Top Asian News 4:42 a.m. GMT

SYDNEY (AP) — The leader of Australia's most populous state resigned Thursday after his popularity plummeted over a series of decisions during 2016. Sydney-based New South Wales Premier Mike Baird used social media to announce that the ruling Liberal Party would elect a new leader at a meeting on Tuesday. He would then quit the state parliament immediately after a 10-year career. Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian, the party deputy, has said she will be a candidate and is widely regarded as the Baird's most likely successor. The surprise resignation comes during a turbulent era in Australian politics when state and federal leaders' careers are often shorted lived.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A Seoul court on Thursday denied a request to arrest one of South Korea's most powerful men, the heir to the Samsung Electronics juggernaut, in a setback to prosecutors investigating an influence-peddling scandal that toppled South Korea's president. The Seoul Central District Court said that a judge concluded that there was not enough justification to detain the 48-year-old billionaire Samsung vice chairman, Lee Jae-yong, at this stage. The announcement, made around 5 a.m. local time, allowed Lee to return home after a long night. He had been waiting for the court's decision at a detention center south of Seoul for more than 12 hours after a court hearing the previous day.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Every night they sleep above cold concrete, curled up in sleeping bags on rubber mattresses in a tent made of plastic sheets held together with tape. Their heads are inches away from cars zooming by — and from a bronze statue of a young girl that sits across from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Most of the protesters are not much older than the girl the statue depicts. It represents thousands of women enslaved for sex by Japan's imperial forces before and during World War II, when Korea was a Japanese colony. Some of these young protesters have been camping here for more than a year, determined to protect the small monument, which plays an outsized role in relations between Seoul and Tokyo, two vibrant democracies and U.S.

SYDNEY (AP) — Three nations shelled out around $160 million and years' worth of work on the underwater search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The result: No plane. The only tangible — and arguably most important — clues into what happened to the aircraft have come courtesy of ordinary citizens, who bore the costs themselves. The deep-sea sonar search for the vanished Boeing 777 was suspended on Tuesday after officials conceded defeat following the most expensive, complex aviation search in history. But while search crews spent years trawling in futility through a remote patch of the Indian Ocean, people wandering along beaches thousands of kilometers (miles) away began spotting pieces of the plane that had washed ashore.

BEIJING (AP) — China is preparing to retaliate if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump raises duties on Chinese goods and already has toughened its stance, an American business group said Wednesday. Trump, who is due to be inaugurated Friday, threatened during his campaign to raise import duties on Chinese goods to 45 percent. American companies are frustrated by Chinese market barriers and want Washington to take a tougher stance toward Beijing but worry reckless action might trigger retaliation. Already, China has ordered unusually high anti-dumping penalties against a U.S.-made agricultural chemical. "China has indeed threatened to and is preparing to take steps in retaliation if such actions take place," said Lester Ross, a board member of the American Chamber of Commerce, at a news conference.

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian officials defended their suspension of the fruitless deep-sea sonar search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, insisting on Wednesday that the enormous costs involved played no role in their decision to halt the nearly three-year hunt. Australia's Transport Minister Darren Chester also said that while the search had been called off on Tuesday, work behind the scenes would go on, with experts continuing to analyze data associated with the doomed aircraft's final hours and examining any future debris that washes ashore. But he declined to specify what kind of breakthrough would convince officials to resume the search for the Boeing 777's underwater wreckage.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia's foreign minister said Wednesday that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation is expected to call for a halt to violence against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority and for the safe return of refugees. Malaysia, which has urged Myanmar to stop what it calls a policy of genocide toward Rohingya, is hosting a meeting of foreign ministers from OIC nations in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday to discuss the crisis. Security forces in Buddhist-majority Myanmar are accused of widespread abuses against Rohingya, including killings, rape and the burning of thousands of homes, that have driven an estimated 65,000 Rohingya to flee across the border to Bangladesh in the past three months.

TOKYO (AP) — Caroline Kennedy stepped down Wednesday after three years as U.S. ambassador to Japan, where she was welcomed like a celebrity and worked to deepen the U.S.-Japan relationship despite regular flare-ups over American military bases on the southern island of Okinawa. Appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013, she had been expected to leave with the coming change in U.S. leadership. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has also said that all envoys who were political appointees must step down by Inauguration Day on Friday. Trump has not named a new ambassador yet. Kennedy ruffled some feathers early in her tenure by tweeting her opposition to Japan's dolphin hunt, shortly after her embassy issued a statement expressing "disappointment" that Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had visited a shrine that memorializes World War II war criminals, among others.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia's exiled opposition leader is facing two new defamation lawsuits stemming from a Facebook post that accused Prime Minister Hun Sen of offering a young political operative $1 million to attack the opposition. Hun Sen said in his lawsuit filed Wednesday that opposition leader Sam Rainsy's post was false and demanded $1 million in compensation. The political operative named in the social media post, Thy Sovantha, also denied the accusation and filed a separate defamation case on Tuesday that seeks $250,000. "I welcome Hun Sen's complaint to Cambodia's Kangaroo Court as its discussion means more publicity for Hun Sen's shameful acts," Sam Rainsy responded on Twitter.

BEIJING (AP) — China's top judge dismissed the concept of judicial independence as an "erroneous Western ideal" in remarks that seemed to emphasize the Communist Party's ultimate control over all areas of public life. Zhou Qiang, the head of the Supreme People's Court, has at times been seen as a reformer keen on limiting the influence of government officials on the courts, but his recent statement drew criticism from legal professionals. Chinese state media quoted him over the weekend as instructing leading judges to "draw your sword" against words and actions that run counter to party dictates. Since seizing power in 1949, the party has maintained strict control over the government, judiciary and military despite the rapid social change accompanying breakneck economic growth.