PAKISTAN: A panel of United Nations-backed independent experts expressed grave concern today about increased discrimination and violence against the minority Ahmadi community in Pakistan and urged authorities to ensure their protection.

The experts said in a statement that they were alarmed by reports of violence and discrimination against Ahmadis. 

CROATIA: Three senior Montenegrins — the country’s parliament speaker Andrija Mandic, lawmaker Milan Knezevic and vice-premier Aleksa Becicwere — were told in a diplomatic note today that they are now unwelcome in Croatia.

This came after they led a declaration in Montenegro’s parliament stating that genocide was committed in a World War II concentration camp operated by a pro-Nazi Croatian regime at the time.

NEPAL: The pilot who survived a deadly plane crash in Nepal, Captain Manish Ratna Shakya, was only saved after the plane’s cockpit was sheared off by a freight container alongside the runway seconds before the rest of the aircraft crashed.

Captain Shakya, the sole survivor of Wednesday’s crash that killed 18 people at Kathmandu airport, was rescued just as flames neared the cockpit section of the airport embedded in the container.

CAMBODIA: A court in Cambodia today found the president of the country’s main opposition Candlelight Party guilty of defamation and ordered him to pay $1.5 million (£1m) in damages to the government, his lawyer and legal observers said.

The party’s president, Teav Vannol, was not present for the court’s ruling and is believed to be outside Cambodia. He holds dual Cambodian-United States citizenship. 

The verdict was the third conviction against a top leader of the Candlelight Party in under two years.