The Royal Canadian Mounted Police says it is investigating a bomb threat that caused a Turkish Airlines flight from New York City to Istanbul to divert and land in Canada.

Halifax Stanfield International Airport said on its Twitter feed early Sunday that Flight 2 had landed safely and that police were at the scene.

Around 100 people have died in a huge landslide in a remote jade mining area of northern Myanmar, officials said Sunday, as search teams continued to find bodies in one of the deadliest disasters to strike the country's shadowy jade industry.

Those killed were thought to have been mainly itinerant miners, who scratch a living scavenging through mountains of waste rubble dumped by mechanical diggers used by mining firms at the center of a secretive multi-billion dollar jade industry in war-torn Kachin state.

Japan on Sunday backed the United States sailing warships close to disputed land in the South China Sea but said it had no plans to send its own maritime forces to support the operation.

Last month Washington infuriated Beijing when the USS Lassen guided missile destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of at least one land formation claimed by China in the disputed Spratly Islands chain.

Nepalese police shot and killed two protesters after fresh clashes erupted in the country's southern plains as a crisis over a new constitution deepens, a senior local officer said Sunday.

The clashes broke out late on Saturday in the southeastern district of Saptari as protesters armed with batons and home-made tools tried to block a highway in defiance of police orders, the officer said.

North Korea warned Sunday of "merciless" attacks on South Korean border islands if Seoul stages live-fire drills Monday near the maritime border on the anniversary of Pyongyang's deadly shelling attack five years ago.

The bombing of Yeonpyeong island off the west coast on November 23, 2010, killed four South Koreans, including two civilians, and sparked a brief fear of a full-scale conflict.

Severe weather conditions forced specialist alpine rescuers to abandon attempts Sunday to recover the bodies of seven people killed when their sightseeing helicopter crashed into a New Zealand glacier.

Police described conditions on the Fox Glacier, a popular tourist site on the west coast of the South Island, as "dangerous" and said it could take two or three days to retrieve all of the victims.

Hong Kong went to the polls Sunday for the first time since huge pro-democracy protests gripped the city, in a key test of public sentiment.

The spotlight is on the district elections to gauge whether support for the democracy movement can translate into votes and bring change to the political landscape.

French police on Saturday freed seven people arrested during a massive raid on an apartment housing the ringleader of the Paris attacks, prosecutors said.

However Jawad Bendaoud, who has admitted lending the apartment to two people from Belgium "as a favour" but denied knowing any more, is being held in custody.

Paris has extended a ban on public gatherings introduced after the terror attacks in the French capital until November 30, the start of U.N. climate talks, the city's police headquarters said Saturday.

In a statement the prefecture recalled the "extreme seriousness" of last week's attacks, which left 130 people dead and prompted the government to put in place a three-month state of emergency. 

A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia Saturday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, but no tsunami warning was issued and no immediate damage or casualties were reported.

The undersea quake was recorded at a depth of 67 kilometers (42 miles) near Indonesia's Babar islands, according to USGS.