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Former Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is seeking to extend his hold on power through a parliamentary vote.

Former Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has launched his campaign for prime minister ahead of a pivotal election on October 25.

Thousands of supporters of the populist politician packed the largest indoor arena in Belgrade on Saturday, as Vucic pledged a “comprehensive” victory in the upcoming parliamentary vote.

The snap election, which polls suggest could be tight between Vucic’s party and a group of candidates fielded by a student-led protest movement, was called before Vucic resigned as president on September 27, cutting short his second term by more than seven months.

Dozens of buses from across Serbia clogged streets around Belgrade Arena on Saturday, as supporters arrived at the rally in the capital carrying Serbian flags and banners bearing Vucic’s picture.

The event, televised by dozens of channels across Serbia, capped a week of Vucic touring towns and villages in an apparent bid to shore up his popularity, which has been shaken after almost two years of sustained antigovernment protests.

Vucic, on the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) ballot, has dominated Serbian politics as president or prime minister since 2014. Barred from seeking a third presidential term, he is now seeking to extend his hold on power through the parliamentary vote.

If the SNS wins a majority of seats, the parliament is expected to elect Vucic as prime minister.

Youth movement

The youth-backed movement that led the protests has demanded accountability for the November 1, 2024, train station canopy collapse that killed 16 people in the northern city of Novi Sad.

The movement’s quest for justice over the tragedy and against corruption has grown into a nationwide political force whose electoral arm, the Student List, will attempt to oust Vucic’s government.

The Student List includes university professors, teachers, experts and others from across the political spectrum. Vucic accused those behind the movement of seeking to “bring Serbia to a halt” and claimed, without providing evidence, that it is backed by unspecified foreign agents.

On Saturday, Vucic told his supporters: “Absent an intervention of some [foreign intelligence] service, we will defeat them. And they know that.”

Hungary’s Parliament lifts immunity of incumbent leader and two ex-Orban ministers, clearing the way for criminal probes.

Hungary’s Parliament has stripped Prime Minister Peter Magyar and two ministers in former leader Viktor Orban’s nationalist government of their immunity, clearing the way for prosecutors to pursue separate criminal investigations into each of them.

The vote on Monday came after Magyar, who is being investigated for theft, specifically asked for his immunity to be lifted so he could clear himself of “character assassination”. The probes against the Orban-era ministers – who are suspected of embezzlement and bribery – are the first corruption investigations against top government figures from Orban’s 16 years in power.

Legislators voted overwhelmingly in favour of lifting their immunity.

Orban’s Fidesz party and its ally KDNP boycotted the session.

The vote was in response to a request last week from prosecutors seeking to investigate Magyar, as well as former Minister of Culture Balazs Hanko and former Minister of National Development Miklos Sesztak.

Magyar is being investigated over an incident at a Budapest nightclub in June 2024, when prosecutors allege he took a mobile phone from a man filming him and threw it into the Danube River.

Magyar has called the case a “sham” and last week accused prosecutors of trying “to conflate” the ex-ministers’ cases “with the attempt at political character assassination… which has already failed several times”.

Corruption cases

Hanko, a legislator from Orban’s Fidesz party, is accused of embezzling more than 40 million euros ($46m) in public funds. Prosecutors allege the money was used to help finance the 2026 parliamentary election campaign and for the personal benefit of others.

Sesztak, a lawmaker from KDNP, is under investigation over allegedly accepting more than $37.2m in bribes and kickbacks connected to vehicle procurements under Hungary’s state bus company, as well as to state construction projects.

Both ministers deny any wrongdoing.

The cases come less than six months after Magyar’s Tisza party ended Orban’s 16 years in power with a landslide election victory. Magyar campaigned on pledges to tackle corruption, restore rule-of-law safeguards, and rebuild Hungary’s strained relationship with the European Union.

His government has since made fighting alleged corruption and overpriced public procurement a central part of its programme, including plans for a new asset-recovery office focused on wrongdoing linked to the Orban era.

Caracas, September 11, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela’s oil industry recovery has stagnated in recent months, notwithstanding pro-business reforms and rising global prices.

OPEC’s latest monthly report placed the Caribbean nation’s August production at 1.145 million barrels per day (bpd), up 23,000 bpd from the previous month, according to secondary sources.

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA reported an August output of 1.201 million bpd, virtually unchanged from July. Direct and secondary measurements have differed over time due to disagreements over the inclusion of condensates and natural gas liquids.

The strong first-trimester recovery that followed Washington’s lifting of its naval blockade petered out by mid-year. Since May, output has grown by only 7 percent despite the acting Delcy Rodríguez government conducting a pro-investor overhaul of hydrocarbon legislation and signing deals with several multinational corporations.

Since the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump White House has seized control over Venezuela’s energy sector. Venezuelan crude export revenues are currently deposited in a US Treasury account, an arrangement confirmed by PDVSA President Héctor Obregón, before US officials decide when and how much of the proceeds should be returned to Caracas.

Washington and Caracas recently announced a major oil deal that will further boost US access to Venezuelan hydrocarbons under favorable conditions. The acting Rodríguez government has granted long-term concessions of 17 prime oilfields, holding 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, to US-controlled NABEP, a company led by Venezuelan oil mogul Alejandro Betancourt.

The oilfields transferred to NABEP, several of which were previously run by joint ventures between PDVSA and Chinese partners, are split among extra-heavy-crude projects in the Orinoco Oil Belt and mature light- and medium-crude ones in the Lake Maracaibo basin. Production in the latter can be ramped up faster as Trump seeks to replenish the US strategic reserve.

After initially hailing the deal as “the biggest in history,” US officials have dampened expectations, lowering a US $100 billion investment pledge to “over $10 billion.” Caracas and Washington announced a 1.5 million bpd target, but NABEP disclosed to Bloomberg only a modest projected increase in the near future.

Venezuela’s loss of sovereignty over its flagship industry has prevented the country from reaping the benefits from surging global energy prices, with the Brent benchmark surpassing $100 per barrel for the first time in four months this week. The Trump administration has sought to leverage its long-term access to Venezuelan oil resources to minimize the fallout from the interrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz resulting from its war on Iran.

Since January, Trump officials have worked closely with the Rodríguez administration to grant decades-long energy concessions to Western corporate players and most recently local Latin American conglomerates such as Colombia’s Gilinski Group. 

On September 4, Acting President Rodríguez signed a 25-year deal granting a concession of the heavy crude Bare block to GeoPark, a company belonging to Gilinski. Previously operated by PDVSA, Bare was one of the most productive fields in the Orinoco Oil Belt, with output surpassing 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2011.

At a ceremony in Caracas, Colombian banking mogul Jaime Gilinski thanked Rodríguez for the confidence in awarding a major oilfield to his conglomerate. GeoPark set an 85,000 bpd target and vowed to invest more than $300 million.

The Gilinski Group began in manufacturing before expanding into finance, purchasing multiple Colombian banks and later acquiring positions in other Latin American countries, the US, and Italy. Investigations have implicated the Gilinski Group in parallel banking and tax evasion, including being named in the 2021 Pandora Papers leak alongside other leading members of the Colombian elite. The conglomerate has also ventured into other sectors such as food and media, with Jaime Gilinski currently the richest man in Colombia according to Forbes.

Of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, the Gilinski family is additionally known for its close ties to Israel. Jaime Gilinski’s father, Isaac, served as ambassador to Tel Aviv in 2010-2013, and his sister, Tania, was recently appointed to the same post by Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella. Jaime’s son, Gabriel, traveled to Tel Aviv in 2025, meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu and evaluating business opportunities between Israeli and Colombian firms.

Edited and with additional reporting by Lucas Koerner in Philadelphia, USA.

CAIRO: An Iraqi military commander was dismissed early on Saturday ‌after ‌investigations confirmed the ‌latest drone attacks targeting Saudi Arabia originated from Iraq, according to ‌a statement ‌by Iraq’s ‌prime ‌minister’s office.

The commander led operations ‌in Maysan province in southern Iraq, according to the statement.