Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani has been re-elected to office after winning 56.12 per cent of the vote, provisional results showed.

His main rival, Biram Dah Abeid, an anti-slavery human rights activist, came in second place after winning 22 per cent of the vote.

Hamadi Sidi Mokhtar of the Islamist Tawasul Party got 12.76 per cent.

Elections were held on Saturday in Mauritania, a former French colony in north-west Africa.

Results were announced late Sunday after 99 per cent of the votes were counted.

Before the announcement, Abeid alleged that there was fraud, and riot police dispersed his supporters demonstrating against the results using tear gas, witnesses said.

Mauritanians were hoping the president will work on improving their living conditions, decrease unemployment, and fight corruption and poverty.

Ould Ghazouani, 67, has promised to focus on supporting the youth during his second term.

Ould Ghazouani, a former defence minister, was elected in 2019 in the country’s first peaceful transition of power.

His predecessor Mohamed Ould Abdel-Aziz took office after a 2008 military coup.

John King, CNN’s chief national correspondent, says the Democratic party is looking to replace President Joe Biden as its presumptive nominee ahead of its national convention in August.

Biden sparred with former US President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, on Friday, in a debate hosted by CNN.

The incumbent’s speech was at times slurred, throaty, incoherent, he stuttered on occasion, and his ripostes came across as weak.

At one point, as the candidates debated on border closure and immigration, a gloating Trump said: “I really don’t understand what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Analysing the performances of both candidates afterwards, all the CNN panellists submitted that Biden had done himself little favours on the night.

“It was a game changing debate in the sense that right now as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic party,” said King.

“The panic started minutes into the debate and continues right now. It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fund-raisers.

“And they are having conversations about the president’s performance which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket. They are having conversations about what they should do about it.

“Some of those conversations include should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside? Other conversations are about should prominent Democrats go public with that call? Because they think this debate was so terrible.

“They do say, in moments in the debate later, the president got better and got his footing. But then in the end, even his closing statement was a little halty. The contrast between the two candidates was stark.”

Abby Phillip, CNN anchor and a senior political correspondent who anchors CNN NewsNight, said Biden’s performance was “problematic” and “damaging”.

Other panellists said Biden was “deeply vulnerable”, his voice was “shaky”, and that Democrats are worried that they could be throwing away the presidency if Biden remains top of the ticket.

Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, sparred on the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, treatment of veterans, abortion, taxes, Medicare, inflation, Afghanistan, and America’s standing in the world — with the Republican repeatedly putting the Democrat on the defensive.

Trump was US president from 2017 to 2021. He lost his re-election bid to Biden and challenged the outcome of the vote in an unprecedented manner.

His supporters infamously invaded the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, as Trump insisted that the election was stolen from him.

Bolivia’s armed forces have arrested the general accused of launching a botched coup on Wednesday.

Juan José Zúñiga, who commanded the South American country’s army, was detained in La Paz in front of television cameras on Wednesday night, capping a dramatic few hours in which armed soldiers attempted to storm the national palace.

President Luis Arce gave a televised statement to denounce an attempted putsch shortly after an armoured military vehicle rammed into the entrance of the presidential palace and soldiers funnelled in. The troops had just taken the Plaza Murillo, a historic central square, outside.

“Today the country is facing an attempted coup d’état,” he said in the address. “Once again the country is up against those who want democracy in Bolivia to be cut short.”

Arce, a onetime protégé of former leftist leader Evo Morales, called on Bolivians to “mobilise against the coup plotters”. He then replaced Zúñiga with an army commander who called on the soldiers to stand down.

Within a few hours, Arce was victoriously pumping his fists in the air and thanking supporters in the Plaza Murillo after soldiers withdrew in a convoy of military vehicles.

Earlier Zúñiga, in military uniform, told a television crew outside the palace that “the three chiefs of the armed forces have come to express our dismay.” He said there would be “a new cabinet of ministers, surely things will change, but our country cannot continue like this any longer”.

Zúñiga also demanded the release of several jailed politicians, including two opposition leaders: former president Jeanine Áñez — who briefly led Bolivia from 2019 to 2020 — and Luis Fernando Camacho, a former provincial governor.

As Zúñiga was arrested he told television crews that he had been acting at a request made by Arce during a meeting days earlier. “It is necessary to prepare something to raise my popularity,” he quoted Arce as saying, without providing evidence.

Interior minister Eduardo del Castillo later said Zúñiga was seeking to boost his profile and “bring down the democratically elected government”. He said a former navy vice-admiral had also been taken into custody.

Zúñiga this week said Morales — who initially claimed victory in a disputed presidential election in 2019 but later resigned — should not be allowed to run again for president.

Tensions have been rising in Bolivia in recent weeks as Arce and Morales — formerly allies from the ruling Movement Towards Socialism party — have been engaged in a caustic split.

Morales, who still wields significant influence, called on his supporters to mobilise in support of democracy. “We will not allow the armed forces to violate democracy and intimidate people,” Morales posted on X.

Bolivia, a landlocked country of 12mn people in the high Andes, has experienced numerous coups since gaining independence in 1825.

Morales, a former coca farmer who led the country from 2006 to 2019, has said he will run against Arce in next year’s presidential election. His term was marked by democratic backsliding as he championed indigenous rights.