Abbas decrees first Palestinian elections in over 15 years

The far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik party has called off a march on the capital, and the government has said allowing the party back into the political mainstream is in the "national interest."

At least eight people were killed in Somalia's capital on Thursday (November 25) when Islamist militants launched a suicide attack on a U.N. security convoy using a vehicle laden with explosives, officials and witnesses said. The Islamist group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the huge blast which rocked Mogadishu and injured at least 23 people, including school students, sending a column of smoke above the city. Gunfire echoed around the scene, witnesses said. It was not immediately clear if any U.N. personnel were among those killed or injured in the huge blast, which targeted the U.N. convoy as it passed near the site of a school.

What if the French left stays home next Sunday? Two-thirds of those who actively support Jean-Luc Mélenchon see no reason to choose centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron over the far-right's Marine Le Pen in the presidential run-off. In a nation where the president enjoys outsized powers, this is the election that matters. Why are so many of his supporters unfazed by the prospect of Le Pen beating Macron? She's the leader of a party whose roots go back to Vichy France and the 1961 attempted coup to keep Algeria French.

With the second round of voting in the French presidential election just days away, we explore the latest twists and turns in the campaign trail with Andrew Smith, a professor of contemporary French history at Chichester University. He unpicks President Emmanuel Macron's last-gasp bid to convince supporters of defeated leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon to vote for him, if only to keep the far right out of the Élysée Palace. We also discuss Marine Le Pen's pledge to ban the Muslim hijab in public. Smith tells us it's an attempt to fire up her base – but does it risk alienating more moderate voters?

Going into Sunday's winner-takes-all runoff vote, French President Emmanuel Macron is leading several polls. But nationalist Marine Le Pen is not far behind. Both are hoping to woo undecided leftist voters.

This week, we take a special in-depth look at the Yarmouk camp on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. It was once home to the largest concentration of Palestinian refugees. During the Syrian civil war, Yarmouk was placed under a brutal siege from 2013 to 2015, leading it to be described as the "worst place on Earth". We speak to filmmaker Abdallah Al-Khatib, who chronicled this period in his documentary "Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege)".

Lebanon is electing a new parliament soon. Even though many people harbour hope for change, it won't be a walk in the park for the opposition. Traditional power structures remain deeply embedded.

Streaming platforms, such as Amazon Prime and Disney+, will now have to contribute money to Swiss cinema. Voters also backed switching to an opt-out system to organ donations.

Australia is counting down to its next federal election on May 21. The environmental crisis is high on voters' minds and smaller parties and independents are gaining momentum by riding a wave of disillusionment over the conservative coalition's lack of climate action. With a hung parliament looking likely, these minor players could force the traditional parties to do more to tackle global warming. Climate change is an increasingly hot-button issue since the country's devastating bushfires of 2019-20. Our correspondents Richelle Harrison Plesse and Gregory Plesse report.

In the aftermath of deadly violence, Kazakhstan has held a referendum that is likely to shift powers away from the president and nix the privileges enjoyed by former dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Thursday.

This news report published on June 15th by IRIB, a state-run TV news channel from Iran, is a compilation of at least seven false claims, in a total of two minutes, alleging Cristiano Ronaldo's support for Palestine and 'hatred' towards Israel. We debunk some of the most outrageous claims in this edition of Truth or Fake.