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Sao Paolo  - Brazilian authorities have identified 11 victims, three weeks after an Air France jet carrying 228 people crashed on its way to France, a news report said Sunday.

The forensics department in the port town Recife identified 10 Brazilians, among them five women, and one foreigner, whose bodies were among the 50 recovered after the Airbus A330 crashed on June 1 off Brazil's coast.

The victims could be identified by their fingerprints and dental records, the O Globo newspaper reported.

Tokyo  - Tokyo stocks ended Monday morning trading almost flat amid a wait-and-see mood ahead of the release of US key economic data.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average edged up 9.76 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 9,796.02.

The broader-based Topix index was also up 1.96 points, or 0.21 per cent, to 920.93.

Tokyo investors retreated to sidelines as they waited for key US economic data such as home sales and durable goods orders to be released later this week.

Kuala Lumpur  - Malaysia has ordered a school to be shut down for a week after one of its students infected her classmates with the swine-flu virus, news reports said Monday.

The primary-level school in the capital Kuala Lumpur, which has a total of 2,100 staff and students aged between 6 and 12, became the first school in Malaysia to be closed down due to the H1N1 virus.

Hong Kong  - Pilots and flight attendants with two Hong Kong airlines said Monday a threat to punish them if they fail to memorize a 68-word company creed appears to have been quietly dropped.

In May when all employees at sister airlines Hong Kong Airlines and Hong Kong Express were ordered to learn the lengthy creed and face punishment if they failed to recite it at spot checks.

Hong Kong  - Hong Kong's economy might make an early recovery from the global slump and return to growth in the second quarter of 2009, the government's top economic analyst said Monday.

Economist Helen Chan told Monday's South China Morning Post that she expected the city's gross domestic product to stop falling or record a quarter-on-quarter growth for the first time in a year in the April-to-June quarter.

Wellington  - A Hungarian tourist killed a 69-year-old gay man he met in a bar by beating him with a banjo and ramming the handle down his throat, police alleged when his murder trial opened in Auckland on Monday.

Ferdinand Ambach, 32, a dive master, pleaded not guilty in the Auckland High Court to murdering Ronald James Brown in December 2007.