Azerbaijan held a day of mourning on Thursday for the dozens of victims of an airliner crash in Kazakhstan, as questions were being asked over the cause of the disaster.

Taiwan's Presidential Office conducted its first ever tabletop exercise simulating a military escalation with China, several officials briefed on the matter said, at a time when the island is facing renewed Chinese military threats.

An Embraer passenger jet crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38 people, after diverting from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks.