A sprawling disinformation network originating in Russia sought to use hundreds of fake social media accounts and dozens of sham news websites to spread Kremlin talking points about the invasion of Ukraine, Meta revealed Tuesday.

The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it identified and disabled the operation before it was able to gain a large audience. Nonetheless, Facebook said it was the largest and most complex Russian propaganda effort that it has found since the invasion began.

The Asian Development Bank said Tuesday it will devote at least $14 billion through 2025 to help ease a worsening food crisis in the Asia-Pacific.

The development lender said it plans a comprehensive program of support to help the 1.1 billion people in the region who lack healthy diets due to poverty and soaring food prices.

Vietnam imposed a curfew and evacuated over 800,000 people as a powerful typhoon that had flooded villages and left at least eight dead in the Philippines aimed Tuesday for the country's central region.

People living near the coast where Typhoon Noru was expected to slam early Wednesday had been ordered to take shelter, national television VTV said. Schools were closed and public events canceled.

The British pound stabilized in Asian trading on Tuesday after plunging to a record low a day earlier, as the Bank of England and the British government tried to soothe markets nervous about a volatile U.K. economy.

The instability began to have real-world impacts, with several British mortgage lenders withdrawing deals amid concern that interest rates may soon rise sharply.

Japan's assassinated hawkish former leader, Shinzo Abe, was given a rare state funeral Tuesday that was full of military pomp and surrounded by throngs of mourners as well as by widespread protests, with thousands taking to the streets in opposition.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the publicly financed ceremony was a well-deserved honor for Japan's longest-serving modern political leader, but it has deeply split public opinion.

The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said he met with his Iranian counterpart in Vienna for talks about an ongoing investigation into manmade uranium particles found at undeclared sites in Iran.

"Dialogue has restarted with Iran on clarification of outstanding safeguards issues," Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), tweeted Monday night.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called Tuesday for parliament to meet Thursday to elect a president to replace Michel Aoun whose term expires at the end of October.

"Berri called for a session to be held at 11:00 am (8:00 GMT) on Thursday September 29, 2022 in order to elect a president," a statement from his office said.

Lebanon's parliament has approved the 2022 budget, one of the conditions set by the International Monetary Fund to action a bailout for the crisis-stricken country.

Lebanon and the IMF had reached a conditional agreement on a $3 billion loan in April to help the country tackle its economic crisis, but the global lender last week condemned the "very slow" progress Beirut has made towards implementing reforms.

The final day of voting was taking place in Russian-held regions of Ukraine on Tuesday in referendums that are expected to serve as a pretext for their annexation by Moscow and is heightening tension between the Kremlin and the West over Russia's warnings it could resort to nuclear weapons.

Formal annexation of captured chunks of eastern Ukraine, possibly as soon as Friday, sets the stage for a dangerous new phase in the seven-month war, with Russia warning the West that from then on it will be defending its own territory — and could resort to nuclear weapons to protect it.

Two suspected Kurdish militants opened fire on police in southern Turkey and later killed themselves by detonating suicide bombs, Turkey's interior minister said. One police officer was killed in the attack while a second officer and a civilian were wounded.

The attack was carried out late on Monday in the Mezitli district in the Mediterranean coastal province of Mersin, by two women affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters.