Seventy-nine school students were kidnapped on Monday in an English-speaking region of Cameroon where separatists are fighting an armed campaign for independence, a government source said.

 The "black box" data recorder from a crashed Lion Air jet shows its airspeed indicator malfunctioned on its last four flights, investigators said Monday, just hours after distraught relatives of victims confronted the airline's co-founder at a meeting organised by officials.

India, China and Japan are among eight countries temporarily exempted from the US sanctions for buying Iranian oil as they showed significant reduction in oil purchase from the Persian Gulf country after the Trump administration reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday.

Sri Lankan Speaker Karu Jayasuriya Monday slammed President Maithripala Sirisena's "unconstitutional and undemocratic" actions to sack Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and suspend Parliament, saying he will not recognise Mahinda Rajapaksa as the new premier unless he wins a floor test.

Saudi Arabia deployed a chemist and toxicology expert to Istanbul after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in an attempt to cover up evidence of the killing, a Turkish newspaper reported on Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday condemned the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in his first comments on the affair, but stressed the need for stability in Saudi Arabia.

India is "on the move" and global organisations like the World Bank and the IMF have appreciated the country's economic progress, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu has said, as he addressed the Indian community in Malawi.

The Trump administration has said it is confident that "the toughest ever" sanctions against Iran which came into force on Monday will have the intended effect of altering the Iranian regime's behaviour, even as it dodged a question on whether the US has firm commitments from India and China to stop all oil purchases from Tehran within six months.