Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump battled to break out of deadlocked polls Tuesday after clashing in their first televised debate, lashing each other with insults on the campaign trail in critical states.

Syria's army took control of a rebel-held district in central Aleppo on Tuesday, after days of heavy air strikes that have killed dozens and sparked allegations of war crimes.

Forest fires have hit two million hectares of Siberian forest, where global warming has caused an "exceptional drought", environmental Group Greenpeace said Tuesday.

The United States has tapped Jeffrey DeLaurentis, America's top diplomat in Havana, to become the first official ambassador to Cuba in five decades.

Our planet may grow intolerably hot even if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere remain at current levels, according to the first two-million-year reconstruction of surface temperatures, published on Monday.

The Asian Development Bank said on Tuesday that growth across the region was holding stable despite global headwinds, with resilience in China and India keeping it on track.

Taiwan went into shutdown on Tuesday as the island faces its third typhoon in two weeks, with thousands evacuated, schools and offices closed across the island and hundreds of flights disrupted.

Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force has signed a historic peace accord with the government and apologized to the countless victims of the country's half-century civil war.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump bickered and traded insults in a fiery US presidential debate on Monday, as they aggressively pitched their case to tens of millions of American voters.