China came under mounting pressure Wednesday over its land reclamation in the South China Sea, with both the United States and Japan criticizing it for militarizing the disputed waters.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry raised the issue during a meeting with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of a regional diplomatic gathering in Malaysia that has been dominated by tensions over the Chinese moves.

Pakistan's powerful army chief has said that ongoing efforts at talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are the "only credible way" to bring peace to the region.

Negotiators for the two sides met in the Pakistani hill town of Murree last month for their first face-to-face meeting aimed at ending the Taliban insurgency, now in its 14th year.

At least 310 Kenyans have been killed and over 215,000 forced from their homes this year in ethnic violence in northern Kenya, the U.N. said Wednesday.

While violence between rival groups is common in Kenya's northern Rift Valley regions, the number killed and forced to flee in the first six months of this year is already the same as the total for all of 2014.

Japanese leader Shinzo Abe told U.S. Vice President Joe Biden he would have "serious concerns" if WikiLeaks claims Washington spied on Japanese politicians were true, and called for an investigation, a top official said Wednesday.

Tokyo's Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Biden had apologised to the Japanese prime minister in a telephone call for "causing troubles", without confirming the spying claims.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit a record high in the first half of 2015, the U.N. said Wednesday, as Afghan forces struggle to contain the spreading conflict six months after the NATO combat mission ended.

In a worrying trend, ground combat is causing more deaths and injuries than improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the U.N. said, adding that the conflict was taking a particularly heavy toll on women and children.

Tens of thousands of people huddled Wednesday in monasteries and other makeshift evacuation centers in remote areas of Myanmar cut off by deadly floods, as rescuers struggled to deliver desperately needed aid.

Heavy monsoon downpours have caused devastation across large parts of South and Southeast Asia in recent weeks, claiming hundreds of lives and displacing millions.

Suspected rebels killed two paramilitary soldiers and wounded another ten after attacking their convoy in disputed Indian Kashmir on Wednesday, a senior police officer said.

The militants fired on the convoy transporting Border Security Force (BSF) troops near the town of Udhampur, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar.

Experts in France began examining a washed-up plane part Wednesday which likely belonged to the MH370 plane that vanished mysteriously last year, hoping to find clues to one of aviation's greatest enigmas.

The Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared on March 8 last year, inexplicably veering off course en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, sparking a colossal but ultimately fruitless multinational hunt for the aircraft.

The FBI has started investigating Hillary Clinton's controversial use of private email as Secretary of State and has contacted a firm that managed the setup, along with her attorney, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Clinton's electronic correspondence has been under scrutiny since her admission in March that she had used a private account for her email correspondence while secretary of state between 2009 and 2013.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye offered North Korea a "door of opportunity" as she flagged off restoration work Wednesday on a railway line that could one day link both Koreas with Europe via the Trans-Siberian.

The work will focus on the South's section of a disconnected inter-Korean railroad that once linked central Seoul with the North Korean eastern city of Wonsan.