Vietnamese searchers on Sunday spotted possible aircraft debris after combing the sea for nearly 48 hours in search of a Malaysian passenger jet that vanished with 239 people aboard, officials said.

The discovery, which could confirm the worst fears of anguished relatives, came after Malaysia's government launched a terror probe into the Boeing 777's disappearance, investigating suspect passengers who boarded with stolen passports.

Two passengers on a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft that went missing in Asia with 239 people on board appeared to have been travelling on stolen EU passports, it emerged Saturday.

An Austrian, named in reports as Christian Kozel, 30, had his passport pinched in Thailand in 2012, while Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37, had his stolen last year, also in Thailand, officials and sources said.

Tearful and angry, the friends and relatives of passengers on board missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 lashed out at the company Saturday as journalists besieged them in a Beijing hotel.

Many were taken there by the airline after going to the Chinese capital's airport to meet the flight, scheduled to land at around 6:30am.

Malaysia and Vietnam on Saturday led a search for a Malaysia Airlines jet that has gone missing over Southeast Asia, as fears mounted over the fate of the 239 people aboard.

Vietnam authorities said contact with Flight MH370 was lost near its airspace, but its exact location and what happened to it remained a mystery 12 hours after it slipped off air-traffic control screens.

A Malaysian couple have been sentenced to hang for murdering their Indonesian maid by starving her to death, according to reports Friday that said she weighed just 26 kilos (57 pounds) when she died.

In the latest case of abuse against the legion of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia, the High Court ruled on Thursday that 26-year-old Isti Komariyah died of deliberate starvation in June 2011.

The soaring cost of cars and utilities as well as a strong currency have made Singapore the world's most expensive city, toppling Tokyo from the top spot, according to a survey Tuesday.

Tokyo's weakening yen saw it slide to sixth place, the position previously occupied by Singapore, in the 2014 Worldwide Cost of Living survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Haze shrouded Malaysia's capital and its surroundings on Tuesday, causing "unhealthy" air quality due to fires from a drought that has led to water rationing.

While dry spells are common in the tropical nation, the current two-month heatwave has been unusually long, sparking bushfires and water supply cuts to more than two million people as reservoirs threaten to run dry.

Malaysia said Friday it will expand water rationing in and around its capital, in a move affecting millions as drought continues to scorch a tropical country usually synonymous with torrential rain.

The national water commission said in a statement over 300,000 households in Kuala Lumpur and nearby Selangor, Malaysia's most populous state, will experience cuts for the whole of March, after a two-month dry spell depleted reservoirs.

Brunei authorities have detained an Indonesian national with links to Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) for alleged "terrorist-related activities" in the oil-rich sultanate, a media report said Thursday.

The suspect, identified as "Daniel, alias Awaluddin Sitorus", was detained on February 21 and is believed to be a member of Indonesia-based JI, the Brunei Times said.

Eight schoolchildren drowned in the Muar river in Malaysia's southern Johor state, police said Sunday, in what officials described as a "shocking" and rare tragedy.

The drownings occurred on Friday after the boys, aged between 13 to 16 years, went jogging along the river bank in Segamat district, local police chief Mohamad Kamil Sukarmi told AFP.