The disappearance of a plane carrying 239 passengers and crew has baffled experts for a decade, sparked wild conspiracy theories and triggered one of the largest searches in aviation history.

It will take more than five million election officials, one billion paper ballots and 800,000 polling stations for 205 million Indonesians to elect their new president in a single-day national vote on Wednesday.

Taiwanese voters swept the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's presidential candidate, Lai Ching-te, into power on Saturday in an explicit rejection of China's warnings not to vote for him in an election Beijing framed as a choice between war and peace.