This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritzen and in the early hours of Sunday the 14th of January, these are our main stories.

The pro-democracy and sovereignty candidate William Lai

wins Taiwan's presidential elections. Over the last eight years we have tried

continuously to extend goodwill. We hope in the future

China will realize peace serves the interests of both sides. UN officials call for

come after two days of US-led air strikes against the Huthi movement in Yemen and...

Is Ecuador a narco state?

We are fighting every day so it doesn't become a narco state.

I do believe that we could win and I will never stop fighting until we win.

We have an exclusive BBC interview with the President of Ecuador which has seen a recent explosion in gang-related violence.

Also in this podcast, Russia declares the exiled best-selling fiction writer Boris Akunin, a foreign agent, and prosecutors in

Peru on the reported discovery of alien mummies in a cardboard box. These are

handmade with synthetic glues unless extraterrestrials have brought

their glue from another planet, which I don't think happened.

The people of Taiwan, which China claims as its own, have defied warnings from Beijing

by electing a candidate who has vowed to maintain the island's democracy.

William Lai is from the Democratic Progressive Party,

which secured a third consecutive term in office.

China insists the island will be reunified

and hasn't ruled out using force to do so.

Our correspondent Rupert Wingfield Hayes is in the capital Taipei and sent this report on the

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