A second round of indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States in Geneva on Monday ended without concrete results. 
  
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and a team of technical experts met with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner—but both sides had little to show for it after over three hours of talks at the Omani embassy. 
  
Afterwards, Araghchi said the meeting was "more constructive" than the previous round held earlier this month. 
  

An air of defiance marked Kosovo’s independence celebrations on Tuesday as thousands of people joined a march in support of former fighters who are facing trial at a Netherlands-based court for alleged war crimes during a 1998-1999 separatist war from Serbia. 
  
Protesters showed up in the capital, Pristina, to voice their opposition to the proceedings in The Hague against former president and rebel leader Hashim Thaci and three others accused of atrocities during and after the conflict that killed some 13,000 people. 
  

Peru’s Congress voted Tuesday to remove interim President José Jerí from office as he faces corruption allegations, triggering a fresh wave of political instability just weeks before the nation’s April presidential and congressional elections. 
  
Jerí is under a preliminary investigation into corruption and influence peddling, stemming from a series of undisclosed meetings with two Chinese executives. 
  

A judge in the United States has ordered the National Park Service (NPS) to restore an exhibit about nine people who were enslaved by former President George Washington at a historical site in the city of Philadelphia. 
  
The ruling on Monday came after Philadelphia sued President Donald Trump’s administration over the takedown of several explanatory panels at the Independence National Historical Park, the site where Washington lived with his wife in the 1790s. 
 

Lebanon’s government has said that its military will need at least four months to complete the second phase of its plan to dismantle Hezbollah’s arsenals in the country’s south. 
  
The announcement by Minister of Information Paul Morcos on Monday comes amid growing pressure from the United States and Israel for Hezbollah to disarm, including near-daily Israeli attacks on Lebanon. 
 
The bombings come despite Israel agreeing to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in 2024 to end more than a year of cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah. 

Strikes on a market in central Sudan’s Kordofan region killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens, said a rights group on Monday, as the war between the army and a paramilitary group nears its three-year mark. 
  
Emergency Lawyers, a rights group tracking violence against civilians, said in a statement that drones bombed a market in Sudri locality in North Kordofan province on Sunday, during a time the market was bustling with civilians, “exacerbating the humanitarian tragedy.” The group said the number of casualties was likely to rise. 

Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born billionaire banker who served as a senior official in the breakaway Armenian administration of Nagorno-Karabakh, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by an Azerbaijani court on Tuesday, state media reported. 
 
A Baku military court convicted Vardanyan on 42 charges including terrorism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. 
 

Nigeria's foreign ministry has issued an urgent warning over what it describes as the increasing illegal recruitment of its citizens to fight in foreign conflicts. 
  
It comes after Ukrainian officials said they found the bodies of two Nigerians who they said were killed in combat last year. 
  

Israel's government has approved a process to register land in the West Bank as "state property," drawing condemnation from Arab nations and critics who said it would accelerate annexation of the Palestinian territory. 
  
Israel's Foreign Ministry said the measure, approved late on Sunday, February 15, would enable "transparent and thorough clarification of rights to resolve legal disputes" and was needed after unlawful land registration in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. 
  

Israeli forces have killed at least nine Palestinians in new attacks across Gaza, in yet another violation of the United States-brokered “ceasefire” in October, according to medical sources. 
  
The attacks on Sunday came as the Israeli military launched several attacks on southern Lebanon, targeting what it called warehouses used by the Hezbollah armed group. 
 
In Gaza, a source at the Nasser Hospital told Al Jazeera Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis.