BBC News. Hello, I'm Gareth Barlow. The Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah are about to sign a power-sharing deal. It's understood that Mr. Ghani will remain as president and both men will choose an equal number of cabinet ministers maintaining the balance of power that existed before last year's presidential election. Mr. Ghani was declared the winner of the poll, but Mr. Abdullah said there have been widespread fraud. Negotiations followed significant pressure from the US.
Iraq has launched a major military operation in the west of the country to counter a recent resurgence in attacks by Islamic State fighters. Sebastian Usher reports. Just days after he took office, the new Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has had to acknowledge the renewed threat and authorize a new military operation involving regular forces and militias. The aim is to try to hunt down and eradicate IS clusters in the remote desert regions to the west, from where the group originally emerged to take over a 3rd of the country. The hope in 2017 was the country could start to rebuild its economy and unity after seeing off the scourge of IS. But months of unrest followed by a collapse in oil prices and the arrival of coronavirus have left Iraq in as perilous of political and financial state as ever.
Officials in Pakistan say two teenage girls have been killed in a so-called honour killing in the northwestern region after a short video then with a young man surfaced on the internet. Police in the Waziristan tribal districts said the two were shot dead by a family member. The daily figure for those with coronavirus who died in Spain has dropped below a hundred for the first time since before the country entered lockdown in mid March. 87 more people have died. Nearly two in every three people in Spain who tested positive for the virus and now listed as being cured. World news from the BBC.
