Media Coverage

Taliban rulers and other officials gathered at Afghanistan’s traditional Loya Jirga assembly hall on Saturday to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their return to power, touting what they described as restored stability and an end to decades of conflict. A top United Nations official, however...

More than two decades after Zimbabwe seized thousands of mainly white-owned commercial farms, some of those properties are set to change hands again. But President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government insisted the move is not a reversal of the land redistribution programme that reshaped Zimbabwe’s...

Israeli settlers have been besieging two Palestinian families in their homes in the occupied West Bank since Sunday, with the families saying their supplies were running out and rights groups urging the authorities to step in. On Wednesday Israeli security forces were reported to have withdrawn from...

Lebanon’s parliament Wednesday passed a controversial general amnesty law, a day after a majority of legislators voted to formally abolish the death penalty. Lawmakers who backed the bill call it a beginning to correcting past overreach by the judiciary and security agencies and help reduce prison...

Lebanon's parliament abolished the death penalty, making the country the first in the Middle East to formally end the practice, replacing the sentencing with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour. "The draft law aimed at abolishing the death penalty in Lebanon was approved after amendments...

Hungary’s parliament has confirmed Andras Baka, a former Supreme Court chief and critic of former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as the country’s next president. The National Assembly voted in a secret ballot on Tuesday to confirm him as president with 140 votes in favour, six opposing and no...

About 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan are barred from secondary school, the United Nations cultural agency has said, renewing its call on the Taliban government to lift restrictions on female education. UNESCO said on Tuesday that the number of girls deprived of secondary school in the country has...

Four leading human rights groups have launched a new lawsuit against the Trump administration’s campaign against the International Criminal Court. The new lawsuit filed on Tuesday charges that the administration’s wide-ranging sanctions against the international tribunal and organizations that...

Israel has quietly given the green light for infrastructure work to begin in a designated area of southern Gaza, according to Israeli media, as it advances a post-war vision that experts warn is designed to reshape reality on the ground and permanently fragment the enclave. Dubbed “Green Rafah”, the...

Two federal judges have cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to end temporary protections from deportation for people who have come to the United States from South Sudan and Myanmar. Judges in Boston, Massachusetts and Chicago, Illinois, on Friday rejected last-ditch efforts...