The main islands of the Seychelles began voting on Saturday in a presidential election which sees incumbent James Michel facing his first serious challenge after two terms in office.

Although voting on more remote islands began on Thursday, the main vote takes place on Saturday, with polls opening at 7:00 am (0300 GMT) on the three main islands of Mahe, Praslin and La Digue, home to most of the archipelago's estimated 91,000 citizens. Voting ends 12 hours later.

Poland's conservatives have only been back in power for a few weeks but they are already sowing alarm in the EU member state by trying to take control of any organ that could keep them in check.

The governing Law and Justice (PiS) party that won the October general election after eight years in opposition wasted no time in replacing the heads of the country's secret services.

West of the Afghan city of Maidan Shahr is a 40-kilometer stretch of paved highway known as "Death Road", where drivers say the country's ethnic Hazara minority are slaughtered by militants "like sheep and cows".

"The spit dries in our mouths from fear when we pass it," says Mohammad Hussain, who ferries passengers along the road from Kabul to Hazarajat, a region in the central highlands of Afghanistan where the Hazaras have traditionally settled.

It has been home to over 35,000 transiting migrants since May thanks to the generosity of local volunteers, but Rome's Baobab reception center is being shut down -- with a shopping mall among the options to take its place.

The former glassworks in a small street near the Italian capital's main stations was converted by an army of unpaid helpers to host tens of thousands of migrants who pass through on their way to countries further north.

Two huge black eyes stare out from the top of the tower block housing the National Assembly in Caracas, surveying the busy streets and the misty green mountains beyond.

Just the eyes -- but every Venezuelan knows whose.

Belgium on Friday said it was searching for two new "armed and dangerous" men who used false ID papers to help wanted Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam travel to Hungary in September.

The fake identity card of one of the suspects was also used to wire money from Brussels to Paris and the cousin of attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud four days after the massacre in the French capital, the Belgian prosecutor's office said.

He hasn't officially started campaigning, but Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, is widely believed to be aiming to extend his near decade in power by yet another term.

If that turns out to be the case in elections to be held in November 2016, the former Marxist rebel would be on track to tighten his grip on the Central American country, which is aligned with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran against U.S. "imperialism."

A powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck in the southern Indian Ocean Saturday, but there was no indication of a destructive tsunami and unlikely to be any casualties or damage, U.S. seismologists said.

The shallow tremor struck at 6:24 am (22:24 GMT Friday), around 3,100 kilometers (1,950 miles) southwest of the Australian city of Perth and 1,000 km from the uninhabited Heard Island and McDonald Islands, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The EU on Friday neared the end of a five-year struggle for a deal on sharing the names of airline passengers to help trace returning jihadists, after pressure from member states in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Interior ministers from the 28 EU nations agreed on issues that had hobbled negotiations with the European Parliament for years. The parliament is now expected to grant final approval for the scheme within two weeks.

Confusion surrounded the fate of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was shot in a firefight during an argument with commanders of the divided movement, after an Afghan government spokesman tweeted Friday that he has died.

The Islamist group has vehemently rejected claims by militant sources and intelligence officials that Mansour was critically wounded in a shootout at an insurgent gathering near the Pakistani city of Quetta.