More than 218,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in October -- a monthly record and nearly the same number as in the whole of 2014, the United Nations said Monday.

"Last month was a record month for arrivals," U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told Agence France Presse, pointing out that "arrivals in October paralleled the entire 2014."

The European Union said Monday it looked forward to working with the new Turkish government after elections showed the people's "strong commitment" to democracy as it waited for an international report on the vote.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won Sunday's vote by a landslide, taking 316 seats in the 550-member parliament to easily form a government on its own after it lost its majority in a June ballot.

The Colombian coast guard rescued 20 Cuban migrants Sunday who were on a boat that had been abandoned by human traffickers in the Gulf of Uraba, the navy said. 

The migrants include 15 men and five women who were found aboard the boat adrift in the north of the gulf, which is part of the Caribbean.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and his South Korean counterpart vowed zero tolerance Monday in the face of any North Korean provocations and agreed to strengthen combined defenses against the myriad threats posed by Pyongyang.

Carter met with Han Min-Koo in Seoul during an annual security meeting for the two allies to assess their ongoing military cooperation.

A U.N. body has determined that former Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been jailed illegally and called for his immediate release, according to a copy of the opinion released Monday by his family.

Anwar, 68, was jailed in February for five years after earlier being convicted for sodomizing a former male aide. He denies the charge, calling it a frame-up by Malaysia's long-ruling government to halt recent opposition political gains.

The leaders of South Korea and Japan broke an extended diplomatic freeze Monday with a rare summit that saw agreement on trying to resolve sensitive historical disputes that have tainted ties for decades.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed a range of topics including the thorny issue of the so-called "comfort women," forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

Selahattin Demirtas, the charismatic leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish party, remains the biggest thorn in the side of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after managing to hold onto his HDP's cherished parliamentary representation, against considerable odds.

Nicknamed the "Kurdish Obama" for his smooth rhetorical skills, Demirtas propelled his Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) into mainstream politics with a message that embodies the hopes of Turkey's biggest minority, but also appeals to non-Kurds.

Azerbaijan's ruling party won a majority in disputed parliamentary polls that were boycotted by all major opposition forces, final results showed Monday, cementing strongman President Ilham Aliyev's grip on power.

Aliyev's Yeni(New) Azerbaijan party took 71 seats in the country's 125-seat parliament, with all votes counted, the Central Election Commission chief, Mazakhir Panakhov, told a news conference.

A second plane carrying victims of the Russian passenger jet crash is set to leave Egypt Monday evening, Russian officials said, as relatives prepared to identify the remains of their loved ones in Saint Petersburg.

Russia's emergency situations ministry said that the second flight was scheduled to take off from Cairo at 1800 GMT, but did not give any indication of how many bodies would be on board. 

Nepal police on Monday fired into a crowd of protesters trying to block a key border checkpoint and killed an Indian civilian as anger over a new constitution boiled over.

The violence came hours after police forcibly broke up the blockade in the southern town of Birgunj on the border with India that has led to crippling fuel shortages and cut off access to other vital supplies in the landlocked Himalayan nation.