President Umaro Sissoco Embalo has dissolved Guinea-Bissau’s parliament and said early parliamentary elections would be held this year to resolve a long-running political crisis. Tensions between parliament and the presidency have gripped the West African state for months. Embalo cited “persistent and unresolvable differences” with parliament, which he described as “a space for guerrilla politics and plotting,” in a statement on Monday. “This political crisis has exhausted the capital of trust between the sovereign institutions,” he said.

The UN Human Rights Council has approved an investigation into possible war crimes by Russian troops in Ukraine. Members of the council voted 33 to two on Thursday in favor of a resolution brought forward by Kyiv to order a Commission of Inquiry to probe alleged atrocities in several regions around the Ukrainian capital that were temporarily held by Russian troops. Moscow’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, criticized the council’s decision.

A U.S. government investigation into the dark history of Native American boarding schools has found "marked or unmarked burial sites" at 53 of them, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said on Wednesday. Haaland, the first Native American cabinet member, announced the investigation last year. In releasing preliminary findings during a press conference in Washington, she spoke through tears and in a choked-up voice. "The federal policies that attempted to wipe out Native identity, language, and culture continue to manifest in the pain tribal communities face today," Haaland said.

A state service for the slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh took place in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, a day after she was killed by Israeli forces. Thousands of Palestinians attended the ceremony, which took place at the Palestinian Authority’s presidential compound at noon on Thursday in the occupied West Bank city. Abu Akleh was shot dead by Israeli forces while she was covering an Israeli military raid in Jenin city early on Wednesday.

Many women in the Afghan capital are delaying a return to fully covering their faces in public in defiance of orders from Islamist Taliban rulers, others are staying at home, and some have been wearing COVID-19 face masks anyway. The Taliban, who swept back to power as the government collapsed, on Saturday ordered women to cover their faces in public, a return to their past hardline rule and an escalation of restrictions on girls and women that are causing anger at home and abroad. 

It was August 9, 2017. Two youths, aged 24 and 22, were returning from work to their home in Mathare, one of Nairobi’s largest slums. Victor worked in construction and Bernard as a tailor. A massive protest had erupted at the time, against alleged fraud in Kenya’s general elections and had made its way to Mathare. Victor and Bernard struggled to make it home amid the tensions. The brothers stopped to speak with other youths in Mathare, when suddenly police opened fire with live bullets, sending them frantically running.

U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday unveiled drugs and weapons charges against a former police chief for Honduras, saying he conspired with now-detained former President Juan Orlando Hernandez to ship cocaine to the United States. Juan Carlos Bonilla, who led the Central American country's police between 2012 and 2013 under right-wing President Porfirio Lobo, was extradited from Honduras on Tuesday, and is expected to appear in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday.

The Gulf Clan drug cartel shut down dozens of towns in northern Colombia for four days in reaction to its leader being extradited to the U.S. for trial. It warned that anyone who disobeyed the stay-at-home order risked being shot or having their vehicle burned. Businesses closed, schools stayed shut, intercity bus service was suspended, and a professional soccer match couldn’t be played after one of the teams refused to travel to the game.

The son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the daughter of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte are the new leaders of the Philippines, an alliance that ushers in six years of governance that has some human rights activists concerned about the course their country may take with the pair in power.

A former senior Rwandan official has gone on trial in Paris, accused of complicity in the African nation’s genocide, the most senior figure yet to face justice in France over the 1994 massacres. The trial of Laurent Bucyibaruta, which opened on Monday, is expected to last two months and feature more than 100 witnesses, including survivors from Rwanda who have flown over or will appear via videoconference.