A member of Syria’s White Helmets civil-defense force was shot dead in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province on Thursday, according to a civil-defense official.

Bangladesh and Myanmar have signed a deal for the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, who have taken shelter in the border town of Cox’s Bazar after a brutal crackdown by the military.

Turkey will build 5,000 more prefabricated homes for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, an increase from the previously promised 20,000 homes, Deputy Prime Minister Recep Akdag said on Tuesday.

Israeli forces in Wednesday shot and injured a Palestinian and arrested another near a security fence between the blockaded Gaza Strip and Israel, according to the Israeli military.

Britain’s primary school inspectors will question girls who wear the Muslim headscarf at school, the head of the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) and the chief inspector of schools, Amanda Spielman, said.

Chinese authorities in Tekes county in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have searched the homes of 30,000 members of the mostly Muslim Kazakh ethnic group in recent weeks, confiscating copies of the Quran, prayer mats and other religious items, RFA has learned.

Lush green hills surround al-Walaja, an agricultural terrain cultivated by locals for millennia that provides a respite from the typically arid landscape of much of the occupied West Bank. While residents of the small Palestinian village have long fought to preserve sovereignty over their lands, the Israeli government has other plans.

Six separatists and an Indian air force commando have been killed in a fierce gun battle in Indian-administered Kashmir, according to police.

A suicide attacker has killed at least nine people, detonating his vest near a political gathering in the Afghan capital, Kabul, officials confirmed.

The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on Thursday on rival US and Russian bids to renew an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria, diplomats said, a move that could trigger Russia’s 10th veto to block action on Syria.