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 were made to it," the speaker of parliament's office announced.

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 abstentions. 

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 grown by 200,000 since last year’s count, and could approach four million by 2030. 

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 cooperate with it risk treading on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and groups. It adds to several previous legal challenges making similar claims. 

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 project backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, is in eastern Rafah near the unilaterally imposed “Yellow Line”, the effective Israeli buffer zone squeezing Palestinians into smaller areas. 

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 by immigrant-rights advocates to maintain the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for the two countries after the US Supreme Court in June allowed the administration to end similar protections for thousands of people from Haiti and Syria. 

The body that oversees the International Criminal Court has called on Chad and Venezuela to abandon their withdrawals from the institution, warning that their departure risks weakening the global fight against impunity. 

In a statement issued Friday from The Hague, the Assembly of States Parties said it had noted the two countries’ moves “with concern”, urging them to remain committed members and to raise any grievances through dialogue within the assembly rather than leaving altogether. 

More than 8 million school-age children in Sudan remain out of the classroom because of the ongoing civil war that erupted more than three years ago, the United Nations has said. 

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed delivered the warning on Friday at an informal UN Security Council session on safeguarding education in Sudan, as the war entered its 1,210th day. 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has released 15 prisoners and handed them over to rebels from ⁠the Congo River Alliance/March 23 movement (AFC/M23) in the east of the country. 

The release was announced by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which facilitated this first known transfer of prisoners under last year’s Qatar-mediated deal to end the fighting in the region. 

The handover happened on Thursday and Friday after months of talks thrashing out the names of detainees to be freed. 

More than 300 people who had been kidnapped across Nigeria have been freed in an intelligence and security operation, the government has announced. 

“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu warmly welcomes the successful rescue of 308 Nigerian citizens who were abducted in different attacks in Niger and Kwara states,” Bayo Onanuga, a special adviser to Nigeria’s president, said in a statement.