Singapore's High Court on Thursday convicted a prominent dissident blogger of contempt of court for "scandalizing" the judiciary in an online commentary, an offence punishable by jail time. 

Alex Au, 61, was found guilty of insulting the judiciary in an October 5, 2013 post that insinuated that hearing dates on a constitutional challenge to a law criminalizing gay sex between men had been rigged.

Indonesian divers Thursday recovered six bodies, some still belted into their seats, near the main section of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month, but failed again to reach the fuselage.

Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28 in stormy weather with 162 people on board as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. A total of 59 bodies have so far been recovered.

Investigators examining the cockpit voice recorder of a crashed AirAsia jet said Tuesday they were considering whether human error or problems with the plane caused the accident, after ruling out terrorism.

Flight QZ8501 went down in the Java Sea on December 28 in stormy weather with 162 people on board, during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Indonesian divers Friday made a fresh attempt to reach the main body of an AirAsia plane that crashed in the sea last month with 162 people on board, after their initial bid failed due to bad weather and rough seas.

Flight QZ8501 went down in the Java Sea on December 28 in stormy weather during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. 

Indonesian divers on Thursday descended to the main body of an AirAsia jet that crashed last month, hoping to recover the bulk of the disaster's victims, a day after it was finally located by a navy ship.

Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28 in stormy weather during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, with 162 people on board.

A Singaporean navy ship on Wednesday located the main body of the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea late last month, raising hopes that bodies of most of the 162 victims will now be found.

Underwater photos showed the cracked fuselage and part of a wing of Flight QZ8501, that went down on December 28 in stormy weather during a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Piracy on the high seas fell last year to an eight-year low worldwide but the number of successful ship hijackings increased due to rising numbers of attacks in the waters off Southeast Asia, a piracy watchdog said Wednesday.

The International Maritime Bureau said in an annual report that 245 pirate attacks were recorded globally in 2014, down from 264 the year before, and nearly half of the 445 reported in 2010 when piracy off Somalia was raging.

Indonesian divers on Tuesday retrieved the cockpit voice recorder from beneath the wreckage of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea as the airline's boss vowed to overcome the "toughest times" he has known.

It came a day after the plane's other black box, the flight data recorder, was recovered, and the devices should provide investigators with vital information about what caused the accident.

A Singapore court on Monday ordered a local activist to pay $22,000 in legal costs to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who had won a defamation suit against him.

Roy Ngerng is also expected  separately to pay thousands more in damages to Lee, who sued the blogger for libel after he accused the Singapore leader of misappropriating state pension funds.

Indonesian divers Monday retrieved the flight data recorder of the AirAsia plane that went down in the Java Sea with 162 people on board, a potential breakthrough in efforts to discover what caused the crash. 

The second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, was spotted by divers a short distance from the first but they had not yet managed to retrieve it because it was trapped under wreckage, officials said.