Bangkok / AFP Thai authorities are investigating the BBC over a Thai-language profile of the nation’s new king, officials said on Wednesday, after the article outraged ultra-royalists in a country where criticism of the monarchy is outlawed. Thailand’s harsh royal defamation law has been used to jail scores of critics and spawned a culture of self-censorship across the media, academia …

  Meureudu / AFP Rescuers scrabbled through the rubble of shattered homes, shops and mosques in search of survivors on Wednesday after a powerful earthquake struck western Indonesia and killed at least 97 people. The shallow 6.5-magnitude quake struck Pidie Jaya district in Aceh province at dawn as many in the mainly Muslim region on Sumatra island were preparing for morning …

  Brussels / AFP Damaging economic sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis must be kept in place to force Moscow to meet its Minsk ceasefire commitments, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. “The international community must keep pressure on Russia to respect its obligations, especially (when) the security situation in eastern Ukraine remains so serious,” Stoltenberg said …