MAGELANG, Indonesia: French President Emmanuel Macron bestowed Indonesia’s leader with France’s top award on Thursday, before announcing a new cultural partnership with Jakarta on a visit to the world’s largest Buddhist temple.

Macron’s trip to Indonesia is the second stop of a three-nation, six-day tour of Southeast Asia that began with Vietnam and concludes in Singapore.

After meeting for talks in the capital Jakarta, Macron and his counterpart Prabowo Subianto flew by helicopter on Thursday from Javan city Yogyakarta to a military academy in Magelang, a city surrounded by mountains in Central Java.

The pair attended a military parade and Macron gave Prabowo the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest military or civil award.

Prabowo is an ex-general accused of rights abuses under dictator Suharto’s rule in the late 1990s. He was discharged from the military over his role in the abductions of democracy activists but denied the allegations and was never charged.

Macron rode in a jeep driven by Prabowo with the pair welcomed by a marching band and hundreds of students waving Indonesian flags.

Macron then visited Borobudur, a Buddhist temple built in the 9th century that is the world’s largest, where the pair announced they were boosting cultural ties.

“In front of this temple, we are taking an important step by launching a new cultural partnership,” said Macron.

“The first pillar is heritage and museum cooperation. The second pillar is cultural and creative industries,” he said.

Macron said the basis of the new partnership would be cinema and fashion, as well as video games, design and gastronomy.

The French leader will now depart for Singapore where he will deliver the opening address Friday at the Shangri-la Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum.

On Wednesday, the pair called for progress on “mutual recognition” between Israel and the Palestinians at a key meeting next month as Macron brought the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation into his diplomatic efforts.

“Indonesia has stated that once Israel recognizes Palestine, Indonesia is ready to recognize Israel and open the diplomatic relationship,” said Prabowo.

Indonesia has no formal ties with Israel and support for the Palestinian cause among Indonesians runs high.

The nations also signed a series of agreements on cooperation in a range of fields including defense, trade, agriculture, disaster management, culture and transport.

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico: Five bodies that appeared to be members of a Mexican regional music group who had gone missing were found in the northern city of Reynosa, along the Texas border, authorities said on Thursday.

The musicians from the band Grupo Fugitivo, which played at parties and local dances in the region, had been reported missing since Sunday.

The genre they played – Mexican regional music, which encapsulates a wide range of styles including corridos and cumbia – has in recent years gained a spotlight as it’s entered a sort of international musical renaissance. Young artists have mixed the classic genre with trap and sometimes pay homage to leaders of drug cartels, often portrayed as Robin Hood-type figures.

While it was not immediately clear if the group played such songs, other artists have faced death threats by cartels, while others have had their visas stripped by the United States under accusations by the Trump administration that they were glorifying criminal violence.

Few details were released about where the bodies were found and in what conditions, but Tamaulipas state prosecutors had been investigating the case, according to a statement by state security officials. The last time they had communicated with their families was Sunday night, when they said they were going to a venue where they were hired to play.

After that, nothing else was heard of them. Officials said the bodies shared characteristics of artists, though did not provide further detail.

Their disappearance caused an uproar in Tamaulipas, a state long eclipsed by cartel warfare. Their families reported the disappearances, called on the public for support and people took to the streets in protest.

On Wednesday, protesters blocked the international bridge connecting Reynosa and Pharr, Texas, later going to a local cathedral to pray and make offerings to the disappeared.

As of midday Thursday, the state prosecutor’s office had not released further details on the case.

Reynosa is a Mexican border city adjacent to the United States and has been plagued by escalating violence since 2017 due to internal disputes among groups vying for control of drug trafficking, human smuggling and fuel theft.

This case follows another that occurred in 2018, when armed men kidnapped two members of the musical group “Los Norteños de Río Bravo,” whose bodies were later found on the federal highway connecting Reynosa to Río Bravo, Tamaulipas.