Category: WORLD

Breakaway Turkish Cypriots on ethnically divided Cyprus cast ballots Sunday in an election that many see as a choice between an even deeper alignment with Türkiye or a shift toward closer ties with the rest of Europe.

There are some 218,000 registered voters. Polls close at 1500 GMT. Seven candidates are vying for the leadership spot but the main two contenders are the hard-right incumbent Ersin Tatar and the center-left Tufan Erhurman, according to The AP news.

Tatar, 65, vociferously supports permanently dividing Cyprus by pursuing international recognition for a Turkish Cypriot state that will be aligned even closer to Türkiye’s political, economic and social policies.

Tatar has taken his cue from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who repeated at the UN General Assembly last month that there are “two separate states“ on Cyprus while calling for the international community to extend formal recognition to a Turkish Cypriot “state.”

Erhurman, 55, advocates a return to negotiating with Greek Cypriots on forging a two-zone federation. He has criticized Tatar’s reluctance to engage in formal peace talks during his five-year tenure as a costly loss of time that has pushed Turkish Cypriots farther on the international periphery.

Cyprus was divided in 1974, when Türkiye invaded days after Greek junta-backed supporters of union with Greece mounted a coup.

Turkish Cypriots declared independence in 1983, but only Türkiye recognizes it and maintains more than 35,000 troops in the island’s northern third. Although Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, only the Greek Cypriot south — where the internationally recognized government is seated — enjoys full membership benefits.

Many Turkish Cypriots hold EU-recognized Cyprus passports but live in the north.

Greek Cypriots consider the two-state proposition as a non-starter that’s contrary to the UN and EU-endorsed federation framework. They reject any formal partition for fear that Türkiye would strive to control the entire island. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has repeatedly said there’s no chance that any talks premised on two states can happen.

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US President Donald Trump called Colombian President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug leader” on Sunday and said the United States would cease “large scale payments and subsidies” to the South American nation.

“The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc,” he said in a Truth Social post.

According to Reuters, the Colombian embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Relations between Bogota and Washington have frayed since Trump returned to office.

Last month the United States revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and urged US soldiers to disobey Trump’s orders.

Last year, Petro pledged to tame coca-growing regions in Colombia with massive social and military intervention, but the strategy has brought little success.

In September, Trump designated countries such as Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia and Venezuela among those the United States believes to have “failed demonstrably” in upholding counternarcotics agreements during the past year.

He blamed Colombia’s political leadership for the failure to meet its drug control obligations.

“Petro … is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs,” said Trump, saying US payments and subsidies to Colombia were a rip-off.

“AS OF TODAY, THESE PAYMENTS, OR ANY OTHER FORM OF PAYMENT, OR SUBSIDIES, WILL NO LONGER BE MADE,” he wrote in capital letters. It was not clear what Trump was referring to.

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Germany said on Sunday that it would recall its ambassador to Georgia ahead of a meeting of European Union officials on Monday as relations between the bloc and the South Caucasus country fray.

“For many months, the Georgian leadership has been agitating against” the EU, Germany and personally against the German ambassador, Ernst Peter Fischer, Germany’s foreign ministry said in a post on X, Reuters reported.

The recall is “for consultations on how to proceed,” the German ministry said.

On Monday, “The EU Foreign Affairs Council will address Georgia”.

Last month, the Georgian Foreign Ministry summoned Fischer, suggesting he was part of attempts to promote a “radical agenda” in the country ahead of closely watched municipal elections.

Georgian officials have for months accused Fischer and other EU ambassadors of backing attempts to overthrow the government in Tbilisi.

Authorities in Georgia have been cracking down on pro-European Union opposition figures and street protesters, who had staged demonstrations following a disputed parliamentary election last October and a subsequent government decision to halt talks on joining the EU.

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A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea across the rivals’ heavily fortified border on Sunday, South Korea’s military said.

The military took the custody of the soldier who crossed the central portion of the land border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said the soldier expressed a desire to resettle in South Korea.

It was the first reported defection by a North Korean soldier since a North Korean staff sergeant fled to South Korea via the border’s eastern section in August 2024, The AP news reported.

Despite the two border crossings, it isn’t common for North Koreans to defect via the land border.

Unlike its official name, the Demilitarized Zone, the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border is guarded by land mines, tank traps, barbed wire fences and combat troops. In 2017, when a fleeing North Korean soldier sprinted across the border, North Korean soldiers fired about 40 rounds, before South Korean soldiers could drag the wounded soldier to safety.

A vast majority of about 34,000 North Koreans who have fled to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War came via China, which shares a long, porous border with North Korea.

Relations between the two Koreas remain strained, with North Korea repeatedly rejecting outreach by South Korea’s liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June with a vow to restore reconciliation between the rivals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Sunday for efforts to advance “reunification” in a message of congratulations to the new leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, whose election took place amid accusations of interference by Beijing.

Former lawmaker Cheng Li-wun, who will take over as leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) party on November 1, won Saturday’s election at a time of rising tension with Beijing, which views the democratically governed island as its own territory. Taiwan’s government strongly objects to China’s sovereignty claims, Reuters reported.

The KMT traditionally backs close relations with China and is Beijing’s preferred dialogue partner. China refuses to talk to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, calling him a “separatist”.

Xi, in a message in his role as head of China’s Communist Party, told Cheng the two parties should strengthen their “common political foundation”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Both parties should also “unite the vast majority of people in Taiwan to deepen exchanges and cooperation, boost common development, and advance national reunification,” he added.

Cheng, in her message to Xi, did not make any mention of union with Beijing, but said both sides of the Taiwan Strait were “members of the Chinese nation”, using an expression in Chinese that refers to ethnicity rather than nationality.

“Both parties should, in light of the current situation, strengthen cross-Strait exchanges and cooperation on the existing foundation (and) promote peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Cheng said, according to a party statement.

ACCUSATIONS OF CHINESE INTERFERENCE

While the KMT lost the presidential election last year, the party and its ally, the small Taiwan People’s Party, together hold the most seats in parliament.

Cheng, 55, opposes Taiwan increasing defence spending, a key policy plank of Lai’s, and won the leadership vote over the KMT establishment candidate, former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin.

Accusations of Chinese interference in the election by a key supporter of Hau’s, the KMT’s vice presidential candidate last year, Jaw Shau-kong, overshadowed the campaign. Jaw said social media accounts had spread disinformation about Hau.

China said on Wednesday that the election was a KMT matter, and that online comments did not represent an official stance.

Writing on his Facebook account on Sunday, Jaw said the KMT must reduce pro-China influence and that the majority of Taiwanese desire peaceful relations and dialogue with China.

“The KMT must recognise that elections are held in Taiwan, and voters are in Taiwan, not mainland China,” Jaw added.

Late on Saturday, DPP spokesperson Justin Wu said there were clear signs of Chinese interference in the KMT election.

His comments were dismissed by the KMT, which responded with a statement saying: “Who is this?”

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A migrant boat carrying around 35 people sailing from Libya capsized in the central Mediterranean leaving one confirmed dead and two dozen missing, UNICEF country coordinator for Italy said on Sunday.

The rescue operation was carried out on Friday off the coast of Italy’s Lampedusa island by the Italian Coast Guard, which saved 11 migrants, including four children travelling alone, and recovered the body of a pregnant woman, UNICEF’s Nicola Dell’Arciprete said, Reuters reported.

The survivors and the body were brought to Lampedusa, while the remaining passengers remain unaccounted for.

The boat capsized after two days at sea, Dell’Arciprete said.

More than 32,700 migrants have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean since 2014, including an estimated one in five who were children, according to data from United Nations agencies, Dell’Arciprete said.

Commenting on the news of the shipwreck on social media platform X, Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesperson for the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, said that at least 916 migrants had died in the central Mediterranean so far in 2025.

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Iran executed on Saturday an individual accused of spying for Israel, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported on Sunday citing an Iranian prosecutor.

The individual had links to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and had leaked classified information, Mizan cited the judiciary official as saying, according to Reuters.

Entangled in a decades-long shadow war with Israel, Iran has executed many people it accused of having links with Israel’s intelligence service and facilitating its operations in the country.

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Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, set to start a five-year prison sentence on Tuesday after being convicted of attempting to raise campaign funds from Libya in 2007, said he is not afraid of going to jail, La Tribune Dimanche reported.

Sarkozy, who is due to be incarcerated at Paris’s Sante prison on October 21, told the newspaper he had already packed his bags and feels calm ahead of the start of his sentence.

“I am not afraid of prison. I will hold my head high, even in front of the gates of Sante,” Sarkozy said, adding he will not ask for any special privileges.

SARKOZY SAYS PLANS TO WRITE BOOK WHILE IN PRISON

The former president told La Tribune Dimanche he does not want to complain or be pitied during his imprisonment. He plans to spend his time in jail writing a book, the newspaper said.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy over efforts by close aides to procure funds for his successful 2007 presidential bid from Libya during the rule of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Sarkozy has always said he was innocent and has appealed his conviction.

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Ukrainian drones overnight struck a major gas processing plant in southern Russia, sparking a fire, according to a Russian governor and the Ukrainian military.

The Orenburg plant, run by state-owned gas giant Gazprom and located in a region of the same name near the Kazakh border, is part of a production and processing complex that is one of the world’s largest facilities of its kind, with an annual capacity of 45 billion cubic meters.

According to regional Gov. Yevgeny Solntsev, the drone strikes set fire to a workshop at the plant and damaged part of it. Solntsev said there were no casualties, The AP news reported.

Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Sunday that a “large-scale fire” erupted at the Orenburg plant, and that one of its gas processing and purification units was damaged.

In the same statement, it claimed a separate drone strike hit Russia’s Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, in the Samara region near Orenburg, sparking a blaze and damaging its main refining units.

The Novokuibyshevsk facility, operated by Russian gas major Rosneft, has an annual capacity of 4.9 million tons, and turns out over 20 kinds of oil-based products. Russian authorities did not immediately acknowledge the Ukrainian claim or discuss any damage.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement early Sunday that its air defense forces had shot down 45 Ukrainian drones during the night, including 12 over the Samara region, one over the Orenburg region and 11 over the Saratov region neighboring Samara.

Ukraine has ramped up attacks in recent months on Russian energy facilities it says both fund and directly fuel Moscow’s war effort.

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A tropical storm lashed the northern and central Philippines Sunday, leaving at least one person dead and forcing more than 22,000 people to evacuate from flood- and landslide-prone villages, officials said.

Tropical Storm Fengshen was tracked at midday over Manila Bay with sustained winds of up to 65 kph (40 mph) and gusts of up to 90 kph (56 mph). It was expected to move away from the main northern Philippine region of Luzon Sunday night, The Associated Press quoted government forecasters as saying.

A villager drowned on Saturday in Roxas City in the central province of Capiz, where flooding in many villages was worsened by the onset of high tide, police and provincial officials said.

Five villagers died after their hut was hit early Sunday by a tree that residents had been trying to topple by burning in Pitogo town in the eastern province of Quezon, provincial police chief Romulo Albacea said by telephone, saying authorities were assessing whether to the classify the deaths as having been directly caused by the storm.

Fengshen, locally called Ramil, was forecast to start moving away from the main northern Philippine region of Luzon later Sunday into the South China Sea on a course toward Vietnam, state forecaster Glaiza Escullar said.

The storm, the 18th tropical cyclone to batter the Philippine archipelago this year, hit as central and southern provinces were still recovering from recent earthquakes that left more than 80 people dead, displaced thousands of people and damaged more than 134,000 houses in central Cebu province alone, the country’s disaster-mitigation agency said.

The Philippines, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Seas, is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s often hit by earthquakes and has about two dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

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