BBC News with Marion Marshall
Afghan officials say they’ve retaken full control of a building from which Taliban insurgents launched an attack on the election commission compound in Kabul a week before the presidential election. David Loyn reports from Kabul.
The attackers hid their weapons under the old protecting folds of women’s burqas and overpowered guards in a building not far from the election commission before opening fire. It took security forces four hours to kill them all. By then there were fires burning in the large election commission compound and there may have been some damages to ballot boxes. This was the fifth serious attack in Afghanistan in eight days, almost all election-related. This afternoon the election commission had planned to make a major announcement on how many polling stations would be prevented from opening because of worsening security in many parts of the country.
The US Secretary of State John Kerry has abruptly cancelled his return home from the Middle East, changing his flight plan to go to Paris to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Sunday. They are expected to discuss an American proposal to end the crisis in Ukraine, which calls for Russia to halt its military build-up on the border. Bentham Claude reports from Washington.
News that the top diplomats from the US and Russia are to meet follows an unexpected phone conversation on Friday evening between President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin initiated the call to discuss ways of stabilising the situation in Ukraine, a surprise move after weeks of escalating tensions between Russia and the West. It may be a sign of tentative progress towards a diplomatic solution, though the White House says Russia must first pull back the troops that have been deployed along the border with Ukraine.
A leading Ukrainian politician, Vitali Klitschko, has announced that he will not run for presidential in elections in May, but will instead support a prominent businessman and former government minister Petro Poroshenko. Mr Klitschko, a former world boxing champion, told a gathering of his Udar party that democratic forces, as he put it, needed to unify behind a single candidate.
“I’ve always said this has to be a candidate who enjoys the strongest public support with the greatest chance of victory. Today this candidate in my opinion is Petro Poroshenko.”
A suicide car bomber in Lebanon has hit an army checkpoint on the outskirts of the town of Arsal near the border with Syria. The Lebanese army says that three soldiers were killed and four people were wounded. The town of Arsal has become one of the main refuges in Lebanon for Syrians fleeing from the conflict in their home country. Tensions have further increased there as fighting just over the border has intensified with Syrian government forces trying to cut off vital rebel supply lines from Lebanon.
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The National Assembly in Cuba has approved a bill aimed at making the Communist-run island more attractive to foreign investors. The bill, which halves taxes on profits from 30% to 15%, is seen as a key part of President Raul Castro’s reform package started more than five years ago. Sarah Rainsford reports Havana.
This extraordinary session of parliament was called by Raul Castro, a sign that Cuba wants more foreign capital to start flowing quickly. The economy is growing at just over 2% now. So ministers told parliament the aim was to boost that, helping to make Cuban socialism prosperous and sustainable. They stressed that the government was not selling the country or going back to the past, but they also made clear that foreign funding is vital. To bring it in, Cuba’s offering investors incentives including eight years’ free of profit tax and no personal income tax.
For the first time Chinese and Australian ships investigating aerial sightings of possible debris for the missing Malaysian airliner have retrieved a number of objects from the water. None of the items recovered so far has been confirmed as related to Flight MH370.
The UN special envoy on education, Gordon Brown, has announced a pilot project in Pakistan with the aim of preventing girls from being forced into marriage. Speaking in Islamabad, Mr Brown, a former British prime minister, said child marriage free zones will be set up in which teachers and girls will be encouraged to work together to combat forced early marriage. He said funding would be available and depriving girls of education was not acceptable in the modern world.
“We want just part of that to make sure that there’s no child marriage. We want to make sure that child labour is outlawed. We want to make sure that the case of Malala and others who were girls discriminated against because they wanted to go to school will not be repeated.”Gordon Brown