World briefs

AUSTRALIA’s prime minister has brushed off controversy over his office’s treatment of the gay partner of the Australian ambassador to France. Ambassador Stephen Brady offered to resign after a disagreement involving Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s reception at Le Bourget Airport in Paris last month, Fairfax Media reported. Abbott’s traveling party sent an instruction that Brady’s partner of 32 years, Peter Stephens, should not take part in greeting Abbott on the tarmac and should wait in a car, Fairfax reported.

PHILIPPINES A Filipino bomb-maker and one of the country’s top terror suspects has been killed by a rival faction of Muslim rebels, the Philippine military said yesterday. The guerrillas who signed a peace agreement with the government on ending a decades-long insurgency in the southern Philippines killed Usman after he strayed into their territory in southern Maguindanao province, said military spokesman Brig. Gen Joselito Kakilala.

ISRALEI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was racing against the clock yesterday to put together a governing coalition or else face an almost unimaginable scenario by which he would be forced out of office. Netanyahu was holding furious consultations with the hawkish Jewish Home Party in order to secure a narrow 61-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament. If he fails by the end of the day, President Reuven Rivlin must appoint someone else the task of forming a coalition.

GERMANY A tornado has caused widespread damage in a small town in northeastern Germany, ripping off most of a church roof and covering streets in debris. Elsewhere, a man was killed by flying debris.

UKRAINE says five government troops battling separatist forces in the east have been killed in one of the worst single days of bloodshed since a cease-fire was declared in February.

YEMEN U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday he’ll discuss with Saudi Arabian officials how to implement a “humanitarian pause” in Yemen’s civil war, citing increased shortages of food, fuel and medicine that are adding to a crisis that has already caused thousands of people to flee to neighboring countries.

YEMEN’s rebels fired rockets and mortars into Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, killing at least three people and purportedly capturing five soldiers in an attack showing the insurgents’ ability to launch assaults despite weeks of Saudi-led airstrikes targeting them.

FRANCE’s lower house of Parliament has approved a bill aimed at legalizing broad surveillance of terrorism suspects that has drawn an outcry from advocates of civil liberties. The new law would entitle intelligence agents to place cameras and recording devices in suspects’ homes and beacons on their cars without prior authorization from a judge, as well as forcing communication and Internet firms to allow intelligence services to install electronic “lock-boxes” to record metadata from all Internet users in France.

NIGERIA Troops rescued 25 more children and women from Boko Haram early yesterday as the soldiers destroyed seven more of the extremists’ camps in a northeastern forest stronghold, the army spokesman said.

RUSSIAN space agency Roscosmos says the cargo ship that failed in its mission to deliver supplies to the International Space Station will fall from orbit on Friday. The Progress was launched on April 28, but entered the wrong orbit and went into an uncontrollable spin. Roscosmos said yesterday that some fragments from the spacecraft may hit Earth on Friday. Most of it will burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.