MH17 | Judges hearing the case against four defendants in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine rejected on Wednesday a defence request for more time to investigate alternative explanations for the crash.

MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by a missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels during fighting with Ukrainian government troops, international investigators say. All 298 people on board were killed, two-thirds of them Dutch nationals.

After years of collecting evidence, a Dutch-led international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) last year said the missile launcher used to hit the civilian airplane came from a Russian army base just across the border...