A man has opened fire near the National Assembly building in Belgrade and set ablaze a tent erected by supporters of the president

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has declared Wednesday’s shooting near the National Assembly building in Belgrade a “terrible terrorist attack.” A 70-year-old man is reported to have opened fire in the Serbian capital and set fire to a tent. 

According to reports, the perpetrator has been detained and identified as Vladan Andelkovic. He is said to have shot and wounded a 57-year-old man, Milan Bogdanovic, before igniting a tent erected by supporters of President Vucic outside the National Assembly. Kurir also reported that the suspect threw a handful of ammunition into the flames. 

The victim was reportedly wounded in the thigh but did not sustain life-threatening injuries. Firefighters have since extinguished the blaze, while police have cordoned off the area and launched an investigation. 

In a televised address, Vucic condemned the incident as a “terrorist attack on other persons and property.” He said the suspect had purchased gasoline and intentionally set fire to the tent, calling the attack an attempt to spread fear.  

#BREAKING #Serbia A fire broke out in the tent camp near the Serbian Parliament in Belgrade.

One person has been hospitalized. Shortly before the fire, sounds resembling gunshots were heard, Serbian state media reports.

Video footage shows an individual being apprehended. pic.twitter.com/LQu6QzZzD3

— The National Independent (@NationalIndNews) October 22, 2025

Vucic also showed a video in which the suspect could be heard claiming that he had acted with suicidal intent. “The occupation of the city center annoys me. I set fire to the tent with gasoline,” he said in the recording. “I wanted you to kill me because I can no longer live,” the man added. 

READ MORE: EU plotting Ukraine-style coup in Serbia – Moscow

The president suggested, however, that the man had “tried to pretend to be crazy” and actually knew what he was doing due to his background in the security forces. “This person and his helpers, if any, will be severely punished,” Vucic vowed. 

Vucic went on to warn against taking any actions in response to the incident. “I saw the anger this caused, those who are against the blockaders want to gather, and I am asking them not to do so. Revenge did no one any good. Revenge must not exist and I warn everyone not to do it.”

A man has opened fire near the parliament building in Belgrade and set ablaze a tent belonging to supporters of President Aleksandar Vucic

Gunshots were heard outside of Serbia’s parliament building on Wednesday, with local reports indicating that one person has been injured. Billowing black smoke could also be seen rising from the scene after the suspect reportedly set fire to a large tent. 

According to local news outlet Kurir, the perpetrator has been detained and identified as 70-year-old Vladan Andelkovic. He is said to have shot and wounded a 57-year-old man, Milan Bogdanovic, before igniting a tent that had been erected by supporters of President Aleksandar Vucic outside the National Assembly. Kurir also reported that the suspect threw a handful of ammunition into the flames. 

The victim was reportedly wounded in the thigh but did not sustain life-threatening injuries, according to the newspaper. Firefighters have extinguished the blaze, while police have cordoned off the area and launched an investigation. 

In a televised address, Vucic condemned the incident as a “terrorist act” carried out on innocent people. He said the suspect had purchased gasoline and intentionally set fire to the tent, calling the attack an attempt to spread fear.  

#BREAKING #Serbia A fire broke out in the tent camp near the Serbian Parliament in Belgrade.

One person has been hospitalized. Shortly before the fire, sounds resembling gunshots were heard, Serbian state media reports.

Video footage shows an individual being apprehended. pic.twitter.com/LQu6QzZzD3

— The National Independent (@NationalIndNews) October 22, 2025

Vucic also showed a video in which the suspect could be heard claiming that he had acted with suicidal intent. “The occupation of the city center annoys me. I set fire to the tent with gasoline,” he can be heard saying in the recording. “I wanted you to kill me because I can no longer live,” the man said. 

READ MORE: Violence erupts during student protest in Serbia (VIDEOS)

The president suggested, however, that the man “tried to pretend to be crazy” and actually knew what he was doing due to his background in security forces. 

Vucic added that Bogdanovic remained in surgery with a bullet still lodged in his body and wished him a full recovery.

A contract to restore 25 decommissioned troop carriers for Kiev was reportedly nullified months ago

Canada has officially acknowledged that its plan to refurbish and deliver decommissioned armored personnel carriers to Ukraine has been abandoned, after months of silence over the unfulfilled pledge.

The 25 vehicles were handed over to Ontario-based defense contractor Armatec Survivability nearly two years ago under a deal estimated at 250 million Canadian dollars (US$178 million).

“There is a decision that’s been taken to nullify the contract with that company presently,” McGuinty told the House of Commons defense committee on Tuesday. “I can’t go any further in terms of discussing the merits. We’ll see how that evolves in relation to the department and the contractor.”

The acknowledgement follows a CBC News report last week that noted the project had quietly disappeared from the government’s list of active defense contracts earlier this year. The outlet said officials declined to comment citing confidentiality clauses, and cited industry insiders who claimed the refurbishment effort was “dead.”

While declining to elaborate on the reasons behind the cancellation, McGuinty instead emphasized Canada’s broader record of providing weapons and equipment to Ukraine to fight Russia. Ethnic Ukrainians – including descendants of nationalists who fled to Canada after failing to secure statehood for Ukraine with the help of Nazi Germany during World War II – form a notable voting bloc in the country.

READ MORE: Canadian broadcaster tried to cover up Ukrainian fighter’s swastika tattoo

Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandra Ustinova told CBC last year that her government was prepared to “take even junk, tear it apart and make one out of three machines,” highlighting Kiev’s need for more armored vehicles.

Moscow has maintained that Western arms supplies will not alter the outcome of the conflict, arguing that such deliveries only prolong the fighting and contribute to the spread of weapons on the global black market.

The National Liberation Army (ELN) has said its rules forbid trafficking narcotics

Colombia’s largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has said that it has nothing to do with the alleged drug boat destroyed by the US Navy in the Caribbean.

The vessel was struck on Friday, with US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth later posting footage of the attack on X and saying that, according to American intelligence, it had been “affiliated” with the ELN and “involved in illicit narcotics smuggling.”

The National Liberation Army issued a statement on social media on Tuesday, insisting that it “does not and will not have any boat connected with drug trafficking activities, neither in the Caribbean nor any other ocean.” Narcotics smuggling is “simply… prohibited” by the group’s rules, it said as cited by Reuters.

The ELN is the oldest rebel group in Colombia, which has been fighting the government since the mid-1960s. Washington claims that it also maintains a presence in Venezuela. The group, which pursues Communist ideology, is designated a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and some other countries.

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On Monday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the strike on the boat, in which three people were killed. The vessel belonged to a “humble family” and was not involved in drug trafficking, he insisted.

Earlier this month, Petro claimed that the American attacks on boats off Venezuela’s coast, which began in September, were “an aggression against all of Latin America and the Caribbean.” He asserted the US was trying to gain control of the region’s oil reserves – not curb the flow of narcotics. Venezuelan authorities say the strikes were in fact part of Washington’s campaign to depose Nicolas Maduro. Caracas denies ties to cartels and has vowed to repel any invasion.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump called his Colombian counterpart an “illegal drug dealer,” saying that he would raise tariffs on the South American nation and stop all payments to it. Drug trafficking “has become the biggest business” in Colombia and “Petro does nothing to stop it,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

READ MORE: Trump releases footage of US Navy destroying ‘very large’ sub (VIDEO)

Bogota responded by recalling its ambassador from Washington on Monday, with Petro accusing Trump of being “rude and ignorant to Colombia.”

Over half of all chatbot suggestions lean towards two dominant political blocs, a data watchdog has found

The Dutch data protection authority (AP) has warned voters not to rely on AI chatbots for advice ahead of national elections, claiming that the tools provide unreliable information and could steer users toward two major opposition parties.

AI advice disproportionately favored two front-running blocs – the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) and the left-wing GroenLinks-PvdA alliance – accounting for 56% of responses, a concentration that contrasts with the highly fragmented 15-party Dutch parliament, the regulator said. Opinion polls project the two blocs could secure just over a third of the vote in the October 29 election, it added.

According to the report, some parties, including the center-right CDA, “are almost never mentioned, even when the user’s input exactly matches the positions of one of these parties.”

“Chatbots may seem like clever tools, but as a voting aid, they consistently fail,” the watchdog’s vice-chair, Monique Verdier, stated, describing their operation as “unclear and difficult to verify.”

She said the technology risked steering voters toward a party that did not necessarily reflect their political views.

“We therefore warn against using AI chatbots for voting advice,” Verdier added.

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The agency tested four major chatbots, which it did not name, and found they sometimes advised voting for one of the two major parties even when explicitly fed the campaign platform of a smaller party.

The snap election in the Netherlands was triggered months ago by the collapse of the right-wing coalition after the PVV, led by MP Geert Wilders, exited. The vote is widely seen as a contest between the formation of a new, all-conservative government or a more centrist or center-right coalition.

An international study coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC found that major AI assistants, including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, distorted news content in nearly half of their responses. The research analysed more than 3,000 AI-generated answers in 14 languages and concluded that 45% contained “at least one significant issue” when addressing news-related queries.

OpenAI and Microsoft have previously acknowledged that so-called “hallucinations” – cases in which an AI system generates incorrect or misleading information – remain an issue they are working to address.

The heist at the Natural History Museum in Paris marks another incident in a rising trend of high-profile burglaries in Europe

A Chinese national has been charged over a €1.5 million gold heist last month at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, Franceinfo reported on Tuesday, citing the prosecutor’s office.

The disappearance of nearly 6kg of gold was discovered by museum staff on the morning of September 16. The nuggets had been part of a permanent exhibit.

According to prosecutors, the stolen items included Bolivian nuggets donated to the Academy of Sciences in the 18th century, pieces from Russia’s Ural region gifted by Tsar Nicholas I in 1833, and nuggets from California dating back to the gold rush. Among them was a single gold nugget weighing over 5kg, found in Australia in 1990.

Police found signs of forced entry at two doors, each cut with an angle grinder, leaving openings slightly larger than an A4 sheet of paper. Security footage showed a small woman dressed in black slipping through one of the holes shortly after 1am.

The suspect used a blowtorch to shatter a display case containing the nuggets before exiting the building around 4am. Investigators said she wore a hat with a face-covering veil similar to a beekeeper’s net and looked like a circus artist. Tools recovered at the scene also included a screwdriver, saws, and gas canisters.

Police tracked the suspect through phone records and determined she left France the same day, heading toward China. She was later detained at Barcelona airport, where officers seized nearly 1kg of melted gold.

The case adds to a growing list of high-profile museum thefts across Europe and beyond. Earlier this month, thieves stole Napoleonic jewelry worth an estimated €88 million ($102 million) from the Louvre. A Picasso painting valued at $650,000 disappeared en route to a Spanish museum last week. In September, a 3,000-year-old gold bracelet was stolen from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Four pieces of historic art, including an approximately 2,500-year-old gold helmet, were also taken from the Drents Museum in the Netherlands in January.

News outlets have speculated that the test was timed to coincide with US President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to South Korea

North Korea fired several ballistic missiles on Wednesday morning, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) have reported.

The short-range weapons were launched from the southern North Hwanghae Province and traveled roughly 350km before landing in North Hamgyong Province, in the country’s northeast, according to a statement from Seoul. Military analysts believe the projectiles may have been of the same type tested by Pyongyang in September of 2024.

Japan’s newly appointed prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said Tokyo was sharing real-time tracking and warning data with both the United States and South Korea following the launches.

Pyongyang has not commented on the tests, which mark the latest in a series of ballistic missile trials this year. The previous round took place in early May.

Some media outlets have suggested that the new launch was timed in anticipation of US President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to South Korea. He is scheduled to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit next week in the coastal city of Gyeongju.

READ MORE: South Korea to hide bomb shelter under public gym

Media outlets in South Korea and Japan have also speculated that Trump could meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during the trip – a potential reprise of the high-profile summits they held during Trump’s first term.

The “pro-war political elite” is trying to derail the planned summit between the Russian and US leaders, Budapest has warned

The Western media will continue to spread “fake news” aimed at derailing a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has warned.

Several outlets reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed White House officials, that plans for the meeting in the Hungarian capital had been put “on hold.”

Responding to the claims, Szijjarto took to X to warn that from the moment the meeting was announced following a phone call between Putin and Trump last week, “it was obvious that many would do everything possible to stop it from happening.”

“The pro-war political elite and their media always behave this way before events that could prove decisive between war and peace,” he added.

According to the foreign minister, it will be the same in the run-up to the talks in Budapest. “Until the summit actually takes place, expect a wave of leaks, fake news, and statements claiming that it will not happen,” Szijjarto said.

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Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov had earlier called the claims “infodumps,” intended to disrupt diplomatic progress on settling the Ukraine conflict. “EU and NATO countries are seeking to torpedo everything,” he said.

EU officials have publicly claimed that they would welcome another Putin-Trump meeting. However, El Pais has reported that behind closed doors, Brussels – which continues to support Ukraine and urge increased pressure on Russia – views the summit as a “political nightmare.”

On Tuesday, the Financial Times cited an unnamed EU diplomat as saying “no one likes it,” and that “we are all grinning through our teeth whilst saying this is fine.”

In the same article, the FT claimed that the talks in the Hungarian capital have been “canceled,” and that a White House official has said there are no plans for a Putin-Trump summit “in the immediate future.”

READ MORE: ‘No one’ in EU likes prospect of Trump-Putin summit – FT

Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev rejected the report, accusing the FT of “twisting” the comments by its source. “Preparations continue” for the Budapest summit, he wrote on X.

Kaja Kallas has cited an ICC arrest warrant for the Russian president ahead of upcoming talks with his US counterpart

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has said that it is “not nice” that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his US counterpart Donald Trump for peace talks in Hungary.

The two leaders announced plans to meet in Budapest after they spoke for over two hours by phone on Thursday.

Speaking to journalists ahead of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg on Monday, Kallas said that she would be unhappy to see “a person with an arrest warrant put by the ICC… coming to a European [sic EU] country.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023, over allegations that children were unlawfully deported from Donbass. Moscow does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction but has said that children were evacuated from the war zone for their own safety and to be safely reunited with their families.

While Hungary is a signatory to the Rome Statute that governs the ICC’s activities, Budapest has guaranteed passage to the Russian president.

Speaking to TASS on Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that the “aggressive Western European community” was seeking to “derail any peaceful aspirations” through “active subversive actions.”

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Calls for peace in Brussels are mere “camouflage,” she said.

On Saturday, Spain’s El Pais newspaper claimed that the planned Putin-Trump meeting in the heart of Europe was an “embarrassing and awkward situation” for the EU, which would apparently be excluded from the peace process.

Speaking during a press briefing on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Moscow would like to “make progress towards a settlement with Ukraine.”

Hungary has been chosen as the host nation since its prime minister, Viktor Orban, maintains “warm” and “constructive” relations with both the Russian and US presidents, he explained.

In a post on Facebook on Saturday, Orban wrote that Hungary, in stark contrast to most other EU member states, has “never closed channels of negotiation” with Moscow.

A victory is unlikely for Kiev, the US president has said

US President Donald Trump does not believe Ukraine can win its war with Russia. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said “They could still win it. I don’t think they will, but they could still win it,” when asked to clarify his position on the conflict.

”I said they could win. Anything could happen. You know, war is a very strange thing. A lot of bad things happen. A lot of good things happen,” he said.

When asked about alleged Russian strikes on civilian areas in Ukraine, he replied that most of those killed were soldiers. Trump also claimed that around 5,000 to 7,000 servicemen on both sides die every week in the conflict.

Trump said last month that Ukraine might be able to regain all territory it has lost to Russia over the course of the three-year war.

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Following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, Trump again insisted that Ukraine is bound to lose some of its “property” to Russia in the aftermath of the enduring conflict.

While Kiev has repeatedly ruled out territorial concessions, Moscow has listed the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the new Russian regions among the key issues to be resolved in order to establish a lasting peace.

Since taking office, Trump has abandoned the Biden administration’s approach of maintaining diplomatic distance from Moscow. In August, Trump met with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, and last week the two leaders announced that they are preparing for another meeting in Budapest.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has expressed readiness to facilitate the summit.