Iraq's pro-Tehran factions have welcomed Joe Biden's election as US president, alarming officials and activists in Baghdad who fear a US-Iran deescalation could empower hardliners in their own country.

Baghdad has long been caught in a tug-of-war for influence between its two main allies Washington and Tehran, made even more tense by outgoing US President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran since 2018.

Democrats and Republicans were gearing up Wednesday for a possible legal showdown to decide the winner of the tight presidential race between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Trump declared overnight he was ready to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to dispute the counting of votes, as the results remained unclear in several key states, notably Pennsylvania.

Veteran British journalist Robert Fisk, one of the best-known Middle East correspondents who spent his career reporting from the troubled region and won accolades for challenging mainstream narratives has died after a short illness, his employer said Monday. He was 74.

Fisk, whose reporting often sparked controversy, died Sunday at a hospital in Dublin, shortly after he was taken there after falling ill at his home in the Irish capital. The London Independent, where he had worked since 1989, described him as the most celebrated journalist of his era.

He has suffered profound personal tragedy and seen his earlier political ambitions thwarted, but veteran Democrat Joe Biden hopes his pledge to unify Americans will deliver him the presidency after nearly half a century in Washington.

Rarely has the profile of opposing presidential nominees differed so sharply as in the 2020 race, which pits the empathetic Biden, with decades of leadership and a blue-collar upbringing, against brawling President Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman who insists he remains the outsider.

All his life, the only constant about Donald Trump has been that everything must be about Donald Trump.

In the build-up to Tuesday's U.S. presidential election, AFP correspondents have travelled to dozens of towns and cities far beyond Washington to hear from voters about how they view hot-button issues. 

Simultaneously battling the twin crises of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and a resurgence in Islamist attacks, French President Emmanuel Macron faces a defining moment that will determine the success of his presidency and even his chances of reelection.

It's been a race like no other: held amid the coronavirus pandemic, economic turmoil, and a national reckoning on race -- and after four turbulent years with Donald Trump as president.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may present himself as the advocate of Muslims but his jibes at French leader Emmanuel Macron on Islam also aim to score points at the expense of Middle Eastern rivals, analysts say.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region of Azerbaijan mainly inhabited by ethnic Armenians and backed by Yerevan, has been the scene of deadly clashes for the past month.