Malaysia told the Security Council on Thursday that it plans to present a draft resolution soon on creating a U.N. tribunal to try those responsible for the downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine.

All 298 passengers and crew on board flight MH17 -- the majority of them Dutch -- died when the plane was shot down on July 17 last year.

Japan and the Philippines flew patrol planes near disputed South China Sea waters for a second straight day on Wednesday, despite Chinese criticism of this week's air and sea exercises.

A Japanese P-3C Orion and a Philippine navy Islander conducted a search and rescue drill 50 nautical miles (93 kilometers) northwest of the Philippine island of Palawan, officials said.

Malaysian authorities on Monday held a somber mass funeral for 21 suspected ethnic Rohingya found in human-trafficking graves last month, with fellow Muslims praying for the unidentified victims to find a place in heaven.

The remains were what police said were the first of 106 exhumed so far from pits at trafficking camps found in late May in jungles in northern Malaysia along the Thai border, a discovery that laid bare the brutal extent of the region's migrant crisis.

The makers of a Thai reality television show have held an apologetic mountaintop prayer ritual after viewers accused them of angering sacred spirits during their last episode.

"Thailand's Got Talent", which is based on the hugely successful British franchise, found itself in hot water after an episode aired Friday.

Four Western tourists were ordered deported from Malaysia on Friday after pleading guilty to obscenity charges for taking nude photos on a popular climbing peak, an act some in the country blamed for causing a deadly earthquake.

The defendants -- Eleanor Hawkins of Britain, 24, Dutchman Dylan Snel, 23, and Canadian brother and sister Lindsey, 23, and Danielle Petersen, 22 -- were arrested earlier this week in the wake of the deadly June 5 quake which killed 18 people on Mount Kinabalu.

The death toll following a strong earthquake that jolted Malaysia's Mount Kinabalu last week has risen to 18 after the final two remaining victims who were unaccounted for were confirmed dead on Wednesday.

The remains of Navdeep Singh Jaryal, a Singaporean student and Mohammad Ghazi Mohamed, a Singaporean teacher, will be sent to their home country after further forensic tests in Malaysia, according to a statement from Singapore's education ministry.

The Philippines has freed nine Chinese fishermen convicted of poaching endangered sea turtles after they completed one-year jail terms, officials said Wednesday.

The nine, arrested in disputed waters in May last year, were jailed after they failed to pay fines of $100,000 each for poaching and an additional $2,662 each for catching an endangered species.

A Rohingya man suspected of involvement in people trafficking has been shot dead in Bangladesh, police said Monday, as the country battles a migrant crisis.

Police said the 30-year-old man died in an early morning gunfight between two groups of human traffickers in Teknaf near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar.

Boulders "the size of cars" roared down the crowded slopes of Malaysia's Mount Kinabalu after its earthquake, a witness said, as authorities on Sunday raised the death toll in the disaster to 16.

Six Singapore primary school students and a teacher who were on an excursion to the peak were among those killed when the 6.0-magnitude quake struck Friday morning, sending landslides crashing downward.

Unwanted by Bangladesh and unwelcome in Myanmar, hundreds of stick-thin migrants found adrift at sea as a transnational trafficking route collapsed are now living in tents on a frontier scrubland.

After weeks crammed together on a boat bound for Malaysia -- a treacherous journey many braved to flee persecution or poverty -- they are back near to where they began.