KASHMIR: A party opposed to India’s stripping of Kashmir’s semi-autonomy has won most seats in the local election.

National Conference (NC) won 42 seats, mainly from the Kashmir Valley, the heartland of the anti-India rebellion, according to the data.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party secured 29 seats, while India’s main opposition Congress party, which fought the election in alliance with the NC, won six constituencies.

CYPRUS: Cyprus has violated two Syrian nationals’ right to seek asylum in the island nation, Europe’s top human rights court has ruled.

The European Court of Human Rights said that Cypriot authorities had returned the two cousins from Idlib, Syria, without processing their asylum claims. 

Authorities should have ensured their asylum applications were processed in Lebanon or that they would not be forcibly returned to Syria, where they could face persecution, the court ruled. 

THAILAND: Mourners wept and monks prayed at a cremation ceremony today in a small town in central Thailand for 23 young students and teachers who died in last week’s bus fire.

Six teachers and 39 elementary and junior high school students were on a school field trip when the bus caught fire on October 1, on a highway in Pathum Thani, a northern suburb of Bangkok. 

FRANCE: French anti-terror prosecutors announced the arrests today of three people in south-west France suspected of plotting a terror attack.

Police detained the three people in the Toulouse region, the national anti-terror prosecutors’ office said.