POLITICS

Polls opened on Thursday in Madagascar's presidential election, which is being boycotted by most opposition candidates over concerns about the vote's integrity.

At her small clinic in Buenos Aires, veterinarian Diana Del Rio, 62, is anguished over her decision to cast a blank vote in Sunday's presidential election, but she sees no other option.

Outspoken British lawmaker Suella Braverman launched a withering attack on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak Tuesday, urging him to change course to avoid election defeat and slamming his record on immigration and anti-Semitism.

Ivory Coast's former prime minister Guillaume Soro, sentenced to life in prison for undermining national security, on Sunday said he was ending his self-imposed exile that began in 2019.

US Senator Tim Scott announced Sunday that he is withdrawing from the US presidential race, saying voters had given him a clear message of "not now."

UK interior minister Suella Braverman's job was hanging in the balance Thursday after she criticised policing of pro-Palestinian marches in comments made without Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's approval.

US President Joe Biden donned the signature red T-shirt of America's biggest car workers union and lashed out at Donald Trump Thursday as he tried to fire up their support for his 2024 reelection bid.

Like many American political watchers, a Nevada resident named Domer had an opinion about who would emerge from turmoil within the Republican Party to become the next speaker of the House of Representatives.

Portugal's political parties were preparing Wednesday for a landscape without Antonio Costa, who had been prime minister since 2015 but quit suddenly the day prior when he was implicated in a corruption probe.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa announced his resignation on Tuesday after he was embroiled in a corruption investigation into the awarding of energy-related contracts.

Ohio voted Tuesday to enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution, while the Democratic governor of Kentucky won reelection, in results that boosted President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 White House race.

Among the glittering chandeliers and wooden benches of a stately and solemn New York City courtroom, Donald Trump took the stand Monday, raising his right hand and swearing his testimony would be truthful.

Former president Donald Trump is expected to testify Monday in the New York civil case threatening to upend his real estate empire and deal him a damaging financial blow as he seeks to retake the White House next year.

US presidential elections are described as a 50-state obstacle course, but the hurdles across Donald Trump's path in the coming year look particularly daunting as a crush of court dates competes with campaign commitments in his 2024 calendar.

Nearly half the world's countries are seeing the level of democracy decline, an international think tank said Thursday.

While the stakes could hardly be higher for American democracy, voters are increasingly turned off by the apparently inevitable rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

"Victory is not easy, but it is certain," imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner and women's rights activist Narges Mohammadi, said in a message smuggled out of her Tehran cell published late Tuesday.

Last week, Tinubu had secured $14 billion U.S. dollars in investment from India, after the Presidential Roundtable and Conference held in New Delhi.

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Iran arrived Tuesday in the Islamic Republic, and his counterpart landed in Riyadh, cementing a restoration of ties between the Gulf rivals after a seven-year rupture in ties.

Turkey said Monday that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will "soon" visit Russia for talks with Vladimir Putin on reviving a Black Sea grain deal that could be used as a springboard for broader Ukraine peace negotiations.

Russia on Thursday extended by three months the detention of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, defying pleas for the release of the reporter arrested on the job in March.

More than 60 people are believed to have died after a migrant boat from Senegal was found off West Africa's Cape Verde islands, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Wednesday.

"The UAE has not supplied arms and ammunition to any of the warring parties in Sudan since the outbreak of the conflict in April 2023," the UAE's Director of Strategic Communications, Afra Al Hameli said.

In his letter, King Mohammed VI wished for the continued progress and prosperity of the UAE while discussing ways to strengthen the bilateral ties for the benefit of both nations and their people, khaleejtimes reported.

France's President Emmanuel Macron stripped off his suit jacket Friday to wander the wild forests of Papua New Guinea on a green-tinted charm offensive in the South Pacific.

Energy ministers from the group of 20 nations meeting in India Saturday failed to agree on a roadmap to phase down the use of fossil fuels in the global energy mix.

The US Congress prepared to welcome President Isaac Herzog Wednesday for a speech celebrating 75 years of Israeli independence, as a row over anti-Semitism highlighted fissures in Democratic Party support for the Middle Eastern ally.

Sultan Al Jaber, Emirates oil executive and president of the most important climate summit since the Paris Agreement in 2015, has a quick answer when asked when the world will stop burning fossil fuels: when there's enough clean energy to replace them. "We cannot shut down the energy system of today before we build the new energy system of tomorrow that is equipped with zero-carbon emission sources," said Jaber, head of the United Arab Emirates national oil company ADNOC.

When the U.S. sees challenges to press, religious or other freedoms, "we make our views known," Sullivan said. He added: "We do so in a way where we don't seek to lecture or assert that we don't have challenges ourselves."