JAPAN
Man held for senior sex ring
Police have arrested a 70-year-old man over claims he arranged sexual encounters among senior citizens through newspaper advertisements soliciting “tea-drinking companions,” police and press reports said on Tuesday. Kiyohide Kuroda had allegedly been posting classified ads in a Tokyo newspaper for about a decade before he was taken into custody last week. Press reports said Kuroda had helped arrange sex among about 1,000 men and 350 women, mostly in their mid-sixties, earning about ￥30 million (US$310,000) as commission. His small ads for his San Ai (Three Loves) club offered to arrange meetings for “tea-drinking companions aged between 40 and mature ages,” the reports said. “I recruited tea-drinking companions as I did not wish to give the impression that mine was sex business,” Kuroda reportedly told investigators. “I thought people seeking prostitution understood what it meant.”
AUSTRALIA
‘Chopper’ dies of cancer
Infamous crime figure turned author Mark “Chopper” Read died yesterday after a lengthy battle with cancer, his manager said. Read, who shot to worldwide fame after Chopper, a 2000 film about his life, was being treated at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for liver cancer. He was 58. Read in the past claimed he was involved in the killing of 19 people, but was never convicted of murder. Read, who spent 23 years in jail, was a national celebrity after retiring from a life of crime to write novels. During his criminal career, he says he was stabbed seven times, shot once, run over by a car, had a claw hammer embedded in his head and was made to dig his own grave. Read’s most notorious act was persuading a fellow inmate to hack off his ears so he could gain access to a prison’s mental health wing during a war between rival factions. Manager Andrew Parisi said in a statement that despite his criminal history, Read had lived quietly in Melbourne for more than 15 years with his wife and two sons, working as a writer, painter and public speaker.
BANGLADESH
Factory fire kills seven
A huge fire at a garment factory has killed seven people, officials said yesterday. Firefighters battled through Tuesday night to douse the flames at the Aswad Knit Composite factory at Sripur, on the outskirts of Dhaka. Parts of the two-story building were still smouldering early yesterday. Police said the fire, which broke out when most of the 3,000 workers had left, was so intense that most of the bodies were too badly burned to be identified. “Two bodies have been identified and handed over to their relatives. Five other bodies were charred beyond recognition,” local police chief Amir Hossain said, revising down an earlier toll of nine. Workers said the overnight blaze appeared to have been started by a malfunctioning knitting machine which had caught fire on previous occasions.
PHILIPPINES
Rat urine infects 132 people
At least 132 people were infected with leptospirosis in and around the northern city of Olongapo, following deadly flash floods in the area last month, health department epidemiologist for the area Jessie Fantone said yesterday. “This is a bacterial infection caused by exposure to rat urine in flooded urban areas,” Fantone told reporters by telephone. While the floods that struck the area late last month have subsided, the disease can incubate in the human body for up to 30 days before flu-like symptoms appear, Fantone said. He said the infection can lead to kidney failure, requiring dialysis.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
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