Sri Lanka attacks: Bomber ‘studied in UK and Australia’
One of the attackers behind the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka studied in the UK, officials say, as further details on the bombers begin to emerge.
The country’s deputy defence minister said the bomber studied in the UK before doing a course in Australia.
The announcement comes after the death toll rose again to 359 on Wednesday with more than 500 people wounded.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the Islamic State (IS) group may be linked to the blasts.
IS has said it was responsible for the attacks, although it has not provided direct evidence of its involvement.
‘No right to livestream murder’: Ardern leads push against online terror content
New Zealand PM launches ‘Christchurch Call’ to build support to eliminate extremist material on social media
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is to spearhead a push to combat violent extremism and terrorism on social media in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, saying the gunman did not have “a right to livestream the murder of 50 people”.
Ardern and French president Emmanuel Macron will host a summit in Paris on 15 May, rallying tech companies and other concerned countries to commit to a pledge known as the “Christchurch Call” – a vow to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
Ardern said online platforms had been used in a “unique” way to disseminate and publicise video of the Christchurch attack, and there had been rallying cries for New Zealand to take on a leadership role, but the remote island country of fewer than 5 million people could not do it alone.
Saudi Arabia carries out ‘chilling’ mass execution of 37 people for ‘terrorism offences’
Most of those convicted were members of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority
Richard HallMiddle East correspondent
Saudi Arabia executed 37 people for terror offences on Tuesday, the country’s interior minister said, in one of the largest mass executions in recent years.
Human Rights Watch described the punishment as “grotesque,” and said the news represented a “day we have feared.”
The country’s state news agency said the Saudi nationals were guilty of “adopting extremist terrorist ideologies and forming terrorist cells to corrupt and disrupt security as well as spread chaos and provoke sectarian strife.”
‘Vengeful’: Hong Kong protest leaders jailed four years later
By Kirsty Needham
Updatedfirst published at
Two high-profile university professors who founded the Occupy movement that brought Hong Kong to a standstill in 2014 have been jailed for 16 months, in a major trial described as “vengeful” by former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten.
The University of Hong Kong’s Benny Tai, 54, and retired Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Chan Kin-man, 60, were taken to prison on Wednesday after sentencing by District Court Judge Johhny Chan.
France marks first national commemoration of Armenian genocide
France is marking its first “national day of commemoration of the Armenian genocide” on Wednesday, fulfilling a pledge by President Emmanuel Macron that has angered the Turkish government.
Macron announced the commemoration at a meeting with representatives of the country’s large Armenian community in February, honouring a promise made during his 2017 presidential campaign.
“France is, first and foremost, the country that knows how to look history in the face,” he said at the time, noting that France was among the first countries to denounce the World War I slaughter of Armenians by their Ottoman rulers.
The logic behind US humiliation of the Palestinians
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has launched an all-out diplomatic assault on the Palestinians, while preparing a new initiative to resolve the Middle East conflict. It has claimed its plan is different from any other, downplayed anything said about it as wild speculation, and accused critics of rushing to judgment before they have seen it.
Indeed, the Palestinians have not seen the actual plan, but they have a pretty good feeling about what it will involve. They have watched closely as the Trump administration has spat out one policy after the other with the clear intention of humiliating and subduing them.
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