TURKEY
Journalist gets three years
A court yesterday sentenced a journalist from opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet to three years in prison on a charge of spreading terrorist propaganda over a tweet that the paper briefly posted in May, state media said. The newspaper’s online editor, Oguz Guven, was accused of discrediting Ankara’s fight against supporters of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government says orchestrated a coup attempt last year. The tweet had referred to a prosecutor being killed in a road accident with the expression that he had been “mowed down by a truck.” Cumhuriyet says the tweet was replaced within one minute by one saying the prosecutor “died awfully in a truck accident.” The prosecutor who died had prepared an indictment against Gulen’s network.
UNITED STATES
Object from another system
A rocky cigar-shaped object detected in space last month came from another solar system, astronomers said on Monday, as they confirmed an unprecedented observation. The discovery could provide clues as to how other solar systems formed, said the researchers, who published their study in the British journal Nature. The asteroid, named Oumuamua by its discoverers, is 400m long and highly elongated — perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That odd shape is unprecedented among an estimated 750,000 asteroids and comets observed in our solar system where they formed, the researchers said. They concluded that the cigar-shaped thing is from another solar system due to data on its orbit. Asteroids like Oumuamua enter our solar system about once a year, but they are hard to trace and had not been detected until now, thanks to stronger telescopes, they said.
UNITED STATES
Bus ruins demolition show
An unlucky TV producer has been left cursing a large commuter bus, after it pulled up at just the wrong moment to ruin a live broadcast. On Monday, the Georgia Dome, an 80,000-capacity stadium that hosted events at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, was demolished in a spectacular controlled implosion. Like many other media outlets, the Weather Channel set up a livestream to catch the moment on film. In footage posted online, a crowd of onlookers can be seen lined up to watch the demolition, as a voice slowly counts down to the demolition of the stadium. Seconds after the first plume of smoke appears, a bus slowly enters the frame. “No bus. Go away,” a man can be heard shouting. The bus then stops, completely obscuring the stadium, while he swears and sighs in frustration. By the time the 20-second stop is over, the implosion has finished.
JAPAN
Mother ‘dumps’ babies
A mother who dumped four of her babies in buckets filled with concrete that she then kept in her apartment for two decades was arrested yesterday. Mayumi Saito, 53, told investigators she had given birth to the infants between 1992 and 1997, a police spokesman said. Saito handed herself in at an Osaka police station on Monday and confessed, saying she did not think her financial predicament made it possible for her to look after the babies, local media reported. Detectives who searched her home found four concrete-filled buckets in a closet. Scans indicate that each one contains what appears to be the remains of an infant, the Asahi Shimbun reported. Police are still interviewing the woman, who lives with her son, and trying to determine whether she killed the babies or whether they were stillborn, the report said.
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
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