The death toll from a devastating 7.5 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday could rise to thousands, the country’s national disaster agency has warned. 

More than 400 people were confirmed dead in the city of Palu, where preparations for a beach festival had been underway as a towering wave of at least ten feet high barreled into the coastline. 

The terrifying moment was captured on a smartphone video that showed the wave crashing over and submerging one-storey buildings and cars by the beach as bystanders screamed and ran for cover. 

The casualty count “would be hundreds, if not thousands,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the disaster agency told The Telegraph. 

“Almost all the houses by the beach, shops, a hospital, hotels, have all fallen down. During the weekend they are all full of visitors,” he said. 

The Head of the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), Willem Rampangilei, told reporters in Sulawesi late on Saturday the death toll from Palu had reached 420 people, according to news website Kompas.

"It’s estimated that 10,000 refugees are scattered in 50 points in Palu city," he was quoted by Kompas as saying. "We are having difficulty deploying heavy equipment to find victims under the rubble of buildings because many of the roads leading to Palu city are damaged."

Amateur video footage showed trees, buildings and a communications tower being swept through a rural landscape. The landslide was caused by liquification of the soil, according BNPB’s Nugroho.

In a terrible twist of fate, an estimated 1,000 people, many of whom remain unaccounted for, had arrived to attend a cultural festival, which was due to be inaugurated on the beachfront by the tourism minister.

“About 250 local security personnel were on standby..and the beach was already full with festival-goers when the earthquake struck. People tried to run away from the beach, but not so many survived. They were caught by the water,” said Mr Sutopo. 

Sulawesi was hit by several earthquakes on Friday, including one of a 6.1 magnitude earlier in the day. 

According to the US Geological Survey, the strongest of 7.5 struck at a depth of 10km, 56km northeast of the coastal town of Donggala. Initial reports suggest it triggered an underwater avalanche that caused the tsunami.   

The Red Cross said staff and volunteers were heading to the affected areas.

"We’re now getting limited communications about the destruction in Palu city, but we have heard nothing from Donggala and this is extremely worrying. There are more than 300,000 people living there," Red Cross said in a statement.

"This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse."

With desperation rising on Sunday, looters were stealing items from a badly damaged shopping mall. 

People were clambering over wreckage to reach goods while people were reportedly still trapped inside. 

One eyewitness called Adam told the Kompas.com website that people had panicked and tried to flee after the first earthquake hit.

“After that, we saw water suddenly crashing, and finally there was a big panic. Not having time to escape, there was a bigger earthquake, and suddenly the water rose," he said.

Shocking images of destruction in Palu emerged quickly on social media, showing split roads, collapsed homes, mosques and supermarkets which had been crowded with shoppers before disaster struck. 

The most tragic pictures revealed partially covered bodies, and the silhouette of a man carrying a dead child through the wreckage. Hundreds of injured are being treated outside and in makeshift tents in field hospitals.  

But with communications and electricity down in much of Sulawesi, the full extent of the damage and loss of human lives remains unclear. Rescuers are still struggling to get to the stricken area, and have not yet been able to reach the worst-hit towns, including Donggala.

The military is deploying troops to both Palu and Donggala but rescue efforts have been hampered by severe damage to the control tower and runway at Palu airport. 

In an act of selfless heroism, Anthonius Gunawan Agung, 21, an air traffic controller, lost his life after refusing to leave the shaking tower because he was guiding an aircraft during take-off.  

As his colleagues ran out of the building Mr Agung calmly remained at his station to ensure the plane left safely.

According to Mr Sutopo, his last words were “Safe flight Batik Air, take care” as the plane soared into the sky, its passengers and crew unaware that they had narrowly escaped a major earthquake. 

Mr Agung died on Saturday from injuries sustained after jumping from the four-storey tower as it collapsed. 

Speaking afterwards to the local media, Captain Ricosetta Mafella, said he had been initially confused by the bumpy take-off as plane was shaking left and right, but he had assumed it was the result of an uneven runway.  

“I was focussing on getting airborne, so I didn’t pay too much attention to the ground,” he said. As he ascended, Mr Mafella tried to contact air traffic control and was perplexed to receive no answer from Mr Agung. 

From the air, he noticed unusual waves rolling into Palu, but it was only later that he discovered he had made a dramatic take-off at the start of an earthquake. 

Palu’s airport halted operations for 24 hours due to earthquake damage, according to AirNav, which oversees airline traffic in Indonesia.

Mirza Arisam, a resident of Kendari, the capital of neighboring Southeast Sulawesi, said his uncle and his family of five, including three children, were on holiday in Palu and he has been unable to contact them since the tsunami hit.

In Palu’s Roa-Roa Hotel, which was completely flattened by the quake, many people were still missing.

"Communication is cut off. All we knew is that 24 guests were successfully evacuated and one has died," hotel owner Ko Jefry told Metro TV on Saturday night. "It is estimated that 50 to 60 people remain trapped."

Mr Nugroho tweeted a video the rescue and recovery effort being conducted there on Sunday.

After the quake struck, television footage showed people running into the streets. Women and children wailed hysterically in a video distributed by the disaster agency, which also released a photo showing a heavily damaged department store.

"It was so strong. The strongest I ever felt. We all ran out of buildings," said Yanti, a 40-year-old housewife in Donggala who goes by a single name.

"All the things in my house were swaying," another Donggala resident, Mohammad Fikri, said of the earlier 6.1 quake.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said U.N. officials were in contact with Indonesian authorities and "stand ready to provide support as required."

Rolex Mahala, Chief Correspondent of Antara Newswire in Palu, described the aftermath of the earthquake as terrifyingly chaotic.

“I heard people shouting: “Go to higher ground… go to higher ground. Don’t stay, there might be a tsunami!” 

“My family and I fled up a hill in the dark. I stumbled a lot, my grandchildren were crying, but we kept walking. I later tried to get them to sleep, while I kept watch in the middle of the night,” said Mr Rolex.

Major Edy Harahap, the Deputy Commander of Military District Command in Palu was assigned to help the rescue effort at Talise Beach, where the cultural festival was taking place.

But the area was difficult to access because of debris from wrecked buildings and bodies. While he was formulating a plan, he heard a voice calling out to him: “Commander, help me, help me!”

A young boy of about ten years old was crying to him from the roof of a hut. The child told him he had been playing on the beach with his friends when the tsunami approached.

“Suddenly a big wave came in our direction. So I ran away, but I was thrown onto that roof. I tried to shout for help, but there was no one yesterday. I tried to call my friends too, but no one answered me,” the boy said.

The officer fears that many street vendors, attracted by the festival, would have been swept out to sea, as well as children, especially girls, who had come to perform dances.

President Joko Widodo is scheduled to visit evacuation centres in Palu on Sunday.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of its location on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.

In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

The US is halting visas for same-sex partners of diplomats, raising concerns among LGBTQ activists who fear it will cause problems for foreign representatives.

Under the State Department’s new requirements, the US will only recognise marriages, rather than same-sex partnerships, when granting diplomatic visas to partners.

The change, which came into effect on Monday, impacts the partners of United Nations officials, ambassadors, embassy staff and foreign military stationed in the US.

Those affected have until the end of the year to get married or their partners risk having to leave the country within 30 days.

A US official said that some 105 families currently residing in America would be impacted. 

But the official denied the move was “punitive” or an “attack”, saying it was needed to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court decision to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015. 

The state department official said the policy was needed to ensure consistent treatment with opposite-sex partners, who must marry to qualify for the diplomatic visas.

Officials also noted that the requirement would align the policy to that which applies to US diplomats abroad.

However, there are concerns about the implications of the new requirements for diplomats from countries that do not recognise same-sex marriages.

Currently less than 10 per cent of UN nations have legally recognised same-sex marriage.

"What I’m worried about is those staff members who have difficulties going to a country that performs same-sex marriages … in order to fufill this requirement," Alfonso Nam, the president of the UN LGBTQI advocacy organization UN-GLOBE, told CNN.

"The reality is that the difference between being in a heterosexual couple and being in a same-sex relationship is that heterosexual couples have an incredible number of choices of where they can get married. 

"That is a choice that is very limited for people in same-sex relationships."

A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Washington said: “We are currently examining the US policy and its potential impact on all UK diplomats.

"The UK’s commitment to LGBT equality at home and internationally is resolute and we will continue to work with governments and civil society to promote diversity and prevent discrimination on any grounds.”

The US began accepting same-sex domestic partners as family members when granting certain diplomatic visas in 2009. But under the new guidelines, officials will only accept legally married spouses when granting derivative visas. 

Officials said there would be some exemptions for diplomats on A-1 or A-2 visas from countries where same-sex marriage is not legal, but not for those holding UN-related visas.

"If a diplomat is representing a country where same-sex marriage is not legal, but which does recognize and accredit US same-sex diplomatic spouses, that diplomat’s domestic partner may still be eligible for a derivative visa," a US official said.

"Officers and employees of a designated International Organisation (G-4 visa holders), such as the United Nations, are not representing a foreign government when working for the International Organisation. 

"Therefore, the change in policy affects all same-sex domestic partners of international organization personnel, with no exceptions," they said.

A New York judge on Thursday dismissed one of the six criminal charges against movie producer Harvey Weinstein after prosecutors said they could not oppose the dismissal in light of information they had learned while investigating the case.

The dismissed charge concerns an alleged sexual assault of an aspiring actress by Weinstein in 2004. Five other charges, involving alleged assaults of two other women, remain in the case in Manhattan criminal court. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said he would seek dismissal of the remaining charges as well. He also said that he would investigate what he described as "perjury" before the grand jury that indicted Weinstein, and the conduct of a New York City police detective involved in the case.

The woman who accused Weinstein of assaulting her in 2004, Lucia Evans, told the New Yorker in October 2017 that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him when she was a 21-year-old college student.

"I want to be very clear that prosecutor’s decision to abandon my client’s claims does not invalidate the truth of her claims," Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer for Evans, told reporters outside the courthouse following Thursday’s hearing.

Following the hearing, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance made public a letter it had sent to Brafman last month disclosing that an unnamed witness had told them that she had heard an account of the alleged assault from Evans that was different from the one Evans originally gave to Vance’s office.

Vance’s office also learned that the witness had given the account to a New York City police detective, who failed to inform the prosecutors, according to the letter.

Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone following accusations by more than 70 women, mostly young actresses and other women employed in the movie business, of sexual misconduct, including rape, dating back decades.

The accusations led to the #MeToo movement in which hundreds of women publicly accuse powerful men in business, politics and entertainment of sexual harassment and abuse.

As the accusations against Weinstein mounted, his company Weinstein Co fired him and filed for bankruptcy, and he was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Through his company and Miramax, Weinstein won plaudits and awards for movies including "Shakespeare in Love," "Pulp Fiction" and "The King’s Speech." (Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York Editing by S

A senior Pakistani civil servant sparked an embarrassing diplomatic incident when he was allegedly caught on CCTV stealing the wallet of a visiting Kuwaiti delegate.

The Kuwaitis made a complaint to Pakistani officials during a mission to discuss investment plans when one visitor said his wallet had gone missing during the meeting.

Officials searched the Economic Affairs Division of the finance ministry and frisked employees in the hunt for the wallet, Dawn, a leading Pakistani newspaper reported.

It was only when CCTV in the meeting hall was checked that a senior bureaucrat with the Pakistan Administrative Services was seen taking the wallet. A six-second clip said to show the incident was widely shared on social media. The clip showed a man taking a wallet from a conference table and putting it in his pocket.

The official reportedly denied involvement until he was confronted with the video and then produced the missing wallet.

Pakistani officials at first refused to tell their guests who the culprit was, until the furious Kuwaitis insisted and were shown the film.

Sources in the ministry told the paper an internal inquiry was now underway against the bureaucrat and further action would be taken according to its conclusions.

Pakistan’s new prime minister, Imran Khan, has long pledged to clean up government and has for years railed against the graft and corruption among senior politicians and officials.

When questioned about the incident, Fawad Chaudhry, information minister, told a press conference that most of the civil service had their “moral training” during the previous governments.

Russia is waging a covert propaganda campaign to torpedo a referendum in Macedonia this weekend which could pave the way for the small Balkan country to join Nato and the EU, diplomats and analysts warned.

Macedonians will vote on Sunday on whether to change the name of their country to North Macedonia, resolving a 27-year diplomatic standoff with Greece.

Athens has always objected to the country calling itself Macedonia, arguing that it implies territorial claims on its northern region of the same name.

But Moscow is vehemently opposed to Nato enlargement in the Balkans, which it regards as its sphere of influence, and has allegedly flooded social media in Macedonia with false accounts calling for a boycott of the referendum.

Thousands of fake Twitter and Facebook accounts with the hashtag #Bojkotiram, meaning "boycott" in Macedonian, have appeared in recent weeks, according to Macedonia’s Investigative Reporting Lab.

The objective appears to be to reduce the turnout of the referendum to under 50 per cent of eligible voters, meaning it would lack legitimacy.

It could be a close-run thing. A recent poll found that 57 per cent of respondents plan to vote, but many people spoken to by The Telegraph on the streets of Skopje said they were still unsure whether they would take part.

Some of the false accounts try to stir up friction between Macedonia’s Slav majority and its ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up about 25 per cent of the population.

Ethnic Albanians are overwhelmingly in favour of the deal, seeing EU membership as a means of tackling poverty and discrimination, but that is unpopular with those ethnic Slavs who bitterly resent having to change the country’s name at the behest of Greece. Tensions between the two erupted into armed conflict in 2001.

“Russia is doing everything it can to stave off more countries joining the West,” said Heather Conley, director of the Europe programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

“In Macedonia, that includes exploiting weaknesses that exist, such as the tensions between ethnic Slavs and ethnic Albanians. There’s a combination of disinformation and using economic influence to support nationalist organisations and politicians,” she told The Telegraph.

“The aim is to sow complete confusion and to make the West look as decadent and dysfunctional as possible.”

British officials warned earlier this month that Moscow may try to influence the outcome of the referendum with an online disinformation campaign, as it allegedly did in the US elections and the Brexit referendum.  

Last month, a fake story claiming that American troops on exercise in Macedonia used ammunition containing depleted uranium went viral.

The defence minister, Radmila Sekerinska, said the report was untrue and founded on “baseless lies”.  

The story was “fake news” designed to erode trust in Nato and undermine the referendum, she said.

In July, Athens expelled two Russian diplomats accused of trying to stoke opposition within Greece to the historic accord with Macedonia.

Greek officials said they had “irrefutable evidence” that Russia was trying to interfere.

Zoran Zaev, the prime minister of Macedonia, accused a Russian oligarch living in Greece of funding radical nationalist groups and football hooligans in Macedonia with the aim of stoking violent protests against the deal.

The US has openly accused Moscow of trying to influence the referendum. On a visit last week to Skopje, the Macedonian capital, Jim Mattis, the US Defence Secretary, said there was no doubt that the Russians have “transferred money and that they are also conducting broader influence campaigns.”

Michael Carpenter, a former Obama administration official and now an analyst at the Penn Biden Centre for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, warned that Russia “fiercely opposes” the name change deal.

“The Kremlin continues to direct its army of internet trolls to bombard the social media space in both countries with anti-agreement propaganda,” he wrote in a recent essay.

“By spreading hateful propaganda and financing violent demonstrations, Russia is actively stoking ethnic grievances, which sadly remain a powerful force in Balkans politics.”

Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for Russia and the Balkans, said Russia’s interference in Macedonia was akin to its attempts to derail Montenegro’s bid to join Nato, “although unlike in Montenegro, there is no evidence Moscow has tried to assassinate the prime minister.”

The Russians were accused in 2016 of plotting to overthrow the government of Montenegro and sabotage its plan to join Nato by killing its prime minister, Milo Djukanovic.

The plot was foiled just hours before it was due to be carried out and would have plunged the country into turmoil on the eve of becoming Nato’s 29^th member.

Ms Farkas, a fellow with the Atlantic Council, wrote that the campaign to boycott the referendum in Macedonia has been led by United Macedonia, a pro-Russian party which has a partnership with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia.

While Mr Zaev, the prime minister, fervently hopes that the yes vote will win on Sunday, Macedonia’s president is against the accord with Greece.

On Thursday, Gjorge Ivanov urged Macedonians not to vote, calling the name change a "noose" and a "flagrant violation of sovereignty."

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, he criticised the procession of EU and American officials who have visited Macedonia in recent weeks to throw their support behind a yes vote.

Bear lovers scored a key victory Thursday after French authorities secretly helicoptered a Slovenian she-bear into the Pyrenees mountains.

The bear was flown over roadblocks erected by irate local farmers who say the beasts pose a threat to their flocks.

Conservationists hope the female, soon to be joined by a second, will prevent the bear population from dying out in the western Pyrenees as only two lonesome males – father and son – are left in the area.

But a group of angry farmers wielding shepherding staffs had set up bales of hay and tractors along key roads into the Pyrenees from France to Spain, and had spent the night manning roadblocks in a bid to stop them being trucked in.

"It’s war," said large letters daubed in white paint across the road.

"We saw the helicopter over Etsaut. It was hovering and let down a cage," said Olivier Maurin, a local sheep farmer and organiser of the anti-bear protest.

Mr Maurin said farmers intended to launch a “hunt” in the woods, not to kill but to scare the bears away from their sheep and other livestock.

Jean-Pierre Chourrout-Pourtalet, the mayor of the small town of Sarrance who joined farmers at one of the roadblocks, pledged to chase the bears off the land.

"I have enacted a bylaw outlawing bears and wolves from within municipal borders and I am duty-bound to see the law enforced," he told AFP.

Anti-bear farmers have previously taken the law into their own hands, targeting the animals with various traps, including one containing honey laced with glass.

Francois de Rugy, France’s environment minister, insisted the government would stand firm in its drive to shore up biodiversity – enshrined in a law passed this summer – by reintroducing bears to the area.

Speaking on France Info radio, he slammed "the unacceptable attitude" of those "who feel entitled to set up roadblocks and threaten me with guns". Not all farmers were against the bears presence. Elise Thebault, a sheep farmer from Etsaut, said: “The bears have always been here since the dawn of time.

We have always lived side by side. You never see them and it doesn’t affect our lives.” The government compensates farmers for any livestock deaths from bear attacks but that has failed to reduce tensions.

Bears were re-introduced from Slovenia in the 1990s after hunters all but wiped out France’s native population.

The last time was in 2006, when five were freed near the Spanish border, but the lovelorn males, Canellito and Néré, are the only ones left in the western Pyrenees.

Another 37 have been counted in the central section of the mountain range along the Spanish border.

But conservationists say the two isolated males are unlikely to reach the group and would have to fight dominant males before being able to mate with the females.

The reintroduction of the creatures, which can weigh 250kg (almost 40 stone) and stand two metres tall on their hind legs, has been a divisive and impassioned issue for more than 20 years.

The quarrel mirrors a similar dispute over wolves, which have returned to France from Italy after being hunted to extinction by the early 20th century.

Polls suggest the French are vastly in favour of the bears, although farmers blamed them for the deaths of more than 200 sheep who tumbled off cliffs while being chased by bears in 2017.

The Ariege stretch of the Pyrenees has seen a doubling of bear attacks over the last two years to more than 230 so far in 2018, according to a local farmers’ union.

Breeders in the area have lost at least 372 livestock so far this year, it asserted.

Ireland has been accepted as a member of the international organisation of francophone nations amid concern that Brexit could leave its English-speaking diplomats out in the cold.

It may not be the land of “bonjour” but the country was authorised to become an observer member of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie — the French equivalent of the Commonwealth — at a summit in Armenia attended by President Emmanuel Macron.

Dublin’s application came amid concerns it lacks clout in continents such as Africa, where France retains extensive links in French-speaking countries, notably in the West.

Joining the club, even as an observer, was part of an attempt to “double the scope and impact of Ireland’s global footprint in the period to 2025”, Helen McEntee, Ireland’s European affairs minister, told the summit.

Brushing off claims that the Irish are no more versed in le français than the British, she insisted her countrymen had a “passion” for French, reminding doubters that Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett wrote some of their works in French.

OIF figures suggest that 12 per cent of Irish citizens speak the language of Molière, which may not sound a lot but is a good deal higher than the 0.1 per cent of Ukrainians and Uruguayans who speak French and whose countries already enjoy observer status. 

Ireland hopes that membership will help it court ministers and strengthen economic ties around the world, as well as tightening links with France as Britain leaves the European Union.

Paris, which calls most of the shots at the OIF, paying almost half of its annual €80 million (£70m) budget, backed the Irish bid. 

Founded in 1970 to bring together French-speaking nations in the name of peace, democracy, human rights and sustainable development, the OIF has come under fire for turning into a tool for French soft power around the globe.

Those wishing to join only need show a “will to favour the development of the use of French".

That explains why at the summit in Yerevan, Gambia, Malta and Louisiana were also made observer members whilst Kosovo, Serbia and the United Arab Emirates became full members.

But one hopeful new entrant, Saudi Arabia, pulled out at the last minute after Canada cried foul over its human rights record.

The widening of its remit has irked a growing number of francophone purists. "The OIF is running a real risk of losing its cohesion," Pierre-Andre Wiltzer, a former French minister responsible for "francophonie" told AFP.

Mr Macron is facing further controversy at this summit over the choice of a successor to Michaëlle Jean, the Canadian of Haitian origin who has been its general secretary since 2014. 

The clear favourite is Louise Mushikiwabo, foreign minister of Rwanda, a nation which, in 2009, sparked Gallic criticism for making English an official language alongside Kinyarwanda, Swahili and French.

Mr Macron backed her candidacy in an attempt to mend fences with Rwanda after decades of frosty relations over France’s alleged role in the 1994 genocide.

That sparked fury among rivals back in France. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party, said: “I am outraged that France should back a minister of (President Paul) Kagame, who is violently anti-French and from a country that has . . . turned its back on the French language.”