PAKISTAN: Five police have been killed and eight wounded in attacks by militants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Over 100,000 people have been displaced by a government operation to suppress insurgents in the province, which borders Afghanistan.

PERU: President Dina Boluarte has signed an amnesty for soldiers and police accused of rights abuses, including unlawful killings, during the conflict with the Maoist Shining Path insurgency in the 1980s-90s.

Offering immunity for crimes committed in those years is bitterly opposed by the country’s left. Ms Boluarte became president after a congressional coup removed elected Marxist president Pedro Castillo, who has been thrown in jail.

SYRIA: A UN-backed commission has found government-aligned militias committed “widespread and systematic” violence against civilians in coastal areas in spring.

Attacks on Alawite and Christian Syrians around Latakia by forces supporting the regime of former al-Qaida fighter Ahmad al-Sharaa, whose troops ousted Bashar al-Assad late last year, killed over 1,400 people. But the commission said there is no evidence the killings were centrally directed.

MEXICO: Over eight million people were lifted out of poverty between 2022-24, the statistics agency reported on Wednesday.

It’s an 18 per cent drop in poverty levels. National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies researcher Manuel Martinez Espinoza said the improvements are down to policies of former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his successor Claudia Sheinbaum, especially raising the minimum wage and rolling out social security and food security programmes.