her family WhatsApp chat group since he reached out just after the Easter Sunday bomb blasts that tore apart churches and hotels and killed hundreds in the South Asian nation. It's unsettling, but she knows he's ok, and the Sri Lankan government's decision to block most social media, citing concern over "false news reports," makes sense to her. In "one way, it's good because so many rumors and so many things, everybody gets scared," said Devadas, whose family runs a restaurant named after the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, in a tiny strip of New York's Staten Island borough known as "Little Sri Lanka." At the same time, she hoped it wouldn't be in place for long, since "people like to see what's going on and happening." The block on social media including Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram services was announced by the Sri Lankan government's official news portal, which cited the spread of misinformation online.

NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — St. Sebastian's Church in Sri Lanka's Negombo city was packed when Nilantha Lakmal arrived with his wife and three daughters for Easter Mass. The pews already full, the family joined dozens of others in the front garden, listening to the priest through the church's open doors. From the corner of his eye, Lakmal saw a man with a large blue backpack walking quickly down the left-hand aisle of the 1940s Gothic-style church, patterned after the Reims Cathedral in France. Within seconds, a bomb went off. "I was scared. I was shouting. I was shouting for my daughters.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Coordinated bombings turned Easter Sunday festivities into a national tragedy in Sri Lanka, killing at least 290 people and wounding more than 500 others. The nine blasts mainly targeted churches and luxury hotels in the country's deadliest violence since its civil war ended a decade ago. The blasts destroyed ceilings and blew out windows. People carried victims out of blood-spattered pews. Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne says all of the suicide bombers were Sri Lankan citizens from a domestic Muslim militant group named National Thowfeek Jamaath, but that authorities suspect foreign links. Police says 13 suspects have been arrested, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

PORAC, Philippines (AP) — Rescuers found more bodies overnight in the rubble of a supermarket that crashed down in a powerful earthquake that damaged buildings and an airport in the northern Philippines, raising the death toll to 11, officials said Tuesday. The bodies of four victims were pulled from Chuzon Supermarket and three other villagers died due to collapsed house walls, said Mayor Condralito dela Cruz of Porac town in Pampanga province, north of Manila. An Associated Press photographer saw seven people, including at least one dead, being pulled out by rescuers from the pile of concrete, twisted metal and wood overnight.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Three crew members aboard a helicopter that crashed off the New Zealand coast while on route to attempt a medical evacuation from a fishing boat have been found alive on a remote island. Rescue Coordination Centre duty manager Kevin Banaghan says the crew members were found Tuesday in their survival suits walking on a beach on uninhabited Auckland Island, some 500 kilometers (311 miles) southwest of Invercargill where they'd left from. Banaghan says they don't have all the details yet on what happened but the outcome is great news. He says the final contact with the helicopter was at 7:37 p.m.