Pirates have released an Indonesian-bound Thai tanker after stealing its oil cargo, in the latest attack in Southeast Asian waters, the International Maritime Bureau said Monday.

MT Orapin 4, with 14 crew aboard, arrived at Sri Racha Port in Thailand on Sunday, the IMB's Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Center said.

A Chinese ship mapping the ocean floor ahead of an intensive underwater search for missing Flight MH370 was returning to port Saturday due to a technical problem, officials said.

The massive Indian Ocean search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared on March 8 carrying 239 people, has so far failed to find any sign of the Boeing 777.

Malaysian police have arrested at least 13 people -- many of who are related -- over the alleged gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl, reports said Friday.

The girl was raped on May 20 for hours by a group of men in an abandoned hut in the northern state of Kelantan, local media reports said.

The swathe of Indian Ocean where acoustic transmissions were detected was Thursday ruled out as the crash zone of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 after a lengthy underwater search.

The Australian-led Joint Agency Coordination Center said that the search in the area using a mini sub where the ping-emitting beacons were believed detected in early April was now complete.

Malaysia's aviation authority released on Tuesday satellite data used to determine that flight MH370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean following demands from skeptical relatives of those on board.

The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) said in a statement it had worked with Inmarsat to provide 47 pages of data communication logs recorded by the British satellite operator as well as explanatory notes for public consumption.

Three men suspected of being Tamil Tigers have been arrested in Malaysia, a top police official said Sunday, accusing them of attempting to revive the Sri Lankan separatist group.

Khalid Abu Bakar, inspector-general of police, said the trio, who had been in Malaysia since 2004, were arrested in multiple raids in the central Selangor state on May 15, and were being held under the Immigration Act.

Malaysian courts on Friday charged three men and a woman from the Muslim-majority country over promoting terrorism in strife-torn Syria.

The four were among 11 Malaysians arrested since late last month in an operation to crack down on Islamic terror suspects, who using claims of humanitarian work as cover. 

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has distanced himself from growing territorial conflicts in Asia, telling a Japanese newspaper they should not jeopardize the "strategic importance" of his country's ties with Beijing.

"We must look at the big picture and not define relations with China on a single-issue basis but look at the broad spectrum of the relations, and recognise the strategic importance of our bilateral relationship with China," Najib told Thursday's Nikkei.

The fruitless MH370 search has breathed new life into conspiracy theories on the plane's fate, with a book, two films and even a former prime minister pushing ideas ranging from diversion by the CIA to an accidental shoot-down.

A host of wild theories including a Taliban hijack or meteor strike had emerged to fill the information vacuum in the days following the plane's disappearance on March 8 with 239 aboard as authorities across Asia scrambled to figure out what happened. 

Several hundred Filipino and Vietnamese protesters united in a march in the Philippine capital on Friday, demanding that China stop oil drilling in disputed South China Sea waters.

Filipino riot police blocked the entrance to a high-rise building that houses the Chinese consulate in Manila's financial district as around 200 protesters marched on the office.