A piece of a wing that washed up on an Indian Ocean island beach last week was part of the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, Malaysia said on Thursday, confirming the discovery of the first trace of the plane since it vanished last year.
Senior U.S. lawmakers expressed concern on Tuesday about whether the State Department’s annual global report on human trafficking may have been watered down due to political considerations and vowed to demand a full accounting at a Senate hearing this week.
Several U.S. politicians sharply criticized the Obama administration on Monday over an annual global report on human trafficking in response to a Reuters article chronicling how senior U.S. diplomats had watered down rankings of more than a dozen strategically important countries.
Malaysia said on Sunday that airplane debris that washed up on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion has been identified as being from a Boeing 777, the same model as a Malaysian Airlines plane which vanished last year.
The five countries investigating the downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine a year ago are considering setting up an independent international tribunal after Russia vetoed attempts to establish a U.N.-backed court to prosecute suspects.
Malaysia is "almost certain" that plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is from a Boeing 777, the deputy transport minister said on Thursday, heightening the possibility it could be wreckage from missing Flight MH370.
Russia is pushing for a greater U.N. role in an investigation into what caused the downing of a passenger plane in eastern Ukraine after dismissing a proposal by Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine for a U.N.-backed tribunal.
Japan is interested in joining a NATO missile building consortium that would give Tokyo its first taste of a multinational defense project, a move the U.S. Navy is encouraging because it could pave the way for Japan to lead similar partnerships in Asia, sources said.
Sheltering in the backroom of a provincial Thai police station is a 35-year-old street vendor who triggered a human trafficking investigation that has reverberated across Southeast Asia.
The Dutch government is lobbying its political allies for the establishment of a U.N. tribunal to prosecute suspects in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane over territory held by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine a year ago, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Friday.
China will soon complete some of its land reclamation on the Spratly islands in the disputed South China Sea, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, indicating that Beijing is close to setting up new outposts in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia.
More than 20 years after the first wave of Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar, fear is spreading through the sweltering camps of mud houses where they found shelter in southern Bangladesh that they will soon be on the move again.
In Bangladesh's southernmost tip, families cling to scraps of paper with Malaysian and Thai hand phone numbers scribbled on them as their only links to loved ones missing after boarding fishing boats, lured by hopes of a brighter future overseas.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday called for an immediate end to island-building by China and other countries near the South China Sea, urging the participants to stop militarizing the dispute and find a peaceful solution.
Malaysia on Tuesday denied entry to a prominent teenage Hong Kong activist for a series of talks on democracy in China, raising concerns that Beijing may have put pressure on Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian police forensic teams, digging with hoes and shovels, on Tuesday began pulling out bodies from shallow graves found in abandoned jungle camps where an inter-governmental body said hundreds of victims of human traffickers may be buried.
Malaysia has found 139 graves, and signs of torture, in more than two dozen squalid human trafficking camps suspected to have been used by gangs smuggling migrants across the border with Thailand, the country's police chief said on Monday.
China said it had lodged a complaint with the United States over a U.S. spy plane that flew over parts of the disputed South China Sea in a diplomatic row that has fuelled tension between the world's two largest economies.
Malaysia and Indonesia said on Wednesday they would offer shelter to 7,000 "boat people" adrift at sea in rickety boats but, anxious not to encourage a fresh influx, made clear that their assistance was temporary and they would take no more.
A boat crammed with migrants was towed out to sea by the Thai navy and then held up by Malaysian vessels on Saturday, the latest round of "maritime ping-pong" by Asian states determined not to let asylum seekers come ashore.
Thai police have arrested a man they believe is the key figure behind a brutal human trafficking network that ran a jungle camp where dozens of bodies have been found.
