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 Russian presidential representative said the meeting on September 4th was “in line with efforts to launch the process of national reconciliation in Afghanistan.”

This is the first time the Taliban are known to have accepted an invitation for multilateral talks from Russia, with China, India, Pakistan and Iran also due to attend the meeting.

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.

The PKK leader was leaving a service that commemorated the fourth anniversary of the Islamic State killing sin the village, where the ethnic Yazidi population was under attack. The PKK is credited with creating a security corridor to allow the Yazidis to escape and battled against IS.

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.

He served between 1997 and 2006, with his tenure coinciding with the height of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka as well as the peace process and resumption of violence.

Kofi Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 jointly with the UN, for having revitalised the UN and giving priority to human rights.

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. 

“Immediate steps are needed to restore political freedoms and democratic rule to ensure free and fair elections in September.”

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. 

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) however warned that it was by no means "out of the woods". 

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.

See more from Al Jazeera here.

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.

A mass funeral took place for the children this week, with thousands gathering to demonstrate against the attack.

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. 

During the video, the fighter, Rehan Baloch, who is said to be the eldest son of the BLA senior commander, Aslam Baloch, demanded that China leave the region and stop taking its resources.