World News Roundup for March 31

FRANKFURT - Three people died in a small plane crash near Frankfurt, and two more people died in a collision with a police car heading to the plane crash site, German police announced.

According to the statement, the plane took off from France towards the city of Egelsbach in central Germany, when it crashed and caught fire in a field 10 kilometers south of Frankfurt.

KYIV - Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a presidential candidate, has disputed exit poll results showing she did not receive enough votes to enter the second round.

Polls showed comedian Volodymyr Zelensky and current President Petro Poroshenko advancing to the second round.

ROME – Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced yesterday that he will run for the European Parliament in the May elections, citing a desire to fight for a more united European Union closer to the vision of its founders, agencies report.

Berlusconi announced this in a speech he gave this weekend at a conference of his center-right party 'Forza Italia', whose popularity is declining due to its affinity for right-wing parties that convey eurosceptic and anti-immigrant messages.

LONDON – British police are still searching for a man who stabbed four people in north London.

The bloody spree lasted from Saturday at 7 PM until Sunday morning when his trail went cold. The first victim was a woman who was taken to a hospital in east London with critical injuries. Shortly after, a man was attacked in Park Avenue, but he is not in life-threatening condition. The third victim of the attacker is a 23-year-old man who is in serious condition due to his injuries. The last incident occurred on Sunday at 9:43 AM, after which the attacker disappeared without a trace.
Police stated that the suspect is a dark-skinned man wearing a hood. The statement also said that the attacks are not related to terrorism and that the perpetrator is most likely a person with mental health problems.

TUNIS - The Arab League announced yesterday at a summit in Tunis that it will propose a draft resolution to the UN Security Council condemning the US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Representatives of the 22 Arab League states also emphasized in a joint statement after the summit that they will request an opinion from the International Court of Justice on the 'illegality and invalidity of the US recognition' of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

Reuters reports that the final communique of the summit, among other things, highlighted the support of Arab countries for the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel peace in exchange for withdrawal from all territories occupied in the 1967 war, as well as the intention to resume peace negotiations with Israel.

In his address to the gathering in Tunis, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that any solution to the conflict in Syria must guarantee the country's territorial integrity, 'including the occupied Golan Heights'.

ANKARA - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) is leading in the local elections with 48 percent of the votes after approximately 28 percent of the ballots have been counted, TRT reported in the evening.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) won 31 percent of the votes, with more than 194,000 polling stations counted, agencies report.

Early Monday morning, both parties claimed victory in Istanbul, Reuters reported.

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP candidate, told reporters that he had won by about 28,000 votes more than his opponent. Just minutes later, AKP candidate Binali Yıldırım stated that his party had won by about 4,000 votes more than his CHP rival.