OPEC shocked markets with a deal to cut oil output after kingpin Saudi Arabia allowed bitter rival Iran to be exempted, but analysts warned Thursday the move would not likely have a lasting impact.

Congress on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected President Barack Obama's veto of legislation allowing relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, the first veto override of his presidency, just four months before it ends.

US Secretary of State John Kerry called his Russian counterpart on Wednesday and warned him that Washington will end talks on the Syrian conflict unless Moscow halts the assault on Aleppo.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks Wednesday on the two largest hospitals in rebel-held parts of Syria's Aleppo as "war crimes."

A concrete wall being built to stop illegal crossings along the length of Turkey's 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria will be finished by the end of February, an official at a Turkish state institution with knowledge of the project said on Wednesday.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani vowed on Tuesday that his country would continue to back Syria in its fight against "terrorism", the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported.

German police shot dead a knife-wielding Iraqi in a refugee shelter who was attacking a Pakistani he suspected of having sexually abused his young daughter, police said Wednesday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday visited Ankara for his third set of talks with top Turkish officials in less than one-and-a-half-months despite standing on opposite sides of the Syria conflict, sources said.

The Senate is poised to reject President Barack Obama's veto of a bill that would allow the families of Sept. 11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia even as lawmakers express fears the legislation could backfire on the United States.

The World Bank announced Tuesday it will release $300 million in loans to help facilitate the labor market for Syrian refugees in Jordan.

A powerful Libyan general whose forces recently captured several key oil facilities has rejected a U.N.-brokered government and said the country would be better served by a leader with "high-level military experience."

Turkey has dismissed 87 staff from its spy agency over alleged links to the failed July 15 coup, state media said Tuesday, in the first purge of one of the country's most powerful institutions.

Former Israeli president and elder statesman Shimon Peres died in Tel Aviv on Wednesday aged 93, Israel Radio said.

Hillary Clinton was calm, cool, well-prepared and -- pundits say -- victorious in the first presidential debate against Donald Trump, but her strong showing may have little impact on polls showing them in a dead heat.

Saudi Arabia and Iran on Tuesday dashed hopes that OPEC oil producers could clinch an output-limiting deal in Algeria this week as sources within the exporter group said the differences between the kingdom and Tehran remained too wide.

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.

Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't want details of his dirty laundry aired in public - and he is suing his own office and Israel's attorney general to try to prevent it.

Bomb attacks hit a mosque and an international convention centre in the eastern German city of Dresden, police said Tuesday, adding that they suspected a xenophobic and nationalist motive.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in a predominately Shia Muslim district of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding 30, police and medical sources said.

Trump Foreign Policy Adviser Walid Phares said that the Republican candidate will endeavor to counter terrorism if he was elected.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman on Monday cut cabinet ministers' salaries by 20 percent and reduced other state officials' benefits in a continuing austerity drive to cope with lower oil revenues.