4 RANGERS KILLED BY BOMB IN REBEL- HIT THAI SOUTH

BANGKOK: Four Thai army rangers were killed Friday when a roadside bomb tore through their truck as they were securing a road for teachers, an army official said, the latest carnage in an insurgency roiling the kingdom’s far south. The blast in Pattani province also wounded six, including one civilian, said deputy army spokesman for the south, Colonel Yuthanam Petchmoang. The group was on a routine early morning patrol to clear a road used by teachers in Sai Buri district when the bomb erupted, tearing their silver pick-up truck in two and carving a crater into the rubble-strewn road. The explosive was tucked into a drainage tunnel beneath the road and detonated after four of the ranged stepped out of their truck to inspect the site, the southern Internal Security Operation Command

EX-AUSTRALIA PM ‘HEADBUTTED’ AMID HEATED GAY MARRIAGE CAMPAIGN

SYDNEY: A man wearing a “yes” badge headbutted former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott while he was campaigning against legalizing gay marriage, the ex-leader said Friday. Abbott, an outspoken critic of such unions, said he was in Hobart in south Tasmania on Thursday when a man approached wanting to shake his hand, but then headbutted him instead. “I held out my hand. He grabbed my hand and turned it into a headbutt. Now, he was, of course, wearing a ‘yes’ badge,” Abbott told reporters in Hobart on Friday. “I worry about the brave new world of same-sex marriage if this is how some of the people who are most enthusiastically working for it are behaving with such bullying and intimidatory fashion.” The 59-year- old suffered minor injuries to his lip but

TRUDEAU TELLS UN: CANADA FAILED ITS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

UNITED NATIONS, United States: Declaring that Canada is “no land of wonders,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the United Nations on Thursday that his country was working to address failures in the treatment of its indigenous people. Trudeau told the UN General Assembly that Canada’s 1.2 million indigenous people had mostly known “humiliation, neglect and abuse” in a country often held up as shining example of diversity. “We know that the world expects Canada to strictly adhere to international human rights standards,” said Trudeau, who has put reconciliation with first nations at the top of his reform agenda.