After only 15 minutes’ warning to residents of Gaza City, Israeli forces attacked and destroyed the 12-story Mushtaha tower on Friday. The site is close to a camp where Palestinians are sleeping in tents and are acclimatized.
The incumbent Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party has been declared the winner of the Samoa national election.
FAST won 30 of the 50 seats contested, according to the official results released by the Samoan electoral commission on Friday. However, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, the party’s former leader, will step down in the place of Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt, who took over earlier this year.
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14 seats were held by the main opposition, the Human Rights Protection Party. Four more independent candidates were chosen.
Only three seats, including her own, were won by Fiame’s Samoa Uniting Party, which was founded earlier this year. In January, a factional dispute led to her expulsion from FAST.
In the nation of about 220 000 people, rising prices were identified as a pressing issue for voters.
Residents of Apia, the capital of Samoa, had informed the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that they wanted the next government to concentrate on the economy and jobs prior to the election on August 29.
Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, the head of state of Samoa, had issued a warrant confirming the names of the new members of the next parliament.
Seats have been won by five women. At least six women must be in parliament, according to the Samoa Observer, which would require the creation of an additional seat in accordance with a 10% minimum representation requirement.
In 2021, Fiame won the election that removed Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi from power after 22 years, making her the country’s first female leader.
She hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last year, which was focused on the Pacific’s impact, to raise the profile of the country internationally.
The UN Human Rights Office released a report on Friday, claiming that it had found that all parties to the bloody conflict had committed abuses since late 2024, including widespread sexual violence and summary executions in North and South Kivu provinces.
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Non-state armed groups have plagued Eastern DRC, a region that borders Rwanda, for more than 30 years, and have experienced extreme violence.
The M23 armed group has seized large tracts of land in the restive region with Rwanda’s support since beginning to use arms at the end of 2021, sparking an armed conflict with the DRC military, leading to a humanitarian crisis that has claimed the lives of thousands and displaced at least seven million people.
This is the first UN report to show that the abuses may have been crimes against humanity, despite numerous human rights organizations and the UN’s accusations of gross atrocities committed by parties involved in the conflict in the DRC.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk issued a statement in support of the atrocities described in this report, calling for victims’ accountability.
The findings “underscore the scale and widespread nature of violations and abuses committed by all parties to the conflict, including acts that might constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the report continued.
In January, M23 took control of Goma, the largest city in the eastern DRC, and spread its gains throughout South and North Kivu.
Summary executions, torture, and arbitrary disappearances, according to the UN report, were carried out by the ethnic Tutsi-led M23, which may amount to crimes against humanity.
The group “degraded, punished, and broken the dignity of victims,” according to the report, which included gang rape, which was primarily committed against women.
There are credible allegations of Rwandan personnel being hid in M23, it added, and the Rwandan Defence Forces provided training and operational support for M23.
Rwanda claims that it supports M23 in self-defense against the army and Hutu militiamen linked to the genocide in 1994. Prior to now, M23 has denied carrying out atrocities.
Additionally, the report found that grave crimes, including gang rape, deliberate killing of civilians, and looting, had been committed by the DRC, the military, and affiliated armed groups, such as pro-government militia fighters known as Wazalendo.
A separate UN report revealed that between January and May of this year, more than 17, 000 sexually violent victims were treated by healthcare providers in the eastern region of the DRC.
The DRC and the rebels signed a declaration of principles on July 19 and agreed to begin negotiations for a peace deal in August after Qatar’s mediation.
Anutin Charnvirakul, the leader of the conservative Bhumjaithai party, was chosen as Thailand’s parliament’s prime minister.
Anutin will succeed Paetongtarn Shinawatra of the ruling Pheu Thai Party, who was fired from office last month due to an ethics scandal.
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With the support of the liberal People’s Party, Anutin defeated Chaikasem Nitisiri, the populist candidate for Pheu Thai.
Anutin promised to call a general election within four months, giving the largest party in the 500-seat parliament the backing it had.
The Bhumjaithai leader was confirmed to have received more than 247 votes, the 492 active members’ majority, while counting and voting were still being conducted.
After the vote is over, his final score must be verified. In a few days, he and his government are scheduled to take office, according to King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s official announcement.
The Shinawatra clan, a force in Thai politics for the past 20 years, is dealt yet another blow by Veteran Anutin’s election.
Their populist movement has long been at odds with the pro-military, pro-monarchy establishment, but it has been increasingly detested by legal and political obstacles.
In the hours leading up to the vote on Friday, Thaksin Shinawatra, the dynasty’s patriarch, flew out of Thailand and headed for Dubai.
Anutin once supported the Pheu Thai coalition, but he abruptly gave up in the wake of Paetongtarn’s actions during a border dispute with neighboring Cambodia.
In the event of a hoped-for peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, hundreds of nations pledged to send troops there on Friday as a security guarantee.
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If President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker that peace are unsuccessful, 26 states agreed at a summit of the “coalition of the willing” on Thursday to provide forces to deter Russia from further aggression. The United States’ commitment, which is viewed as essential to any such security arrangement, is still a mystery.
At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin stated that if some troops showed up, especially now that they are engaged in fighting, they would likely be legitimate targets. This was a move that came after the Russian president made a public display of close ties with China and North Korea.
Putin reaffirmed his claim that Ukraine’s closer military ties with the West are one of the “root causes” of the conflict, which started in February 2022 when Russian forces launched an invasion and stated that the deployment of foreign troops would not promote long-term peace.
Putin said, “I simply do not see any sense in their presence on the territory of Ukraine, full stop, if decisions are made that lead to peace, to long-term peace.”
Separately, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, stated that the Paris summit proposal was “definitely not” acceptable.
The presence of NATO forces, foreign forces, or international forces on Ukrainian soil, he said, “would be considered a threat to ourselves,” he said to reporters.
Peskov instead asserted that all necessary security guarantees for Ukraine were included in the terms of the 2022 peace negotiations in Istanbul.
Ukraine would abandon NATO goals and establish a neutral, nuclear-free status under the Istanbul framework. It would also receive security assurances from France, the US, Russia, China, and Britain.
However, the Paris summit proposal stated that any future agreement must be enforced by a “reassurance” force to patrol in Ukraine under the leadership of France and Britain.
Russia has previously violated numerous agreements with Ukraine and the West, including one that involved separatists fighting Kyiv’s army in the east between 2014 and 2022.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, hosted the Paris summit, while other countries, such as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, took the initiative remotely.
After Trump and Putin had direct talks, the meeting stoked concerns that Macron is ready to accept Kremlin accounts of the conflict and its demands for a ceasefire. He led the charge to demonstrate that Europe can act independently of the US.
Therefore, it’s uncertain whether the US will be involved in the Paris proposal.
Trump has previously stated that Washington may provide additional support, such as air power, but won’t deploy troops there.
Putin stated on Friday that both Russia and Ukraine need security guarantees.
Russia will, of course, carry out these agreements, I repeat. However, no one has yet had a serious discussion about this with us.
United Kingdom, London The United Kingdom’s “silence in action” is a manifestation of the government’s involvement in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, according to Nick Maynard, a British doctor who has visited Gaza several times.
He depicted the harm that Israel caused to children through aerial bombardment, gunfire, or the deliberate restriction of life-saving infant formula and medicine as a torrent of early autumn rain fell on London on Thursday.
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On the eve of an unofficial inquiry looking into the UK’s alleged role in Israeli war crimes, he claimed that the boys he operated on, some as young as 11 or 12, were clearly targeted with shootings to the abdomen and the chest.
A group of four young teenagers, aged between 13 and 14, were brought in at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital on one occasion, who were all shot in the testicles as Maynard performed an operation on a patient in an understaffed theatre to the cacophony of bombs exploding.
We all understood the pattern of specific body parts being targeted, he said, explaining what I believe Israeli soldiers practiced as target practice. ”
He also brought up Zaynab, a seven-month old child who passed away from malnutrition. He told the audience, “You could see every bone in her body,” adding, “You could see every rib.” She was receiving sugar and water. In Nasser [hospital], we were completely out of formula feed.
Four days before she passed away, US doctors discovered a shortage of formula feed. Israeli guards purposefully removed those, as they were. Zaynab might have been saved thanks to that formula feed. ”
Since Israel launched its war against the besieged enclave in October 2023, in response to Hamas attacks on southern Israel, in which an estimated 1,200 people were killed, more than 64,000 people have died in Gaza.
Former Labour leader and lifelong supporter of Palestinian rights, Jeremy Corbyn, who is launching a new left-wing party in the UK, will host the two-day event known as the “Gaza tribunal.” It will end on Friday.
On Friday, former US diplomat Mark Smith will address the tribunal. He resigned over the country’s failure to stop sending weapons to Israel.
To Corbyn’s effort, which comes after a conflict with Keir Starmer’s government, are lawmakers, campaigners, and experts from the UN who have survived the genocide.
In a bill that was introduced in the House of Commons on June 4, Corbyn demanded an independent investigation into the UK’s involvement in Israeli military operations in Gaza, including the use of Royal Air Force bases and the supply of weapons. The ruling Labour Party ultimately vetoed the bill, which was supported by dozens of MPs and by more than 20 aid organizations.
It is up to us to conduct a public open inquiry if the government won’t organize one, and if Parliament doesn’t effectively conduct an inquiry, Corbyn said. This event will help us make stronger arguments both inside and outside the court system. A lot of what is happening is completely unlawful and shouldn’t be concealed. ”
If the UK were to continue to supply Israel with the “vital components” of F-35 jets, which were “bombing hospitals and schools,” we would be complicit in international humanitarian law violations.
The majority of panelists at the conference, which took place in Westminster’s heartland, including Labour lawmaker Richard Burgon, concurred that the UK is a part of the alleged war crimes committed by Israel.
He claimed that some countries, including the UK, are aiding in Israel’s arming. That constitutes complicity in its own right. ”
Another type of political complicity, in his opinion, is.
I contend that the UK government is also at fault for giving Israel the political green light. ”
He claimed that the UK should have used “every tool at its disposal, from sanctions to using its role in the UN and elsewhere to force, not plead with Israel, to stop,” just as it has done with Russia’s war against Ukraine.
UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, did not make any accusations of complicity in war crimes, but said states like the UK had been made aware of their obligations for decades and have not done so in response to Israel’s “longstanding structural system of widespread and systemic oppression and exploitation against the Palestinians that has turned genocidal.”
The meetings are held as a result of the Palestinians’ growing public support. Pro-Palestine marches are expected to take place across the nation on Saturday, with many people expected to attend.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s head, Ben Jamal, called for a “fundamental shift in public opinion.”
Israel hasn’t been able to change the dynamics of government behavior because it is more dispersed in the court of public opinion, he claimed.
Israel’s prime minister, Isaac Herzog, is scheduled to visit the UK next week, according to The Guardian, despite the UK’s recent criticism of Israel’s atrocity and its commitment to recognizing a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly later this month.
The UK continues to fly surveillance planes over Gaza while maintaining diplomatic ties, raising concerns about possible intelligence sharing with Israel, and provides F-35 components to Israel through the global pool program.
The Sameer Project, a grassroots aid organization for Gaza, co-founded by Palestinians Hala Sabbah, who questioned why the UK has welcomed fewer child evacuees in need of immediate medical care than countries like Italy and Spain.
She claimed that the UK does not only actively murder us, but that they also refuse to assist us.
Victoria Rose, a British surgeon who has volunteered in Gaza and has witnessed the effects of Israel’s campaign, wrote to Prime Minister Starmer in November 2024 to demand action along with campaigners.
However, she and other doctors were only given a press invitation to speak with the premier via Zoom after her media appearances in June 2025. She also had a personal meeting with health minister Wes Streeting.