The world in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“One’s person’s atrocity does not excuse another’s.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, urging Nigeria to uphold human rights as it steps up its fight against Islamic extremists Article, this page

30 arrested in Moscow gay-rights rally

MOSCOW - Gay-rights campaigners and their opponents clashed at an unsanctioned rally in the Russian capital Saturday, but a heavy police presence in Ukraine kept the two sides apart at that country’s first-ever gay pride march.

Russian police said they arrested at least 30 gay-rights campaigners and Christian Orthodox opponents in Moscow.

The campaigners tried to unfurl banners denouncing Kremlin-backed anti-gay legislation in front of Russia’s lower house of parliament, but they were attacked by opponents carrying religious icons and crosses.

The lower house in January voted in favor of a bill that makes public events and dissemination of information about gay community to minors punishable. The bill awaits final approval.

In Kiev, between 50 and 100 gay rights activists staged the ex-Soviet nation’s first-ever gay pride parade. They held banners reading “Homosexuality is no disease” and “Human rights are my pride.”

Ukraine authorities on Thursday won a court order banning the rally from going ahead in the city center, saying it would disturb the annual Kiev Day celebrations.

Maoists suspected in 28 India deaths

NEW DELHI - About 200 suspected Maoist rebels set off a land mine and opened fire Saturday on a convoy of cars carrying local leaders and supporters of India’s ruling Congress party in eastern India, killing at least 28 people and wounding 24 others, police said.

Senior police officer M. Gupta said the attack occurred in the Sukma area, about 215 miles south of Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state.

Two state party leaders and five police officers were among those killed in the attack, said R. K. Vij, a top state police officer. Other victims were party supporters.

Police identified one of those killed as Mahendra Karma, a Congress leader in Chhattisgarh state who founded a local militia, the Salwa Judum, to combat the Maoist rebels. The anti-rebel militia had to be reined in after it was accused of atrocities against tribals - indigenous people at the bottom of India’s rigid social ladder.

Dagestan suicide bombing injures 18

MAKHACHKALA, Russia - A female suicide bomber blew herself up in the southern Russian region of Dagestan on Saturday, injuring at least 18, including two children and five police officers, authorities said. The attacker was later identified as a widow of two Islamic radicals killed by security forces.

It was the first suicide bombing in Dagestan since the Boston Marathon attacks last month. The Tsarnaev brothers suspected of carrying out those blasts are ethnic Chechens who lived in this turbulent Caucasus province before moving to the U.S.

In Saturday’s attack, the bomber detonated an explosives-laden belt in the central square in the provincial capital, Makhachkala, Dagestan police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said.

The woman was identified as Madina Alieva, 25, who married an Islamist who was killed in 2009 and then wedded another Islamic radical who was gunned down last year, police spokesman Fatina Ubaidatova said.

Egypt court rules against voting laws

CAIRO - Egypt’s top court ruled that draft laws on voting and parliamentary procedures are in breach of the constitution, creating a new obstacle to President Mohamed Morsi’s plan to hold elections.

The Supreme Constitutional Court found four articles of the parliament law and nine from the election law were unconstitutional, the judicial body said in a faxed statement from Cairo on Saturday.

Egypt has been without a functioning lower house of the parliament, the main legislative body, since it was shut down by court order in June last year, days before Morsi won an election runoff. Morsi’s initial proposal to hold elections starting in April this year for a new assembly was also blocked by courts, which objected to the proposed rules for voting.

After the failure of that plan, Morsi said in March that he envisaged elections starting in October for a parliament that would then be able to convene before the end of the year.

Front Section, Pages 10 on 05/26/2013

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