AFGHANISTAN
Gunmen attack police HQ
Three male suicide attackers wearing burqas yesterday attacked a police headquarters close to Kabul, officials said, killing one policeman as concerns rise over security ahead of the presidential election in April. The militants were shot dead when they stormed the police base in Sarobi District, 50km east of Kabul, after another suicide attacker died when he exploded a vehicle bomb outside the entrance. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the two-hour attack, which occurred in the same district where presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s convoy came under gunfire on Wednesday.
PHILIPPINES
Police kill 7 drug suspects
Authorities have killed at least seven alleged drug traffickers and arrested more than a dozen others in a raid in a southern city. Benjamin Magalong, head of the national police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said that police and Drug Enforcement Agency agents were met by gunfire when they raided hideouts of suspected drug traffickers in Davao early yesterday. He said seven suspects died in the ensuing firefight. Authorities recovered assorted firearms, components for home-made bombs and an undetermined amount of crystal methamphetamine.
TUNISIA
Libya plane crash kills 11
A Libyan army medical plane crashed south of Tunis early yesterday, killing all 11 people on board, emergency services said. “The plane crashed at 1:30am... with 11 people on board — three doctors, two patients and six crew members,” spokesman Mongi El Kadhi said. He said there were no survivors from the accident in the Grombalia area, 40km from the capital. “The whole plane was completely burnt out. The emergency services went to the crash site and recovered the charred bodies.”
MYANMAR
Huge jade boulder found
Soldiers have been sent to the resource-rich Kachin State in the north to protect an enormous jade boulder that could weigh up to 45 tonnes. Kachin Minister Lajun Ngan Seng said the raw jade was discovered in the mining region known as Hpakant just more than a week ago. Still half buried, it is difficult to know its exact size, but he said authorities believe it may be 5.5m high and weigh up to 45 tonnes.
NICARAGUA
Banana suit puzzles lawyers
A court’s decision to hold three men for trial on April 23 for the attempted theft of two bananas is drawing surprise and ridicule from lawyers. The bananas stolen are valued at US$0.32, while the trial is expected to cost at least US$600. Prosecutors said in preliminary proceedings on Thursday the three men tried to steal the bananas from a fruit vendor in December. Two of the suspects are being held at a local jail, and a third is under a form of house arrest. Lawyer Ivan Morales is not defending any of the men, but says the decision to prosecute is inexplicable.
GERMANY
UN wants more CAR troops
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday appealed to the international community to urgently send another 3,000 troops and police to Central African Republic (CAR) to stop violence between Christians and Muslims that threatens to spiral in genocide. The security requirements far exceed the capability of the international troops now deployed,” Ban told the UN Security Council. A further 3,000 troops and police would increase the international force to about 12,000.
UNITED KINGDOM
Iran’s mission reopens
Iran’s diplomatic mission partly reopened its doors on Thursday for the first time in two years as part of a wider agreement on the thawing of tensions between the countries. Diplomats in London said that only the Iranian embassy’s consular section, which handles visas and commercial affairs, resumed operations on Thursday, while its political section remained closed. Nonetheless, the move represented another welcome sign of progress. The move is part of an agreement to end both countries’ reliance on formal “protecting power” arrangements. Under that system in force since 2011, Sweden’s embassy in Tehran had handled the consular needs of British citizens in Iran, while Oman did the same for Iran in London.
GERMANY
Suspected guards arrested
Three suspected former guards of the Auschwitz death camp run by the Nazis during World War II have been arrested, the public prosecutor’s office in Stuttgart said on Thursday. The three accused, aged 88, 92 and 94 years old, are believed to have been involved in the murder of prisoners at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland. They were arrested after police searched six homes in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg using information released to several states in autumn last year by the Central Office of the Judicial Authorities for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes.
SUDAN
Gang rape victim fined
A pregnant teenager who was gang-raped and ignored when she tried to report the crime has been convicted of “indecent acts” by a court. The victim, an Ethiopian migrant, was sentenced to one month in prison, which has been suspended, and fined 5,000 Sudanese pounds (US$878). The verdict was condemned by activists who said it would discourage rape victims from speaking out and entrench “a culture of impunity” for perpetrators. The 18-year-old victim was searching for a new home when she was lured to an empty property in the capital, Khartoum, attacked by seven men and gang-raped. The incident was filmed by the perpetrators and distributed through social media six months later, triggering the arrests of everyone involved.
AUSTRALIA
Iranian’s body to go home
The body of an asylum seeker who was killed in a violent breakout from a detention camp on Papua New Guinea is to be repatriated to his family in Iran. Reza Barati sustained fatal head injuries on Monday night as hundreds of asylum seekers pushed down a perimeter fence to escape from the camp on Manus Island, off the Papua New Guinea coast, during an angry protest. Border Protection Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday that the country will repatriate the 23-year-old’s body to Iran at his family’s request, but the body would first be sent to the Papua New Guinea capital, Port Moresby, for an autopsy.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not