South Asia
Over 80 people were injured in clashes with the police while protesting against the construction of the Adani Group’s $900 million Vizhinjam seaport. Protests over the port in Kerala have been going on for over three months now, with local fishermen expressing concern that it will cause coastal erosion, thereby impacting their livelihoods.[Economic Times]
Indian President Droupadi Murmu emphasised Bangladesh’s importance in India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, pointing to the two countries’ strong cultural, linguistic, and historical ties. While presenting his credentials to Murmu, Bangladeshi High Commissioner to New Delhi Mustafizur Rahman communicated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s commitment to bolstering bilateral relations and promoting regional and sub-regional cooperation. [Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha]
Central Asia and the Caucasus
Jailed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s doctors have asked authorities not to transfer him from a medical clinic to the Tbilisi City Court to take part in a hearing in a case against him due to his deteriorating health. Saakashvili, who has been in jail since last October on corruption charges, has claimed that he is innocent, accusing the ruling Georgian Dream party of persecuting him. He has held two separate hunger strikes while in prison. [RFE/RL]
Azerbaijan on Monday transferred the bodies of 13 Armenian soldiers to Armenia who died in clashes between their forces in Nagorno-Karabakh in September. Baku said the bodies were discovered during a military search operation. [Public Radio of Armenia, Anadolu Agency]
East and Southeast Asia
The Japanese defence ministry-affiliated Defence Research Institute said in its China Security Report that China carried out 1.4 billion cyberattacks against Taiwan between September 2019 and August 2020. It revealed that the attacks mostly aimed to spread disinformation in the self-governing island. The report also assessed that China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan was a “great threat.” [Taipei Times]
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that the United States’ (US) ban on multiple Chinese companies’ telecommunications equipment and video surveillance devices due to a supposed threat to its national security, was “yet another example of its abuse of the national security concept and state power to hobble Chinese companies.” [Xinhua News Agency]
Europe
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned the Norwegian Ambassador Robert Kvile over the arrests of Russian citizens in Norway for alleged “illegal use of drones,” noting that it was “politically motivated” and had “nothing to do with the principles of fair and unbiased justice.” “We urged the Norwegian authorities to abandon such Russophobic actions and persecution of Russian nationals on the grounds of their ethnicity,” the ministry emphasised. [TASS]
On Monday, Germany’s state interior ministers agreed to suspend deportations to Iran, owing to the government’s brutal crackdown on ongoing anti-regime protests. The head of the Conference of Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, said that only individuals convicted of serious crimes and who are considered dangerous would be sent back to Iran. [Deutsche Welle]
The Italian Civil Protection Department said on Monday that 94% of municipalities are “at risk” of floods, landslides, and coastal erosion. On Saturday, eight people died in a landslide in Ischia after six hours of severe rain. [Politico]
Latin America and the Caribbean
On Monday, former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas was released from prison for a second time this year after Judge Emerson Curipallo in the Santo Domingo province could serve his sentence for corruption charges outside prison. The former VP was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017 after being found guilty of receiving bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for government contracts. He was then handed a separate eight-year sentence three years later for misappropriating funds from contractors to support the electoral campaign of now-former President Rafael Correa. [Reuters]
Haiti’s Ministry of Health and Population says the current cholera outbreak, which began on 2 October, has now killed at least 223 people. Moreover, although there have been 1,003 confirmed cases, authorities say there are around 12,000 more suspected cases as well. [teleSUR]
Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will hold talks with his Finnish and Swedish counterparts regarding their bids to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Bucharest on Tuesday. Turkey is the only NATO member that has declined to approve Finland and Sweden’s applications, which were submitted following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Ankara continues to blame the Nordic countries for harbouring Kurdish “terrorists” and refusing to extradite them to Turkey. Çavuşoğlu said on Monday that Finland and Sweden have not yet taken steps to deport Kurdish militants as promised under the trilateral agreement of June. [Daily Sabah]
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Monday warned that his incoming successor Benjamin Netanyahu would “dismantle the democratic foundations” of Israel, saying the former PM would try to influence his corruption trial by tampering with the judiciary. “Netanyahu wants to decide who the prosecutor in his trial will be. Netanyahu wants to decide the identity of the judges who will hear his appeal,” Lapid noted, calling it a “crime of opportunity.” [Times of Israel]
North America
On Monday, an anonymous United States (US) official revealed that the US Military’s European Command and Russia’s National Defence Management Centre have used the “deconfliction” line only once since the Ukraine war began to raise concerns about Russia’s military operations near Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. The Pentagon remarked that Washington has many channels to “discuss critical security issues with the Russians during a contingency or emergency for the purposes of preventing miscalculation, military incidents, and escalation.” [Reuters]
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly on Monday summoned Russian Ambassador Oleg Stepanov over the embassy’s several anti-LGBTQ tweets, one of which directly targeted Canada’s openly-lesbian Minister of Sport, Pascale St-Onge. Condemning the tweets as “hateful propaganda,” Joly asserted, “We absolutely can’t tolerate this rhetoric. […] This is an attack on the Canadian values of acceptance and tolerance.” [CBC News]
Oceania
Australia’s Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said that it is unlikely the citizens’ energy bills would be reduced by $275 as the Labor government promised while campaigning. “Of course, the promises were made before the election, before Putin invaded Ukraine – that’s certainly up-ended things,” he reasoned. “It is going to be tough for a while, no doubt,” he admitted. [Adelaide Now]
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced several new funding options for retail shops on Monday, including $4000 for every small shop and dairy that wants to install fog cannons. The move comes after the fatal stabbing of dairy worker Janak Patel in Auckland. [Stuff]
Sub-Saharan Africa
The United States’ (US) Department of Justice has charged three US citizens of Cameroonian origin for allegedly providing the Ambazonian Restoration Forces, a separatist group in the Anglophone region of northwestern Cameroon, with around $350,000 in funds for arms and bomb-making materials. The funds were also used for the kidnapping of Catholic cardinal Christian Tumi two years ago. [AFP]
A court in the Comoros on Monday sentenced former President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, in power from 2006 to 2011, to life in prison for high treason after he was convicted for selling passports to stateless people living in the Gulf. In 2008, he passed a law approving the sale of passports and was accused of funnelling millions of dollars into his own pockets, which the prosecution says ultimately cost the state over $1.8 billion. [Africanews]