JAPAN
Pro wrestler dies at 22
Hana Kimura, a pro wrestler who appeared in the latest series of the popular reality show Terrace House, has died. She was 22. Her organization Stardom Wrestling confirmed Kimura’s death on Saturday. Kimura was found dead at her home, local media reported. Kimura became the target of massive bullying on social media over her role on the Terrace House show on Netflix, which involves three men and three women temporarily living together at a shared house in Tokyo. The show was temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In her latest Instagram posting on Friday, she published a photograph of herself and her cat, with a message saying: “Goodbye.” Her death has triggered a wave of messages on social media against anonymous bullying.
JAPAN
Emergency to end in Tokyo
The government is set to lift the state of emergency in Tokyo, its surrounding regions and the northern island of Hokkaido today as new COVID-19 cases tail off, local media reported. The city of 14 million people on Saturday reported just two cases, the lowest number of infections since the state of emergency was declared early last month. If the trends are confirmed in data for yesterday, the government plans to end the state of emergency, Japan Broadcasting Corp reported, without saying where it got the information. The move would bring the measure to an end across the whole nation a week ahead of schedule and enable more businesses to restart in the Tokyo region, whose economy is about the size of Canada’s.
TUNISIA
Migrant killed in shipwreck
At least one migrant has drowned, six are missing and more than 80 have been rescued off the country’s coast, authorities said, amid a new wave of dangerous attempts to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. The coast guard rescued 11 migrants after an emergency call from a boat that was filling with water on Saturday off the city of Sfax, coast guard spokesman Lieutenant Houssameddine Jbabli said. Divers from emergency services retrieved one body, while the captain and chief trafficker fled, he said. Six others who had been aboard the boat were missing, Sfax Governor Anis Oueslati told the national news agency TAP. The coast guard also rescued 70 people from another boat in poor condition off the Kerkennah Islands, the governor said.
AFGHANISTAN
Ghani vows hasty release
President Ashraf Ghani yesterday vowed to speed up the release of Taliban prisoners after welcoming a surprise offer by the insurgents of a three-day ceasefire during the Eid al-Fitr. “As a responsible government we take one more step forward — I announce that I will expedite the Taliban prisoner releases,” Ghani said in an address to the nation marking the holiday. He also urged the militants to press on with the release of the security personnel they hold.
GREECE
Occupation claim denied
The government yesterday dismissed reports that Turkish soldiers had occupied a strip of Greek territory in the Evros border region, where Athens is expanding a fence to keep migrants out. Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias said allegations, picked up the British press, that Turkish troops had occupied a patch of land that is normally submerged at this time of year on Greece’s side of the border were “utterly false.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion