Executions in 2025 soared to the highest figure recorded by Amnesty International since 1981, with 2,707 people executed across 17 countries, revealed the latest annual report from the human rights organization on the global use of the death penalty.
The staggering rise recorded in the report Death Sentences and Executions 2025, was down to a handful of governments determined to rule by fear. Iranian authorities, the main drivers behind the spike, executed at least 2,159 people, more than double its 2024 figure. Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia raised its execution tally to at least 356, using the death penalty extensively for drug-related offences. Executions in Kuwait almost tripled (from 6 to 17), while they near doubled in Egypt (from 13 to 23), Singapore (from 9 to 17), and the United States of America (from 25 to 47). Overall, executions rose by 78%, after at least 1,518 executions were recorded in 2024. The 2025 total does not include the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes continued to be carried out in China, which remained the world’s lead executioner.
“This alarming spike in the use of the death penalty is due to a small, isolated group of states willing to carry out executions at all costs, despite the continued global trend towards abolition. From China, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia to Yemen, Kuwait, Singapore and the USA, this shameless minority are weaponizing the death penalty to instil fear, crush dissent and show the strength state institutions have over disadvantaged people and marginalized communities,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
The resurgence of highly punitive approaches in the “war on drugs” drove efforts to expand the use of the death penalty. This was reflected in the number of executions, with close to half (1,257 or 46%) of all known executions recorded for drug-related offences: in China (+), Iran (998), Kuwait (2), Saudi Arabia (240) and Singapore (15). Algeria, Kuwait, and the Maldives made legislative efforts to expand the scope of the death penalty to include drug-related offences.
The government of Burkina Faso adopted a draft bill that included reinstating the death penalty for offences such as “high treason,” “terrorism,” and “acts of espionage”, while the authorities in Chad established a commission to review matters related to the death penalty – including its reinstatement.
The media empire built by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government, a key pillar of the nationalist leader's 16 years in power, is swiftly unravelling following an election last month that abruptly ended his rule.
Within weeks of the vote, which the centre-right opposition led by Peter Magyar won with a landslide, senior figures at some of the most prominent pro-Orban outlets have been pushed out and a flagship news programme was scrapped.
The tone of public service media changed overnight, with more opposition voices appearing even before Magyar formally took power, while pro-Orban influencers have practically disappeared from social media.
Magyar, who called public service media a "factory of lies", has pledged to restore press freedom, create a new media law and a new media authority.
Leaders of the European Union are closely watching Hungary as a test case for restoring democratic checks and balances - media freedom was one of the key rule-of-law issues over which Orban's government often clashed with Brussels.
Under Orban, state media came under increasing government control as new media laws were enacted, and several private outlets were either shut down or taken over by pro-government businessmen. ungary fell to 74th place in 2026 from 23rd in 2010 in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index.
Finding a rental apartment with three or four rooms in Berlin? No problem for top earners. In May 2026, a major rental platform is listing a unit of just over 100 square meters (1,076 square feet) for just over €4,000 ($4,680) per month, including heating and other additional costs. The lowest offer is just under €1,000 for 80 square meters — but that unit requires renovations and is located on the outskirts of the city.
Renters are currently finding it almost impossible to find an attractive and affordable apartment in a good location in large parts of Germany. This is especially true in both metropolitan areas and in economically strong rural regions.
Across the nation, there's a shortage of around 1.4 million apartments in the lower and middle price ranges, and this limited availability, combined with high demand, is driving prices up.
More than half of Germany's population lives in rental housing. Tenant‑protection laws safeguard existing contracts relatively well, but the situation is different for new rentals. According to the latest annual report by the Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR), immigrants and people of immigrant background are disproportionately disadvantaged in this process.
Newcomers often live in smaller — and frequently overcrowded — apartments, and they are far less likely to be homeowners. More than 50% of people with no migration history live in owner-occupied housing, compared with less than 33% of those with one. Newcomers to Germany also have to devote a larger share of their income to rent.
These challenges are compounded by structural disadvantages: Lower incomes and larger household sizes are key factors. But migration‑specific hurdles also play a role, as insecure residency status, weak social networks, and language barriers make finding housing even harder. Refugees in particular tend to move into socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, where rents tend to be lower or where support networks might already exist.
At the same time, many asylum-seekers remain in state-run accommodations for lack of alternatives — even though they are legally permitted to move out. Discrimination is another disadvantage people with a migration history face in the housing market, said deputy SVR chair Birgit Glorius: "Including racial discrimination, as studies have shown."
Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) won Sunday’s Andalucían regional election, but lost its absolute majority, leaving it dependent on the support or abstention of the far-right Vox party to form a new government.
After the poll in Spain’s most populous region – which will serve as a barometer of wider electoral opinion before next year’s general election – the socialists slumped to an all-time low and Vox picked up one additional seat.
The PP took 53 seats in the 109-seat regional parliament, leaving them two seats short of an absolute majority and five down on the 58 they won at the last election in 2022.
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), which is led nationally by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, dropped from 30 seats to 28, while Vox climbed from 14 seats to 15. The leftwing Adelante Andalucía party climbed from two seats to six, and the leftist coalition Por Andalucía held on to the five seats in won four years ago.
Sunday’s results mean that the regional PP leader, Juan Manuel “Juanma” Moreno, will have to negotiate his return to office with Vox – something he was keen to avoid during the campaign.
Polls leading up to next year’s general election suggest the PP is on course to defeat Sánchez, whose inner circle, party and administration have been battered by a series of corruption scandals. However, the conservatives are expected to fall short of an absolute majority and would probably need Vox’s support to govern at a national level.
##Iranian attacks and the stoppage of seaborne transit have paralyzed Qatar’s vital gas exports, stalling the economic pivots intended to anchor the country’s growth.
In Qatar, a desert peninsula protruding into the Persian Gulf, natural gas turned the country from a pearl-diving backwater into one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Qatar spent three decades building supply lines, shipping tens of billions of dollars of liquefied natural gas each year through the Strait of Hormuz to ports across Asia and Europe.
The state, which derives more than 60 percent of its revenue from gas and gas-related exports, used that money to transform the peninsula into a gleaming metropolis.
Then, in February, Qatar’s door to the world slammed shut.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz means virtually no gas has left Qatar’s shore for more than two months. The nation is also cut off from the sea routes through which it imports everything from vehicles to produce. Fears of regional instability have hurt tourism and eroded business sentiment.
Ras Laffan, Qatar’s industrial center for gas production, is shuttered, and roads are blocked. At the vast Hamad port south of Doha, loading cranes stand paralyzed. Throughout the capital, hotels and boutiques sit in noticeable silence. Qatar’s growth forecasts have been slashed amid the cessation of L.N.G. trade.
Qatar’s economic transformation started in the 1990s. It made a large bet on supercooling gas from the North Field — the world’s largest natural gas reservoir, in Qatar’s northeast — to minus 162 degrees Celsius. This turned the fuel into a liquid, allowing Qatar to bypass regional pipelines and ship gas to every corner of the globe.
From the 1990s to the 2010s, the economy boomed, growing at an average annual rate of roughly 13 percent. To power this build-out, Qatar relied on an influx of foreign workers. Today, about 90 percent of its 3.2 million residents are noncitizens.
Seeking to build on that momentum, Qatar said in 2019 that it would expand the amount of L.N.G. its North Field could produce to 126 million tons a year by 2027. Before the war, its capacity was about 77 million. The expansion is considered one of the largest energy projects ever planned.
Then, in late February, much of that activity ground to a halt. Unlike its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have pipelines that can bypass the Strait of Hormuz, Qatar is geographically trapped behind the waterway.
Within 24 hours of the Iranian blockade, QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy giant, announced it couldn’t fulfill its contracts. Two weeks later, Iranian missiles and drones struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan plant, damaging critical equipment and causing a 17 percent reduction in Qatar’s production capacity.
The damage means that even if the strait were to open tomorrow, it would take years to return to prewar output. Analysts estimate that QatarEnergy has already lost billions of dollars since the war started, and every day that the strait remains closed, the country bleeds hundreds of millions more in lost sales and shipping charter fees.
The war has also exposed another kind of vulnerability. As part of a long-running effort to diversify beyond fossil fuels, Qatar has tried to transform itself into a tourist destination and a hub for international business and finance. Since the war began, however, the number of international visitors to Qatar has plummeted amid travel advisories from the United States and other governments. Many multinational companies, fearing regional instability, have sent staff out of the country. In March, the World Travel & Tourism Council estimated that the Middle East was losing $600 million a day in tourism revenue.
For Qatar, like many of its neighbors, the diversification strategy hinges on sustained foreign capital, a steady supply of expatriate labor and, above all, the perception of stability.
Economists forecast that even if L.N.G. revenue were to vanish for years, Qatar’s deep pockets would allow it to continue paying salaries and maintaining essential services. At the same time, the authorities have pressured international firms to return to prevent an exodus of foreign capital and talent. The concern is that if companies are allowed to collapse, the country’s overwhelmingly foreign work force could quickly disappear
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A man drove his car into pedestrians in the northern Italian city of Modena on Saturday, injuring eight people, four seriously, officials said.
They included a woman who had to have both her legs amputated.
After the car came to a halt against a shop window, the driver emerged holding a knife and injured a passer-by who gave chase, before the suspect was overpowered.
The suspect, 31, has been identified by officials as an Italian national of Moroccan origin.
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who cancelled a planned trip to Cyprus and described the incident as "extremely serious", visited the injured in hospital with President Sergio Mattarella on Sunday.
She also met Luca Signorelli, the passer-by who intervened, and thanked him for his actions.
The incident occurred around 16:30 (14:30 GMT), when the speeding car hit the pedestrians in Via Emilia next to the iconic cathedral of Modena, south-east of Milan.
The vehicle then veered left before coming to a halt against a shop window.
Signorelli had told Italian media he was trying to help the woman when he noticed the driver trying to run away.
He said he gave chase and the attacker turned on him with a knife in hand. He received a blow to the head and one on his chest before being able to restrain the suspect, with the help of other passers-by.
At a news conference on Saturday evening, the prefect of Modena Fabrizia Triolo said the suspect had been referred to a mental health centre in 2022 for "schizoid disorders", but had then "disappeared without a trace".
The death toll from a Russian missile attack that flattened a Kyiv apartment building rose Friday to 24, including three teenagers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said as he led the mourning for one of the deadliest attacks on the capital in the 4-year-old war.
The cruise missile hit the nine-story corner apartment block Thursday during what the Ukrainian air force said was Russia’s biggest barrage on the country of the full-scale invasion. Emergency workers finished digging through the rubble searching for victims after more than a day, Zelenskyy said on X.
Crowds of grieving people — many of them children — streamed toward a makeshift memorial beneath a tree near the destroyed building.
Russia has hammered Ukraine with large-scale aerial attacks in the days since a May 9-11 ceasefire that U.S. President Donald Trump said he asked Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to observe. Fighting continued over those 72 hours, although reportedly on a lesser scale.
This week’s attacks ran counter to recent suggestions from Trump and Putin that the war is close to ending.
The assault mostly targeted the Ukrainian capital, where 48 people were wounded, including two children, Zelenskyy said.
He said Moscow had launched more than 1,560 drones against Ukrainian population centers since Wednesday, adding that about 180 sites across the country were damaged, including more than 50 residential buildings.
Previously, the biggest Russian drone attack was on March 23-24 when Moscow’s forces fired nearly 1,000 drones and missiles at Ukraine. Thursday’s death toll in Kyiv approached one from July 2024 that killed 32 civilians and injured another 85.
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##Residents of al-Bustan district told to make way for Kings Garden, with knocking down own houses cheaper option
At the bottom of a steep and densely populated valley just below Jerusalem’s old city walls, the earth has been shaken in recent weeks by jackhammers and bulldozers.
These have been the sounds of Jerusalem for decades as the Israeli state has relentlessly sought to stamp a uniformly Jewish identity on to the occupied east of the city, while erasing its Palestinian character.
Typically it is workers for the state and municipality at the wheel of the bulldozers, but in the al-Bustan neighbourhood, in the shadow of the 11th-century al-Aqsa mosque, the clamour is from a more recent development.
It is the sound of Palestinians demolishing their own family homes.
“This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” Jalal al-Tawil said as he watched a tractor he had hired, with a front loader at the front and jackhammer at the back, rip apart the last remnants of the house his father had built, which in turn had been on the site of his grandparents’ home.
The experience of demolishing his own family’s home and history had drained al-Tawil, but it came down to brutal economics. The Jerusalem municipality had told him it would cost him 280,000 shekels (£72,000) if its workers demolished the house. Hiring his own equipment and labour would cost al-Tawil less than a tenth of that.
“Also, if they do it, they will uproot the land and make a complete mess,” he said. For him it was like being given the choice between suicide or being murdered, he said.
More than 57 homes in al-Bustan, part of the larger Silwan district of East Jerusalem, have been demolished in the past two years with at least eight designated for demolition in the next few weeks. On the site a biblical theme park called the Kings Garden is to be built, supposedly where King Solomon took his leisure three millennia ago.
The park is designed to be part of a spreading, largely settler-driven, archaeological project focusing exclusively on Jerusalem’s Jewish past and centred on what has been called the City of David – despite the view of many Israeli archaeologists that the visible remains date to other eras, before and after King David’s iron-age reign.
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Authorities from 15 countries carried out coordinated raids on 12 May against a criminal group suspected of selling fake medicines and supplements online and misleading seriously ill people.
The group, operating since 2019, allegedly marketed more than 400 differently named supplements through companies set up to sell products that were not authorised for sale, Eurojust informed on Thursday.
Hundreds of websites and social media pages were created by a network of “virtual sellers”, often using the names and images of celebrities and fake doctors.
People who filled in online forms were contacted by call-centre operators who posed as doctors or medical specialists and claimed the products were genuine treatments for serious or incurable diseases.
The supplements had no effect on the human body and contained similar ingredients despite being advertised for different illnesses.
The group is suspected of generating at least €240 million in transactions.
The coordinated action day involved searches at 113 locations in Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Republic of Moldova, Eurojust said.
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Forty-six nations in Europe and beyond agreed Friday on a new interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights in migration cases, including how it applied to the controversial use of deportation centers set up in third countries.
The political declaration came after calls from some member states for stricter approaches to fight irregular migration and facilitate deportations.
Rights groups criticized the political declaration, saying it could loosen prohibitions on torture and weaken Europe’s human rights protections for migrants.
“The declaration underlines that states have the undeniable sovereign right to control the entry and residence of foreign nationals, and that it is both an obligation and a necessity for states to protect their borders in compliance with the Convention,” the Council of Europe said in a statement after the non-binding declaration was adopted all of its 46 members’ foreign ministers Friday at a meeting in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital.
It said that nations “exposed to mass arrivals” can pursue new approaches to deter irregular migration including “third country ‘return hubs’, and cooperation with countries of transit.”
The Council oversees the European Court of Human Rights, the top court that protects the continent’s human rights convention.
The declaration could weaken both the court and convention, said Chiara Catelli, a spokesperson for the Brussels-based rights group PICUM.
“Governments are effectively seeking to pressure an independent Court into weakening long-established human rights protections in order to facilitate deportations, with the risk of deporting people where they could face torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, or where they would stop receiving life-saving medical care,” she said.
“A two-tier human rights system based on migration status is an affront to the basic principle that human rights are universal,” said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.
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###Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist right-wing party, had previously said the money was for personal security.
Since news surfaced that Nigel Farage received a gift of 5 million pounds from a cryptocurrency billionaire, the leader of Britain’s populist right-wing Reform U.K. party has argued that the money was for his personal security.
On Thursday he offered another explanation, saying that it was “a reward for campaigning for Brexit.”
His comments, made in a video interview with the British outlet The Sun, came as the British Parliament’s standards watchdog confirmed that Mr. Farage was under investigation for not declaring receipt of the £5 million (about $6.7 million), which came from Christopher Harborne, a Briton who lives in Thailand.
Mr. Farage argues that the gift was unconditional, was made before he won a seat in the general election in 2024, and that there was no requirement to declare it.
Critics say that under parliamentary rules the money should have been registered after the election, and the main opposition Conservative Party referred the case to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.
Reform U.K.’s success has brought closer scrutiny and criticism that Mr. Farage, who cultivates the image of a political outsider, depends on wealthy donors.
Last year, Mr. Harborne, the cryptocurrency billionaire who gave Mr. Farage the gift, also gave a donation of £9 million to Reform U.K., the largest single donation to a British political party by a living person. Critics of Mr. Farage have pointed out that since he entered Parliament, he has championed the cryptocurrency industry and pushed for light-touch regulation.
Millions of pounds have been saved by replacing a Palantir IT system which helps to find homes for Ukrainian refugees with one built by its own experts, a government department has said.
The Homes for Ukraine scheme matched people fleeing the conflict with offers of accommodation - a complex task Palantir initially supported for free but which grew to cost millions.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said its new system was "more flexible" and could meet "high standards" of security.
Homes for Ukraine was set up in in March 2022. In order to set this up quickly, then-Conservative government ministers accepted an offer from Palantir to build a system to administrate the scheme, based on its Foundry platform, for free for six months.
Subsequent 12-month contracts were awarded - one worth £4.5m and another £5.5m, according to a National Audit Office report.
The report notes the Government's chief commercial officer informed Palantir of his concern about the firm's practice of offering a zero- or nominal-cost initial offer to gain a commercial foothold.
This, he argued, was contrary to public procurement principles requiring open competition.
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When the U.S., in concert with Israel, launched war on Iran earlier this year, Gulf Arab states cooperated, but quickly discovered that supporting American military operations carried potentially catastrophic costs for them, as their energy facilities and desalination plants became targets of Iranian reprisals. Gulf rulers watched as the U.S. deployed enormous military resources (including Aegis-equipped destroyers and advanced interceptors) to shield Israel from Iranian retaliation while Gulf states absorbed the payback for enabling American strikes.
That experience appears to have fundamentally altered their calculations.
Another turning point came recently when Trump announced “Project Freedom”. The Gulf monarchies viewed it as a potential disaster and refused to grant the U.S. access to their airspace and bases to support the operation, forcing Trump to abruptly suspend it. In effect, Gulf states vetoed a major American military initiative — something that would have been almost unthinkable only a year ago.
From their perspective, the current arrangements look dangerously asymmetric. The U.S. can launch operations, rotate forces and eventually withdraw. But the six Gulf states remain geographically trapped beside Iran permanently. In any confrontation between Washington and Tehran, the Gulf monarchies become the frontline targets.
The lesson these states appear to have learned from recent hostilities is stark: They are platforms for American power, not equal partners in American protection. That realization is driving a profound strategic shift.
The Gulf states no longer appear willing to practice automatic alignment with Washington. Instead, they are moving toward what might be called “transactional neutrality.” In effect, they are applying Trump’s own worldview back onto the U.S. itself.
That means Gulf monarchs are becoming far more selective about which American operations they support. The shift extends beyond military access. Major Gulf states are diversifying their defense partnerships, purchasing non-American technologies and exploring alternative security arrangements. Some Gulf governments are also intensifying diplomatic outreach to regional rivals, including Iran itself.
For them, de-escalation is no longer simply diplomacy; it is strategic self-preservation.
A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz.
It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said it received reports that the ship seized Thursday was taken by unauthorized personnel while anchored 38 nautical miles (70 kilometers, 44 miles) northeast of the UAE port of Fujairah, an important oil export terminal that has been repeatedly attacked during the war with Iran.
The U.K. maritime center did not name the ship seized Thursday and said it is investigating. The British military said the vessel is heading toward Iranian waters.
Indian authorities said Thursday that an Indian-flagged cargo ship sank off the coast of Oman after an attack sparked a fire aboard the vessel while it was en route from Somalia to Sharjah, another UAE port. They did not say who attacked the ship.
The attack on the Indian-flagged cargo ship Haji Ali occurred Wednesday, according to Mukesh Mangal, a senior official in India’s shipping ministry. He said all 14 Indian crew members were rescued by Oman’s coast guard and were safe.
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Tens of thousands of Argentines flooded the streets of major cities nationwide on Tuesday to protest funding cuts by libertarian President Javier Milei to the public university system that represents a near-universal point of pride in this crisis-prone country.
Vast crowds in downtown Buenos Aires marched toward the government headquarters to denounce budget shortfalls eroding the financial foundation of the country’s higher education. Argentina’s public university system, a cornerstone of its well-educated workforce cherished by its large middle class, has been tuition-free since 1949 and produced five Nobel Prize laureates.
Congress passed a law last year to fund universities’ operational costs and raise teacher salaries in line with high inflation. But the government has not implemented it as it challenges the legislation in court.
Like his powerful backer and ally U.S. President Donald Trump, Milei routinely attacks university campuses as bastions of “woke” indoctrination. He has slashed public education funding as part of his plan to take a chain saw to state funding in a sharp break from what he describes as decades of reckless spending that spawned corruption under his left-leaning predecessors.
Tuesday’s protest gathered people of all ages and political persuasions as Milei faces declining approval ratings over slumping economic activity, falling wages and climbing unemployment. A recent series of corruption scandals has also struck a nerve, with fallout particularly growing from an investigation into lavish spending by Milei’s close ally, Cabinet chief Manuel Adorni, that appears inconsistent with his modest public salary and declared assets.
Since Milei took power in late 2023, university professors’ paychecks have declined by roughly 33% after accounting for stubborn inflation, according to the main teachers’ federation.
The rector of the prestigious University of Buenos Aires, Ricardo Gelpi, said the steep losses in purchasing power has driven at least 580 research professors in the engineering and science departments to ditch the public system for private universities or other better-paying jobs.