Pakistani pilgrim bus crashes in Iran kills three

A general view of the wrecked bus is seen after it crashed along a mountainous area in Basima town of Balochistan province on May 29, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 26 August 2024
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Pakistani pilgrim bus crashes in Iran kills three

  • This was the third road accident in less than a week involving Pakistani pilgrims
  • Two separate bus accidents hours apart in Pakistan on Sunday left at least 35 people dead and dozens more injured

TEHRAN: At least three people have been killed and 48 others wounded when a bus carrying Pakistani pilgrims crashed into a truck in southern Iran, state media reported Monday.
In recent days, Shiite Muslims have been heading to Iraq for a major ritual, with Pakistanis often traveling through Iran to attend the Arbaeen commemoration.
Iran’s official news agency IRNA said a bus collided with a truck late Sunday on the main road between Neyriz city in Fars province and Sirjan in Kerman province, leaving “48 wounded and three dead.”
It did not specify how many people where on board the bus.
Col. Abdol Hashem Dehghani, a Fars traffic police official quoted by IRNA, said the accident was caused by “a technical failure” in the brakes and the driver’s “inability to control the vehicle.”
This was the third road accident in less than a week involving Pakistani pilgrims.

Two separate bus accidents hours apart in Pakistan on Sunday left at least 35 people dead and dozens more injured, officials said.
The first happened when a bus carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims returning from Iraq through Iran fell from a highway into a ravine in southwest Pakistan, killing at least 12 people and injuring 32 others, police and officials said.
Hours later, 23 people were killed when a bus fell into a ravine in Kahuta district in the eastern Punjab province, police and officials said.
The first accident occurred on the Makran coastal highway after the driver lost control of the bus when its brakes failed while passing through Lasbela district in Baluchistan province, local police chief Qazi Sabir said.
Bus accidents are common in Pakistan. The crash on Sunday occurred days after 28 Pakistani pilgrims were killed in a bus crash in neighboring Iran while heading to Iraq.
The bodies of those victims were brought home on a Pakistani military plane on Saturday and buried in the southern Sindh province.
Sabir said the bus that fell into a ravine on Sunday was heading to Pakistan's eastern Punjab province.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in separate statements expressed their deep sorrow over the accident. They asked authorities to ensure the provision of the best medical treatment for the injured pilgrims.
Thousands of Shiites travel to Iraq’s holy city of Karbala to commemorate Arbaeen — Arabic for the number 40 — marking the end of the annual 40-day mourning period after the date of the 7th century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, a central figure in Shiite Islam.
Hussein died at the hands of the Muslim Umayyad forces in the Battle of Karbala, during the tumultuous first century of Islam’s history.


Mamdani’s NYC primary win sparks surge in anti-Muslim posts, advocates say

Updated 5 sec ago
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Mamdani’s NYC primary win sparks surge in anti-Muslim posts, advocates say

There were at least 127 violent hate-related reports mentioning Mamdani or his campaign in the day after polls closed
Overall, it noted about 6,200 online posts that mentioned some form of Islamophobic slur

WASHINGTON: Anti-Muslim online posts targeting New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have surged since his Democratic primary upset this week, including death threats and comments comparing his candidacy to the September 11, 2001 attacks, advocates said on Friday.

There were at least 127 violent hate-related reports mentioning Mamdani or his campaign in the day after polls closed, said CAIR Action, an arm of the Council on American Islamic Relations advocacy group, which logs such incidents.

That marks a five-fold increase over a daily average of such reports tracked earlier this month, CAIR Action said in a statement.

Overall, it noted about 6,200 online posts that mentioned some form of Islamophobic slur or hostility in that day long time-frame.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist and a 33-year-old state lawmaker, declared victory in Tuesday’s primary after former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded defeat.

Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim and Indian American mayor if he wins the November general election.

“We call on public officials of every party — including those whose allies are amplifying these smears — to unequivocally condemn Islamophobia,” said Basim Elkarra, executive director of CAIR Action.

The advocacy group said its hate monitoring system includes its own scraping and analysis of posts, online submissions by the public and notifications from law enforcement. About 62 percent of the anti-Muslim posts against Mamdani originated on X, CAIR Action said.

People close to Republican President Donald Trump, including one of his sons, are among those spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric, advocates said.

Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son, wrote on X on Wednesday that “New York City has fallen” while sharing a post that said New Yorkers had “voted for” 9/11. Also on Wednesday, Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an AI-generated picture of the Statue of Liberty draped in a burqa.

President Trump has pursued domestic policies that rights advocates have described as anti-Muslim, including banning travel from some predominantly Muslim or Arab countries in his first term and attempting to deport pro-Palestinian students in his current term.

The White House, which did not respond to a request for comment, has denied claims of discrimination against Muslims. Trump and his allies have said they oppose Mamdani and others due to what they call the Democrats’ “radical left” ideology.


THREATS
The New York City Police Department said earlier this month its hate crime unit was probing anti-Muslim threats against Mamdani.

Manjusha Kulkarni, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, which documents hate against Asian Americans, and CAIR said attacks against Mamdani mirrored those endured by other South Asian and Muslim political figures, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Republicans have called Mamdani antisemitic, citing his pro-Palestinian advocacy and his criticism of Israel’s military assault on Gaza after an attack by Hamas militants in October 2023.

Mamdani has condemned antisemitism and has the backing of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish. Lander also ran in the Democratic primary.

Rights advocates have noted rising antisemitism and Islamophobia since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, with fatal US incidents including the shooting of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington and the stabbing of a Muslim child in Illinois.

Mamdani and other Pro-Palestinian advocates, including some Jewish groups, said their criticism of Israel is wrongly conflated with antisemitism.

Kremlin says Estonia's readiness to host nuclear-capable NATO jets threatens Russia

Updated 18 min 7 sec ago
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Kremlin says Estonia's readiness to host nuclear-capable NATO jets threatens Russia

  • Pevkur said Estonia was ready to host nuclear-capable jets if necessary
  • Peskov said such a move would be an obvious threat to Russia

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Friday that Estonia's stated readiness to host NATO allies' U.S.-made F-35A stealth jets, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, posed a direct threat to Moscow.

Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Postimees news outlet on Thursday that Estonia - which borders Russia and is a rotating base for NATO jets tasked with protecting Baltic airspace - was ready to host nuclear-capable jets if necessary.

"If some of them, regardless of their country of origin, have a dual-use capability to carry nuclear weapons it doesn't affect our position on hosting F-35s in any way," the outlet cited him as saying.

"Of course we are ready to host our allies."

Pevkur was speaking after Britain, a NATO member, announced it would buy at least 12 F-35A jets capable of carrying nuclear warheads and that they would join NATO's airborne nuclear mission.

Asked about Pevkur's comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said such a move would be an obvious threat to Russia.

"Of course it would be an immediate danger," Peskov told a journalist from Russia's Life news outlet. He said the statement was one of many "absurd thoughts" voiced by politicians in the Baltic region, which comprises Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

"We have practically no relations with the Baltic republics because it is very difficult to make them worse," he said.


Liberia holds funeral for ex-leader Doe decades after assassination

Updated 51 min 48 sec ago
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Liberia holds funeral for ex-leader Doe decades after assassination

  • Samuel Doe’s brutal 1990 torture and murder were an early turning point in the two civil wars
  • The circumstances surrounding Doe’s death mark a notorious episode in Liberia’s history

ZWEDRU, Liberia: Hundreds of people gathered Friday in rural Liberia for the state funeral of authoritarian former president Samuel Doe 35 years after his assassination, part of the country’s ongoing reconciliation efforts over its violent past.

Doe’s brutal 1990 torture and murder were an early turning point in the two civil wars that killed around 250,000 people and ravaged Liberia’s economy.

He is being commemorated at his home compound in southeastern Grand Gedeh County alongside his wife, Nancy, who died in May and will be buried at the estate.

Liberians gathered along the route Friday as the couple’s caskets – his symbolic, and hers containing her body – were slowly driven through the county capital of Zwedru on the bed of a truck decorated in bunting in the country’s red, white and blue colors.

The state ceremony is being attended by President Joseph Boakai, who declared a period of mourning this week from Tuesday to Friday, with flags flown at half-mast.

His executive mansion Facebook page said the commemorations are part of a “broader effort” meant to “promote national reconciliation.”

The circumstances surrounding Doe’s death mark a notorious episode in Liberia’s history.

Infamous warlord Prince Johnson, a key player in the civil wars (1989 to 2003), appeared in a video watching his fighters slowly mutilate and torture Doe to death while he calmly sipped a beer.

Various rumors but little concrete information exists as to the fate and location of Doe’s remains following his death.

Doe’s own rise to power was also steeped in violence.

His 1980 to 1990 rule remains divisive, remembered by many Liberians as a brutal dictatorship, while others recall some transformative measures he implemented fondly.

Liberian Mercy Janjay Seeyougar said in Monrovia ahead of the funeral that she remembered how Doe once gave her a candy, and that during street cleanings he would “stop and be with the people who are doing the cleaning.”

In 1980, Doe, then an army sergeant in his late 20s, led a coup assassinating president William Tolbert, the last in a line of leaders from the Americo-Liberian ruling class comprised of the descendants of former US slaves.

Quickly establishing a regime of terror, Doe had 13 members of the government he had overthrown publicly executed on a beach and his regime subsequently jailed or persecuted many of its opponents.

He was elected in a 1985 presidential vote that many observers said was marked by fraud.

The brutality of his regime, combined with declining economic conditions and favoritism toward the Krahn ethnic group of which he was a member, led to increased unpopularity.


Russian missile attack kills five in Ukraine’s southeast

Updated 27 June 2025
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Russian missile attack kills five in Ukraine’s southeast

  • At least four of the wounded were in severe condition and were taken to hospital
  • Officials gave no immediate details on damage in the city

KYIV: A Russian missile attack on Friday killed at least five people and wounded more than 20 in the industrial city of Samar in Ukraine’s southeast, officials said, the second strike on the city in three days.

At least four of the wounded were in severe condition and were taken to hospital, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on the Telegram messaging app.

Officials gave no immediate details on damage in the city, where an attack on an unidentified infrastructure facility on Tuesday killed two people.

Hundreds of kilometers to the south, in the Kherson region, authorities urged residents on Friday to prepare for extended periods without power after a Russian attack hit a key energy facility.

Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram that “Russians decided to plunge the region into darkness.”

In recent weeks Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukrainian cities, particularly its capital Kyiv, more than three years into the war that followed its full-scale invasion.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 363 long-range drones and eight missiles overnight into Friday, targeting a small western city of Starokostiantyniv, home to an important air base. There were no details on damage.


Oslo police announce rape and sexual assault charges against son of Norwegian crown princess

Updated 27 June 2025
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Oslo police announce rape and sexual assault charges against son of Norwegian crown princess

  • Oslo Police Attorney Andreas Kruszewski said Høiby was cooperative during police questioning
  • “I cannot go into further detail about the number of victims in the case”

OSLO: Oslo police on Friday announced charges against Marius Borg Høiby, the eldest son of Norway’s crown princess, on multiple counts including rape, sexual assault and bodily harm after a months-long investigation of a case that involved a “double-digit” number of alleged victims.

Høiby, the son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit and stepson of the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Haakon, has been under scrutiny since he was repeatedly arrested in 2024 amid allegations of rape and on preliminary charges of bodily harm and criminal damage.

Oslo Police Attorney Andreas Kruszewski said Høiby was cooperative during police questioning, which is now complete. Evidence in the case was drawn from sources including text-messages, witness testimonies and police searches, the police attorney said.

The charges included one case of rape involving intercourse and two cases of rape without intercourse, four cases of sexual assault and two cases of bodily harm, Kruszewksi said at a news conference.

“I cannot go into further detail about the number of victims in the case beyond confirming that it is a double-digit number,” he said.

Defense attorney Petar Sekulic, in an email to The Associated Press, said Høiby was “absolutely taking the accusations very seriously, but doesn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing in most of the cases — especially the cases regarding sexual abuse and violence.”

The case was top news in Norway, where the royals are popular.

Høiby, 28, previously lived with the royal couple and their two children, Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus, but now lives in a separate house nearby, according to Sekulic.

Høiby remains free pending a possible trial and is entitled to a presumption of innocence until a court rules otherwise.

Norway’s future queen made headlines in 2001 when she married Haakon because she was a single mother who had lived a freewheeling life with a companion who had been convicted on drug charges.