BANGLADESH: Students who led a mass uprising to topple former prime minister Sheikh Hasina last summer announced yesterday that they are forming the new National Citizen Party.

The aim is to create new political space in a fiercely divisive dynastic political landscape. 

The announcement came yesterday at a rally in front of Parliament in Dhaka.

PAKISTAN: A suicide bomber blew himself up after walking into a mosque within a pro-Taliban seminary in north-western Pakistan yesterday, killing a top cleric and five other worshippers and wounding dozens of others ahead of Ramadan, according to local police.

The blast occurred in Akora Khattak, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He named Hamidul Haq, who is the head of a faction of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party, as being among the dead. 

No group has immediately claimed responsibility.

EUROPEAN UNION: At least 25 arrest were made yesterday in a worldwide swoop against child abuse images generated by artificial intelligence, according to Europol.

The EU law enforcement agency said that those arrested were suspected of being part of a criminal gang whose members engage in distributing fully AI generated images of minors. 

TURKEY: A senior Turkish official yesterday called for the dissolution of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) affiliates in Iraq and Syria, a day after the party’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, urged his supporters to disarm and disband in a bid to end four decades of conflict with Turkey.

Omer Celik, the spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing party, said all groups associated with the PKK should comply with the call.