In a bustling Tehran prayer hall, ultraconservative Saeed Jalili has rallied fervent supporters ahead of Friday's runoff presidential vote, while his reformist rival Masoud Pezeshkian stirred up a crowd in a nearby stadium.
The two candidates held their final campaign rallies late Wednesday, after leading the first-round vote in snap elections to succeed president Ebrahim Raisi who died in a May helicopter crash.
The gunman who killed two people at Oslo's 2022 Pride festival was handed decades behind bars Thursday over the attack that the court said aimed to "instill fear in LGBTQ people".
Zaniar Matapour, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, was found guilty of opening fire on June 25, 2022 outside two bars in central Oslo, including a famous gay club, just hours before the Pride Parade.
Nine other people were wounded.
The Hamas militant group said Wednesday it had sent new "ideas" to Qatari mediators aimed at ending the nearly nine-month Gaza war with Israel.
Israel confirmed that it was "evaluating" Hamas "comments" on a deal to free its hostages in the Palestinian territory and would reply.
With the death toll mounting and conditions worsening daily for Gazans, both sides are under increased international pressure to agree to a ceasefire -- more recently based on a roadmap pushed by US President Joe Biden.
Hezbollah said it fired more than 100 rockets at Israeli positions on Wednesday in retaliation for a strike that killed a senior commander in Lebanon, the movement's second such loss in recent weeks.
Hezbollah has traded near daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in Gaza, but a recent uptick in bellicose rhetoric from both sides has raised fears of all-out war.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled southern Gaza since Israel issued an evacuation order, amid fears of a new offensive in the area which came under Israeli bombardment on Wednesday.
On Israel's northern front, Lebanon's Hezbollah said it fired 100 rockets at Israeli targets in retaliation for a strike that killed a senior commander, heightening fears of full-scale war between the longtime foes.
Investigators in Germany and Sweden on Wednesday arrested eight suspects allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government over alleged participation in crimes against humanity in Syria, prosecutors said.
The arrests, five in Germany and three in Sweden, represent the latest attempt to pursue justice for the victims of abuses committed in Syria's civil war.
Iranians will vote on Friday in a presidential runoff pitting the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian against ultraconservative anti-Western former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Around 61 million Iranians are eligible to cast ballots in the election, which was called after the death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
It will be held amid heightened regional tensions over the Gaza war, a dispute with the West over Iran's nuclear programme and popular discontent over the state of Iran's sanctions-hit economy.
Wafaa Elwan's five-year-old son cannot sleep in the Gaza tent city where she and her seven children shelter, but it is not the guns of war that cause his daily nightmare.
"My son can't sleep through the night because he can't stop scratching his body," the anxious mother said.
The boy has white and red blotches over his feet and legs, and more under his T-shirt. He is one of many Gazans suffering from skin infections ranging from scabies to chicken pox, lice, impetigo and other debilitating rashes.
Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in two military operations in the occupied West Bank where tensions have risen because of the Gaza war, Palestinian and Israeli sources said Wednesday.
One night-time air strike killed four men at a refugee camp near the town of Tulkarm, which has seen a surge in violence as Israel has intensified raids.
The Palestinian Authority health ministry said the four were "killed as a result of the occupation's bombing of Nur Shams camp".
Making concessions to Taliban authorities by excluding civil society groups from UN-hosted talks was a price worth paying for further engagement, the EU's special envoy to Afghanistan said Tuesday.
Rights groups have strongly criticised the UN move to exclude women's rights and other groups from the Doha meeting which ended Monday, in a compromise to allow the Taliban government's participation.
