Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and southern separatist forces have agreed on a ceasefire and will begin talks in Saudi Arabia on implementing a peace deal, the Saudi-led coalition said on Monday.

The two sides have now agreed to a ceasefire in Abyan province along the coast east of Aden, as well as on a de-escalation of tensions in Socotra and other regions, and on the start of talks, a statement from the Saudi-led coalition said.

Malaysia is considering a plan to send nearly 300 Rohingya Muslim refugees detained after arriving on a damaged boat back out to sea once the ship has been fixed, two security sources told Reuters on Thursday.

The Arakan Project, a nonprofit group focusing on the Rohingya crisis, urged Malaysia not to send the refugees back out to sea.

“This would amount to refoulement and would be completely inhumane as passengers already died aboard this boat before it was rescued,” Chris Lewa, the group’s director told Reuters.

Sudan’s Public Prosecution Service has confirmed the discovery of a mass grave in El Elafon district in Khartoum state. The dozens of bodies are presumed to be of students who were forced into military service just after finishing high school and who fled a training military camp in 1998.

Saudi Arabia has proposed a framework to end the latest standoff in southern Yemen between nominal allies under a Saudi-led coalition, three sources said, as violence escalates with the Houthi movement in the north of the country.

Previous clashes between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and the Southern Transitional Council, a separatist group, have complicated UN efforts to end Yemen’s ruinous conflict and protect its fractured health sector from COVID-19.

The Trump administration on Wednesday ramped up pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his inner circle with a load of new economic and travel sanctions for human rights abuses and blocking a settlement of the country’s conflict.

The State Department and the Treasury said 39 Syrian individuals, including al-Assad and his wife, had been designated for the new sanctions.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday he would reject European Union membership if Belgrade does not receive concessions in return for recognizing Kosovo and dropping attempts to stop it from joining the United Nations.

After meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Vucic said no resolution of Serbia’s future relationship with its former province would be possible without Moscow’s consent.

Venezuela on Saturday demanded the release of a government-connected businessman who was detained in Cape Verde on U.S. corruption charges, calling his arrest an illegal act of aggression by the Trump administration aimed at piling new hardships on the crisis-wracked oil nation.

Campaigners have criticized the UN for removing the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen from a list of groups violating children's rights, adding that the coalition had been responsible for the death or injury of 222 children last year.

Angry protesters in Lebanon took to the streets in the capital, Beirut, and other cities on Saturday calling for the government's resignation as the country sinks deeper into economic distress.

The protests come after two days of rallies spurred by a dramatic collapse of the local currency against the dollar. Some of those rallies degenerated into violence, including attacks on private banks and shops.

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A Sudanese war crimes suspect said on Monday that charges mentioned on his arrest warrant are untrue, during an initial appearance at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The suspect, who had previously been identified in court documents as having the surname Kushayb, said his preferred name was Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman. He is accused of persecution, murder, and rape in the western Sudanese region of Darfur in 2003-2004.