Malaysia's premier on Wednesday appointed a new transport minister to replace Hishammuddin Hussein, who took the lead during the search for missing flight MH370.

Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, had provisionally held the transport portfolio after the post was left vacant following the last elections a year ago.

Human rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday condemned a Malaysian government ban on Christians using "Allah" to refer to God as "an abuse against free speech".

The Catholic Church in the Muslim-majority country on Monday lost a long-running court battle for the right to use the Arabic word in the local Malay-language edition of its Herald newspaper.

Malaysia's top court on Monday upheld a government ban forbidding non-Muslims from using "Allah" to refer to God, rejecting an appeal by the Roman Catholic Church that argued that the ban failed to consider the rights of minorities in the mostly Muslim nation.

The Federal Court ruled in a 4-3 decision that the church's newspaper has no grounds to appeal a lower court decision last year that kept it from using "Allah" in its Malay-language weekly publication.

After years of warnings, the United States Friday named and shamed Thailand, Malaysia and Venezuela dumping them at the bottom of a list of countries accused of failing to tackle modern-day slavery.

The three countries, plus Gambia, found themselves added to nations such as Iran, North Korea and Syria already languishing on the lowest tier of the State Department's annual report into human trafficking -- a designation which could trigger U.S. sanctions.

The drawn-out search for missing Malaysian Flight MH370 will revert to an area south of the previously suspected crash site following new analysis of the plane's flight path, an official said Friday.

Investigators grappling to solve the mystery of the jet's disappearance are reportedly set to scour a zone 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of Perth -- previously subject to an aerial search -- when an underwater probe resumes in August.

Malaysian authorities said Friday a 15th body was found and 27 people remain missing from two boat accidents, at a time when Indonesian illegal migrant workers head home for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Eighty-two people have been rescued so far in an ongoing search off western Malaysia after the boats, believed to be bound for Sumatra, sank early Wednesday, said Mohamad Hambali Yaakup, an official with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).

Malaysian authorities on Thursday were searching for 35 people missing at sea following two boat accidents at a time when many illegal migrant workers head home to Indonesia for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

In the latest reported incident, nine people were missing off western Malaysia after a boat believed to be bound for the Indonesian island of Sumatra sank, said Mohamad Hambali Yaakup, an official with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).

Twenty-seven people were missing on Wednesday and nine were confirmed dead after an apparently overloaded boat carrying Indonesian illegal migrants headed home for Ramadan sank overnight in rough seas off western Malaysia.

Officials said 61 people were rescued or made it to land by themselves after the accident around midnight near Port Klang, Malaysia's largest port, as authorities intensify the search with nine ships and a helicopter.

The search for the missing Malaysian Flight MH370 is yet to target the most likely crash site, having been distracted by what is now believed to have been a bogus signal, British company Inmarsat claimed Tuesday.

Inmarsat's scientists told the BBC's Horizon programme that they had calculated the plane's most likely flight path and a "hotspot" in the southern Indian Ocean in which it most likely came down.

Two men -- a Malaysian and a Filipino -- were abducted Monday off the coast of Borneo island by a pair of sea-borne gunmen, a police official said, despite heavy security in the area after a spate of kidnappings.

"Two armed gunmen abducted two people from an open-sea fish farm. They were taken away in a boat," said Omar Mammah, head of criminal investigations for the Malaysian state of Sabah, told AFP.