ISTANBUL, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday cast his vote for twin presidential and parliamentary elections in a school in Istanbul, the country's largest city.

Erdogan arrived at the school in the Uskudar district on Istanbul's Asian side with his wife, Emine Erdogan, at 11:40 a.m. local time (0840 GMT).

BERLIN (AP) — Voters are going to the polls in Germany’s northern state of Bremen on Sunday to decide whether the center-left Social Democrats should continue to run a city they’ve governed since World War II.

The party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz came second behind its conservative rivals for the first time in 70 years at the last election, but retained power with the help of the Greens and Left party.

FIROZ KOAH, Afghanistan, May 14 (NNN-ANA) – Afghan counter-narcotics police destroyed a drug processing lab and arrested nine suspects for alleged involvement in drug business, in four of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, the Ministry of Interior Affairs said, yesterday.

Acting on a tip-off, units of counter-narcotic police launched an operation in Chaharsada district of Afghanistan’s western Ghor province on Friday, discovered and destroyed the drug lab, the ministry said in a statement.

Tehran, IRNA - Iran’s vice-president for legal affairs has announced that Laurent Aynès, president of an international tribunal hearing a $32 billion gas dispute between the UAE-based Crescent Petroleum and National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), has been dismissed from the case.

Mohammad Dehghan on Saturday called the removal of the arbitrator a great victory for Iran in the case, and said that the change in the arbitration team will have a significant impact on the fair and just review of the case.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi expressed concern Saturday about Russian and Chinese military cooperation in Asia and said the security situation in Europe could not be separated from that in the Indo-Pacific region since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking at a meeting of European and Indo-Pacific foreign ministers in Sweden, Hayashi said Russia’s war in Ukraine had “shaken the very foundation of the international order” and must face a united response by the international community.

GAZA/JERUSALEM May 14 (Reuters) - Life on both sides of the Gaza Strip border began returning to normal on Sunday after an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire halted five days of fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad, which killed 34 Palestinians and an Israeli.

Israel reopened its goods and commercial border crossings, allowing fuel to flow to the lone power plant in the blockaded coastal enclave. Shops and public offices reopened and crowds returned to streets that had been deserted for days.

TOKYO, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Earthquakes with a preliminary magnitude of up to 5.9 struck Japanese islands including Kozushima on Sunday, according to the weather agency.

According to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), the temblor, measuring 3 on Japan's seismic intensity scale which peaks at 7, occurred at 5:12 p.m. local time (0812 GMT) at a depth of 10 km.

The temblor's epicenter was located in the adjacent sea of Hachijojima Island at a latitude of 33.4 degrees north and a longitude of 139.3 degrees east.

Islamabad, May 13 (PTI) Pakistan Army chief General Syed Asim Munir on Saturday warned that the armed forces would not tolerate any further attacks on the country's key installations and vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the recent acts of vandalism.

BANGKOK (AP) — Officials in Thailand began counting votes Sunday in a general election, touted as a pivotal chance for change nine years after incumbent Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha first came to power in a 2014 coup. He is now running against the daughter of the politician who is the military’s top nemesis.

The polls closed at 5 p.m. and some results were expected in early evening, with a fuller picture coming later Sunday night. Thai elections use paper ballots that are counted publicly at polling stations.

HIROSHIMA, May 14 (NNN-NHK) – Hundreds of Japanese citizens took to the streets in the Japanese city of Hiroshima over the weekend, to protest against the upcoming Group of Seven (G7) summit.

Protests are also being held along the streets today, starting at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a cenotaph where an atomic bomb was dropped by the U.S. at the end of World War II.

Dhaka, May 14 (PTI) Super cyclone Mocha started hitting the coastlines of Bangladesh and Myanmar on Sunday after intensifying into the equivalent of a category-five storm.

The powerful cyclone is bringing heavy rain and winds of up to 195 kph, which could see dangerous flooding in areas around the Bay of Bengal.

SANTA JUANA, Chile, May 14 (Reuters) - In the southern Chilean city of Santa Juana, hit hard by wildfires earlier this year, locals have a special taskforce helping fight blazes: a herd of goats.

The goats have already saved the native forest of the Bosques de Chacay once, preventing the park from being consumed by February forest fires - fueled by heatwaves and a punishing drought - that left dozens dead, thousands injured and almost 440,000 hectares destroyed in south-central Chile.