AFGHANISTAN
At least 12 die in fracas
Three suicide attackers killed at least nine civilians, most of them children, in a botched attack yesterday on the Indian consulate in an eastern Afghan city near the border with Pakistan, security officials said. Police fired on the militants as they approached a checkpoint near the consulate in Jalalabad, prompting one of them to set off their explosives-laden car, said Masum Khan Hashimi, the deputy police chief of Nangarhar province. The blast killed nine bystanders, and wounded 24. All three attackers also died, although it was not clear how many were killed by police fire and how many by the explosion. In New Delhi, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said all Indian officials in the consulate were safe. Afghanistan’s main insurgent group, the Taliban, denied in a text message that it had carried out the attack. Smaller militant groups based in Pakistan have targeted Indian interests in Afghanistan in the past.
INDIA
Maoists blow up railway
Maoist guerrillas blew up a railway track in an eastern Indian state, disrupting rail traffic near Bodh Gaya, Buddhism’s holiest site, a railway official said yesterday. The blast came after Bodh Gaya in the state of Bihar, which attracts Buddhists and other visitors from all over the world, was hit by multiple small bomb blasts last month. The government called the blasts a “terror attack” after nine bombs exploded but there has no claim of responsibility for the explosions. In the latest attack, Maoist rebels blew up a portion of railway track in Gaya district late on Friday night, an officer of the East Central Railway said. “No one was injured but rail traffic was disrupted for a few hours,” he said. Last month, more than 50 Maoist guerrillas ambushed a police patrol in Bihar, killing the district police chief and four others.
TURKMENISTAN
Niyazov tome discarded
Schools are to stop teaching lessons based on a spiritual guidebook written by the country’s eccentric former president, an education ministry official said on Friday. A book called the Rukhnama, supposedly written by late Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov, was given almost sacred status during his rule. However, his successor, former dentist Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, has dismantled much of Niyazov’s cult of personality. “From the start of the new school year, the subject Rukhnama [spirituality] will not be taught,” an informed source in the education ministry said on Friday. Instead of teaching the two-volume tome by the first president of the country, the new school curriculum will include classes on Turkmen and world culture, the official in the deeply secretive state said on condition of anonymity. Schools in 2011 lifted the requirement to pass exams on the Rukhnama in order to graduate.
PHILIPPINES
Children die in landslide
Two children were killed in a landslide yesterday as heavy rains battered the south, bringing flooding to large areas, authorities said. The rains caused an avalanche in a suburb of the southern city of Zamboanga, burying three houses and killing a 14-year-old boy and his six-year old sister, Mayor Isabel Climaco-Salazar said. Three other districts of the city in the southern island of Mindanao were also flooded by rains that have battered the region for more than a week. In some parts of Mindanao, classes have been called off for more than a week due to the flooding with as many as 37,000 people evacuated, the civil defense office said.
NIGERIA
Lead victims to get help
Doctors Without Borders say they can start treating child victims of one of the world’s worst recorded lead poisoning cases after a cleanup was held up for two years by a lack of funding. Michelle Chouinard said on Friday that more than 1,000 children need treatment that will take one or two years. She said it is too late to reverse serious neurological damage that has blinded some children and paralysed others. Her organization uncovered the scandal in 2010 when about 400 children convulsed and died in Zamfara state. The poisoning was caused by crude mining in a gold rush.
RUSSIA
Madonna, Gaga ‘broke rules’
Officials are considering prosecution against Lady Gaga and Madonna after discovering they entered the country under incorrect paperwork. The office of Russia’s prosecutor-general has issued a statement confirming that neither singer obtained an appropriate visa prior to performing there last year. Madonna and Gaga traveled under cultural-exchange visas. These documents “do not grant their bearers the right to engage in any commercial activity,” authorities said. According to the Russian legal information agency, prosecutors are now considering asking Russia’s foreign ministry or federal migration service to press charges. Prosecutors launched their investigation after being contacted by one of the singers’ most outspoken enemies, Vitaly Milonov, who serves in St Petersburg’s municipal legislature and authored a law banning gay “propaganda.” After Gaga and Madonna spoke in support of gay rights at their concerts, Milonov tried to pursue them in court for “promoting sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism among minors.”
UNITED KINGDOM
MPs told not to touch toes
Parliamentary officials want lawmakers to keep their hands off Margaret Thatcher’s toes. Authorities are considering roping off statues of former prime ministers, including Thatcher and Winston Churchill, because they are suffering wear and tear from legislators rubbing their toes for luck. Members of Parliament traditionally touch the statues in the House of Commons lobby before entering the chamber. Deputy House of Commons curator Melanie Unwin told Parliament’s Works of Art Committee that statues of Thatcher, Churchill, Clement Attlee and David Lloyd George “are seriously under threat due to the tradition of touching the toes of the statues for good luck.” The committee agreed that “Do not touch” signs should be put up.
ITALY
Rome acts on Colosseum
The city of Rome from yesterday barred private vehicles from using the main road to the Colosseum to protect the iconic monument that has been blackened by pollution and is in a poor state. Cars, lorries and other private vehicles are barred from using the last trunk of the avenue Via dei Fori Imperiali, which links Piazza Venezia to the Roman amphitheater. Traffic has been diverted to an adjacent route and only public transport will be allowed on the old route. The decision was taken by the new mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, who would like eventually to make the Via dei Fori Imperiali a pedestrian area. The number of visitors to the Colosseum has increased from 1 million to around 6 million a year over the past decade, thanks mainly to the blockbuster film Gladiator. However, it has also fallen into disrepair in recent years and some experts have voiced concern that the foundations are sinking.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing