BRUSSELS (AFP) - Student protests against education reforms continued Monday across Belgium, with demonstrations reported in several cities and police making 16 administrative arrests, according to broadcaster RTBF. Shops in central Liege were closed as a precaution as protesters moved through the city, including areas around Guillemins train station. Police said 16 people had been administratively arrested shortly before 11 am local time. Hundreds of students gathered outside several schools across the city. Police said they found materials that could potentially be used to make Molotov cocktails, including glass bottles and pieces of fabric, in some protesters’ bags.

 

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MADRID (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced early general elections Monday after his government suffered a bruising legislative defeat last week on emergency measures related to the country’s housing crisis. The vote will be held on Nov. 29. In recent weeks, Spaniards have demanded solutions from the government over housing affordability, holding protests in cities across the country after public outrage grew over the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid last month. Right-wing opposition parties joined forces to scuttle two emergency decrees introduced by Sánchez’s government that included measures to reduce evictions and real estate speculation. 

 

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LAGOS (Reuters) - A Nigerian military aircraft carrying 25 passengers and seven crew members crashed near a naval base in southwestern Ondo state after losing contact with air traffic control while en route to Lagos, the aviation minister said on Monday. The minister, Festus Keyamo, said in a statement that controllers lost contact with the aircraft at 0813 GMT and were unable to re-establish communication before its disappearance was reported. The wreckage was later located near a naval base in the coastal town of Igbokoda, and search and rescue operations were underway, he said. There was no immediate confirmation of casualties from the crash. The crash is one of Nigeria’s worst military aviation accidents in recent years and is likely to intensify scrutiny of flight safety and operational readiness as authorities investigate the cause.

 

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Monday that her government has requested evidence from U.S. authorities regarding allegations that gunfire originated from the Mexican side of the border and targeted U.S. personnel, saying Mexican security forces had not detected any such incident. “We asked for all the evidence because we have no evidence,” Sheinbaum said during her daily press conference. She added that no personnel from Mexico’s National Guard, Army or Navy had detected shots fired from Mexican territory toward the U.S.

 

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STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Scientists Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in medicine for “discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”, the award-giving body said on Oct 5. Deisseroth, a 54-year-old American, Hegemann, a 71-year-old German, and Nagel, a 73-year-old German, were selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet medical university and will receive a prize sum amounting to 12 million Swedish kronor (S$1.53 million), which is shared if there are multiple winners. Optogenetics “makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain”, said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.