Top Asian News 4:48 a.m. GMT

SYDNEY (AP) — Australia's Transport Minister Darren Chester said on Wednesday that experts will continue analyzing data and scrutinizing debris washing ashore from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in a bid to narrow down where it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. But Chester declined to specify what kind of breakthrough would convince officials to resume the search for the missing airliner that was suspended this week after almost three years. "When we get some information or data or a breakthrough that leads us to a specific location, the experts will know it when they see it," he told reporters in the southern city of Melbourne.

TOKYO (AP) — Caroline Kennedy is stepping down Wednesday after three years as U.S. ambassador to Japan, where she was welcomed like a celebrity and worked to deepen the U.S.-Japan relationship despite regular flare-ups over American military bases on the southern island of Okinawa. She ruffled some feathers early on by tweeting her opposition to Japan's dolphin hunt, shortly after her embassy issued a statement expressing "disappointment" that Japan's leader had visited a shrine that memorializes World War II war criminals, among others. During her tenure, though, the conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and liberal U.S. President Barack Obama built a relationship of trust despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Indian Ocean search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been suspended almost three years after the Boeing 777 vanished. Here's a look at some numbers associated with the tragic mystery: ___ 40: Number of minutes Flight 370 had been flying before air traffic control lost contact with the plane on March 8, 2014. The plane was on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing when it disappeared from radar and communications and went off course for reasons that remain unknown. Investigators used automatic signals sent to a satellite to determine the plane had flown thousands of miles to the eastern Indian Ocean before crashing.

BEIJING (AP) — K.S. Narendran never boards a flight without feeling terror. And he doesn't expect that to change without answers to what happened to the plane carrying his wife three years ago. His wife, Chandrika Sharma, was one of the 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared over the Indian Ocean after veering far off course on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. After a fruitless search, the governments of Australia, China and Malaysia announced Tuesday that they were suspending their efforts. Some relatives of Flight 370's passengers expressed anger, disappointment and a resolve to press authorities to resume their efforts and find out exactly what happened.

SYDNEY (AP) — Searchers' frustration over Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is difficult to overstate, from the monstrous waves that battered search crews in one of the world's most desolate stretches of ocean to the dearth of information on the plane's flight path that stymied investigators. And now, perhaps most brutal of all, comes the admission of defeat. Australia's announcement on Tuesday that the fruitless, nearly three-year hunt for the plane in the Indian Ocean was officially suspended has sparked the inevitable second-guessing of those who led the $160 million search. Few know the agony surely being felt by the Flight 370 search crew better than American oceanographer David Gallo.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong's outgoing leader has issued a warning in his farewell policy speech to those advocating independence for the Chinese-controlled territory. In his annual address to the legislature, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said Wednesday that Hong Kong is an "inalienable" part of China. He said, "There is absolutely no room for independence or any form of separation." The latter part of Leung's five-year term has been marked by growing separatist sentiment following massive 2014 pro-democracy protests that failed to sway the government's position on restricting electoral reform. Last year, Leung's government took a tough stance against two newly elected lawmakers, taking legal action to disqualify them after they used their swearing-in ceremonies to mount apparent protests against China and express pro-independence views.

BANGKOK (AP) — Thai police say they have arrested a Czech man in Phuket who is believed to be infected with HIV and is wanted by Interpol for alleged sexual offenses against minors back home. Interpol issued a red notice for 49-year-old Zdenek Pfeifer from northeast Bohemia in March 2016. Thai police deputy spokesman Krisana Patanacharoen says one of the crimes he is accused of by Interpol is having sex with minors. He says Pfeifer had been living in Phuket on a tourist visa which expired in 2015. He is being brought to court on Wednesday to be charged with overstaying his visa, which will allow him to be deported.

BANGKOK (AP) — Trudging up a lush mountainside to a remote village, plunging through a swift-moving river in the footsteps of elephants and cruising Bangkok's gleaming luxury malls — with each step, I walked into different worlds, each one beautiful, all in Thailand. Don't forget glittering temples, bustling night markets and world-famous Thai massages to soothe weary muscles. ___ BANGKOK The capital's malls and markets are endless, from Siam Paragon, filled with designer brands and an upscale food court, to stands of cheap goods where souvenir-seekers haggle over the price of utensils, bracelets and trinkets. After dark, the night markets come alive, bustling with shoppers grabbing cheap sunglasses and shoes while families and friends enjoy soups and curries in more bearable heat.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The end of the deep-sea sonar search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 leaves the largest and most technologically challenging search in aviation history unresolved. Some of the key moments in the search: March 8, 2014: Air traffic control loses contact with the plane 40 minutes into a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. An air and sea search begins four hours later in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea. March 15, 2014: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announces that Flight 370 was tracked by military radar doubling back across the Strait of Malacca and was sending satellite signals seven and a half hours after takeoff.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The deep-sea sonar search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may not have found the plane but will reveal more about how land beneath the Indian Ocean formed over millions of years and where oil fields could lie. National geoscience agency Geoscience Australia will soon release detailed sonar mapping of 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) of seabed that was searched for the wreckage of the Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 passengers and crew on March 8, 2014. The unique information about plate tectonics would interest geoscientists as well as oil and gas explorers, said Australian National University marine geologist Neville Exon, who has advised Geoscience Australia on the sonar data.