The Taliban have accepted an invitation from Russia to attend regional talks in Moscow, on Afghanistan’s future.

The talks are likely to exclude the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports.

A Turkish airstrike has killed a senior Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader in Sinjar, a village in northern Iraq where Kurdish forces fought off Islamic State (IS) militants in 2014.

Zaki Shingali, a senior PKK leader who is highly regarded by many in the area, was killed in the strikes, which also left up to a reported dozen people dead.

Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, has died at the age of 80.

His family and the Kofi Annan foundation announced that he passed away today after a short illness.

Born in Ghana, Mr Annan was the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations and the first black African to take up the role.

The government of Maldives is cracking down on "any and all dissent" through the intimidation of political opponents and the media, Human Rights Watch said in a report published this week. 

“The Maldives government has cracked down on any and all dissent, from activists and journalists to Supreme Court judges,” HRW's Asia director, Brad Adams. 

The United States imposed sanctions on Myanmar's military and police on Friday over the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. 

“Burmese security forces have engaged in violent campaigns against ethnic minority communities across Burma, including ethnic cleansing, massacres, sexual assault, extrajudicial killings, and other serious human rights abuses,” the US Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Sigal Mandelker was quoted by Reuters as saying. 

The United States has criticised attempts by the Republika Srpska Government to annul a report that acknowledged that Bosnian Serb troops were responsible for the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.

“International courts have concluded that genocide occurred in Srebrenica in 1995,” said a US State department statement. “The August 14 session of the Republika Srpska National Assembly is a step in the wrong direction. Attempts to reject or amend the report on Srebrenica are part of wider efforts to revise the facts of the past war, to deny history, and to politicize tragedy.”

Over 700 schools run by the United Nations for Palestinian refugee children are set to open on schedule despite US funding cuts, the UN said on Thursday. 

Over half a million children attend the schools, which are situated in sites across the Palestinian territories, as well as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. 

Earlier this year the Trump administation announced it would be stopping hundreds of millions of dollars of funding to the UN. 

A large Taliban offensive has killed at least 40 Afghan soldiers and police in Afghanistan's Baghlan province, reports Al Jazeera, as intense fighting continues between the two sides.

The attack on the military outpost, launched in the early hours of Wednesday, is the latest in a series of assaults launched by the Taliban across the country. It comes after the Taliban overran a military base in the northern Faryab province on Monday, killing at least 17 soldiers.

Saudi Arabia announced it will hold an investigation into the “collateral damage” after an airstrike killed at least 40 Yemeni children in Saada province last week.

The airstrike, which Saudi Arabia initially said was a “legitimate military operation carried out in accordance with humanitarian law”, struck a bus carrying schoolchildren from a summer camp. At least 51 people were killed in the strike and a further 79 injured.

Six people, inlcuding three Chinese workers were injured on Saturday when a Baloch fighter detonated an explosive device on a bus in Balochistan, killing himself. 

The bus was transporting engineers working on a mining project in the Dalbandin region. 

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has claimed responsibility for the attack, posting a video on social media that it said was of its fighter taken before the attack. 

The Republic of Vanuatu is seeking support from other Pacific islands towards a UN General Assembly resolution calling for the right to self-determination for West Papua, to be presented at the 74th session in September 2019. 

The draft text was presented last week at the Pacific foreign ministers' meeting in Apia, by Vanuatu's foreign minister, Ralph Regenvanu.

The Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik yesterday rejected a government report which acknowledged the Srebrenica genocide as "biased" and called for it to be withdrawn, AP reports. 

"The report is biased and does not mention Serb victims," Mr Dodik told parliament. His supporters voted to reject the report, arguing it was "not objective and is untrue". 

The report was written in 2004 by the previous Bosnian Serb government. 

EU observers maintain that whilst there were irregularities there was not fraud, commenting on the recent runoff election in Mali between President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and opposition leader Somalia Cisse.

Mr Cisse has rejected this arguing that the results were “neither sincere nor credible” and launched a legal challenge in Mali's constitutional court alleging "ballot box-stuffing”.

A special tribunal in Bangladesh today sentenced five men to death for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the rape, murder and torture of civilians during the country's war of independence in 1971. 

The International Crimes Tribunal, led by Justice Shahinur Islam said the convicted men were part of the Muslim League and Al-Badr, who were working with the then occupying Pakistan army.