Top Asian News 4:50 a.m. GMT

TOKYO (AP) — In his debut abroad as the first retired general to lead the Pentagon in more than half a century, Jim Mattis found that in Japan and South Korea his experience in uniform is seen as an asset. Not everyone who knows Mattis well in the U.S. shares that view, but he clearly was an instant hit in northeast Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was effusive in his endorsement as the two shook hands Friday before a phalanx of Japanese and international news reporters and cameras. "I was very encouraged," Abe said, "to see someone like you who has substantial experience, both in the military and in security, defense and diplomacy, taking this office." Mattis won easy confirmation by the U.S.

SYDNEY (AP) — Seven percent of priests in Australia's Catholic Church were accused of sexually abusing children over the past several decades, a lawyer said Monday as officials investigating institutional abuse across Australia revealed for the first time the extent of the crisis. The statistics were released during the opening address of a hearing of Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The royal commission — which is Australia's highest form of inquiry — has been investigating since 2013 how the Catholic Church and other institutions responded to the sexual abuse of children over decades. The commission has previously heard harrowing testimony from scores of people who suffered abuse at the hands of clergy.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — More than 900 children were killed in Afghanistan's conflict last year, the United Nations said Monday, calling it the most violent year for children since it started keeping records. The U.N. mission said the nearly 25 percent increase in child deaths from the previous year was largely caused by mines and munitions left over from decades of conflict. It documented a 66 percent increase in such deaths in 2016. "Conflict-related violence exacted a heavy toll on Afghanistan in 2016, with an overall deterioration in civilian protection and the highest-total civilian casualties recorded since 2009, when UNAMA began systematic documentation of civilian casualties," the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in its annual report.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — A human rights group urged Myanmar's government on Monday to back an independent international investigation into alleged abuses by security forces against members of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority, including the reported systematic use of sexual violence. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that soldiers and Border Guard Police took part in rape, gang rape, invasive body searches and sexual assaults while conducting counter-insurgency operations in the western state of Rakhine from October through mid-December. The estimated 1 million Rohingya face official and social discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, also known as Burma. Most do not have citizenship and are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even when their families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian senator and outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he will start a new political party to appeal to disenfranchised conservatives. Cory Bernardi decided to abandon Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's conservative Liberal Party as the ruling coalition trails further behind the center-left Labor Party in opinion polls seven months after elections. Bernardi told the Senate he had resigned from the party to start his new party called Australian Conservatives. "We will be united by the desire to create stronger families, to foster free enterprise, to limit the size and scope and reach of government while seeking to rebuild confidence in civil society," Bernardi said.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Avalanches in Afghanistan triggered by heavy snowfall across the country have killed at least 119 people in recent days, officials said on Monday. Wais Ahmad Barmak, the state minister for disaster management and humanitarian affairs, said that at least 89 people have been injured and 190 homes destroyed by avalanches in multiple provinces. Those figures were expected to rise as rescue teams made their way through snow-blocked roads to afflicted areas. Many of the most recent fatalities come from Nuristan province, near the Pakistani border, where two villages were buried in snow. Barmak's spokesman Omer Mohammadi said rescue teams have so far recovered 48 bodies from those villages and that more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of farmland have been destroyed.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A Japanese man and two Cambodians were charged Tuesday with allegedly tricking Cambodian women into working in the sex trade in Japan. They could face seven to 15 years in prison if convicted of "unlawful recruitment for exploitation," said Ly Sophana, a spokesman for Phnom Penh Municipal Court. A statement posted Monday on the Cambodian National Police website said Susumu Fukui, the 52-year-old owner of a Japanese restaurant in Phnom Penh, was arrested last week on suspicion of luring at least 10 women from provincial areas to work in Japan, ostensibly as well-paid waitresses, but then forcing them into the sex trade.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand's Prime Minister Bill English said Tuesday he told President Donald Trump during a phone call that he disagreed with his travel and refugee ban but that the conversation remained amicable. Last week Trump had a testy exchange with Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a deal Australia reached with the Obama administration to resettle refugees in the U.S. Trump later tweeted that the deal was "dumb." By contrast, English told Radio New Zealand that his 15-minute call with Trump on Monday was a "sensible, polite discussion" that affirmed the good relationship between the countries.

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — An Afghan diplomat was shot and killed by his security guard inside the consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Monday, officials said. Mohammad Zaki Abdu, the third secretary at the consulate, died of his wounds shortly after the shooting, according to the consulate's spokesman, Haris Khan. "We were working at our office when we heard gunshots," he said. "Everybody was running in panic." The guard, identified only as an Afghan national named Rahatullah, was taken into custody, said Pakistani police official Azad Khan. Both officials said the motive behind the killing was not yet known.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine troops have resumed assaults against communist rebels, killing at least one guerrilla, after President Rodrigo Duterte scrapped peace talks with the insurgents, military officials said Monday. Duterte had lifted the government's six-month-old cease-fire Friday and the next day discarded the talks being brokered by Norway. Those moves came after the Marxist guerrillas abandoned their own truce and killed six soldiers and kidnapped two others in new flare-ups in the 48-year insurgency. The government and the rebels separately declared cease-fires last year to foster the peace talks, which progressed steadily for months before rapidly deteriorating in recent weeks.