Turkey on Monday sent back to Russia the body of a pilot killed when his plane was shot down by the Turkish air force for allegedly violating its air space on the Syrian border, reports said.

A Russian plane carrying the body of Oleg Peshkov left Ankara's Esenboga International Airport airport for Russia, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported, without giving further details.

The United States has not lost Thailand to China, Washington's envoy to Bangkok said Monday, despite acrimony between the two allies and a palpable shift by the kingdom's junta towards its giant northern neighbor.

"I don't spend a lot of time, I don't spend any time, saying to Washington here's how we get Thailand back. We haven't lost Thailand," ambassador Glyn T. Davies told reporters in Bangkok.

Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has rebounded since his government rammed through unpopular security legislation, according to polls published Monday, as he re-focuses on the struggling economy.

In September, parliament in the officially pacifist nation passed the contentious security bills, opening the door for Japanese troops to engage in combat overseas for the first time since the end of World War II.

Taiwan said Monday it has for the first time exchanged jailed spies with China, in another sign of closer relations between the two sides which recently held a historic summit.

The swap took place last month ahead of Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's November 7 meeting with China's leader Xi Jinping -- the first encounter since the rivals split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.

Myanmar's top leaders will hold talks this week with opposition chief Aung San Suu Kyi, the first since her party's landmark election success, officials said Monday. 

Uncertainty surrounds the handover of power after Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy swept nearly 80 percent of seats in the November 8 polls, the fairest elections for 25 years.

Pope Francis on Monday said Christians and Muslims were "brothers", urging them to reject hatred and violence while visiting a mosque in the Central African Republic's capital which has been ravaged by sectarian conflict. 

On the last leg of a three-nation tour of Africa, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholic visited a flashpoint Muslim neighbourhood in Bangui, where tensions remain high after months of violence on what was the most dangerous part of his 24-hour visit. 

Republican U.S. presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Sunday refused to take back claims he saw Muslims cheering in New Jersey after the September 11, 2001 attacks, despite a lack of proof.

The brash real-estate tycoon has drawn sweeping condemnation after saying earlier this month that Arab and Muslim Americans had publicly rejoiced the unprecedented terror attacks on the United States.

A Honduran judge Sunday ordered a hearing on five Syrians who made it to the country after a five-nation odyssey, as a slice of the refugee crisis unfolds in far-flung Central America.  

Honduras say the men were arrested on November 17 with stolen Greek passports.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday condemned the West's "double standards" in a letter to the youth of America and Europe following the Paris attacks that killed 130 people.

"Anyone who has benefited from affection and humanity is affected and disturbed by witnessing these scenes -- whether it occurs in France or in Palestine or Iraq or Lebanon or Syria," he wrote in the letter, translated into English and French.

Hundreds of Americans have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight for the Islamic State group and around 50 have returned to America, a senior U.S. lawmaker said Sunday.

That's the kind of scenario that led to the Paris terror attacks of November 13, said Republican Congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.