POLITICS

The territory on the northwest point of Somalia unilaterally declared independence in 1991 and has been far more stable and peaceful than the rest of the country since then.

Scholz, whose coalition collapsed on Wednesday, said that "asking for the vote of confidence before Christmas, if all sides agree, is no problem at all for me".

Ishiba, 67, took office in early October and called a snap election which he hoped would shore up his mandate as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Linda McMahon, a former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, and Howard Lutnick, the founder of the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, are leading the transition process.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz -- who announced a January confidence vote, likely followed by snap elections in March -- will seek to reassure his European partners at a summit in Budapest.

In what promises to be an agonizing moment for Biden, he will speak in the Rose Garden of the White House at 11:00 am (1600 GMT) to "discuss the election results and the transition" to Trump's second term.

As polling stations open nationwide on Election Day, Democratic vice president Harris, 60, and Republican former president Trump, 78, are dead-even in the tightest and most volatile White House race of modern times.

The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day on Tuesday is being ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery, or violence against election workers.

The man surnamed Chang and the woman surnamed Hung were charged Monday with violating Taiwan's anti-infiltration law, the district prosecutors' office in southern Chiayi city said in a statement.

Republican Trump has promised a "landslide" as he seeks a sensational return to the White House, while Democrat Harris said the "momentum" was on the side of her bid to be America's first woman president.

Republican Trump will return to the venue where he was crowned his party's presidential nominee over the summer, his ear bandaged in bright white gauze after he was wounded in an attempted assassination just days earlier, while Democrat Harris will lean on the star power of rapper Cardi B to outshine her rival.

The Washington-based American Sunlight Project analyzed over 300 groups on the Meta-owned platform that masquerade as pro-Harris pages while misleading the Democratic contender's supporters with abusive, hateful posts or capitalize on her popularity to promote merchandise.

The Labor Department's report on hiring and unemployment will be closely scrutinized by the teams of both candidates -- Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump -- but the numbers will be distorted by fallout from devastating hurricanes and a major strike.

The former Republican president persists in calling Harris by her first name at his rallies -- a contrast to how he referred to the former Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, either as "Biden" or sometimes "Sleepy Joe."

The banks of the Rio Grande river separating Mexico and the United States look almost deserted, and formerly overcrowded migrant shelters are half empty -- a consequence of tougher US immigration policies in an election year.

Post-war Japan has long been a byword for political stability with the conservative, market-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in power for all but four of the last 69 years.

The government has confirmed that the budget will include tax rises, cuts to public spending and changes to fiscal rules to enable borrowing billions more to invest.

Harris will travel to North Carolina and then to Pennsylvania, focusing again on two of seven battleground states that could determine who wins the closest, oddest and most consequential election in modern US history.

The military figure in charge of Jakarta's security at the time was last week sworn in as the new defense minister of the world's fourth-most populous nation.

Pro-Western opposition parties have refused to recognize the results of Saturday's vote, which they claim was falsified in favor of the ruling Georgian Dream party. Tens of thousands joined a protest rally in Tbilisi on Monday.

American voters will choose between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former president Trump on November 5, with polls showing the pair neck and neck.

Official results showed that Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner Komeito suffered their worst election result since 2009 in the vote on Sunday.

More than 41 million Americans have already cast early ballots ahead of Election Day on November 5, in what is expected to be one of the tightest elections of modern times.

Public broadcaster NHK projected that women had won 73 of 465 lower house seats up for grabs, figures expected to be confirmed in official results later in the day.

Solidly Republican Texas makes an unorthodox stop just days before November 5, especially for Harris who could be working to revive her momentum in the battleground states set to decide the vote.

Ishiba took office and called an election less than a month ago after a tough contest within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed for all but four of the last 69 years.

Kamala Harris faces voters' questions at a live forum Wednesday in must-win Pennsylvania as the vice president and her rival Donald Trump battle for undecided voters in the closing stretch of an extremely close White House race.

While Democratic candidate Kamala Harris's campaign has not commented on the contest, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, said on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think it's something that law enforcement should take a look at."

Both campaigns are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a final push for any wavering, undecided voters who could tilt the balance in their favor, with polls consistently showing their candidates in a dead heat ahead of Election Day.