The Greens made strong gains in Switzerland's election on Sunday while the far-right party lost ground, early results reported by Reuters showed. Environmentalists could potentially win a seat in the coalition that has governed Swiss politics for decades.

Protesters in Lebanon flooded the streets on Sunday, keeping pressure on Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri as a self-imposed deadline to deliver a package of badly needed reforms for the country’s crumbling economy drew near.

European Union officials called Sunday for a ceasefire in Afghanistan, saying the breakdown in talks between the US and the Taliban presented an opportunity to push anew for a truce.

Bolivia votes in the first round of its presidential elections on Sunday with Evo Morales seeking an unprecedented fourth term in office. If the country’s first indigenous president wins the indigenous politician will be in power until 2025. His critics say he has ignored a referendum in which Bolivians voted to restrict presidents to two terms. Opinion polls suggest he has a wide lead over his nearest rival.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Saturday that all of the nearly 1,000 troops withdrawing from northern Syria are expected to move to western Iraq to continue the campaign against Islamic State militants and "to help defend Iraq."

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey would press on with its offensive into northeastern Syria and “crush the heads of terrorists” if a deal with Washington on the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from the area were not fully implemented.

North Macedonia's prime minister on Saturday called for an early election after the EU decided against membership talks for the Balkan state, denying his administration a key policy success. After hours of heated wrangling, European Union leaders on Friday could not agree on starting Skopje's accession negotiations, chiefly because of opposition from France. The issue is now on hold until next spring.

At least 15 gold miners were killed on Saturday when a dam collapsed, flooding an artisanal mining encampment in a remote part of Siberia, officials said. Heavy rains had weakened the dam and water broke through, sweeping away several cabins where the artisan miners lived, about 160 km south of the city of Krasnoyarsk.

Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera declared a state of emergency in the capital Santiago early on Saturday, as the city of 6 million descended into chaos amid riots that left a down town building engulfed in flames and its metro system shuttered.

Although the US and Turkey have agreed on 17 October to a cease-fire of the Turks' deadly attacks on Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, shelling and gunfire were heard around the northeast Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, by the Turkish border, on Friday. Agencies reported seeing continued fighting in this Syrian town at the centre of the fight between Turkey and Kurdish forces, which have also been reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. There were reports machine-gun firing and shelling could be heard and smoke rose from one part of the Syrian town.