At least 38 people died after an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 and ​dozens of aftershocks struck off eastern Indonesia on Saturday, officials said, as rescue workers rushed to reach areas closest to ‌the epicentre.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called for improving the country’s ability to prevent, mitigate and respond to natural disasters, after a string ​of deadly floods and landslides this summer.

Mourners gathered in Australia’s Northern Territory capital Alice Springs on Saturday to bid farewell to a five-year-old ​Indigenous girl whose death in April shocked the nation ‌and sparked violent clashes in the outback town.

Mexico is scrambling to contain a record surge of foul-smelling sargassum along its Caribbean coast, as the brown seaweed swamps beaches in the heart of ​the country’s tourism belt.
Officials in Quintana Roo, home to resort destinations including Cancun, ‌Playa del Carmen and Tulum, have cleared more than 105,000 metric tons of sargassum so far this year, according to data released this week, a figure that already exceeds last year’s record 92,783 tons.

Rescuers in Colombia raced to free survivors still trapped under the rubble on Friday, four days after ​one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the Andean nation in decades left hundreds of people dead or missing.

The Brazilian government has opened a process that could result in the adoption ​of reciprocal measures against the United States ‌in response to tariffs recently imposed by Washington on the country’s goods, it said in a Thursday statement.

Preliminary results on Friday showed that Prime Minister Mark Brown’s Cook Islands Party would likely retain control of ​parliament, winning 12 of the Pacific nation’s 24 seats, although ‌bad weather delayed voting on the remote island of Nassau.

Tourists and residents fled villages in the Halkidiki region of northern Greece by land and sea on ​Thursday as a wildfire fanned by strong winds engulfed houses and ‌trees near a resort during the heart of holiday season.

Australian ​Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that the AUKUS defence pact ‌remained “full steam ahead” after an overnight phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, and said he had urged him to fully exempt Australia from all tariffs.

The Trump administration has repeatedly said the fight against sex trafficking is one of its top priorities.

Hopes of finding more survivors of the ​powerful earthquake that rocked Colombia early this week were fading as rescue workers narrowed their searches, while families in the worst-hit areas waited for ‌news of missing relatives.

Two U.S. Army soldiers died when an Apache military helicopter crashed ‌into a field in Texas.