SPAIN: An adviser to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was shot dead yesterday when gunmen targeted him outside the American School of Madrid.

Andrii Portnov was identified as the victim by Spain’s Interior Ministry. Authorities said he had been shot after dropping his children off at school.

Witnesses reported that Mr Portnov had been shot “several times” in the head and body by more than one attacker as he was getting into his car, a black Mercedes Benz, police said. The assailants then fled on foot.

IRAN: The authorities executed a man yesterday who had carried out a 2023 attack on the Azerbaijan embassy in Tehran, killing its head of security and wounding two other people in an incident that escalated tensions between the neighbouring nations, state media reported.

The IRNA news agency reported the unidentified man’s execution, without offering further details.

PAKISTAN: A suicide car bomber struck a school bus in the country’s south-west yesterday, killing five people and wounding 38, officials said, in the latest attack in Balochistan province. 

Local deputy commissioner Yasir Iqbal said the attack had taken place on the outskirts of the city of Khuzdar as the bus was taking children to their military-run school there.

THAILAND: Officials said yesterday that they planned to tighten regulations on cannabis sales after cases of tourists attempting to smuggle the drug out of the country soared in recent months.

Thailand became Asia’s first country to decriminalise cannabis in 2022.

The ruling Pheu Thai Party has pledged to recriminalise the drug, but it has faced strong resistance from its partner in the coalition government.