Iran and the Taliban exchanged heavy gunfire last week on the Islamic Republic's border with Afghanistan, killing and wounding troops while sharply intensifying rising tensions between the countries.  

Both sides accused each other of shooting first.

While the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial is now over, the mission to achieve justice over alleged war crimes committed by Australian service members in Afghanistan is still in its infancy.

The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times won a landmark defamation case on Thursday brought by Roberts-Smith after the court found they had proven he was a war criminal, murderer and bully.

The Taliban clashed with Iranian border guards over the weekend, and it used American equipment to do it. The fight took place in the Nimroz province of Afghanistan, on its south western border with Iran. At least three people died, and others were wounded in a dispute about water rights in the region.

The legacy of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky will be turning Ukraine into “a new Afghanistan,” according to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. Azarov was head of government three times and presided over Ukraine’s largest economic growth in its post-Soviet history, thus making his opinion about Zelensky’s legacy, especially scathing.

The prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, held secret talks with the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhunzada, during the month of May in order to discuss alleviating the tension between the Afghan government and the international community, a source familiar with the meeting told Reuters on 31 May.

Last week, deadly clashes broke out between Afghan and Iranian guards at their border raising fears of a new conflict.

Both sides have accused each other of initiating the shooting in which at least two Iranian and one Afghan guard were killed. However, they have issued measured statements aimed at de-escalating the situation.

A gunfight broke out between Iranian border guards and Taliban fighters along the border between Iran and Afghanistan this weekend. Fighting killed three people in the biggest escalation between the two countries over water. And the Taliban brought out a big gun to help.  

Video posted to social media offered an up-close view of the skirmish, inside an unexpected place: an Humvee kitted out with an M240 machine gun. If that looks familiar it’s because those are some of the pieces of military equipment captured by the Taliban, now put into use for fighting other parties.