ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Preliminary, unofficial results from Turkey’s state Anadolu news agency showed incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead with 67% of ballot boxes counted, while a competing news agency gave a slight lead to the opposition candidate in a presidential runoff that will decide whether the country’s longtime leader stretches his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade.

Anadolu showed Erdogan at 55%, and his challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, at 45%.

CHICAGO (AP) — During Donald Trump’s first visit as president to Chicago, a frequent target in his attacks on urban violence, he disparaged the nation’s third largest city as a haven for criminals and a national embarrassment.

At a recent town hall, Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy sat alongside ex-convicts on the city’s South Side and promised to defend Trump’s “America First” agenda. In return, the little-known White House hopeful, a child of Indian immigrants, found a flicker of acceptance in a room full of Black and brown voters.

CAIRO (AP) — The United States and Saudi Arabia called on warring sides in Sudan to extend a fragile cease-fire due to expire Monday, as weeks of fighting reached a stalemate in the capital and elsewhere in the African country.

The Sudanese army and a rival paramilitary force, battling for control of Sudan since mid-April, had agreed last week to the weeklong truce, brokered by the U.S. and the Saudis. However, the cease-fire, like others before it, did not stop the fighting in the capital of Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.

27 May 2023; AA: US President Joe Biden said Friday he is ''hopeful'' of a deal to raise the national debt limit by Friday night that could prevent an economic meltdown.

Biden made brief remarks to reporters about the debt ceiling before leaving Washington for Camp David.

"Things are looking good, I'm very optimistic," he said. "I hope we'll be able to know by tonight whether we have a deal.''

NEW YORK, May 26 (Xinhua) -- As the United States is planning the biggest FIFA World Cup in history, scheduled for the summer of 2026, some nations are issuing warnings about traveling to the United States for the matches over its rampant gun violence, reported Spectrum News 1 on Thursday.

26 May 2023; MEMO: Russia signalled, on Thursday, that if demands to improve its grain and fertiliser exports are not met, then it will not extend beyond 17 July a deal allowing the safe wartime export of the same products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports, Reuters reports.

26 May 2023; MEMO: Like many Syrians in Turkiye, Ghaith Sameer is awaiting the result of Sunday's election runoff with trepidation, fearing a win for an opposition candidate who promises to swiftly repatriate migrants, Reuters reports.

Sameer fled Syria's civil war in 2012 and is now one of over 3.4 million Syrians living in neighbouring Turkiye, where economic woes have aggravated a rising tide of hostility that has washed into the presidential election.

26 May 2023; MEMO: Turkiye has launched the construction of a mega-scale housing project to resettle Syrian refugees in northern Syria, Turkish media outlets reported.

The project includes nearly a quarter of a million housing units on the outskirts of the town of Ghandura in the Jarablus region on the border with Turkiye.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Work requirements for federal food aid recipients have emerged as a final sticking point in negotiations over the looming debt crisis, even as President Joe Biden said Friday that a deal is “very close.”

Tehran, IRNA – Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in reaction to Western governments' concerns, especially the United States and France, about Iran's progress and defense power, that the very same countries that encouraged and equipped Saddam Hussein to attack Iran are now the biggest exporters of weapons to the Middle East.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday urged his supporters to protest at the state Capitol when Republicans in the House of Representatives take up historic impeachment proceedings that threaten to oust him.

The House has set a Saturday vote to consider impeaching Paxton and suspending him from office over allegations of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust — just some of the accusations that have trailed him for most of his three terms.

26 May 2023; MEMO: Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said yesterday that there are international efforts to reach a preliminary version of a nuclear agreement.

Abdullahian said in a press statement that the negotiations for a nuclear agreement are taking place indirectly through the exchange of messages between the concerned parties, according to the local IRNA news agency.