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.

The pilot of a small passenger plane died after colliding with another aircraft and crashing into a field near the capital Ottawa, officials said.

Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday announced reconvening of Parliament on November 14, which he had suspended last month, two days after sacking Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replacing him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Storms lashing Sicily have killed at least 12 people with torrential floods, Italian authorities said as the country's leader headed Sunday to the stricken Mediterranean island.

Sri Lanka's sacked prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has warned time is running out to avert a "bloodbath" while voicing hope that parliament will resolve a damaging constitutional crisis in the coming days.

An Indonesian diver died while recovering body parts from the ill-fated Lion Air plane which crashed into the sea killing 189 people, an official said Saturday.

Prominent Pakistani cleric Maulana Samiul Haq, who was also known as the ‘Taliban leader’, was killed in a gun attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday, according to media reports.

Fifteen people are feared dead after a bus in the Chinese city of Chongqing plunged from a bridge into the Yangtze River during a fight between the driver and a woman who missed her stop, police have said.