Iran's reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday won a runoff presidential election against ultraconservative Saeed Jalili, the interior ministry said.

Pezeshkian received more than 16 million votes and Jalili more than 13 million out of about 30 million votes cast, electoral authority spokesman Mohsen Eslami said, adding that voter turnout stood at 49.8 percent.

France's tense election campaign was on hold Saturday on the eve of the final vote, but thoughts were turning to an uncertain future before polling even opens.

The Labour Party has won Britain's general election, bringing a new party to power for the first time in 14 years. But Labour leader Keir Starmer won't actually become prime minister until a carefully choreographed ceremony on Friday during which King Charles III will formally ask him to form a new government.

It's a moment that embodies the fact that, technically at least, the right to govern in the United Kingdom is still derived from royal authority, centuries after real political power was transferred to elected members of Parliament.

Venezuela's self-described socialist government is facing a serious electoral challenge in a presidential election for the first time in decades.

President Nicolás Maduro, now in his 11th year in office, is being challenged by former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia at the head of a resurgent opposition, as well as a field of eight other candidates. The official campaign period for the July 28 election kicked off Thursday.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orbán's press chief said Friday, a rare visit to Russia by a European leader since it invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.

Orbán's visit comes only days after he made a similar unannounced trip to Ukraine, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and proposed that Ukraine consider agreeing to an immediate cease-fire with Russia.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is worried about the outcome of the runoff elections in France.

Scholz, who is normally tightlipped when asked about domestic politics in other European countries, has in recent weeks more than once expressed concern that the far-right, nationalist National Rally may win a parliamentary majority in the second round of elections in neighboring France on Sunday, allowing the party to form a new government.

Iranians began voting Friday in a runoff election to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, killed in a helicopter crash last month, as public apathy has become pervasive in the Islamic Republic after years of economic woes, mass protests and tensions in the Middle East.

Voters face a choice between the hard-line former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime parliament member who has allied himself with moderates and reformists within Iran's Shiite theocracy.

Britain's Labour Party swept to power Friday after more than a decade in opposition, as a jaded electorate handed the party a landslide victory — but also a mammoth task of reinvigorating a stagnant economy and dispirited nation.

Labour leader Keir Starmer will officially become prime minister later in the day, leading his party back to government less than five years after it suffered its worst defeat in almost a century. In the merciless choreography of British politics, he will take charge in 10 Downing St. hours after Thursday's votes are counted — as Conservative leader Rishi Sunak is hustled out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday attended the summit of a security grouping created by Moscow and Beijing to counter Western alliances.

Putin and Xi joined the leaders of other countries that are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at its annual meeting in Kazakhstan's capital of Astana.

After the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, Iranian lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian wrote that it was "unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family."

Days later as nationwide protests and a bloody crackdown on all dissent took hold, he warned that those "insulting the supreme leader ... will create nothing except long-lasting anger and hatred in the society."