Serbia's veteran ruler Vučić concedes election to student-led protest movement

BBC News, André Rhoden-PaulandJaroslav Lukiv, 25 October 2026 

Vučić said early results made it "clear" that his party had lost

Serbia's long-standing leader Aleksandar Vučić has admitted defeat to the student-led protest movement in snap parliamentary elections. 

"We still do not have final results... it is clear that we have lost these elections," the right-wing populist leader said as he conceded late on Sunday. 

Preliminary figures provided by Serbia's election commission indicated a record high turnout, which commentators had suggested would favour the student movement. 

Vučić had called the snap elections after two years of protests triggered by the 2024 collapse of a train station canopy in the city of Novi Sad, which killed 16 and was seen as emblematic of corruption and negligence in Serbia. 

Vučić had spent two terms as president and could not seek a third term, so was leading his party with the aim of returning to the post of prime minister, which he left in 2017. 

There have been wild celebrations at the Student List headquarters

He made his announcement at the headquarters of his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in the capital Belgrade. 

There were celebrations on the streets of the city, with people dancing and chanting "victory", cars honking, and fireworks set off. "Serbia is free," one student told the BBC. "It's a miracle." 

The Student List - which has no obvious leaders and whose members are not used to politics - had attracted anti-government voters across Serbia. 

It decided to field candidates to the 250-member parliament from across Serbian society including doctors, actors, academics and sports personalities. 

"This will be a free state," its lead candidate - cardiologist Ilija Srdanović - said in a statement to BBC Serbian as the result became clear. 

He said the movement hoped to "free the country from tyranny". 

The anti-corruption movement campaigned on a manifesto that included purging officials who broke rules cracking down on protesters, stopping party loyalists from leading public enterprises, and freeing the public broadcaster of political control. 

Vučić and the SNS party have repeatedly denied corruption. 

Vučić, who backs Serbia's candidacy for the European Union while refusing to impose sanctions on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, had pledged to increase pensions and public sector salaries, and investment in state healthcare. 

Preliminary figures provided by Serbia's election commission suggested a record high turnout, with 64.9% having cast their vote by 18:00 local time (17:00 GMT), two hours before polls were set to close.

Trump-sanctioned ICC wins EU Parliament’s human rights prize

Polico, Max Griera, October 22, 2026 

Court nominated by center-left weeks after sanctions imposed by Donald Trump.

This photograph shows a view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on September 23, 2026. | Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via

STRASBOURG — The International Criminal Court has won this year's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, awarded by the European Parliament, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. 

The €50,000 prize honors defenders of human rights and freedom of thought, with past winners including Nelson Mandela, Alexei Navalny, Belarusian journalists, and the people of Ukraine. 

Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced the decision later on Thursday: “The European Union is built on respect for multilateralism and international institutions, and this prize recognizes the important work of the Court in upholding international law and justice.” 

The Socialists and Democrats group nominated the ICC following U.S. President Donald Trump's sanctions on the court, announced on Oct. 9. 

Inside the room, European People's Party chief Manfred Weber was counting on the right-wing groups to back his group's pick for the prize, Tanzanian politician Tundu Lissu — but needed the Patriots’ support to secure a majority. The Patriots, however, stood by their own nominees, the Iranian twin sisters imprisoned for protesting, one of whom has been sentenced to death. 

Weber first asked the right-wing ECR to lobby Patriots chief Kinga Gál. When that failed, he approached her himself, according to two officials, granted anonymity to speak about the internal process. Gál ultimately recused herself from voting, allowing the Socialists, Renew, Greens and The Left to prevail with a relative majority of votes. 

"It is a great achievement for the European Socialists that we led this proposal despite the EPP’s opposition. We are on the right side of history. This vote shows that the majority of this Parliament, together with our group, stands with international law,” Spanish S&D lawmaker Hana Jalloul, one of the promoters of the ICC nomination, told POLITICO. 

French MEP Chloé Ridel said: "This is a message of hope and resistance sent to Donald Trump. No, we will not abandon the rule of law and international justice. We will stand with the ICC for as long as it takes.” 

The prize is named in honor of Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet physicist and political dissident. Shortlisted candidates are traditionally invited to the Parliament’s award ceremony, which takes place during the December plenary session in Strasbourg. The Parliament plans in the coming months to increase the prize money from €50,000 to €100,000, according to an internal note seen by POLITICO.

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Hackers force French supermarket fridges to heat up to 50C in ‘unprecedented’ cyber-attack

The Guardian/Reuters in Paris, 12 October 2026 

Hundreds of Intermarché shops and Coopérative U outlets in France hit, with fears Dutch chains also affected

The branches affected would have to ‘throw away all of the products’
 that are fresh and frozen, Intermarché said.
Photograph: Virginie Lefour/BELGA MAG/AFP/Getty Images

Hackers have forced the temperature of many French supermarket fridges up to 50C overnight, in an “unprecedented” cyber-attack affecting several hundred stores across the country, with fires and food losses reported. 

The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Monday ⁠the large-scale attack was “affecting connected refrigerators ⁠in several ​major food retailers across France”. Reported damage included “food losses and fires”, it added. 

The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, instructed France’s national cybersecurity agency ANSSI to investigate, ⁠a person in his office said. 

France “was coordinating with its European counterparts, as other countries may also be affected”, while also investigating whether any other French ⁠firms were at risk, they said. 

Les Mousquetaires, which owns retailer Intermarché, said about 150 of its stores had been ​hit, with fridges heated up to 50C for six hours. ‌It had thrown all the food away to avoid any health risks, a spokesperson said. 

Dominique Schelcher, chief executive of Coopérative ‌U, said his supermarkets had also been hit by the attack. “Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented,” he wrote on X. 

Several other supermarket chains, including Carrefour, Monoprix and Auchan, did not respond to requests for comment. According to BFM TV, France’s largest supermarket chain E Leclerc was also affected, with hackers “managing to remotely trigger the forced defrosting of the refrigeration systems in numerous stores”. E Leclerc did not respond to a request for comment. 

The attack may not have been confined to France. The Dutch supermarket company ‌Ahold Delhaize said it was also dealing with a “security issue” in its network, and had taken several systems offline to protect them. 

Stores of its Albert Heijn chain, ​the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, which also has several stores in Belgium, remained open in both countries. But its online app and delivery system were down, while electronic price tags often displayed the wrong information. 

It was not clear if there was any link between the French supermarket attack and the ⁠problems flagged by Ahold Delhaize. 

Delhaize supermarkets, also part of Ahold Delhaize but operating ​in Belgium and Luxembourg, were ​also affected by the security issue, ​Belgian media reported. 

The source close to Lecornu said ANSSI had identified a vulnerability ​in software supplied by ‌the Danish company Danfoss. 

US closely monitoring case of lab worker who ‘possibly’ died of plague in Siberia, says Rubio

The Guardian, Mon 5 Oct 2026, Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding 

Quarantine measures in place in several hospitals in eastern Russia amid uncertainty over death of Darya Shipilova 

Darya Shipilova died on the night of 2 October at a regional hospital in
Shelekhov. Photograph: Social Media

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said the US is closely monitoring the case of a Russian laboratory worker who died last week after a reported accident at a plague research institute in Siberia.

“We’re watching and monitoring it closely,” Rubio said on Monday before leaving for a trip to Europe. “I ⁠don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause just to keep an ⁠eye on it.”

Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee at the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk, became ill at work. She died two days later on the night of 2 October at a regional hospital in the nearby town of Shelekhov.

It remains unclear how she became unwell. Unconfirmed reports in Russian media have suggested Shipilova may have been infected after a mishap at the laboratory. Officials have not publicly confirmed that account.

Local media have reported that the institute has subsequently been locked down, with staff forced to sleep on the floor and on chairs. “They’ve been isolating everybody since Friday – more than 60 people,” one relative, Roman, told the news portal Siberia.Realities.

He said family members were allowed to drop off food at a checkpoint while tests were carried out inside the building. Similar quarantine restrictions have been placed on several other hospitals in and around the city.

Rubio, citing what ‌Russians have released about the death, said it seemed a worker in the lab became ​infected and there was concern the disease may have spread internally.

“There’s very limited travel between the US and Russia, obviously,” he said. “But like anything else, something like that gets out, it just quickly spreads.”

Senior Russian officials have added to public disquiet by sending conflicting messages. Alexey Tsydenov, the head of the Buryatia region, which neighbours Irkutsk, initially wrote that Shipilova had died of plague, before editing his post to say she had “possibly” died of the disease.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s health watchdog, said Shipilova died from “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”. It insisted that tests found no micro-organisms linked to her professional work and described the “sanitary and epidemiological” situation in the area as stable.

Authorities in the nearby city of Baikalsk briefly urged residents to avoid travelling to Shelekhov and surrounding settlements after what they said was unofficial information about a possible plague infection. They later deleted the post from social media.

“There are no obvious changes to daily life on the streets, but people are worried and anxious. Locals are angry that they are not being told anything,” said Elena Trifonova, a journalist with People of Baikal, an exiled Russian media outlet specialising in Siberia.

Despite the lack of a confirmed diagnosis, precautionary measures appear to have been introduced across the region. The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Monday that several hospitals in Irkutsk had been placed under quarantine.

The outlet confirmed that staff from Shipilova’s workplace, the Irkutsk Anti-plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, had been kept inside the institute since 2 October.

Patients at Irkutsk city clinical hospital No 1 and the Ivano-Matreninskaya children’s hospital said relatives were not being allowed to visit and people inside were not permitted to leave.

On social media, local residents described some of the precautions being introduced.

Ulyana Gavryunina, who went on Monday to one of Irkutsk’s main maternity hospitals for a routine check-up on Monday, said doctors refused to allow her mother in, citing a quarantine imposed over the suspected plague case. Gavryunina said staff member checked her for flu-like symptoms and asked her to fill out a screening form for infections, on which “plague” was listed. She posted a photograph of the form on Instagram.

Elsewhere, a mask requirement was introduced at the Irkutsk aluminium smelter in Shelekhov. The plant’s director, Artyom Fominykh, called it a preventive measure, saying: “Better safe than sorry.” Over the weekend several public events in Irkutsk were cancelled.

Shipolova’s death has prompted intervention from senior federal health officials. Anna Popova, the head of Rospotrebnadzor and the country’s chief sanitary doctor, travelled to Irkutsk on Friday.

She attended an emergency meeting of the regional sanitary and anti-epidemic commission over what officials called a suspected case of a “particularly dangerous infection”.

Igor Kobzev, the governor of the Irkutsk region, urged residents to remain calm after meeting Popova to coordinate the response. “All identified contacts have been placed under medical observation. As of today, none is showing signs of illness and laboratory tests have returned negative results,” he wrote on Telegram.

Kobzev made no reference to reports that a laboratory worker had died.

US politicians have raised concerns about the incident, which follows longstanding and unfounded allegations by the Kremlin that Ukraine has secretly carried out biological weapons research with the support of Washington.

A Republican representative, Don Bacon, a senior member of the House armed services committee, wrote on social media: “I remember hearing from anti-Ukraine voices about their so-called bio labs. It was Russian disinformation ops at their best. But in reality it is Russia with the bio labs.”

Plague remains endemic in parts of Siberia and the Russian far east, where the bacterium persists naturally among wild rodents and their fleas.
But human cases in Russia are rare. Before the suspected Irkutsk case, the country’s last recorded human infection was in 2016, when a 10-year-old boy in Siberia’s Altai Republic contracted plague after helping butcher a marmot.

“This case here seems like a rare lab accident and is unlikely to go much further,” Prof Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading, in the UK, said. “Although it is true that pneumonic plague is directly transmissible, the contacts of the primary case are known and can be treated if they show any sign of infection.”

He added: “Plague carries a huge history and is still present in many parts of the world, including Russia, but the living conditions associated with previously spread plague are no longer generally true, antibiotics are available and its potential is therefore limited.”

The victim was working at the anti-plague institute in 

the Siberia city of Irkutsk. AFP via Getty Images.

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