JAPAN
Osaka mayor to step down
Controversial Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto is to step down and seek re-election in a bid to prove he has public support for a plan to reform local government. Hashimoto, who doubles as co-head of the Japan Restoration Party, has long championed merging Osaka’s prefectural and municipal governments, claiming it would cut out unnecessary layers of bureaucracy. A panel of representatives of the Osaka Prefectural Government and Municipal Government on Friday last week rejected plans to speed up the integration, prompting his decision to go over their heads to the electorate.
SOUTH KOREA
Lawmaker tried for sedition
Prosecutors yesterday demanded a 20-year jail term for a leftist lawmaker on trial for allegedly plotting an armed revolt in support of North Korea. Prosecutors also asked judges to strip United Progressive Party Legislator Lee Seok-ki of his civic rights for 10 years following his release from prison. The sedition charges leveled against Lee are rarely used, especially against a sitting legislator. After parliament voted to lift his immunity from arrest, Lee, 52, was charged in September last year with plotting an insurrection to overthrow the government. The prosecution is also seeking jail terms of up to 15 years for six other party members being tried on similar charges.
SOUTH KOREA
Reunion talks date proposed
The government yesterday said North Korea has agreed to hold talks on arranging reunions of families separated by the Korean War for the first time in more than three years. Pyongyang last month agreed to restart the reunions and asked the South to pick the date. Seoul chose Feb. 17 to Feb. 22 and proposed working-level talks to discuss the reunions, but the North did not respond until yesterday, when it broke a week-long silence to send a message proposing the talks take place either tomorrow or Thursday at a border village, according to the Ministry of Unification and Pyongyang’s state media. Seoul said that it preferred tomorrow, the ministry said.
YEMEN
Attacks deepen tribal unrest
Shiite Huthi rebels have overrun strongholds of powerful tribes in the north of the country, witnesses said on Sunday, in a major advance following a month of combat that has killed scores of people. The Huthis seized Huth Town and Khamri Village — the seat of the Hashid tribal chief — as tribal defense lines crumbled, local sources and witnesses said. Tribal chief sheikh Hussein al-Ahmar ordered his fighters to evacuate his family’s farm in Khamri and set it ablaze, witnesses said. In another indication of the growing unrest, a mortar shell was fired overnight in the direction of the French embassy, while a car bomb exploded meters away in Sana’a’s diplomatic quarter, a police source said yesterday. “The two attacks happened after midnight. There were no victims,” the source said.
INDIA
Men burned for cattle: police
Four men were burned to death in a West Bengal State village as suspected punishment for stealing cattle from a rival gang, a police officer said yesterday. The four charred bodies were found close to the border with Bangladesh on Sunday evening, said Jagmohan, police commissioner of nearby Siliguri City. Two of the bodies were found inside a burned van also containing one of the suspected stolen cows, while the other two were found nearby, Jagmohan, who uses one name, told reporters.
UNITED STATES
Philip Seymour Hoffman dies
Philip Seymour Hoffman, winner of an Academy Award for his title role in the film Capote, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Sunday in what a New York police source described as an apparent drug overdose. Hoffman, 46, was discovered unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his Greenwich Village apartment by police responding to a 911 call, and Emergency Medical Service workers declared him dead at the scene, the New York City police said in a statement. A police spokesman said investigators found Hoffman with a syringe in his arm and recovered two small plastic bags in the apartment containing a substance suspected of being heroin. Hoffman, who is survived by three children with his partner, Mimi O’Donnell, had detailed his struggles with substance abuse in the past. Hoffman won the Best Actor Oscar for the 2005 film Capote, in which he played writer Truman Capote. He also received three Academy Award nominations as best supporting actor for The Master last year, Doubt in 2009 and Charlie Wilson’s War in 2008.
UNITED STATES
Woody Allen denies abuse
Film director Woody Allen said Dylan Farrow’s allegations of child molestation “untrue and disgraceful.” Allen’s publicist, Leslee Dart, said in an e-mail on Sunday that Allen had read Dylan Farrow’s open letter, published online on Saturday by the New York Times, claiming she was sexually assaulted when she was seven by her then adoptive father. “Mr. Allen has read the article and found it untrue and disgraceful,” Dart said. Allen’s lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, added: “It is tragic that after 20 years, a story engineered by a vengeful lover resurfaces after it was fully vetted and rejected by independent authorities. The one to blame for Dylan’s distress is neither Dylan nor Woody Allen.’’ Dylan Farrow claimed that in 1992, at the family’s Connecticut home, Allen led her to a “dim, closet-like attic’” and “then he sexually assaulted me.” Allen was investigated on child molestation claims for the 1992 accusation, but was never charged.
RUSSIA
Release prisoners: protesters
Thousands of demonstrators marched through Moscow on Sunday to demand the government free eight prisoners jailed after a 2012 protest against President Vladimir Putin. There was heavy security for the march, with hundreds of police lining the route from Pushkin Square to Turgenev Square, while a helicopter hovered overhead. Police said the march attracted 2,000 protesters, but organizers put the number of participants at 10,000. Prosecutors are seeking jail sentences of five to six years for the protesters.
EL SALVADOR
Ex-guerrilla leads polling
Former left-wing guerrilla commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren had a strong lead in the presidential election on Sunday, heading into a run-off vote well positioned to defeat a conservative rival, former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano. Sanchez Ceren had 49 percent support with votes from more than 94 percent of polling booths. Quijano had 38.9 percent of the vote.
COSTA RICA
Polling leads to runoff
Voters sent former San Jose mayor Johnny Araya and opposition leader Luis Guillermo Solis to an April 6 runoff after neither candidate received enough votes in Sunday’s election to win the presidency outright. With 69 percent of votes counted, Solis of the Citizen Action Party had 30.6 percent to 29.8 percent for Araya.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
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