Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Tuesday denied U.S. claims that the Islamic republic had scuttled nuclear talks in Geneva, pointing instead to France as the culprit.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Abu Dhabi on Monday Iran had balked at the Geneva talks just as world powers were closing in on a deal to curb Tehran's nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

A woman was shot dead and several people injured in clashes between protesting garment workers and riot police in the Cambodian capital Tuesday, a rights group and family members said.

The clashes erupted as hundreds of employees from a factory supplying global brands marched towards Prime Minister Hun Sen's home in the heart of Phnom Penh to demand better working conditions.

Australia and Indonesia are discussing a people "swap" deal under which Jakarta would take asylum-seekers from Australia if Canberra agreed to take some of its refugees, an Indonesian government adviser said Tuesday.

Asylum-seekers arriving on unauthorized boats in Australia, often via Indonesia, are a sensitive issue for both sides, and Canberra's military-led Operation Sovereign Borders to clamp down on them has raised concerns in Jakarta.

The Sudan government and a key rebel group are refusing to let U.N. workers vaccinate 160,000 children against polio in conflict-stricken states despite agreeing to a ceasefire, the U.N. said Monday.

U.N. humanitarian operations director John Ging said he had appealed to the U.N. Security Council for pressure to end what he called a "filibuster" by the Sudan government and opposition Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) on humanitarian access.

U.S. and British warships were deployed Tuesday to the typhoon-ravaged Philippines where well over 10,000 people are feared dead and countless survivors are begging for help in rain-soaked wastelands.

Four days after Super Typhoon Haiyan destroyed entire coastal towns in mostly poor central islands with record winds and tsunami-like waves, the magnitude of the disaster continued to build with almost unimaginable horror.

A bus collision in South Africa late Monday killed 29 people and severely injured 11 others, on a road notorious for deadly accidents, a government spokesman said.

"The number is now 29," said Mpumalanga province safety department spokesman Joseph Mabuza, updating an earlier tally of 26 dead.

The international peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur is "gravely concerned" by tribal fighting in the region, a spokesman said on Monday, as efforts began to halt the latest clashes.

Sources in the Taisha and Salamat Arab tribes told Agence France Presse late Sunday that tribal militias used rockets, artillery and heavy machine-guns in battle across a wide swathe of southwest Darfur.

The Democratic Republic of Congo and defeated M23 rebels failed to sign a peace deal Monday hoped to be a key step in ending decades of war, after Kinshasa demanded the agreement be revised.

The "DRC delegation has aborted the signing of agreement with M23," Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said, adding that the meeting was adjourned without a new date scheduled.

The United Nations warned Monday of a quickly mounting death toll from the Philippines super typhoon with 10,000 feared killed in the worst-hit city of Tacloban alone.

The United Nations was "expecting the worst" over the final body count, one top U.N. humanitarian official said.

A framework accord signed Monday in Tehran by the U.N. atomic agency and Iran is only a very preliminary step towards addressing concerns about Tehran's nuclear program, analysts said.

In particular it does very little to ease fears about the nuclear reactor Iran is building in Arak and no specific mention is made of the watchdog's long-stalled probe into alleged past efforts to develop an atomic bomb.