TURKEY: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan set off a new controversy yesterday, declaring that women were not equal to men and accusing feminists of not understanding the status Islam attributes to mothers.

Mr Erdogan told a meeting on women and justice that women cannot be expected to undertake the same work as men.

“You cannot put women and men on an equal footing,” he said. “It is against nature. They were created differently.”

BANGLADESH: A special tribunal sentenced a Pakistani army collaborator to death yesterday for killings during the 1971 independence war.

Collaborators’ group former commander Mobarak Hossain was convicted of killing 33 civilians.

He was also sentenced to life for abducting and killing a man during the war.

Mr Hossain was a member of Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, which openly campaigned against the creation of Bangladesh.

THAILAND: A military court sentenced web editor Nut Rungwong to four-and-a-half years in jail yesterday for publishing an article defaming the king.

The Judge Advocate General’s department said that the sentence had been cut in half because the editor pleaded guilty to the charge.

Thailand’s lese majeste law is considered the harshest in the world, with those accused facing jail terms of three to 15 years if found guilty.

MOROCCO: Heavy flooding in the south has killed at least 32 people with several others still missing after heavy rains over the weekend.

In the southern city of Guelmim alone, 24 people were killed by a flash flood that roared through a dry river bed.

There has also been flooding around Marrakesh, with roads being cut and tour buses stranded.

The army and national police rescued 214 people, including 40 by helicopter.

CZECH REPUBLIC: An official said yesterday that an envelope mailed to the country’s finance minister contained poison, the second such case in a week.

Tests conducted on the suspicious envelope addressed to Andrej Babis detected “a deadly amount of a dangerous poison,” according to Institute for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Protection spokesman Radek Pokornik.

IRAQ: Troops backed by Shi’ite militias have retaken two towns seized previously by militants in Diyala province.

Iraqi forces entered the towns of Saadiya and Julala late on Sunday after fierce clashes with members of the Islamic State group.

The fighting is still continuing, with some pockets of resistance outside the two towns, said police.

DR CONGO: Around 100 people were slaughtered last week in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the latest massacre in the restive region.

The carnage took place near the town of Beni in North Kivu province, where Ugandan rebels have been blamed for killing more than 200 civilians since October.

ISRAEL: Three young Israelis attacked a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem yesterday, police said — the latest sectarian incident in the increasingly tense city.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the unidentified youth was in good condition in a Jerusalem hospital and that officers were investigating the attack.