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| Delayed reforms, market woes tarnish end to Modi's first year | |  By Manoj Kumar and Abhishek Vishnoi NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) - A surprise delay to India's new goods and services tax (GST) marks one of the most painful setbacks suffered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government as it nears the end of a first year in power, with markets falling and farmers braced for a poor monsoon. Investors had hoped that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, would ensure Modi could push through reforms far more smoothly, but that assumption has taken a battering. The introduction of the GST would constitute India's biggest tax reform since independence. The delay to the bill is a blow to a government that is already dealing with rural discontent over proposed land reforms, which have also still to be sent to the upper house for approval.
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| Asia boatpeople pushed back to sea as U.N. calls for rescue | |  By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Fransiska Nangoy BANGKOK/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia will continue to push boats holding thousands of migrants back to sea, a senior Thai official said on Wednesday, despite a U.N. appeal for a rapid rescue operation to avoid a humanitarian crisis. Several thousand migrants, many of them hungry and sick, are adrift in Southeast Asian seas in boats that have been abandoned by smugglers following a Thai government crackdown on human trafficking, the United Nations has said. "Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have decided not to receive boat people, as far as I am aware," Major General Werachon Sukhondhapatipak, spokesman for Thailand's ruling junta, told Reuters.
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| Senior Burundi army officer says dismisses President Nkurunziza | |  A prominent Burundi army officer said on Wednesday he was dismissing President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose bid for a third term in office sparked more than two weeks of demonstrations by protesters who said he was violating the constitution. Major General Godefroid Niyombare, who was fired by Nkurunziza as intelligence chief in February, was speaking at a military barracks to reporters. "Regarding President Nkurunziza's arrogance and defiance of the international community which advised him to respect the constitution and Arusha peace agreement, the committee for the establishment of the national concord decide: President Nkurunziza is dismissed, his government is dismissed too," he said.
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| Congo rebels may have committed crimes against humanity - U.N. | | | By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - A Ugandan Islamist rebel group committed human rights abuses in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last year that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to a U.N. report published on Wednesday. "In total, ADF combatants attacked 35 villages. Some had their throats slit, were shot at while trying to flee, or were burned alive in their homes." Civil society groups in eastern Congo said the ADF had killed 13 people with machetes and hatchets in two overnight assaults over the last week. "These violations, which were both systematic and extremely brutal, may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity," the U.N. statement said. |
| Philippine factory fire kills 31, leaves dozens missing - officials | |  MANILA (Reuters) - A fire at a factory making rubber slippers killed 31 workers in the Philippine capital on Wednesday, and dozens were missing and feared dead, government and fire officials said. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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| Blood drips from bus doors after gunmen kill 43 in Pakistan's Karachi | |  By Syed Raza Hassan KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunmen on motorcycles boarded a bus and opened fire on commuters in Pakistan's volatile southern city of Karachi on Wednesday, killing at least 43, police said, in the latest attack directed against religious minorities this year. Police Superintendent Najib Khan told Reuters there were six gunmen and that all the passengers were Ismailis, a minority Shi'ite Muslim sect. Pakistan is mostly Sunni. Militant group Jundullah, which has attacked Muslim minorities before, claimed responsibility.
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| Islamic State kills dozens in Syrian army-held area - Observatory | | | Islamic State fighters killed dozens in an attack on Syrian army-held areas in Homs province overnight, an organisation monitoring the war said, as the group intensifies efforts to expand beyond its strongholds. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the monitoring group, said about 30 government soldiers and 20 Islamic State militants were killed in the fighting in and around the town of al-Sukhna, some 300 km (190 miles) northeast of Damascus. Syrian troops repelled the attack in places and were still fighting in others, a military source said. "(The army) repelled the attack in areas, there are areas where it is still ongoing." Islamic State has in recent months launched attacks in both the Syrian government-held as well as rebel-held areas far beyond areas of northern and eastern Syria where it is most firmly entrenched. |
| North Korea to launch live-fire drills near disputed sea border with South | | | North Korea notified the South of its plan to conduct live-fire drills this week near a disputed sea border, the scene of deadly clashes in recent years, the South's military said on Wednesday. North Korea conducted similar drills last year, with more than 100 rounds landing south of border, prompting the South to fire hundreds of rounds back. The South's joint chief of staff said in a statement that North Korea told Seoul that it would carry out the drills from May 13-15 north of the Northern Limit Line, the west coast maritime border. "If North Korea makes any provocation in our waters, we will strongly respond to it," the statement said. |
| N.Korea executes defence chief with an anti-aircraft gun- S.Korea agency | |  By Ju-min Park and James Pearson SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea executed its defence chief by putting him in front of an anti-aircraft gun at a firing range, Seoul's National Intelligence Service told lawmakers, which would be the latest in a series of high-level purges since Kim Jong Un took charge. Hyon Yong Chol, who headed the isolated nuclear-capable country's military, was charged with treason, including disobeying Kim and falling asleep during an event at which North Korea's young leader was present, according to South Korean lawmakers briefed in a closed-door meeting with the spy agency on Wednesday. His execution was watched by hundreds of people, according to NIS intelligence shared with lawmakers. It was not clear how the NIS obtained the information and it is not possible to independently verify such reports from within secretive North Korea.
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| Police torture in China still routine despite reforms - rights group | |  Six years after China took steps to crack down on torture by police, detainees continue to be beaten, hanged by their wrists and shackled to iron chairs, New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. The report comes six months before China is due to face scrutiny by a U.N. panel against torture and following a pledge by President Xi Jinping to boost the rule of law. The ruling Communist Party is looking to quell public discontent over several high-profile miscarriages of justice, with China's top court unveiling legal reforms in February to halt the use of torture to gain evidence. "Police are torturing criminal suspects to get them to confess to crimes and courts are convicting people who confessed under torture," Human Rights Watch said in its report, however.
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| Gunmen kill seven in attack on Muslim council in Afghan south - police | | | Gunmen opened fire on a gathering of Afghan Muslim clerics in the southern province of Helmand, killing seven people, police said on Wednesday. The Ulemma Council, the highest religious authority in a deeply conservative country, came under attack after it had repeatedly announced its support for security forces fighting the hard-line Islamist Taliban insurgents. "The meeting was ongoing when two Taliban gunmen attacked the gathering," police official Jan Aqa said. One gunman was killed and another was still fighting with security forces, Aqa added. |
| Protesters to African leaders: end Burundi presidential bid | | | By Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Protest organisers in Burundi urged African leaders meeting in Tanzania on Wednesday to demand that their president halt his bid for a third term, which has triggered the nation's worst crisis since an ethnically fuelled civil war ended in 2005. At least two gunshots rang out as protesters returned to the streets of Burundi's capital on Wednesday. They say Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for another five years violates two-term limits in the constitution and the peace deal that ended the civil war. East African leaders and a top official from continental heavyweight South Africa met in Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam to discuss the crisis that has already spilled over into a region with a history of ethnic conflict. |
| Foreign investor group mulls Supreme Court challenge to MAT | |  By Rafael Nam, Himank Sharma and Michelle Price MUMBAI/HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong-based lobby group representing global banks and investors is considering challenging a controversial tax in the Supreme Court, escalating a row that has eroded investor confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. The Asia Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (ASIFMA) is in discussions with financial firms, lawyers and tax consultants about applying to join an existing legal action on a tax dispute, several sources aware of the talks told Reuters. A spokeswoman for ASIFMA declined to comment. The existing Supreme Court case, filed by Mauritius-based Castleton Investment Ltd, is seen as a test case on the legitimacy of extending the so-called minimum alternate tax (MAT), which was intended to ensure companies inside India paid a minimum tax rate, to foreign investors' gains.
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