The world's largest election could also be one of its most consequential.

India has close to 970 million voters among its more than 1.4 billion people, and its general election pits Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an avowed Hindu nationalist, against a broad alliance of opposition parties that are struggling to play catch up.

Mexico's projected presidential winner Claudia Sheinbaum will become the first woman president in the country's 200-year history.

The climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor said Sunday night that her two competitors had called her and conceded her victory.

Iran's hard-line former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad registered Sunday as a possible candidate for the presidential election, seeking to regain the country's top political position after a helicopter crash killed the nation's president.

The populist former leader's registration puts pressure on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In office, Ahmadinejad openly challenged the 85-year-old cleric, and his attempt to run in 2021 was barred by authorities.

Iran on Saturday criticized the European Union's imposition of new sanctions on high-ranking officials and the Revolutionary Guards for supplying drones to Russia and its Middle East allies.

France authorities have banned Israeli defense firms from exhibiting at a trade show next month near Paris, organizers said on Friday.

"By decision of the government authorities, there will be no stand for the Israeli defense industry at the Eurosatory 2024 fair," organizers Coges Events said.

Russia is preparing "provocations" at the Baltic region's borders, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday during a visit to Stockholm, referring to recent hybrid warfare attacks denounced by several Baltic countries.

"It is also evident that Russia is preparing for provocations in the Baltic region against borders," Zelensky said, a week after Estonia said Russian border guards had removed buoys from the Narva River marking the border.

Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

Trump sat stone-faced while the verdict was read as cheering from the street below could be heard in the hallway on the courthouse's 15th floor where the decision was revealed after more than nine hours of deliberations.

A former speaker of Iran's parliament registered Friday as a possible candidate in the Islamic Republic's June 28 presidential election to replace the late Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash earlier this month with seven others.

Ali Larijani is the first high-profile candidate to register for the contest. He and other serious contenders against Raisi had been barred from running in the 2021 election.

U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs met for more than an hour on the sidelines of a major security forum in Singapore on Friday, where disputes over Taiwan and other flashpoint issues are expected to dominate the three-day event.

The rare direct talks between the United States' Lloyd Austin and China's Dong Jun finished shortly after 2:00 pm (0600 GMT), AFP reporters said, in the first substantive face-to-face meeting between the two countries' defence chiefs in 18 months.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Friday downplayed the threat of escalation from Moscow, after the United States authorised Kyiv to use American weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

"This is part of efforts by President (Vladimir) Putin and Moscow to prevent NATO allies from supporting Ukraine to defend themselves, and, again, Ukraine has the right for self defence and we have the right to help Ukraine," Stoltenberg told journalists at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.