Eight people were killed and 22 others injured when a tour bus veered off a Malaysian highway and caught fire early Thursday morning, media reports said.

The driver of the bus had swerved to avoid hitting a tyre in the road and the bus plunged into a ditch and overturned, the Star newspaper said on its website.

A group of Muslim girls in Malaysia were threatened with arrest Wednesday after a video emerged showing them hugging members of K-pop boy band B1A4, local media reported.

The incident has prompted a public outcry in the Muslim majority country, with Islamic conservatives denouncing both the popular Korean K-pop genre and the girls.

A Singaporean navy ship on Wednesday located the main body of the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea late last month, raising hopes that bodies of most of the 162 victims will now be found.

Underwater photos showed the cracked fuselage and part of a wing of Flight QZ8501, that went down on December 28 in stormy weather during a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Piracy on the high seas fell last year to an eight-year low worldwide but the number of successful ship hijackings increased due to rising numbers of attacks in the waters off Southeast Asia, a piracy watchdog said Wednesday.

The International Maritime Bureau said in an annual report that 245 pirate attacks were recorded globally in 2014, down from 264 the year before, and nearly half of the 445 reported in 2010 when piracy off Somalia was raging.

Indonesian divers on Tuesday retrieved the cockpit voice recorder from beneath the wreckage of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea as the airline's boss vowed to overcome the "toughest times" he has known.

It came a day after the plane's other black box, the flight data recorder, was recovered, and the devices should provide investigators with vital information about what caused the accident.

Indonesian authorities said Sunday they may have tracked down the crucial black box recorders of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the sea two weeks ago, killing all 162 people on board.

Strong ping signals were being picked up by three vessels involved in the search in the Java Sea, S.B Supriyadi, a director with the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters.

Until Flight QZ8501 went down everything had gone right during a spectacular 13-year run of success for AirAsia, which unlocked a booming market of budget travelers in the region.

But as long as no serious safety lapses emerge, analysts say the robust and media-savvy business built up by the Malaysia-based group should help overcome its first major reversal.

Signals believed to be from the black box data recorders of crashed AirAsia Flight 8501 were detected Friday, Indonesian authorities said, offering the strongest lead to explain the disaster. 

"A ship detected the pings. The divers are trying to reach it," said S.B Supriyadi, a director with the National Search and Agency who is stationed at the search headquarters of Pangkalan Bun.

Elite Indonesian military divers battled strong currents on Thursday in an effort to reach the submerged tail of crashed AirAsia Flight 8501 in the hopes of finding its crucial black box data recorders.

The plane crashed on December 28 during stormy weather as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, claiming the lives of all 162 people on board.

Indonesian search officials sent divers down to the bed of the Java Sea during a break in bad weather Tuesday in hopes of recovering more bodies from the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501.

Recovery teams, hampered by rough seas, have found fewer than 40 bodies since the plane crashed on December 28, carrying 162 people from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.