MORROCCO
Politicians caught in the act
Two senior Muslim politicians have been suspended from their party, the group announced on Monday, following media reports that they were arrested in a “sexual position” on a beach. Moulay Omar Benhammad and Fatima Nejjar, both in their 60s and vice presidents of the Unity and Reform Movement, have been “suspended from all structures of the movement,” the party said in a statement issued after an emergency meeting of its leadership. According to private Web site al-Ahdath, police detained Benhammad and Nejjar early on Saturday last week on a beach in Mohammedia, about 60km south of Rabat. They were allegedly found in a “sexual position” inside a car, it said. Nejjar, a 62-year-old widow and mother of six, faces a charge of complicity to adultery. A married 63-year-old father of seven, Benhammad faces charges of “attempted corruption” of the policemen who detained the couple, the Web site said. Some social media in Morocco have reveled in the case, posting videos of Nejjar in full Islamic headdress exhorting female students not to give in to “temptation and vice.”
JAPAN
Father kills son over exam
A father stabbed his 12-year-old son to death after complaining the boy was failing to study for a school entrance exam, media said yesterday. Kengo Satake, the boy’s 48-year-old father, told police that he “argued with his son for not studying” before a test to enter a private junior-high school, public broadcaster NHK reported. The son, named Ryota, was taken to hospital on Sunday after the stabbing, but died from loss of blood, Aichi prefectural police in the central city of Nagoya told reporters. “The father stabbed his son in the chest with a kitchen knife,” a police spokesman said, declining to provide details of the motive. The father was arrested after police received a call from hospital staff, he said. Satake reportedly told police he had stabbed his son “by mistake.”
INDIA
Man swallows 40 knives
Doctors in northern India say they have surgically removed 40 knives from the stomach of a man who had swallowed them over the past two months. The 42-year-old man is recovering in a hospital in Punjab State after undergoing surgery on Friday in which doctors removed the knives — some folded and some with exposed blades up to 18cm long. Jatinder Malhotra, a doctor who was present during the five-hour operation, said yesterday that the man, who works as a police constable, was apparently suffering from a psychiatric disorder and is now being counseled. He said the man could not explain why he swallowed the knives. Malhotra said he had never before heard of a case of a person swallowing knives.
JAPAN
Sea Shepherd deal reached
The Institute of Cetacean Research and Kyodo Senpaku, which conduct the nation’s whale hunts, say they reached a mediation agreement with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and its founder Paul Watson. Under the terms of the negotiated agreement, Sea Shepherd and Watson are prohibited from “physically attacking” Japan’s whaling vessels or crew, or approaching closer than 457m to the vessels on the high seas. The agreement settles a case brought by the Japanese institutions against Sea Shepherd at a Seattle court in 2011, in which the Japanese institutions sought an injunction from “violent behavior” of protesters which they said endangered the safety of the whaling vessels’ crew.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of