* Bulgaria's incumbent President Iliana Iotova won Sunday's presidential runoff, according to partial results published by the country's electoral commission on Monday. With over 99 percent of the ballots counted, Iotova, running with Kiril Valchev as her vice-presidential candidate, won 57.6 percent of the vote.
* More than 913,000 people have cast their votes in the first seven days of advance voting for New Zealand's 2026 general election scheduled for Nov. 7, exceeding the number recorded at the same stage of the 2023 election. A total of 913,762 votes were cast between Oct. 26 and Nov. 1, compared with 712,192 during the equivalent period in 2023, the Electoral Commission noted on Monday.
* The South African government on Sunday called on the country's 29.2 million registered voters to cast their ballots in the upcoming 2026 Local Government Elections.
* The Mercosur (Southern Common Market)-Singapore Free Trade Agreement entered into force between Singapore and Argentina on Sunday, completing its implementation with all four founding Mercosur member states, Singapore's Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry and the Argentinian Embassy in Singapore have said.
* Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chinese foreign minister, will chair the 11th Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Beijing from Nov. 3 to 4, a foreign ministry spokesperson announced on Monday.
* U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday again threatened to resume strikes against Iran "at some point," while the Iranian Army warned that any renewed conflict could be longer and more extensive than the previous one.
* The ongoing ethnic violence in India's northeastern state of Manipur has left five people dead in two separate incidents in the state's Kangpokpi and Noney districts, officials said Monday.
* Ecuador's government on Sunday imposed a new curfew on five violence-plagued provinces through Nov. 10 to combat organized crime and drug trafficking.
* People seeking reviews of most protection visa decisions in Australia are now required to pay an upfront application fee of 1,863.50 Australian dollars (about 1,300 USD), the country's Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) announced on Sunday.
* The Arab League on Sunday called for an independent international investigation into alleged torture and systematic abuses against Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip held at Israel's Ramla Prison.
* Iranian forces have determined a vast battlefield to inflict damage on the "enemy" and achieve complete deterrence, spokesman for Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Hossein Mohebbi said Sunday.
* Iraqi President Nizar Amedi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi stressed in a phone call on Sunday that dialogue and diplomacy should remain the primary means of resolving disputes in the region, the Iraqi presidency said in a statement.
* Yemen's Houthi group said Sunday evening that a series of airstrikes hit Ras Isa port, a key oil terminal on the Red Sea coast in the western province of Hodeidah, including a port berth and a commercial vessel docked there.
* The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Sunday that it had carried out an operation to neutralize vital resources used by the Houthi group.
* Egypt signed a financing agreement worth 1 billion USD with the World Bank on Sunday under the second phase of a development policy financing program to support the country's economic reforms, the Egyptian cabinet said.
* A plane carrying nine people crashed in a residential neighborhood in Florida on Sunday, killing all those on board, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said. At 12:50 p.m. Eastern Time, a Learjet 60 crashed in a neighborhood near Cresthaven, FLorida, Duffy said in a post on X.
* At least one person was killed and 13 others injured in a stampede during a wedding ceremony in Sialkot district of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, rescue officials said Sunday.
* At least eight people died and a couple of others sustained burn injuries when their vehicle came into contact with a high-voltage power line in India's western state of Rajasthan, confirmed a local cop on Monday.
* Over 20 flights were cancelled in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and neighboring Andhra Pradesh on Monday in the wake of severe cyclonic storm Murasu, officials said.
* An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 jolted the Vanuatu Islands at 1147 GMT on Sunday, the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences said. The epicenter, with a depth of 10 km, was initially determined to be at 14.14 degrees south latitude and 165.91 degrees east longitude.
