JAPAN
Castrating ex-boxer jailed
A former boxer who chopped off the penis of his wife’s lover with a pair of garden shears before flushing it down the toilet was jailed in Japan yesterday. Ikki Kotsugai, 25, carried out the “vicious” attack in August 2015 when he burst into the office of a lawyer who had an affair with his wife. Kotsugai, an ex-boxer and law student, became enraged after mistakenly believing his wife had been forced to sleep with her boss at a legal firm, when in reality the affair was consensual, the judge said at a Tokyo District Court, according to Jiji Press. The Sankei Shimbun reported that Kotsugai’s wife had falsely told him that she was forced to have sex with the lawyer. He was sentenced to four years and six months yesterday by presiding judge Kazunori Karei. “An irreparable injury has been sustained,” Karei told the court, according to Jiji.Kotsugai has since apologised to the victim, who also apologised for having the affair with his wife, the Sankei reported.
UNITED STATES
Shooter saves eagle
An army veteran used his sharpshooting skills to free a bald eagle trapped in a Minnesota tree ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, his wife said. Jackie Gervais Galvin of Rush City, Minnesota, said on Facebook that the eagle had become entangled in a rope. It had hung upside down from a tree near the cabin belonging to her and her husband, Jason Galvin, for more than two days, she said. Jason Galvin used a borrowed .22 caliber rifle with a scope to sever the 10cm rope after firing 150 shots. Galvin never hit the eagle. The bird tumbled 23m to the ground. The couple wrapped it in a blanket and took it to the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center, Jackie Galvin said in her posting on Friday. “We named the eagle Freedom and hope to be able to release him near his home once he is back to health!” she wrote.
PERU
Drowned selfie fan retrieved
Police pulled a South Korean tourist dead from under a waterfall in the Amazon jungle, days after he fell in while taking a photo of himself, police said on Monday. The man, 28-year-old Kim Jong-yeob, slipped and fell 500m under the waterfall in northeastern Peru on Wednesday last week, a local police official said. “The tourist was found dead, submerged 7m deep in the lake where into which the Gocta waterfall runs,” the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters by telephone. “He wanted to take a self-portrait at the waterfall but while he was looking for a good place to take it, he fell.”
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
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