A Malaysia Airlines flight was forced to turn around due to an auto-pilot defect, landing safely early Sunday, said the carrier already reeling from the loss of two planes this year.

Flight MH198 from Kuala Lumpur to Hyderabad in India departed late Saturday, but the Boeing 737-800 turned back due to an auto-pilot defect.

A bomb suspect held for two weeks without charge in Thailand's insurgency-battered south says an army dragnet following the coup is calcifying hostility towards the kingdom -- and undercutting a fresh bid for peace.

Dutch prosecutors said Friday they need to know where a missile that may have shot down flight MH17 was fired from in eastern Ukraine before criminal charges could be laid.

Four people were killed and several others wounded Thursday when suspected rebels in Thailand's insurgency-ravaged south raided a government office, police told Agence France Presse. 

Family members of the passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are still seeking answers and closure six months after the plane's disappearance.

But at an emotional gathering in Beijing on Monday, relatives' sorrow was mixed with fierce resentment of Chinese authorities who they feel have turned against them after dozens of family members were reportedly beaten and arrested in recent months.

An intensified underwater search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will start in about two weeks' time, Australian premier Tony Abbott said Saturday as he visited Malaysia to discuss the issue.

Abbott said the hunt for the jet, which inexplicably veered off its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on March 8 with 239 people aboard, would continue for as long as necessary.

A Malaysian court on Friday sentenced a student activist to 10 months in jail for sedition, with the government increasingly using tough colonial-era legislation to stifle dissent despite promises to repeal the law.

Dutch air crash investigators have announced that they will release a preliminary report next Tuesday into what brought down flight MH17 over east Ukraine, killing 298 passengers.

Malaysia on Monday refused entry to a New Zealand anti-mining activist who had previously been arrested for joining a protest against a rare earths processing plant, rights groups said.

Armed pirates commandeered a Thai tanker off Malaysia's east coast and pumped out its cargo of oil, a maritime watchdog said Friday, adding to a series of hijackings that has raised fears of a growing Southeast Asian piracy menace.

The incident took place Thursday near the Malaysian resort island Tioman in the South China Sea as the tanker was travelling from Singapore to Thailand, the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center said.