Top Asian News 4:50 a.m. GMT

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court has denied prosecutors' request to extend detention of former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn. The Tokyo District Court on Thursday rejected the request for another 10-day detention over his indictment for falsification of financial reports. Ghosn was arrested Nov. 19, along with another executive, Greg Kelly, over allegations that they underreported Ghosn's pay in 2011-2015 and both have since been charged. The arrest of an industry icon has raised concerns over the Japanese automaker and the future of its alliance with Renault SA of France.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A U.S. special envoy for North Korea on Thursday visited a border village the rival Koreas has been demilitarizing as part of steps to reduce military tensions amid a larger diplomatic push to resolve the nuclear crisis. The U.S. Embassy in Seoul did not provide details about Stephen Biegun's visit to Panmunjom. He wasn't expected to meet with North Korean officials at the village, which is often used for diplomacy between the allies and North Korea. Biegun said after arriving in South Korea on Wednesday that Washington was reviewing easing travel restrictions on North Korea to facilitate humanitarian shipments to help resolve an impasse in nuclear negotiations.

TORONTO (AP) — A third Canadian has been detained in China, although Canada's prime minister said Wednesday the case doesn't seem to be linked to the previous two that appear to be retaliation for Canada's recent arrest of a top Chinese tech executive. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said he didn't want to escalate frictions set off by the executive's arrest. Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, was arrested in Canada on Dec. 1 at the request of the United States, which wants her extradited to face charges that she and her company misled banks about the company's business dealings in Iran.

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a pre-Christmas visit to hundreds of troops in Iraq, telling them he wanted to say thank you from "one Australian to another." But Morrison canceled a planned visit to Afghanistan on the advice of the defense force chief due to operational security reasons. Morrison traveled to Iraq on Wednesday to meet special forces soldiers and other Australian military personnel who are training the Iraqi Army to combat the Islamic State group. It was the conservative prime minister's first visit to the Middle East since he took the top job in August. "I understand it's a sacrifice.

BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai social media influencer who criticized a gown worn by her country's Miss Universe contestant could end up in court after another online personality filed a complaint with police charging that her thumbs-down fashion comment defamed the royal family. Kitjanut Chaiyosburana, a businessman and politician, said Wednesday that he filed his complaint after seeing a Facebook post by Wanchaleom Jamneanphol, who disparaged a blue dress designed by Princess Srivannavari Nariratana, a daughter of King Maha Vajiralongkorn. Miss Universe Thailand, Sophida Kancharin, wore the gown during a Dec. 5 promotional event that was part of the pageant, won in Bangkok on Monday by the Philippines' Catriona Gray.

BEIJING (AP) — The U.S. government said Tuesday that it is reviewing reports of forced labor at a Chinese internment camp where ethnic minorities are sewing clothes that have been shipped to the U.S. market. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that reporting by The Associated Press and other media "for the first time appears to link the internment camps identified in Western China to the importation of goods produced by forced labor by a U.S. company." The AP tracked shipments from a factory in a camp in China's far western Xinjiang region to Badger Sportswear in North Carolina.

The historic summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the riveting drama that unfolded in a cave in northern Thailand and a deadly earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia were just some of the memorable stories from Asia in 2018. Associated Press photographers across the region captured remarkable images from these stories, as well as others, including the plight of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya who fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh and the move by China to abolish presidential term limits that could allow Xi Jinping to rule for life. The Trump-Kim summit was stunning, coming not long after the two leaders exchanged angry barbs that had the world wondering whether war was on the horizon.

LONDON (AP) — Hackers have spent years eavesdropping on the diplomatic communications of European Union officials, a U.S. cybersecurity firm said Wednesday, an operation disrupted only after researchers discovered hundreds of intercepted documents lying around on the internet. The documents were discovered a few months ago after a malicious email was caught by the Redwood City, California-based Area 1 Security firm, according to company co-founder Blake Darche. He said the firm followed forensic clues in the message back to an unsecured server that had some 1,100 EU diplomatic cables. Darche said he believed that tens of thousands more such documents have been stolen.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The Trump administration's special envoy for North Korea said Wednesday that Washington is reviewing easing its travel restrictions to North Korea to facilitate humanitarian shipments as part of efforts to resolve an impasse in nuclear diplomacy. Stephen Biegun made the comments upon arrival in South Korea for talks on the nuclear negotiations, which have seen little headway since a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June, when they issued a vague vow for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing how or when it would occur. Biegun said his discussions with South Korean officials will be about how to work together to engage with North Korea "in a manner that will help us move forward and move beyond the 70 years of hostility." Toward that end, Biegun said he was directed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to review America's policy on humanitarian assistance provided to North Korea.

BANGKOK (AP) — Facebook has announced its third and biggest purge of military-linked accounts in Myanmar, where critics have charged that the social network did too little to block inflammatory material that fueled communal hatred and violence, particularly against the country's Muslim Rohingya minority. The social media giant said in a statement Wednesday that it had removed 425 Facebook pages, 17 groups and 135 accounts in Myanmar for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior," meaning they misrepresented who was running the provocative accounts. It also removed 15 Instagram accounts. Some 700,000 Rohingya fled their homes in western Myanmar since last year in response to a brutal counterinsurgency campaign by the military, which has been accused of massive human rights violations.