Calling Iran "the world's most heinous terrorist regime," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to extend the U.N. arms embargo against Tehran, which expires in October, and reject "extortion diplomacy."

The United States has circulated a draft Security Council resolution to extend the arms embargo indefinitely, and Pompeo said the United States' "overwhelming preference" is to work with its 15 members to adopt it.

Belgium's King Philippe expressed his "deepest regrets" on Tuesday for the harm done during Belgian colonial rule in DR Congo, in a first for his country.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the closure of a university in Istanbul linked to a rival and former prime minister, according to a decree published Tuesday.

Iran's judiciary said on Tuesday that a five-year jail sentence for French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah had been upheld, semi-official news agency ISNA reported.

Adelkhah's sentence, passed in May over "security charges including conspiring against national security", was upheld by the appeals court and "she is going to serve five years" including time served since her arrest, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told a televised news conference.

In 2011, the industrial city of Nizhny Tagil was dubbed "Putingrad" for its residents' fervent support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Nine years later, it appears the city 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) east of Moscow no longer lives up to that nickname.

Leaders from five West African countries and their ally France meet Tuesday to confer over their troubled efforts to stem a jihadist offensive unfolding in the Sahel.

China passed a sweeping national security law for Hong Kong on Tuesday, a historic move that critics and many western governments fear will smother the finance hub's freedoms and hollow out its autonomy.

Iran said Monday it has called for Interpol to arrest President Donald Trump and 35 other U.S. officials for the January killing of its top general in an American drone strike.

France's Greens on Monday urged President Emmanuel Macron to prioritise the environment as they savoured big wins in municipal elections, seen by many as a rebuke of the centrist leader's top-down governing style during his first three years in office.

Russian state pollster VCIOM on Monday published an exit poll showing a vast majority of Russians backing proposed constitutional reforms, days before the end of voting.