A missing Malaysian airliner was apparently deliberately diverted and flown for hours after vanishing from radar, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday, stopping short of confirming a hijack but taking the "excruciating" jet drama into uncharted new territory. Najib said investigators believed "with a high degree of certainty" that Malaysia Airlines flight 370's communications systems including its transponders were manually switched off.

By Seda Sezer ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said a teenager who died this week after sustaining a head injury in anti-government protests last summer was linked to "terrorist organizations", in comments likely to fan political tensions. The death of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan on Tuesday after nine months in a coma sparked Turkey's worst unrest since nationwide anti-government demonstrations last June, compounding Erdogan's woes as he battles a graft scandal that has become one of the biggest challenges of his decade in power. Erdogan made his remarks, his first about Elvan, late on Friday at a campaign rally in southeast Turkey ahead of nationwide municipal elections on March 30.

Slovaks voted Saturday in the first round of a presidential election that Prime Minister Robert Fico is poised to win, amid concerns that his leftist Social Democrats could monopolise power in the eurozone country. Victory for the former communist frontrunner in a pack of 14 candidates would give control of the presidency, parliament and government to the same party for the first time since Slovakia's independence in 1993. He scored around 35 percent support in voter surveys and is most likely to face millionaire-turned-philanthropist Andrej Kiska in a run-off vote set for March 29. The non-partisan Kiska, 51, with no communist past, came into the vote with 24 percent support and is seen as an untainted political greenhorn with a good nose for business.