JAPAN
Goto tweet goes viral
A poignant tweet by murdered journalist Kenji Goto on the virtue of being calm was spreading rapidly on social media yesterday. “Close your eyes and remain patient. It’s over once you get angry or yell. It is almost like praying. Hating is not the role of humans; judgement is God’s domain. It was my Arab brothers who taught me this,” he tweeted in Japanese on Sept. 7, 2010. By early yesterday afternoon, the message had been retweeted more than 26,000 times in Japanese, with English versions also widely circulated. Goto’s killing was announced by Islamic State militants in a video posted late on Saturday last week.
SOUTH KOREA
Soldier sentenced to death
A soldier was sentenced to death yesterday for killing five comrades in a shooting spree last year, the Ministry of Defense said. The soldier, surnamed Yim, has told investigators that he opened fire on his colleagues in June after seeing drawings they made of him that he considered insulting. Yim was captured following a failed suicide attempt.
AUSTRALIA
Perth blast kills one
An explosion yesterday in an electrical transformer room at a shopping center in Perth left one man dead and three people badly burned, authorities said. One of the injured suffered 80 percent burns to his body. Some of the injured were electrical contractors inside a store at the Galleria, an ambulance spokesman said. An investigation into the blast is under way.
BANGLADESH
Seven killed in bus attack
Attackers threw crude fire bombs at a packed bus early yesterday morning, setting it alight as it traveled from traveled from Cox’s Bazar to Dhaka and leaving at least seven people dead and 16 injured. The pre-dawn attack was the latest in a surge in political violence amid a nationwide strike called by the opposition. Uttam Chakrabarty, police chief in the Comilla district where the bombing occurred, said the injured have been hospitalized, mostly for burns.
CHINA
Bund crush funerals held
The first funerals for the victims of a New Year’s Eve crush in Shanghai are being held this week, after authorities finally allowed the ceremonies to go ahead following publication of the official accident report. A funeral ceremony was held yesterday in the city center for Du Shuanghua, 37. His wife, Fan Ping, said she would be taking his body back to his hometown today. Funerals for the 36 victims were blocked until the accident report could be released and compensation agreed upon. The document was published two weeks ago, along with an offer of 800,000 yuan (US$131,000) for each family.
AUSTRALIA
Special sauce up for bids
McDonald’s is putting a bottle of the special sauce used on its famous Big Mac up for sale on eBay — with a starting bid of A$23,100 (US$18,000). The 500ml “Limited Edition Big Mac Special Sauce Bottle #1 of 200” is being auctioned off for charity. “This bottle is #1 of only 200 being produced worldwide, and they won’t be sold in restaurants,” the eBay ad reads. “We’re excited to be auctioning off the first-ever bottle of Big Mac sauce for a cause we are passionate about,” McDonald’s Australia chief marketing officer Mark Lollback said. Local customers will also be able to buy 25ml tubs of special sauce at restaurants around the country this month.
UNITED STATES
Bobbi Kristina fights for life
The 21-year-old daughter of singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown is fighting for her life, according to a statement from the Houston family on Monday. Police said Bobbi Kristina Brown was taken to a hospital on Saturday after she was found face down and unresponsive in a bathtub in a suburban Atlanta town home. The statement said that she is surrounded by immediate family and that the family was requesting privacy.
BELGIUM
EU blasts death terms
Egypt has violated its international human rights obligations by sentencing 183 men to death on Monday in the deaths of 13 policemen, the EU’s foreign service said in a statement. Monday’s verdict, which can be appealed, came after the initial sentences were sent to the grand mufti, the government’s official interpreter of Muslim law, for ratification. The policemen were killed in an attack on a police station in Kerdasa, a town on the outskirts of Cairo, on Aug. 14, 2013.
ICELAND
Norse shrine being built
People will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg, with construction starting this month on the nation’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age. Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity about 1,000 years ago, but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity. The temple is to be circular and be dug 4m down into a hill overlooking the capital, Reykjavik, with a dome on top to let in sunlight.
CUBA
Castro images released
State media outlets late on Monday released the first photographs of former president Fidel Castro in nearly six months in a bid to quiet rumors that his health is failing. The images showed the 88-year-old at his home along with his wife, Dalia, during a meeting with the leader of a students’ union, and were published in the state-run newspaper Granma and other official media outlets. The article accompanying the new photos said the meeting took place on Jan. 23.
ARGENTINA
Judges avoid Nisman case
Two judges on Monday declined to handle the allegations brought by late prosecutor Alberto Nisman against President Cristina Fernandez, charging her with seeking to derail his investigation of the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. Just days after Nisman brought the charges against Fernandez and members of her government, he was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment with a gunshot wound to the head. Federal Judge Ariel Lijo said in a statement on Monday that there were insufficient grounds to link the two charges. Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas also declined to take up the charges, media reports said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Michelangelo bronzes?
New evidence has emerged that two nude male bronzes attributed to other sculptors may be the work of Michelangelo. Experts from the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University of Cambridge say the evidence suggests the figures riding panthers were made after Michelangelo completed the marble David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The museum said in a statement on Monday that if the attribution is correct, the sculptures would be the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of