Talks between Indian and Chinese army commanders to disengage troops from key friction areas along their border have ended in a stalemate and failed to ease a 17-month standoff that has sometimes led to deadly clashes, the two sides said Monday.

The continuing standoff means the two nations will keep troops in the forward areas of Ladakh for a second consecutive winter in dangerously freezing temperatures.

The U.S. has agreed to provide humanitarian aid to a desperately poor Afghanistan on the brink of an economic disaster, while refusing to give political recognition to the country's new Taliban rulers, the Taliban said Sunday.

The statement came at the end of the first direct talks between the former foes since the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of August.

Iraq said on Monday it has detained a top leader of the Islamic State group and a longtime al-Qaida operative in a cross-border operation.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi tweeted the news, identifying the man as Sami Jassem, who oversees the Islamic State group's financial operations and served as the deputy leader of IS under the late Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Iraq saw a record low election turnout since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, the independent body that oversees the election said Monday. The preliminary results signal widespread dissatisfaction and distrust in this weekend's vote for a new parliament.

The election was held months ahead of schedule as a concession to a youth-led popular uprising against corruption and mismanagement. But the vote was marred by widespread apathy and a boycott by many of the same young activists who thronged the streets of Baghdad and Iraq's southern provinces in late 2019, calling for change and new elections.

Jordan's King Abdullah II received Prime Minister Najib Miqati in Amman Sunday, saying his country will stand by the small nation and its people during its worst-ever economic crisis.

The visit to Jordan by Miqati is his first to an Arab country since he formed his Cabinet last month. It comes after the premier's trips to France and Britain, as Miqati seeks their help.

Firefighters extinguished a huge blaze that broke out in a gasoline tank at one of Lebanon's main oil facilities in the country's south Monday after it sent orange flames and a thick black column of smoke into the sky.

Energy Minister Walid Fayyad said the fire broke out when workers were transferring gasoline from one storage tank to another in the coastal town of Zahrani. He said nearly 250,000 liters of gasoline were burnt during the blaze, which lasted more than three hours. No one was reported hurt.

Lebanon's two main power plants have been forced to shut down after running out of fuel, leaving the small country with no government-produced power.

Lebanon is grappling with a crippling energy crisis made worse by its dependency on fuel imports. Erratic power supplies have put hospitals and essential services in crisis mode. The Lebanese increasingly depend on private operators that also struggle to secure supplies amid an unprecedented crash of the national currency.

Nissan's "intelligent factory" hardly has any human workers. The robots do the work, including welding and mounting. They do the paint jobs and inspect their own paint jobs.

"Up to now, people had to make production adjustments through experience, but now robots with artificial intelligence, analyzing collected data, are able to do it. The technology has developed to that level," Nissan Executive Vice President Hideyuki Sakamoto said during a tour of the production line for the Ariya sport-utility vehicle at its Tochigi plant Friday.

The Vatican said Friday that Pope Francis does not plan to attend the upcoming U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Francis has made care for the environment a hallmark of his papacy, and he said in a recent interview that he intended to participate in the Oct. 12-Nov. 12 event and had a speech being drafted. Scotland's bishops also were preparing for a visit.

United States and Pakistani officials are meeting Friday amid a worsening relationship between the two countries as each nation searches for a way forward in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

Pakistan has been pressing for greater engagement with the all-male, all-Taliban Cabinet in Kabul even as it shies away from any unilateral formal recognition. The South Asian country has urged Washington to release billions of dollars to the Taliban so that Afghanistan's new rulers can pay salaries of the many ministries and avoid an economic meltdown. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warns such a crash could unleash a mass migration.