Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for dialogue with Pakistan in a letter to its newly elected leader and Pakistan also saw talks with its old rival as the “only way forward”, Pakistan s foreign minister said on Monday. New Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan offered an olive branch to India after his election victory last month, proposing talks to resolve a long-standing dispute over the Kashmir region. The two leaders spoke by telephone late last month.

Rescuers searched submerged villages in southwest India on Sunday in a desperate hunt for survivors after floods killed at least 370 people and drove more than 700,000 from their homes. Entire villages in Kerala have been swept away in the state’s worst floods for a century. Rescuers fear the death toll will rise as they reach areas almost entirely underwater.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared Saturday that his country would not be cowed by the United States, his latest broadside in the bitter feud between Ankara and Washington. The two NATO members are at odds over Turkey s detention of an American pastor, which has triggered a trade row and sent the local currency the lira into a tailspin. "We will not surrender to those who present themselves as a strategic partner while at the same time trying to make us a strategic target," Erdogan said at a congress of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The official death toll from major floods in India s tourist hotspot of Kerala hit 86 on Thursday with media reporting even higher numbers amid warnings of more torrential rainfall. With a major rescue operation launched to help thousands of people trapped by the floods, Kerala s chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the state now faces an "extremely grave" crisis.

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won a landslide victory in a run-off against opposition rival Soumaila Cisse, the government said on Thursday, giving him a second term to try to turn back a surge in ethnic and Islamist militant violence. Keita won 67 percent of the vote in an election marred by militant attacks and claims of fraud by the opposition. Keita, known as IBK, now faces the giant task of lifting Mali out of a spiral of Islamist and ethnic bloodshed in the center and north, where attacks worsened in the months leading up to the vote despite the presence of a United Nations peacekeeping force and French troops.

India will send a manned mission to space by 2022 and introduce health insurance for half a billion of its citizens, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged Wednesday in a keynote speech ahead of an expected election campaign. Modi, speaking from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, told a crowd of supporters that “sleeping elephant” India had awakened and was ready to take its place in the global economy.

Emperor Akihito, in his last appearance as reigning monarch at an annual ceremony marking Japan s World War Two surrender, expressed “deep remorse” on Wednesday over the conflict, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed no repeat of the horror of war. Early in the day, Abe sent a ritual offering to Tokyo s controversial Yasukuni Shrine for war dead but did not visit out of apparent consideration for ties with South Korea and China.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at his former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman in especially angry terms, slamming her as a “dog” and “crazed” as their mud-slinging match escalated. Manigault Newman — who gained fame as a contestant on Trump s reality TV show “The Apprentice,” and then secured a $180,000-a-year staff job at the White House — on Monday released a recording of a private conversation she had with the president after she was fired.

Turkey s central bank took action Monday to free up cash for banks as the country grapples with a currency crisis sparked by concerns over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan s economic policies and a trade and diplomatic dispute with the United States. The Turkish lira has nosedived over the past week, accelerating a months-long decline, and tumbled another 7 percent on Monday as the central bank s measures failed to restore market confidence.

China rejected on Monday allegations raised by a UN panel that 1 million Uighurs may be held in internment camps in the restive Xinjiang region, but said that some people underwent re-education after being deceived by extremists. Hu Lianhe, deputy director general of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, said that authorities in the far western Xinjiang region protected the full rights of all citizens equally.

North and South Korea agreed to hold a summit in Pyongyang in September, the latest step forward in cross-border ties this year after more high-level talks on Monday, the South’s Unification Ministry said. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in April and May at the border truce village of Panmunjom, within the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas, and agreed that the next summit in autumn would be held in the North Korean capital.

Turkey said on Sunday it had finalised preparations to create more safe areas in Syria, which would allow the return of refugees who have fled the civil war. Speaking at his AK Party s provincial headquarters in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, President Tayyip Erdogan said a quarter of a million people had already returned to liberated areas in Syria.

Human rights groups called on European governments on Sunday to tell a charity ship where it can dock and let more than 140 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean disembark in safety. The Aquarius, run by Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders (MSF), rescued 141 people in two separate operations off the Libyan coast last week.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he looked forward to meeting Kim Jong Un soon and thanked the North Korean leader for sending the suspected remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War back to the United States. "Thank you to Chairman Kim Jong Un for keeping your word & starting the process of sending home the remains of our great and beloved missing fallen! I am not at all surprised that you took this kind action," Trump wrote in a Twitter message.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said the scope of tariffs on China is set to increase. The measure would come amid an ongoing trade dispute and after Trump threatened to apply levies on all Chinese goods. Senior officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration said on Wednesday that proposed tariff rates on $200 billion (€172 billion) worth of Chinese goods would be raised from 10 percent to 25 percent, in an effort to “encourage” China to change its trade policies.

US President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that talks with arch foe Iran were imminent, but the idea has been criticized in Tehran, with the country s foreign minister warning that "PR stunts won t work." Tehran has not given a definitive response to Trump s statement that he would meet "any time" without preconditions, but skepticism is rife in Iran over the possibility, with one lawmaker saying negotiations would be a "humiliation."

The presidential candidate for Zimbabwe’s main opposition accused the ruling ZANU-PF of trying to steal the general election on Wednesday after official figures gave President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s party a majority in parliament. Nelson Chamisa, 40, and the 75-year-old Mnangagwa were the main contenders in Monday’s vote, the first since Robert Mugabe was forced to resign after a de facto coup in November after nearly 40 years in power.

North and South Korea discussed reducing tension but didn t announce any detailed agreements after military talks on Tuesday, while the United States detected renewed activity at a North Korean missile factory, casting more suspicion over the North s intentions. The meeting, the second since June and held in the border village of Panmunjom, was designed to follow on from an inter-Korean summit in April at which leaders of the two Koreas agreed to defuse tension and halt “all hostile acts”.

A rescue operation in which an Italian towboat rescued more than 100 migrants and returned them to Libya earlier this week may have been in breach of international law, the United Nations said on Tuesday. According to Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms, an Italian towboat rescued 108 migrants from international waters on Monday and took them to Libya, their country of departure.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey is seeking to hold a summit in Istanbul with France, Germany and Russia on September 7 to discuss regional issues including the Syrian conflict, in comments published on Sunday. "We will discuss what we can do in the region together," Erdogan said, quoted by Hurriyet daily. He gave no further details on the issues on the agenda but said Turkey would continue dialogue with Russia, "outside of this foursome", in the remarks made to Turkish journalists during his South Africa visit on July 25-27.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met survivors of a wildfire that killed at least 91 people during his first visit to the town of Mati on Monday, after facing criticism for the government’s response to the blaze. Fires began a week ago in the coastal resort, which is 30 km (17 miles) east of Athens, and Tsipras has been attacked by opposition parties for the government’s handling of the disaster, which also left dozens injured.