PAKISTAN
Nine people from Punjab were killed near Noshki, in Pakistan's Balochistan province, in the early hours of this morning when gunmen forced them off the bus they were travelling on, checked their identity papers, took them away, and shot them. One person was killed and four wounded in another roadside attack. Militant Baloch separatist groups have been fighting Pakistan’s central government for decades, opposed to the way the latter manages the province’s natural resources and Chinese groups that exploit them.
ISRAEL – PALESTINE
The search for an Israeli teenager who disappeared from a West Bank settlement has led to a violent settler raid on a Palestinian village. Benjamin Achimeir, 14, disappeared yesterday morning from Malachi Hashalom, a Jewish settlement near Ramallah. His search, which involves soldiers and settlers, took a violent turn when the nearby Palestinian village of al Mughayyir was attacked, leaving one dead and 25 wounded among Palestinians, eight by gunshots.
INDIA – SAUDI ARABIA
In Kerala, people of every religious background have raised 340 million rupees (US$ 4 million) to save the life of Machilakath Abdul Rahim, an Indian migrant sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for carelessly causing the death of the disabled boy in his care. The boy's family has demanded the payment of “blood money” (diyah) to stop the execution, set for 16 April.
SOUTH KOREA
A 37-year-old engineer who worked on the development of North Korean missiles before fleeing has been elected to South Korea's National Assembly. Park Choong-Kwon, who was elected with President Yoon Suk-yeol's People Power Party, reached South Korea via China. Although thousands of North Koreans live in South Korea, Park is only the fourth North Korean exile to be elected to parliament in South Korea.
CHINA
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced the successful launch of the Queqiao-2 satellite, which will serve as a communications bridge between ground operations on earth and upcoming lunar probe missions on the far side of the moon, first reached by a Chinese spacecraft in 2019. While the moon's near side always faces earth, data transfers from the far side are impossible.
RUSSIA
The Russian Ministry of Labour has released the results of a study on families in Russia. It found that mothers raise children alone in 4.85 million households. More than a third of the country's children are raised in single-parent households (mostly women, with 20 per cent single fathers). The proportion of single-parent households jumped from 20 per cent of the total to almost 40 per cent in the last decade.
KAZAKHSTAN
The Senate of Kazakhstan approved a long-awaited law to protect women and children from violence, called the Saltanat Law in honour of Saltanat Nurkenova, the murdered wife of a former minister, Quandyq Bishimbaev. The law, which covers violence on the Internet and social media, is a “great victory for civil society”, according to activists.
