Congress chief Jose Jeri was sworn in as Peru’s new president less than hour after the country’s Congress unanimously voted to remove President Dina Boluarte for “permanent moral incapacity”.
Japan’s Komeito party has announced it will withdraw from its coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), as newly elected leader Sanae Takaichi awaits a parliamentary vote to confirm her as Japan’s first prime minister, which is now in peril.
Tetsuo Saito, Komeito party leader, told party members on Friday that the 26-year partnership had broken down over an “inadequate” explanation by the LDP of its handling of a political funding scandal that has roiled the ruling group.
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He said Komeito would not back Takaichi in the parliamentary vote expected later this month. In response, Takaichi said the collapse of the country’s ruling coalition was “extremely regrettable”.
“We have cooperated over the last 26 years, including when we were out of power. That this relationship is coming to such a conclusion is extremely regrettable,” the head of the LDP said of its junior partner Komeito.
Takaichi, who the LDP picked as its new leader on Saturday and skews to the right wing of the party, is now 37 seats short of a majority in parliament’s lower house. Without Komeito, she will need the backing of at least two other parties to pass legislation.
Opposition parties can put forward their own candidates when parliament meets to vote on the next premier.
Any candidate who secures a simple majority in the first round wins approval. If not, the two candidates with the most votes go into a run-off.
The LDP also has a minority in the less powerful upper house of parliament. It has governed Japan for most of the post-war period.
Takaichi’s selection as LDP leader last week dampened market expectations for a near-term interest rate hike, sending stocks higher and weakening the yen.
She is known for her staunch support of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” stimulus policies.
Islamabad, Pakistan – A series of explosions and bursts of gunfire rattled Afghanistan’s capital late Thursday evening, according to local media. The cause of the blasts and the extent of casualties remain unclear.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that an explosion had been heard in Kabul, saying the cause was under investigation.
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“An explosion was heard in Kabul city,” he posted on social media platform X in Pashto. “But don’t worry, it’s all good and well. The accident is under investigation, and no injuries have been reported yet. So far there is no report of any harm done.”
The incident came amid worsening relations between Afghanistan and its western neighbour Pakistan, which has accused the Taliban government – in power since August 2021 – of providing safe havens to armed groups, particularly the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which Islamabad blames for a surge in attacks on its security forces.
The explosions also coincided with the arrival of the Taliban administration’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, in India for a six-day visit, the first such trip since the Taliban’s return to power.
Following the Kabul explosions, speculation swirled on social media that Pakistan was behind the attack, allegedly targeting senior TTP leaders, including its chief, Noor Wali Mehsud.
However, the Taliban have not levelled any accusations yet. Pakistani security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to talk to the media, neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the Kabul explosions. “We have seen the media reports and statements from Afghan officials about explosions in Kabul. However, we have no further details on this,” one official told Al Jazeera.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also did not respond to Al Jazeera’s queries.
While neither the Taliban nor the TTP has commented on Mehsud and whether he is safe, Mujahid’s comments suggest that no one was killed in the explosions.
Once seen as heavily backed by Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban have been trying to recalibrate their foreign policy, engaging regional powers such as India, their former adversary, in a bid to secure eventual diplomatic recognition.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has accused India of supporting armed groups operating on its soil, a charge New Delhi denies.
After a bloody 2024, one of Pakistan’s deadliest years in nearly a decade, with more than 2,500 people killed in violence, both countries tried to reset their relationship.
Pakistan’s deputy prime minister Ishaq Dar visited Kabul in April, with senior leadership on both sides holding a series of meetings, often mediated by China. That process led to upgraded diplomatic ties and a brief lull in violence over the summer.
Yet, according to the Pakistan Institute of Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), an Islamabad-based think tank, violence in the first three quarters of 2025 nearly matched the entire toll of 2024.
TTP remains the singular cause for the increasing attacks since 2021, according to US-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED).
“Our data show that the TTP engaged in at least 600 attacks against, or clashes with, security forces in the past year alone. Its activity in 2025 so far already exceeds that seen in all of 2024,” a recent report by the ACLED pointed out.
And in recent days, Pakistan has witnessed a further escalation in violence. A string of assaults has killed dozens of soldiers, mostly in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which shares a long and porous border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani military on Friday said it killed more than 30 fighters involved in a recent attack in the tribal district of Orakzai.
In September alone, at least 135 people were killed and 173 injured. After visiting wounded soldiers following raids that killed 19 personnel, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif issued a stark warning to Afghanistan.
“Choose one of two paths. If they wish to establish relations with Pakistan with genuine goodwill, sincerity and honesty, we are ready for that. But if they choose to side with terrorists and support them, then we will have nothing to do with the Afghan interim government,” Sharif said on September 13.
On Thursday, Defence Minister Khwaja Asif also accused Afghanistan of enabling violence in Pakistan while speaking on the floor of the parliament
“Despite years of negotiations with the Afghan government and delegations coming and going to Kabul, the bloodshed in Pakistan has not stopped. Daily funerals of military personnel are being held. We are paying the price of 60 years of hospitality to 6 million Afghan refugees with our blood,” he said.
Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghan refugees since the 1980s, first after the Soviet invasion, then during the Taliban’s initial rule in the 1990s, and again after their 2021 takeover.
Since November 2023, Islamabad has been carrying out a mass expulsion campaign, forcing Afghans – many of whom have lived in Pakistan for decades – to return home. Government figures say nearly a million have been sent back so far.
The tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban in recent years have also escalated into military clashes.
The Pakistani military has previously conducted airstrikes inside Afghan territory, the most recent one in December 2024.
Analysts say that if the latest explosions were indeed linked to Pakistan, the implications could be serious.
Tameem Bahiss, a security analyst based in Kabul, said the Taliban have consistently denied harbouring TTP fighters, and any formal acknowledgement of strikes inside the capital could inflame tensions.
“We’ve seen before those previous Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan yielded no concrete results. Instead, they only deepened mistrust and made cooperation on countering the TTP more difficult. This latest incident will likely harden positions further, making dialogue and coordination even more complicated,” he told Al Jazeera.
The last major targeted strike in Kabul took place in 2022, when al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US drone attack.
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, an Islamabad-based security analyst, said that if Pakistan was involved in the attacks, they may have been intended as a warning following recent attacks on Pakistani soil.
Mehsud, who co-founded The Khorasan Diary, a security-focused news outlet, said the explosions could signal Pakistan’s intent to pursue high-value targets across the border.
“Pakistan could try and target individuals in Kabul, which is the political capital, as well as those in Kandahar, which is seen as the spiritual capital of Taliban, in case security situation in Pakistan remains dire and Afghan Taliban don’t rein in the TTP,” he cautioned.
Bahiss, however, warned that any cross-border strikes could backfire.
“If Pakistan continues to expand its strikes inside Afghanistan, more Afghans may begin to sympathise with the TTP. This sympathy could translate into new recruits, funding, and possibly even quiet support from some segments within the Afghan Taliban,” he said.
He added that if Pakistan indeed was targeting TTP leaders inside Afghanistan, that could provoke the group into escalating attacks inside Pakistan.
‘For her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.’ The Nobel Committee has announced Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Maria Corina Machado, a key opposition leader in Venezuela, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 for her struggle to promote democratic rights in her country.
Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding in Venezuela, was blocked by its courts from running for president against President Nicolas Maduro in the 2024 elections.
“She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” said the Norwegian Nobel Committee, awarding the prize on Friday at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
Hailing Machado as one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America, it added that Machado had been a “key unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided – an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government”.
Machado ran as the democratic opposition candidate in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election but was disqualified by Maduro’s government and went on to support the opposition’s alternative candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Incumbent Maduro won re-election that year with 51 percent of the vote – his third win since he first took over as president in 2013 after the death of his mentor, former President Hugo Chavez.
But the opposition said the results were rigged, claiming Maduro had only won 30 percent of the vote and that Gonzalez was the real victor.
The opposition received global support when it publicised vote counts collected from the country’s election districts, showing that the opposition had won by a clear margin.
Protests erupted, demanding the release of election results by individual polling stations, and Maduro’s government responded with a brutal crackdown on opposition protesters and leaders.
Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, praised Machado’s decision to remain in her country, having been “forced to live in hiding” after “serious threats against her life”. Her choice, he said, had “inspired millions”.
“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” he said.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) congratulated Machado. “This recognition reflects the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections, for civil and political rights and for the rule of law,” said OHCHR spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan.
‘Brave women and men’
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish kronor, or about $1.2m, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
The committee said in its announcement of this year’s winner that it has always “honoured brave women and men who have stood up to repression, who have carried the hope of freedom in prison cells, on the streets and in public squares, and who have shown by their actions that peaceful resistance can change the world”.
Winners in recent history include Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023, Congolese humanitarian Denis Mukwege in 2018, and former United States President Barack Obama in 2009. Malala Yousafzai became the youngest recipient of the award in 2014 at the age of 17. The oldest laureate is Joseph Rotblat, honoured at 86 for his work against nuclear weapons.
The 2024 award was given to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”.
The recognition honoured the organisation’s decades-long campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and preserve the testimonies of the survivors of the US atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The lead-up to this year’s award had been dominated by US President Donald Trump’s repeated self-aggrandising public statements that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The committee took its final decision just before an Israel-Hamas ceasefire came into effect in Gaza under the first phase of Trump’s initiative to end the war.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do, really, but I know this: That nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months, and I’ve stopped eight wars,” Trump said on Thursday. “So that’s never happened before, but they’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives.”
The president was alluding to the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, which saw him intervene with bunker buster bombs on Iranian nuclear sites, as well as conflicts and tensions of varying levels of intensity, not all of which classify as wars, between India and Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.
Before the Nobel announcement, experts on the award had said Trump was very unlikely to win, as his policies were seen as dismantling the international world order that the Nobel committee cherishes.
That did not stop Trump’s cheerleaders from lobbying for a victory. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, said in a post on X that Trump should “undoubtedly” receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on ending the war in Gaza.
Palestinian families have begun returning to Gaza City as Israel continued deadly attacks on the enclave, despite signing the first phase of a ceasefire deal paving the way for fighting to stop in the next 24 hours.
As displaced families from the southern parts of the enclave moved north on Friday, Israel launched a deadly attack from helicopters on a site east of Gaza City and conducted air strikes in the southern Khan Younis area, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
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Sources at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital confirmed to Al Jazeera that the bodies of seven people had been recovered from several areas in Gaza City since Friday morning.
There were no initial reports of casualties in the attacks on Khan Younis, which also included rounds of shelling and heavy tank fire north of the city, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
The attacks are the first to be reported in Gaza since Israel’s government ratified the first phase of a ceasefire deal with Hamas late on Thursday night.
The attacks took place as Al Jazeera’s team on the ground reported Israel had started to pull its troops back behind the line agreed under the Gaza deal.
“What is controversial is that there has been high activity of Israeli drones, fighter jets and even warships from the early hours of this morning,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Nuseirat in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
Abu Azzoum said families had started moving towards the north of the Strip, but were still waiting to enter the areas in the Netzarim Corridor, where the Israeli army used to operate.
“They are waiting for the last Israeli tank to leave the region to enter the territory,” he said.
Gaza’s civil defence warned people to keep away from the border areas of Gaza City until the official announcement of the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Earlier, Israel’s government approved “phase one” of a ceasefire agreement, which will see captives exchanged and Israel withdraw from parts of Gaza, but details of how it fits into a wider plan to bring lasting peace, if at all, remain unclear.
Khalil al-Hayya, the head of Hamas’s negotiating team, said the group has received guarantees from the United States and mediators that an agreement on a first phase of the ceasefire agreement means the war in Gaza “has ended completely”.
The Israeli government’s ratification of the peace plan, which was confirmed in the early hours of Friday morning, paves the way for fighting in Gaza to stop within 24 hours, while Hamas has been given a 72-hour timeline to free Israeli captives.
Palestine’s Quds News Network reported that Gaza residents who left the Strip from Egypt will be allowed to return home through the Rafah crossing for the first time since October 7, 2023. Gaza residents will also be allowed to exit to Egypt.