Indonesian President Joko Widodo ordered more rescuers to be sent in to find victims of a devastating earthquake and tsunami on Tuesday as the official death toll rose above 1,200 and looting raised fears of growing lawlessness. Most of the dead have been from the small city of Palu, 1,500 km (930 miles) northeast of Jakarta, but some remote areas have been cut off since Friday s 7.5 magnitude quake triggered tsunami waves, leading to fears the toll could soar.

Germany s coalition parties agreed on a new immigration law on Tuesday to attract more skilled workers from countries outside the European Union, in a politically risky push to fill a record number of job vacancies and stabilise the public pension system. Centre-right Chancellor Angela Merkel, hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and Social Democrat Labour Minister Hubertus Heil reached a compromise deal that removes labour market hurdles for all non-EU citizens with job qualifications and German language skills.

Pro-independence protesters obstructed major roads and a high-speed railway line in Spain s Catalonia region on Monday, one year after a banned referendum on secession marred by police violence. "Everything began on October 1 and everything goes back to October 1," the region s separatist president Quim Torra said.

Two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for research into how the body s natural defences can fight cancer, the jury said on Monday. Unlike more traditional forms of cancer treatment that directly target cancer cells -- often with severe side-effects -- Allison and Honjo figured out how to help the patient s own immune system tackle the cancer more quickly.

Kurds voted in a parliamentary election in their semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq on Sunday, with political dynasties expected to extend their power sharing rule despite growing discontent with perceived corruption and economic hardship. The vote comes a year after the region of six million, which gained semi-autonomous status after the 1991 Gulf War, made a failed bid to break away from the rest of Iraq in a campaign headed by Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday denied that his country was responsible for increased threats against a US consulate in the Iraqi city of Basra. "We of course have influence in Iraq but that does not mean we control people in Iraq, as the United States doesn t control people in countries with whom it has good relations," Zarif said on CNN s “Fareed Zakaria GPS."

China demanded the United States "dispel obstacles" to improving military ties and stop slandering it, amid growing tensions over trade, Taiwan, the South China Sea and US President Donald Trump s claims of China meddling in the upcoming US election. Trump on Wednesday accused China of seeking to interfere in the Nov. 6 US congressional elections, saying that Beijing did not want him or his Republican Party to do well because of his pugnacious stance on trade.

A South Sudanese surgeon, who has spent two decades helping the sick and injured in the war-torn east African nation, was on Tuesday announced the winner of a U.N. prize for treating tens of thousands of people forced to flee violence and persecution. Evan Atar Adaha - a 52-year-old doctor who runs the only hospital in northeastern Maban county - was given the 2018 Nansen Refugee Award for his "humanity and selflessness" where he often risked his safety to serve others, the U.N. said.

An estimated 190,000 people have been killed in South Sudan s civil war and when factors such as population displacement, disruption to health facilities and lack of food are included the death toll is at least 383,000, an independent study said. Fighting broke out in December 2013 after a political disagreement between President Salva Kiir and the former vice president he had sacked, Riek Machar.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he wanted a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the clearest expression yet of his administration s support for such an outcome. The Trump administration has in the past said it would support a two-state solution if both sides agreed to it. Trump, in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations, also said he wanted to unveil a peace plan in the next two to three months.

U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Iran on Tuesday as a "corrupt dictatorship" that is plundering the Iranian people to pay for aggression abroad, using his speech to the United Nations General Assembly to lay down a tough message for Tehran. "Iran s leaders sow chaos, death and destruction," Trump told the annual gathering. "They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations."

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned leaders on Tuesday that world order is "increasingly chaotic," trust is at breaking point and shifts in the balance of power may increase the risk of confrontation, though he did not lay blame. As U.S. President Donald Trump prepared to tout protection of U.S. sovereignty at the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders, Guterres told the 193-member U.N. General Assembly that multilateralism is under fire when it is needed most.

OPEC s leader Saudi Arabia and its biggest oil-producer ally outside the group, Russia, ruled out on Sunday any immediate, additional increase in crude output, effectively rebuffing US President Donald Trump s calls for action to cool the market. "I do not influence prices," Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told reporters as OPEC and non-OPEC energy ministers gathered in Algiers for a meeting that ended with no formal recommendation for any additional supply boost.

Maldives opposition leader Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won the Indian Ocean archipelago nation s presidential election on Monday, delivering a possible blow for China which has invested millions of dollars in projects under the outgoing administration. Incumbent Abdulla Yameen, who had cultivated ties with both Beijing and Saudi Arabia, conceded defeat after the Election Commission said Solih had won Sunday s election by a margin of 16.7 percent.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Sunday dismissed Iran s assertion that Washington and its Gulf allies were to blame for a deadly parade attack and said Tehran should look closer to home. Before leaving for the United Nations on Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani accused other countries including the United States of provoking the shooting attack on a military parade that killed 25 people on Saturday.

Grieving families were on Sunday preparing to bury victims of Tanzania s devastating ferry disaster, with more than 200 confirmed dead after the crowded boat capsized in Lake Victoria. Hopes were fading of finding any more survivors three days after the ferry sank on Thursday, even after rescuers pulled out an engineer who had managed to find refuge in an air pocket in the upturned vessel.

The leader of Lebanon s Hezbollah said on Thursday that his group had obtained precision rockets despite Israeli strikes in recent years aimed at cutting the supply route through Syria. "No matter what you do to cut the route, the matter is over and the resistance possesses precision and non-precision rockets and weapons capabilities," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, addressing Israel in a broadcast speech.

Iran has asked the United Nations to condemn Israeli threats against Tehran and to bring Israel s nuclear programme under its supervision, state media reported on Thursday. Israel s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a visit to a secretive Israeli atomic reactor in late August to warn the country s enemies that it has the means to destroy them, in what appeared to be a veiled reference to its assumed nuclear arsenal.

North Korea said on Wednesday it would permanently abolish its key missile facilities in the presence of foreign experts, in a new gesture by leader Kim Jong Un to revive faltering talks with Washington over his country s nuclear programme. After a summit in Pyongyang, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the North was also willing to close its main nuclear complex but only if the United States took unspecified reciprocal action. The pledges Kim and Moon made at their third summit this year could inject fresh momentum into the stalled nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang and lay the groundwork for another meeting Kim recently proposed to U.S. President Donald Trump.

French President Emmanuel Macron s closest security officer, fired after video showed him beating May Day protesters, defended himself before a Senate inquiry on Wednesday, saying he was neither a police officer nor a genuine bodyguard. Alexandre Benalla, whose case erupted into a political scandal and accusations of unchecked abuses of power in the presidential palace, was questioned for more than two hours about the nature of his job as Macron s security shadow.

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the shooting down of a Russian military plane near Syria s seacoast was the result of a chain of tragic and chance circumstances. Russia s Defence Ministry said earlier that the aircraft was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft systems, but accused Israel of indirectly causing the incident, saying Israeli jets nearby had put the Russian plane in the path of danger. The ministry threatened to retaliate over what it called a hostile act.