The presumptive next speaker of the U.S. House is a onetime "young gun" of the Republican Party, a conservative with a wonkish reputation who is clearly driven by higher political ambition.

Paul Ryan is expected to be nominated by his Republican colleagues Wednesday to lead the fractious House of Representatives through the end of the Barack Obama presidency and potentially beyond.

The death toll from acrid haze blanketing parts of Indonesia has climbed to 19, a minister said Wednesday, almost double the previous figure as the crisis from widespread forest fires worsens.

For nearly two months, thousands of fires caused by slash-and-burn farming in Indonesia have choked vast expanses of Southeast Asia, forcing schools to close and scores of flights and some international events to be canceled.

Republican White House frontrunner Donald Trump and nine other 2016 hopefuls do battle Wednesday in their third nationally televised primary debate, as rivals seek a political opening against the caustic billionaire.

Millions of Americans are expected to watch the debate, which will take place at an arena at the University of Colorado in Boulder, as the field moves toward the first statewide votes in the primary process next February.

Mexican authorities have searched several homes in three states and seized 11 small airplanes in their hunt for fugitive drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The attorney general's office said several properties were searched in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa in the northwest as well as the central states of Mexico and Puebla.

Alassane Ouattara has won a landslide victory in Ivory Coast's presidential election, results showed Wednesday, in a vote seen as key to cementing the west African country's bid to overcome a history of electoral violence.

The 73-year-old won a second five-year term outright by garnering almost 84 percent of ballots in the first round of polls Sunday, when more than half of voters turned out despite calls for a boycott by opposition candidates.

Top U.S. military officials will on Tuesday announce the winner of a highly anticipated, multibillion-dollar contract to build a new generation of long-distance bombers that will replace aging, Cold War machines. 

The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and other top Air Force brass will unveil the winner at 5:15 pm (2115 GMT) -- after the U.S. stock market closes.

The Dominican Republic will request the arrest of two French pilots who slipped out of the country and returned home after being sentenced to 20 years for drug running, the attorney general said Tuesday.

"We are proceeding with a request for an international arrest warrant for the pilots involved," Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito said in a statement, after the pilots turned up in France saying they had come home to clear their names.

Europe's military operation to seize and destroy boats used by migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean will not work unless it has access to Libyan territory, its deputy commander said Tuesday.

For the past three weeks, Operation Sophia has been operating in international waters, charged with arresting smugglers and seizing their vessels as Europe tries to stem the flow of migrants making the perilous sea crossing.

The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday called for an end to the decades-long U.S. embargo on Cuba in a resolution adopted by a near-unanimous vote, three months after U.S.-Cuba diplomatic ties were restored.

The United States and Israel voted against the non-binding resolution, but a resounding 191 countries supported the measure in the 193-member assembly.

Colombian rebel group the National Liberation Army (ELN) is holding two soldiers hostage after capturing them in an attack that killed 12 troops and police, officials said Tuesday.

"Two soldiers have been kidnapped," said Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas after President Juan Manuel Santos convened an extraordinary meeting of his national security council in the wake of Monday's attack in the remote indigenous reserve of Bachira.