UNHCR is coordinating with its local partners and authorities to gather more details on the group - who appeared to be made up of women and children - and to organise aid, senior communications assistant Yanuar Farhanditya told Reuters, 

But as the Boeing 777-300R soared above Myanmar it suddenly hit extreme turbulence, wildly throwing passengers, flight attendants and inflight meals and kettles around the cabin. 

Macron's plane was en route from France to the troubled islands, a holiday destination now strewn with hundreds of charred vehicles and scarred by burned-out stores, businesses and schools.

The scheduled London-Singapore flight on a Boeing BA.N 777-300ER plane diverted to Bangkok after the plane was buffeted by turbulence that flung passengers and crew around the cabin, slamming some into the ceiling.

Photographs from the interior of the plane showed gashes in the overhead cabin panels, oxygen masks and panels hanging from the ceiling and luggage strewn around.

Israel and Hamas, engaged in heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip, both angrily rejected on Monday moves to arrest their leaders for war crimes made before an international court.

France's High Commission in New Caledonia said on Tuesday the airport remains closed for commercial flights, and it will deploy the military to protect public buildings.

Lai was sworn in early Monday Taiwan time and will face rising geo-political turbulence in the region, with Chinese military pressure building and tense Washington-Beijing relations.

The president-elect joined a chorus of congratulatory messages from countries across the globe for Wong, Singapore's first new prime minister in 20 years.

"The People's Republic of China can't have its cake and eat it too," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.

Wong rose to prominence in 2020 as co-chair of the pandemic taskforce and was named Lee's successor in April 2022 after a series of consultations between the political leadership and Wong's peers.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations has led so far fruitless diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict unleashed by the military's putsch, which has displaced 2.7 million people, according to the United Nations. 

China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.

Wong, 51, comes from among a crop of so-called "4G" leaders, a new generation of politicians hand-picked by the long-ruling People's Action Party (PAP) to take over the reins of the key Asian trade and financial centre. 

Boeing breached obligations under an agreement that had shielded it against legal proceedings for the accidents, department officials said in a letter to a federal court in Texas.

The inaugural dialogue -- announced during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit last month to Beijing but without a confirmed date -- will take place in Geneva.

Putin will be in Beijing from Thursday to Friday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement, the Russian leader's first trip abroad since his March re-election and his second in just over six months to China.

"Shots were fired at the gendarmes using high calibre weapons and hunting rifles. There have been no deaths," High Commissioner of the Republic Louis Le Franc told reporters.

The US move "seriously infringed on China's sovereignty and security," the military said.

China's embassy in Manila had orchestrated "repeated acts of engaging and dissemination of disinformation, misinformation and malinformation", with the objective of sowing discord, division and disunity, Eduardo Ano said in a statement.

Indonesia reiterated its commitment to strengthening ties with Papua New Guinea on Wednesday in a “historic” meeting in Jayapura that emphasized defense cooperation with the Pacific Island nation amid unabating geopolitical tensions in the region.

A senior US treasury official said this week the United States saw Iran's capacity to move its oil as being reliant on service providers based in Malaysia. 

"The pilot successfully ejected and the plane crashed thereafter within Tengah Air Base," it said in a statement.

Johari Abdul Ghani said the "orangutan diplomacy" strategy would gift the endangered great apes to palm oil trading nations, especially major importing territories like the EU and India.

Each month since June 2023 has ranked as the planet's hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.

Brian Nelson, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, was speaking during a four-day visit to Singapore and Malaysia. 

A Chinese fighter jet endangered an Australian military helicopter during an unsafe and unacceptable confrontation over the Yellow Sea, Australia said on Monday.

Indonesia recently suggested to the South Korean government that it would pay about 600 billion won ($442.47 million) for the KF-21 joint fighter jet project, Yonhap reported, citing multiple unnamed government sources. 

AC exhaust units are a common feature of urban landscapes in many parts of Asia, clinging like limpets to towering apartment blocks in Hong Kong or tucked in a cross formation between the windows of a building in Cambodia.

Like much of Southeast Asia -- where schools have recently been forced to close early and electricity usage has surged -- southern and central Vietnam have been scorched by devastating heat.