The United Nations on Tuesday urgently called for civilian protection amid growing violence and instability in the Middle East—and particularly in regard to the ongoing US and Israeli military operations against Iran. The UN urged a thorough investigation into a deadly strike on a girls’ school in Iran, and requested the disclosure of all relevant [...]

Pakistan’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that the country now considers itself in an “open war” with Afghanistan after the two countries carried out cross-border strikes Thursday night. Pakistan launched overnight airstrikes on targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktika hours after Afghan Taliban forces attacked Pakistani military posts along the border. Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad [...]

British police arrested Peter Mandelson, former UK ambassador to the United States, on Monday on “suspicion of misconduct in public office” following allegations that he improperly shared sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein. Metropolitan Police said they arrested a 72-year-old man in Camden, North London, for questioning as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. Officers [...]

Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday after the Seoul Central District Court found him guilty of leading an insurrection over his brief imposition of martial law on December 3, 2024. The court held that Yoon’s decision to declare martial law and deploy military and police forces against [...]

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) opened an inquiry into social media platform X on Tuesday following reports that its AI chatbot has produced sexual “deepfake” images. The DPC investigation concerns the apparent creation and dissemination “of potentially harmful, non-consensual intimate and/or sexualised images” on X created using integrated AI chatbot “Grok,” developed by owner Elon [...]

Puerto Rico’s governor on Thursday signed a law to recognize a fetus as a human being for the purposes of homicide law. The signed law was approved by the Senate of Puerto Rico as Senate Bill 923. It amends the definition of murder under the territory’s Penal Code. The definition now treats the killing of [...]

The UN’s top human rights official on Monday warned of increasing atrocities in Sudan and demanded the international community take quick action to de-escalate violence in the country. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk told member states at the Human Rights Council in Geneva that “we can only expect worse to come” unless international action [...]

The UN’s top human rights official on Thursday demanded that Burkina Faso end its clampdown on civic freedoms, including an announced ban on political parties. In his comments, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk emphasized that the government’s decision to prohibit political parties marks a serious setback for the freedoms of expression, association and political participation [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged both Taliban and Pakistani authorities on Thursday to investigate the killing of Afghan journalist Abdul Ghafor Abed. Abed, a provincial reporter for Taliban-controlled Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), was killed on October 15 while covering cross-border clashes between Taliban and Pakistani forces in  Zazai Maidan district of Afghanistan’s Khost [...]

The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned on Monday that the nation faces a renewed wave of armed violence, deepening human rights violations, and mass displacement, stating that the country’s political leaders have “deliberately stalled progress and brought South Sudan to yet another precipice.” The Commission’s mission to the African Union revealed [...]