LONDON (AP) — A tiny English village has voted to leave the United Kingdom as a symbolic protest against government plans to house up to 1,200 asylum seekers on a nearby military base.

Residents of Piddington, which has a population of about 350, voted overwhelmingly for secession in the non-binding referendum. The results announced on Wednesday showed 285 votes in favor of breaking away, with 26 villagers voting against.

“We have given an absolute message, not just to the region, not just to the country, but to the world,” said the parish chairman, Tim McNally. He said the district will henceforth be known as “the Principality of Piddington.”

The attention-grabbing vote was called to oppose plans to turn the former Ministry of Defense Bicester base — which is about half a mile (0.8 kilometers) from the village — into housing for male migrants. The government says the site is “designed to be largely self‑sufficient to minimize any impact on the local community.”

Residents in the Oxfordshire village have raised fears about safety, crime and the effect on house prices in the affluent area, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of London.

Supporters called the declaration of independence a victory for people power and local democracy. Some media coverage compared the gesture to the classic 1949 Ealing comedy film “Passport to Pimlico,” in which a London neighborhood breaks away from Britain.

Others said the campaign had a darker side and stirred up fear of newcomers. Some backers of the Piddington referendum compared their fight against the asylum accommodation to the 1940 Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany.

Villager Herbert Owen, 76, said after voting on Tuesday that the independence referendum “isn’t just about Piddington,” adding: “It means everything our grandparents, our parents fought for. Today is the Battle of Britain.”

Comparing unauthorized immigration to an invasion has become increasingly common among politicians including Nigel Farage of Reform UK, and far-right groups that have been active in organizing and attending anti-immigrant protests.

The U.K. has seen a wave of anti-immigrant demonstrations since riots erupted two years ago after a teenager killed three young girls during a dance class near Liverpool. The U.K.-born attacker had been wrongly identified on social media as a Muslim asylum seeker.

Protesters clashed with police last year outside hotels housing asylum seekers in London and several other cities.

In June, masked men in Northern Ireland set fire to several homes in Belfast they believed to house immigrants after a Sudanese man was arrested over a stabbing.

Earlier this month, masked demonstrators blocked the port of Dover, in southeast England, and tried to stop a boatload of migrants being taken ashore in Portsmouth on the country’s south coast.

The center-left Labour Party government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham says it is making progress in processing asylum claims more quickly, so that migrants spend less time in state-sponsored accommodation, and stopping people crossing the English Channel in inflatable dinghies.

More than 41,000 people made the hazardous journey in 2025, but the number so far this year is down by more than 40% from the same period last year.

The government has also pledged to move migrants from hotels and rooming houses — often in poorer neighborhoods — into more suitable accommodation.

“I understand the strength of feeling,” Burnham said on Wednesday. “I will look at the issues being raised by the community and in the referendum, but we have to ensure that we have a fair plan” that spreads the burden of accommodating new arrivals across the country.

Refugee groups said military barracks aren’t the right place to house asylum seekers, but cautioned that migrants should not be made scapegoats.

“For people who have fled war and violence and come to the U.K. to be safe, being accommodated in such remote and unsettling environments only exacerbates their sense of insecurity,” said Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council.

“And as we’ve seen from other sites, they’ve undermined social cohesion.”

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The U.S. special envoy for Belarus said Wednesday that the country’s authorities have agreed to release 25 prisoners as part of a deal that includes the lifting of U.S. sanctions against some Belarusian companies.

John Coale, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Belarus, made the statement a day after meeting Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who pushed for the remaining U.S. sanctions against his country to be lifted.

“25 prisoners are free today!” Coale said on X, adding that “President Trump’s commitment to direct diplomacy delivers results.” He also thanked Lukashenko and authorities in Lithuania, a European Union member that neighbors Belarus, for their support.

“We will continue to improve U.S.-Belarus relations and are working to secure the release of more people in the very near future,” Coale said. “We are not finished!”

Belarusian state news agency BELTA quoted Coale as saying Wednesday that the parties reached significant progress during Tuesday’s talks and that the U.S. will lift sanctions imposed on two Belarusian companies.

Belarusian authorities haven’t announced any details of the prisoners’ release yet.

Lukashenko has governed the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and the country has been sanctioned repeatedly by Western countries — both for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Since Trump returned to the White House for his second term, Lukashenko has released hundreds of political prisoners in a series of U.S.-mediated deals that also lifted some U.S. sanctions.

Speaking before the meeting with Coale, Lukashenko said that he’s open for discussing “a deal big or small.” Lukashenko also said that he would like to discuss the prospects for lifting more U.S. sanctions and exporting Belarusian fertilizers to the U.S.

As part of a deal in March that Washington helped broker, Lukashenko ordered the release of 250 political prisoners, while the U.S. agreed to lift sanctions on two Belarusian state banks and the country’s Finance Ministry, and to remove the top Belarusian potash producers from a sanctions list.

Another deal in April released prominent journalist Andrzej Poczobut in a swap with Poland that saw a total of 10 people freed.

Lukashenko’s rule was challenged after a 2020 presidential election, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest a vote they viewed as rigged. In an ensuing crackdown, tens of thousands were detained, with many beaten by police. Prominent opposition figures fled the country or were imprisoned.

Five years after the mass demonstrations, Lukashenko won a seventh term last year in an election that the opposition called a farce.

The Belarusian opposition has welcomed Coale’s efforts as an important humanitarian mission, but emphasized that Lukashenko’s government has jailed more political prisoners.

Belarusian opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Tuesday she was deeply grateful to Trump, Coale and the U.S. administration for “making political prisoners a priority,” adding that “their engagement has already brought real results.”

But she emphasized that “repression continues” and Lukashenko “continues supporting Russia’s war.”

“The purpose should be to empty the prisons, not to rehabilitate the dictatorship,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

Belarus still has 887 political prisoners, according to the Viasna human rights center.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone struck a passenger bus in southern Ukraine early Wednesday, killing five people and wounding at least seven. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack, the latest in a series of Russian strikes on civilian transportation, as an “atrocity.”

The strike occurred in the Nikopol district of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, near the war’s southern front line. Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the regional military administration, said all five were killed at the scene while the seven wounded were receiving medical care.

In a post on social media site X, Zelenskyy described the vehicle as a minibus and said the strike had “no military rationale,” and that the incident was connected to Russia’s targeting of logistics and critical infrastructure that has continued “unabated.”

Zelenskyy said a passenger train was also struck in the Mykolaiv region on Wednesday, damaging a railway station and a diesel locomotive. Nearly 170 passengers on board the train were evacuated before the strike. An electric locomotive in the northwestern city of Kovel was also struck, Zelenskyy said.

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s rail network have resulted in over 500 locomotives being damaged or completely destroyed since the beginning of the war in February 2022, with more than half those strikes occurring this year, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X on Tuesday.

Sybiha described such attacks as “systematic” and aimed at disrupting logistics across Ukraine. He said Ukraine urgently needs replacements for damaged locomotives, and called on the country’s partners to assist in finding locomotives compatible with its 1,520 millimeter rail gauge and to assist in financing.

In another post on X on Wednesday, Sybiha said Russian forces were striking passenger trains, locomotives, stations and railway routes “knowing exactly how essential they are for civilians, evacuations, and Ukraine’s economy.”

“This is not collateral damage. It is a systematic hunt for people and an attempt to paralyse civilian life,” he wrote.

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Zelenskyy pushed back against an earlier claim by U.S. President Donald Trump that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to mutually cease attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure. Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to enter such an agreement if Russia stops striking Ukrainian energy facilities.

Trump said in a social media post Monday that such a truce had been reached, but didn’t offer details on the purported agreement. Previous efforts to broker even a partial ceasefire have repeatedly fallen apart within hours, with both sides accusing the other of violations.

In the CBS interview, Zelenskyy said the possibility of an energy truce was discussed during a recent meeting in Kyiv with Trump’s representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, but that he had told them: “If the Russians are ready for an energy truce, that means there will be no attacks on energy facilities at all.”

The deputy head of the Russian armed forces’ military-political department, Lt. Gen. Apti Alaudinov, confirmed Wednesday that a decorated Russian general had been killed by a Ukrainian drone in the occupied Donetsk region.

Alaudinov, who did not provide details on the circumstances of Maj. Gen. Anton Grunis’ death, hailed the officer as “one of the most respected generals … a real man and officer and a great patriot.”

“He has died as a hero, who has fulfilled his sacred duty,” Alaudinov said.

In July, Grunis reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his troops had captured the town of Kostiantynivka and he was later awarded with the Hero of Russia medal. Ukraine has disputed Kostiantynivka was fully taken by Russian forces.

Grunis had previously fought in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim republic whose bid for independence after the Soviet Union’s collapse led to years of war with Russian government forces, and also took part in Russia’s campaign in Syria.

In Ukraine, he commanded the 4th Guards Motorized Infantry Brigade.

Meanwhile, 17 other sites were damaged in Ukraine’s Kyiv region between Tuesday and Wednesday morning, according to the head of the Kyiv regional military administration, Tymur Tkachenko. Among the sites damaged were eight private homes, five vehicles, a municipal building, a hangar and a production facility, Tkachenko said on Telegram.

Zelenskyy said on X that the Kherson, Donetsk and Poltava regions had also come under attack.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 71 Ukrainian drones overnight. In the Belgorod region, one person was killed and four others were injured by Ukrainian strikes over the last 24 hours, according to acting governor Alexander Shuvayev.

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MOSCOW, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Russia believes there is still time to prevent an arms race in space by drawing up a legally-binding international treaty to outlaw the deployment of offensive weapons there and called on the United States and other nations to set aside their scepticism about the idea, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday. 

Ryabkov was commenting after the U.S. acknowledged this week that the Pentagon is operating weapons in Earth’s orbit, a landmark moment in the militarisation of space. U.S. Space Force chief Douglas Schiess said that enlisted members of his military branch “operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the Joint Force against space-enabled attacks.”

Speaking at a news briefing in Moscow, Ryabkov said the United States had not notified Russia – one of the world’s top three space powers – about its new weapons capability, but said the U.S. statement had not come as a surprise.   

“This is nothing new to us; we are monitoring all of this, recording it all, and drawing the appropriate conclusions,” he said, noting that Moscow had long spoken of the need for a treaty that would rule out the use of force in space or the threat of force against objects in space.

“The Americans and other Westerners, in particular the British, have for many years used inflammatory excuses to cover up their unwillingness to move in this direction; they seek out spurious arguments to avoid doing so and attempt to turn the tables by accusing us of activities which, in their view, are destabilising in nature,” said Ryabkov.

“But we believe that it is not yet too late to create an environment that would preclude an arms race with escalating risks of open conflict in outer space.”

(Reporting by Dmitry AntonovEditing by Andrew Osborn )

JOHANNESBURG, Sept 16 (Reuters) – South Africa’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it had noted with concern U.S. visa restrictions on some people from South Africa announced by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio a day earlier.

The foreign ministry added in a statement that the U.S. announcement aligned with “the mischaracterisation of South Africa’s domestic policies by fringe groups”.

“We maintain that challenges in our bilateral relations with the USA can only be resolved by constructive engagement through state actors on both sides of the diplomatic channel not unilateral acts,” the statement said.

Trump has repeatedly criticized South Africa since the start of his second term for what he falsely claims is the racial persecution of its white minority, citing affirmative action laws aimed at addressing the inequality that has persisted since apartheid.

It was not clear who would be impacted by the new visa restrictions. The U.S. Ambassador to South Africa said in a post on X earlier on Wednesday that they were “only the first step in a series of escalatory measures”.

(Reporting by Anathi Madubela and Sfundo Parakozov;Writing by Nellie Peyton;Editing by Alexander Winning)

VATICAN CITY, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Pope Leo said on Wednesday that recent conflicts in the Middle East had tested relations between Jews and Christians, adding that differing views of the ongoing violence had strained dialogue but not broken it.

In a new decree to mark the Catholic Church’s last 60 years of efforts at inter-religious dialogue, the pope also reiterated the Church’s condemnations of both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

“The conflicts that have erupted in the Middle East in recent years have … left their mark on Jewish-Christian dialogue,” said the decree, developed by three top Vatican offices and approved by Leo.

“Many channels of communication have been strained,” it said. “Nevertheless, the pillars of dialogue among believers, built over 60 years of common effort, have remained firm. Upon these foundations, it is both possible and necessary to continue building.”

The decree, issued to mark the anniversary of a 1965 Church document widely credited with improving centuries of acrimony between Jews and Christians, did not mention any specific Middle East conflicts.

Leo, the first U.S.-born pope, has previously criticised the Iran war, drawing the ire of President Donald Trump on social media.

Wednesday’s decree described fighting antisemitism as a “shared struggle” for Jews and Christians. It also said attitudes of Islamophobia “fail to distinguish” between cases of extremist violence and the everyday lives of the world’s Muslims.    

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

By Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – The drone shot down in Lithuania by an Italian NATO fighter jet on Tuesday was of a type used by Russia and was most likely targeted at Ukraine, Lithuania’s president said on Wednesday.

“It was a Gerbera drone,” Gitanas Nauseda told reporters on Wednesday, referring to a cheap plywood long-range aerial drone used by Russia. Gerbera drones are often used as decoys but can also carry explosives.

“It was most likely not a conscious action against Lithuania. It [the drone] was probably targeted towards Ukraine but affected by Ukrainian electronic warfare and deviated off course,” he added.

The Lithuanian army is analysing the drone’s electronics to determine its targeting, Nauseda said.

The drone is the first suspected Russian drone shot down by the NATO Baltic Air Defence mission, which has patrolled the skies in the region since the Baltic states joined NATO in 2004.

Countries on NATO’s eastern flank have seen repeated drone incursions, fuelling fears of the war between Russia and Ukraine spilling over the alliance’s borders.

Russia has not commented on the incident.

“The security situation has not changed,” Nauseda said. Although there is no large-scale operation against Lithuania or NATO, there could still be “certain incidents, provocation, sabotage acts, including false-flag operations,” he added.

Attacks against Russian opposition activists or Ukrainian supporters are also possible, he said.

Polish prosecutors said on Wednesday that a drone spotted in the Baltic sea and later washed up on a Polish beach on Monday was a Russian Gerbera 2 drone according to preliminary findings.

Colonel Bartosz Okoniewski, the deputy district prosecutor for military affairs at the District Prosecutor’s Office in Poznan, told state news agency PAP the drone was carrying a warhead which was neutralised on the beach overnight.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, additional reporting by Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Hugh Lawson)

NEW DELHI, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Nepali authorities said on Wednesday that only about 7% of the bodies recovered after the devastating flood have been identified, underscoring the scale of the work involved in helping thousands of families find out the fate of loved ones.

Weeks after the torrent of mud, rocks and water was unleashed by a glacial collapse, relatives continue to seek answers from authorities as hopes of finding survivors fade.

About 5,200 people remain missing, including 636 foreigners, after the disaster swept through mountain communities and hydropower sites, killing at least 1,399 people, Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

The agency said it collected DNA samples from 1,206 bodies and 1,889 samples from family members of the missing.

Despite that, overall only 105 bodies have been identified and handed to family members, it added.

Authorities have deployed thermal drones and helicopters in the search and brought in specialists to rescue workers trapped in tunnels.

The search for the missing has led to a few remarkable rescues of people trapped in tunnels of Nepal’s hydropower plants.

But the once regular flow of information about the rescue effort has slowed, families of foreign nationals said.

“Narrow airspace, difficult geographical mountainous terrain and scale of debris deposited are the major challenges on locating the missing,” the department said.

It added that it was providing regular updates to embassies and families through direct and indirect channels.

(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed in New Delhi; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

LONDON (AP) — Inflation in the United Kingdom rose to a five-month high as the aftershocks of the Iran war continued to ratchet up fuel prices, official figures showed Wednesday, an increase that will pressure the Bank of England to hike interest rates again over coming months.

The Office for National Statistics said rising prices at the pump and airfares were largely behind the increase in the U.K.’s consumer prices index to 3.1% in August from 2.9% the month before. The increase moved inflation further away from the Bank of England’s 2% inflation target.

However, rate-setters are widely expected to keep the bank’s main interest rate at 3.75% when they conclude their meeting on Thursday as a majority of the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee appear to want to see whether higher prices are feeding into higher wages that could further stoke inflationary pressures. A soft labor market is currently keeping wage demands in check.

“August’s inflation increase is unlikely to trigger a rate hike tomorrow, as policymakers will take some comfort from a cooling jobs market,” said Suren Thiru, chief economist at ICAEW. “However, it will probably harden the Bank’s hawkish tone and leave the door open to higher rates later this year.”

Interest rates in the U.K. had been trending downward from a 15-year high of 5.25% until the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February. The Iran war led to sharp increases in oil and gas prices, partly because the crucial Strait of Hormuz has been largely closed to traffic ever since.

As well as impacting the cost of personal loans and mortgages, the uptick in interest rate expectations is a growing problem for the British government as the servicing of its debt accounts for a higher proportion of its spending.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham insisted the British economy is still showing “resilience across the board” and that next month’s annual budget statement would take a prudence-first approach.

“We won’t take risks with people’s living standards or with the economy as a whole,” he said.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The Trump administration has announced that it will impose travel bans on officials it claims are responsible for discrimination against whites and other minority groups in South Africa.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday he would revoke U.S. visas or reject visa applications from foreign nationals found to be responsible for, or complicit in, enacting or enforcing laws and policies that allow for uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination and the incitement of violence against minority ethnic and racial groups in South Africa.

“The United States will not allow such behavior to go unchecked,” Rubio said in a statement. “These actions directly undermine peace, economic stability, and the rule of law, and they are incompatible with the pillars of America’s foreign policy.”

The South African government has strongly rejected U.S. allegations of discrimination against whites, calling the claims made by the administration since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office last year baseless and a result of misinformation.

Rubio did not identify any officials who would be targeted with the travel restrictions, though a lobby group for minority whites in South Africa has previously called for the U.S. to sanction officials of the African National Congress party, the party of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and the largest in South Africa’s Parliament.

It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to sanction South Africa over its claims that whites, and especially the Afrikaner group, are being discriminated against by their Black-led government. Afrikaners are descended from mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who first came to South Africa in the 17th century. They were at the heart of South Africa’s previous apartheid system of racial segregation.

There are approximately 4.5 million white people in South Africa’s population of 62 million, which also includes whites with British or other heritage.

The U.S. has cited a contentious South African law that allows for the expropriation of unused private land without compensation in some circumstances, affirmative action policies that advance opportunities for Blacks and others, and a small number of violent crimes against white farmers as evidence of a larger anti-white stance in South Africa.

The Trump administration has also strongly criticized South Africa’s move to accuse U.S. ally Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a highly emotive case in the United Nations’ top court. Israel vehemently denies that allegation.

The U.S. has enforced a series of other sanctions against South Africa during Trump’s second term for purported anti-white and anti-American policies. They include barring South African officials from meetings of the Group of 20 economic bloc this year in the U.S., and phasing out aid for South Africa’s HIV treatment program.

The U.S. has also launched a refugee program for Afrikaners and other whites, claiming baselessly that they are victims of a humanitarian emergency in South Africa.

The U.S. says the sanctions are because South Africa has not changed its policies.

“This visa restriction policy is only the first step in a series of escalatory measures that will show America’s firm resolve in this matter,” the official U.S. Ambassador to South Africa account posted on X on Wednesday, referring to Rubio’s visa announcement.

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AP writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

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