The Russian passenger jet that crashed in Egypt killing all 224 people on board came down due to "external" factors, the airline said Monday, as relatives began identifying their loved ones in Saint Petersburg.

Senior Kogalymavia executive Alexander Smirnov said that "no technical failures" could account for why the Airbus 321 would have broken up in mid-air, as investigators have said happened.

Bulgaria's ruling conservative party of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov scored a resounding victory in local elections this weekend, winning mayoral seats in 22 out of the 27 major cities, official results showed Monday.

Borisov's Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party won the mayor's seat in the second largest city of Plovdiv in Sunday's second-round ballot, a week after securing the capital, Sofia.

Thirteen United Nations workers in South Sudan kidnapped by rebels have been safely freed a week after their abduction, the U.N. said Monday.

Around 100 rebel fighters, who have been battling the government for almost two years, seized 31 members of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) last week.

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.