By Neha Dasgupta and Nidhi Verma NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced that 500 and 1,000 rupee banknotes would be withdrawn from circulation at midnight to crack down on rampant corruption and counterfeit currency.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police will extradite two fugitives from France in the second repatriation since the two countries signed an extradition treaty that came into effect in 2015, state media reported on Wednesday.

By Sarah Marsh HAVANA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will visit Cuba next week to strengthen ties and boost trade, four decades after his father made a historic visit to the Communist-ruled island and struck up a friendship with revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Canada has long been one of Cuba's closest Western allies.

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia's Dreamworld theme park will permanently shut a water ride on which four people were killed last month, owner Ardent Leisure Group said on Wednesday.

By Andrew R.C. Marshall MANILA (Reuters) - Jason Madarang, awaiting trial on a charge of drug use, is in a muggy, windowless cell in a Manila prison so overcrowded that inmates must sleep in halls and stairwells and share each toilet with 150 other men. But with President Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs" raging beyond the walls of Quezon City Jail, Madarang says he is lucky.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Park Geun-hye will visit parliament on Tuesday and meet the speaker, an opposition assemblyman said, amid an influence peddling scandal that has gripped the country and thrown her government into a political limbo.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's plan to permanently ban asylum seekers who arrive by boat from ever entering the country was in jeopardy on Tuesday when the opposition Labor said it would not support the ban. Under the plan asylum seekers who are deemed genuine refugees and resettled in a third country would be permanently denied access to all Australian visas, including tourist and business.

By Greg Torode HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma, a bald, thickset lawyer with a Churchillian air, is in the eye of a storm after Beijing's politically charged intervention in the city's legal system, and those close to him say he is not a man to bend his principles.

By Jack Kim and Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Tuesday she will withdraw her nominee for prime minister if parliament recommends a candidate and is willing to let the new premier control the cabinet, seeking to defuse a crisis rocking her presidency.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong jury on Tuesday retired to consider its verdict in British banker Rurik Jutting's double murder trial, a gruesome case involving graphic video of the torture and killing two Indonesian women in his luxury high-rise apartment in 2014.