The Philippine government and leftist rebels have agreed in principle on an interim ceasefire to boost ongoing peace talks aimed at ending one of the world's longest insurgencies, a joint statement said.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will make his first visit to the United Nations later this month to chair a UN Security Council meeting on North Korea.

 British police said on Monday that they had charged seven people over a suspected hate-crime attack against a 17-year-old Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker in London.

The European Union and the UN host a two-day conference starting on Tuesday on Syria's future, with Russian-backed President Bashar al-Assad as firmly in place as ever despite efforts to oust him.

Eleven people were killed and dozens more injured as an explosion rocked the Saint Petersburg metro on Monday, in what Russian authorities described as an "act of terror". Authorities shut down the metro system in Russia's second city for several hours as security services said they had also defused a bomb at a second metro station.

Around 10 people were feared dead and dozens injured yesterday after an explosion rocked the metro system in Russia’s second city Saint Petersburg, according to authorities, who were not ruling out a terror attack.

Devastating mudslides in the Colombian town of Mocoa killed at least 254 people, 43 of them children, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Sunday, in yet another sharp rise in the death toll.

A massive clean-up was in full swing on Monday as floodwaters receded across parts of Australia devastated by a cyclone, with residents and business owners returning to thick mud, piles of debris and ruined property.

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and top aide to President Donald Trump, is in Iraq on an official visit, a senior administration official said on Sunday.