AFGHANISTAN
Suicide bomber targets MP
A suicide bomber yesterday targeted a vehicle convoy of Afghan lawmakers that included a prominent female MP, killing three civilians and injuring 17 others, officials said. The blast, in which the attacker detonated an explosives-packed car, left the MPs’ vehicles badly damaged on a main road in the west of Kabul, close to the parliament. “[Shukria] Barekzai — she is fine and suffers small injuries,” interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said of the politician via Twitter. Barekzai is renowned as a campaigner for improved women’s rights in Afghanistan, a stance that attracts fierce opposition from many Islamist groups and Muslim conservatives. She has spoken about receiving regular death threats.
SYRIA
Obama rejects alliance idea
US President Barack Obama yesterday rejected any alliance with Bashar al-Assad against the Islamic State group, arguing that the Syrian ruler was illegitimate and that any such pact would backfire. “Assad has ruthlessly murdered hundreds of thousands of his citizens. As a consequence, he has completely lost legitimacy with the majority of the country,” Obama told reporters after a G20 summit in Brisbane. “For us to then make common cause with him against ISIL [Islamic State] would only turn more Sunnis in Syria in the direction of supporting ISIL and would weaken our coalition [against IS],” he said. Obama said that communication with the Assad regime was limited to informing them that if the US uses Syrian air space in anti-IS operations “they would be well advised not to take us on.”
INDIA
20 dead in road crashes
A collision between a minibus and a speeding truck in the country’s north yesterday killed 12 people, while eight others were killed in a western state when a truck hit people waiting at a roadside bus station, police and news reports said. The driver was among 12 who died on the minibus on a highway near Amroha in northern Uttar Pradesh state, police officer R.P. Singh said. The town is 300km southwest of Lucknow, the state capital. Police arrested the truck driver as he tried to flee the crash site. Singh said four people are hospitalized, three of them with serious injuries. In Satara District in western Maharashtra State, a truck hit people at a bus station, killing eight and injuring 15, the Press Trust of India said. India has the world’s deadliest roads, with more than 110,000 people killed annually and most accidents blamed on reckless driving, poor road maintenance or aging vehicles.
TURKEY
‘Muslims in Americas first’
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is claiming that Muslim sailors reached the Americas more than 300 years before explorer Christopher Columbus. Speaking on Saturday at a gathering of Muslim leaders from Latin America, Erdogan said that contact between Islam and Latin America dates to the 12th century. He says Muslim sailors reached the American continent in 1178 — 314 years before Columbus did in 1492. Turkey’s president says that in his memoirs, Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba. Scholars have disputed the claim in Columbus’ writings, saying there is no archeological evidence of Muslims having lived in the Americas before Columbus. However, Erdogan is convinced and says he would like to see a mosque built on that hilltop in Cuba today.
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