Cameroon President Paul Biya, 85, who is seeking a seventh consecutive term on Sunday, is the second longest-serving leader in Africa with nearly 36 years in office.

Only Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea is ahead, by three years.

On 30 September Macedonians will head to the polls to vote on whether to add "North" to their country's official name.

As world leaders talk peace at the U.N. this week, the people of Idlib cling to fragile hope that diplomacy will avert a blowout battle over Syria's last rebel stronghold.

Yet diplomacy hasn't served Syria well so far. Those same world powers trying to negotiate a peaceful outcome in Idlib have been using Syria as a proxy battleground for years.

The Indian Ocean island nation of the Maldives is famed as an upmarket tourist destination of white beaches and turquoise waters but is threatened by rising sea levels and endured stifling political control.

Nelson Mandela's South African journey from anti-apartheid leader to prisoner to president to global statesman — the "Long Walk to Freedom" of his autobiography title — is one of the 20th century's great stories of struggle, sacrifice and reconciliation. Now the United Nations is seeking to harness its soaring symbolism.

The unveiling of a statue of Mandela, born 100 years ago, with arms outstretched at the U.N. building in New York on Monday opens a peace summit at the General Assembly, where world leaders will once again address the planet's pressing problems: war, poverty, disease, migration and climate change. They'll do so amid a massive security operation in a city where Mandela was welcomed by exultant crowds in 1990, a few months after he walked out of a South African jail, ending 27 years of imprisonment under the country's white minority government.

Shinzo Abe comes from a long line of politicians but the hawkish nationalist is now poised to write his name into the record books as Japan's longest-serving premier.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South's President Moon Jae-in agreed a series of proposals Wednesday as they sought to deepen the ties between the two halves of the divided peninsula.

A regime assault on the last rebel Syrian stronghold of Idlib has been expected for months, with forces massing in the area and volleys of Russian-backed strikes.

Summits between North and South Korea are closely watched for both spectacular symbolism -- on grand display at the Panmunjom summit in April -- and smaller hints of meaning.

Nearly two years out of the White House, former President Barack Obama is facing another political test.

To the delight of many Democrats, he's stepped back into the fray that former presidents often try to avoid, campaigning for Democratic candidates ahead of the midterms and blasting the political culture of the Trump era. He attracted a large, adoring crowd this past week in Ohio and will be in Pennsylvania on Friday campaigning for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.