Top Asian News 4:46 a.m. GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) _ Billionaire Sheldon Adelson's casino company is paying almost $7 million to U.S. authorities to end a more than five-year corrupt practices investigation of the firm's former relationship with a consultant in Macao and China, company and federal officials said Thursday. With the agreement, Las Vegas Sands Corp. resolved twin probes of more than $60 million paid to an unnamed agent retained in 2006 to acquire a Chinese basketball team, plus other business dealings that include a Beijing real estate deal to promote casinos on the Cotai Strip of Macao, U.S. Justice Department and FBI officials said.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The family smartphones? An assortment of Samsung Galaxies. The flat-screen TV that illuminates the living room? A Samsung SUHD, with the brand name sparkling on the nameplate. The maker of the digital toilet seat? You guessed it: Samsung. It's difficult for people outside South Korea to fully grasp what Samsung, a truly global brand, means inside its home country, where it is far more than just another big company. It is seen variously as both a talisman and a millstone, as national savior and greedy business behemoth. Those diverse views only intensified Thursday when a court rejected prosecutors' request to arrest Samsung heir and Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong in the corruption scandal surrounding impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

SYDNEY (AP) — A man deliberately drove into a street crowded with pedestrians in Australia's second-largest city on Friday, killing at least three people and injuring 20 others, police said. Officials said the incident had no links to terrorism. The chaos began in the early afternoon, after a man was seen driving in erratic circles in the middle of a major intersection in downtown Melbourne. The driver then turned onto the Bourke Street Mall, a pedestrian-only road, deliberately colliding with pedestrians before continuing onto a sidewalk and hitting several other people, Victoria state Police Acting Commander Stuart Bateson said. The man was arrested at the scene and there was no further threat to the public, Bateson said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly three years after a Malaysian airliner vanished, it's still possible, if unlikely, for a plane to disappear. But that's changing with new satellites that will soon allow flights to be tracked in real time over oceans. New international safety standards also begin to kick-in beginning next year, although the deadline for airlines to meet most of the standards is still four years away. Even then, it could be decades before the changes permeate the entire global airline fleet because some of the requirements apply only to newly manufactured planes. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from radar on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.

ROME (AP) — Philippine negotiators and communist guerrillas resumed peace talks in Rome on Thursday, with the insurgents warning that alleged government violations of an accord on human rights might prompt them to terminate a monthslong cease-fire. Philippine officials led by Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. and guerrilla leaders shook hands in a show of unity at a hotel in the Italian capital before resuming the negotiations, which both sides acknowledged would be tough. Special envoy Elisabeth Slattum from Norway, which has been brokering the talks, also attended. The venue was shifted from the Norwegian capital, Oslo, which Philippine officials said would be too cold.

DARWIN, Australia (AP) — A 47-year-old man has been killed by crocodile while trying to cross a flooded river in northern Australian wilderness, police said Friday. The man had been wading through the East Alligator River in the Northern Territory with two women on Thursday when he disappeared at Cahill's Crossing near the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, a police statement said. The women made it across safely then reported the man missing. Police and rangers found the body downstream late Thursday near a 3.3-meter (11-foot) crocodile. The crocodile was shot dead and the body taken to the city of Darwin for an autopsy.

BEIJING (AP) — Sidestepping recent disputes over Taiwan and regional security, China said Thursday that "important progress" has been made in its relationship with the U.S. under President Barack Obama and the two countries should move forward as partners rather than competitors. Asked to sum up relations under Obama, who leaves office Friday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying recalled the numerous meetings between the U.S. president and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, including last year in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Trade, investment and people-to-people exchanges between the sides all hit new records under Obama, while the countries worked together on climate change, an investment agreement, building trust between their militaries, counterterrorism and the Iranian nuclear issue, Hua said at a daily briefing.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The Organization of Islamic Cooperation plans to send a high-level delegation to Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state to assess the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority, Malaysia said Thursday. A resolution issued after a special meeting of OIC foreign ministers to discuss the Rohingya crisis urged Myanmar to accept the OIC's visit. It asked Myanmar to implement the rule of law, work toward a sustainable solution, and allow the safe return of refugees and "unimpeded and unconditional access" for humanitarian aid to the affected area. Rohingya villagers and activists say hundreds of civilians have been killed since October, although figures cannot be verified because authorities have limited access for aid workers and journalists.

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.

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing will spend $2.7 billion to fight air pollution in the capital this year, state media reported Thursday. Part of the money will be used to close or upgrade more than 2,000 polluting factories, replace the use of coal with clean energy on the outskirts of the city and phase out 300,000 high-polluting older vehicles, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing Beijing's acting mayor, Cai Qi. Authorities are eager to bring about a visible improvement in China's bad air, especially in the high-profile capital and its surrounding areas. Beijing has suffered some particularly bad bouts of hazardous air in the past few weeks, causing it to order some factories to temporarily close and schoolchildren to stay at home.