Reuters World News Summary

China's Xi warns of rising risks as party charts course for five years Chinese President Xi Jinping, commenting on the ruling Communist Party's recommendations for the next five years, said on Tuesday said the country faces a significant increase in risks.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. 'Praying that Biden wins': Asylum seekers hold their breath as U.S. votes

In a makeshift refugee camp just across the border from Brownsville, Texas, Oscar Borjas and a few friends are planning to gather on Tuesday night to watch anxiously as results from the U.S. presidential election roll in. Borjas, a Honduran asylum seeker who has spent the last year living in a cold and unsanitary encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, is not a U.S. voter. U.S. Congress notified of drone sale to Taiwan: Pentagon

The U.S. State Department cleared the potential sale of four sophisticated U.S.-made aerial drones to Taiwan in a formal notification sent to Congress, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, the last step before finalizing a weapons sale that will further anger China. The $600 million deal would be the first such sale since U.S. policy on the export of sophisticated and closely guarded drone technology was loosened by the Trump administration. Poland needs calm to discuss disputed abortion ruling: government

Poland needs a period of calm to discuss a ruling by the highest court that bans most abortions, a government spokesman said after the measure did not take effect on Monday as expected following two weeks of mass protests. Widespread outrage among women and others greeted the Oct. 22 ruling which bans terminations due to foetal defects, ending one of the few legal grounds left for abortion in a staunchly Roman Catholic country with a deeply conservative government. 'Death coming for me': Gunmen cut young lives short in Kabul campus slaughter

As Mohammad clambered out of a second-floor window at Kabul University on Monday to escape gunmen rampaging across the campus, he was sure death was close. Minutes earlier, the 20-year-old had been sitting in his classroom in the Afghan university's National Legal Training Centre building, waiting for a lecturer at the start of what should have been a regular Monday morning. Austrian police arrest 14 in manhunt after gunman's deadly rampage

Austrian police raided 18 properties and arrested 14 people in a massive manhunt on Tuesday for possible accomplices of a convicted jihadist who shot dead four people and injured 22 others in a late-night rampage in the centre of Vienna. The gunman, who was killed by police minutes after opening fire on crowded bars on Monday, had been released from jail less than a year ago. He was identified as Kujtim Fejzulai, a 20-year-old Austrian who also held North Macedonian nationality. 'We're really afraid': Fierce Hurricane Eta lashes Nicaragua

Hurricane Eta, one of the most powerful storms to hit Central America in years, plowed into Nicaragua on Tuesday in an impoverished region of its Caribbean coast, battering homes and infrastructure and threatening deadly floods. Eta came ashore south of the port of Puerto Cabezas, pulling roofs off houses, knocking down trees and power lines, and causing flooding in the region, said Guillermo Gonzalez, the head of Nicaragua's disaster management agency SINAPRED. Brazil vice president defends rain forest policy, says it won't change if Biden wins in U.S.

Vice-President Hamilton Mourao on Tuesday defended Brazil's environmental policies, saying the country was working to protect the Amazon rain forest and adding nothing will change if Democrat Joe Biden wins the U.S. presidential election. Biden, who has the backing of environmental groups, has criticized Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of deforestation in the Amazon. A Biden administration would be expected to put the environment and human rights at the top of the bilateral agenda, complicating relations and jeopardizing trade, diplomats and analysts have told Reuters. China's Xi warns of rising risks as party charts course for five years

Chinese President Xi Jinping, commenting on the ruling Communist Party's recommendations for the next five years, said on Tuesday said the country faces a significant increase in risks. Xi and the Central Committee, the largest of the ruling Communist Party's top decision-making bodies, concluded a four-day meeting on economic and social policy goals for the next five years last month. 'And the winner is?' - Risk of contested vote has U.S. allies on edge

As Americans head to the polls, prime ministers and presidents around the world face a delicate question - when to congratulate the eventual winner, especially given the risk the election result will be contested. On the one hand, there's a chance the popular vote will go one way and the Electoral College - which actually determines the winner - the other. Also, President Donald Trump has repeatedly alleged mail-in ballots are subject to fraud, suggested he may not accept the result and said the Supreme Court may have to decide the winner. Analysis: Bad blood - why France-Turkey cartoon row could leave lasting impact

Slights and barbs have marred relations between France's Emmanuel Macron and Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan for years, but the row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad has dragged them to a new low which could have more lasting consequences. Officials on both sides describe a series of behind-the-scenes frosty exchanges and grudges between the two leaders going back years, long before the row of the past few weeks.