In what comes as no surprise, incumbent Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko won the presidential election with 80.3 percent of the vote Sunday, Bloomberg reported. Known as Europe’s “last dictator,” Lukashenko, 61, has ruled over the Eastern European state for over two decades.
Six months ago, a small drone carrying drugs, cell phones, screwdrivers and a knife crashed into the razor wire of a British prison located about 45 miles west of Cambridge. The incident marked the first time a drone was used to smuggle contraband into a prison in the United Kingdom, but it’s hardly the first time British police were called in to investigate the use of a drone.
Oil prices around the world can expect recovery and continued stabilization in 2016, according to the leader of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Reuters reported. Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri said Sunday that investors can be optimistic about the oil industry's future in the coming months. "We need to keep investing; it is essential for our industry," said al-Badri. "I remain confident that our industry's best days are yet to come."
Republican presidential front-runner and real estate mogul Donald Trump criticized Germany's commitment to taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants, many of them refugees fleeing Syria's civil war, during an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
"Steve Jobs," the biopic about the late Apple co-founder and CEO of the same name, raked in a whopping $521,000 after its limited release in just four New York and Los Angeles theaters over the weekend. The movie's average take of $130,236 per theater made it the highest grossing early release so far this year, and the record-breaking initial box office numbers could pave the way for a lucrative wide release.
Kenyan Dickson Chumba pulled away from compatriot Sammy Kitwara and comfortably won a slow Chicago Marathon in a sweep for the African nation Sunday.
Children constitute roughly one-third of the fighters in Yemen, according to a United Nations official cited by Gulf News Sunday. The official said a growing number of children have been pulled into the conflict as it has intensified in recent months. “We are seeing children in battle, at checkpoints and, unfortunately, among [those] killed and injured,” Julien Harneis, Unicef’s representative in Yemen, reportedly said during a stop in Geneva.
Once again, a technical glitch at a major airline has led to delayed flights -- and frustration -- for passengers traveling around the country. On Sunday morning, Southwest Airlines reported “a system issue” that was affecting the company’s digital check-in systems.
Turmoil in the Republican Party continued Sunday as the GOP leadership struggled to agree on a candidate for speaker of the House of Representatives. The spot has been vacant since former speaker John Boehner resigned in September, citing Republican fracturing along ideological lines. Members of the House made public statements Sunday that showed continued indecision.
The Italian city of Venice has begun exploring the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of art now in the city's museums, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said Friday. The mayor is considering the sale of the artworks in an effort to deal with Venice's debt load, which has been rising like the Adriatic Sea waters surrounding the City of Canals. Approval of his proposal has yet to be granted, according to the Telegraph in the U.K.
Malaysian officials are investigating reports that a plane crash site was spotted in the southern Phillipines Saturday, Channel NewsAsia reported. Jamil Omar, 46, said his relative had spotted plane wreckage with a Malaysian flag inside on the island of Tawi Tawi. Authorities have called on the public not to speculate on the claimed sighting until officials are able to carry out an investigation, since past reports of debris sightings have, for the most part, been inaccurate.
So, Canadian Thanksgiving is Monday. You’re planning on drinking the entire weekend leading up to it because that’s fun and what else is there to do in Canada in October anyway, eh? We get it. When it’s all over, though, you’re going to need a quick-and-easy recipe to obscure the fact that you’ve not done a blessed thing to plan for this joyous family occasion.
Turkish authorities rounded up dozens of individuals suspected of having links to the militant Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper reported Sunday.
Russia will not participate in a ground war in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview Sunday, as reported by the state-owned news agency Sputnik International. Putin said his country's armed forces would continue to carry out air operations against terrorist targets in Syria.
UPDATE: 12:34 p.m. EDT -- Several senior leaders of the Islamic State group were believed to have been killed in an airstrike in western Iraq Sunday, but the militant group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not appear to be among them, according to local residents and hospital sources cited by Reuters. Original story:
U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers are still likely to raise interest rates this year, but that is “an expectation, not a commitment” and could change if the global economy pushes the U.S. economy further off course, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said. “Both the timing of the first rate increase and any subsequent adjustments to the federal-funds-rate target will depend critically on future developments in the economy,” Fischer told a group on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meeting in Peru.
BERLIN (Reuters) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out Sunday tax increases to help deal with the biggest influx of refugees since World War II. "We can be glad that our economy has been well-managed for years and that our economic situation is currently good," Merkel said in an advance preview of an interview to be published in the daily Bild Monday. Asked whether she could give her word that there would be no tax increases in connection with the refugee crisis, Merkel replied, "Yes, definitely."
TOKYO (Reuters) -- Do not believe in official statistics, Japanese retailers seem to be saying, as they cut earnings forecasts and warn of lackluster consumer spending, a key growth engine for Japan at a time when exports and factory output are stalling. If you go by the larger-than-expected 2.9 percent gain in household spending in August -- the first year-on-year rise in three months -- then consumption looks like it is finally alive and well again, after a sales-tax hike last year stifled the economy.
Columbus Day carries more misconceptions than most holidays. The second Monday of October marks the holiday, which became a legal federal holiday in 1971 to celebrate the Italian-born sailor's first day in the New World. But many historians have called into question widely accepted knowledge about the holiday, as well as whether the United States should honor Columbus as a hero. Here, we set the record straight and share some little-known facts about the holiday:
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -- South Africa plans to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC), a deputy minister said Sunday, as the government faces criticism for ignoring a court order to arrest Sudan's president this year. The ICC has "lost its direction" and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) wants to withdraw South Africa after following certain processes, Obed Bapela, deputy minister in the presidency, told reporters after a ruling-party policy meeting.
Even though battling climate change was added as one of the new sustainable-development goals during the recent session of the United Nations General Assembly, the organization’s definition of a refugee has remained focused on people escaping persecution, excluding climate change as a factor.
OSLO (Reuters) - If and when a global deal to curb climate change is done in Paris this December, the matter of enforcement is likely to be left not to sanctions but to peer pressure. While legally enforceable environmental treaties do exist, experts say that some of the most effective environmental controls have come about from a shared sense of self-interest.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran successfully tested a new precision-guided ballistic missile, Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan was quoted as saying on Sunday, signaling an apparent advance in Tehran's attempts to improve the accuracy of its missile battery. "The Emad missile is able to strike targets with a high level of precision and completely destroy them," state news agency IRNA quoted Dehghan as saying.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the world economy -- which is growing at a rate of 3.1 percent, compared to 3.4 percent last year -- could crash if central banks do not continue to keep interest rates low. The IMF said uncertainty and financial market volatility have increased and medium-term growth prospects have weakened.
ATHENS (Reuters) - Listening to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his re-elected leftist government, you would think the revolution had been postponed, not canceled. That makes it hard to answer the 64-million-euro question on the minds of policymakers and investors in Europe and beyond: has Greece finally emerged from six years of economic and political crisis, or is this just another false dawn?
