JAPAN
Fuji view beats building
A property developer is to demolish a near-complete, 10-story condominium in Tokyo after pushback from neighbors who said it blocked a view of Mount Fuji. Sekisui House on Tuesday said that it had “voluntarily decided to discontinue the project” as “there is no denying that the current situation has an enormous impact on the landscape.” The apartments are in part of western Tokyo famous for its views of Japan’s highest mountain from the end of a road named Fujimi, or “Fuji Viewing,” street.
Photo: AFP
GUATEMALA
Animals found in prison
The penitentiary system has asked authorities to investigate more than 100 prison guards for charges including possible abuse of power, the government said in a statement on Tuesday, after a prison clean-out revealed hidden cash and even pets. Of the guards, 102 worked at a prison known as “El Infiernito” (The Little Hell), which until early this month housed 225 suspected members of the Barrio 18 criminal gang. On June 2, authorities transferred the prisoners to take back control of the building from its occupants. The following day, authorities found nearly US$24,000 in hidden cash stashes, 30 mobile phones and animals that were being kept as pets, including raccoons, hawks and crocodiles.
Photo: AFP
ARGENTINA
Building climber arrested
A Polish daredevil was arrested in Buenos Aires on Tuesday as he tried to scale a 30-story building without ropes, only to be removed by firefighters. Marcin Banot, dressed in an Argentina soccer jersey, was intercepted after climbing 25 floors of the Globant building. More than 30 firefighters, ambulances and police cars were rushed to the scene after someone inside the building called an emergency line. He did not resist efforts to remove him. On the ground, Banot was arrested and risks being ordered to pay the costs for the rescue operation, officials said.
UNITED STATES
IS-linked suspects arrested
Eight people from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State (IS) group have been arrested in the past few days, people familiar with the matter said. The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and the individuals, who entered the nation through the border with Mexico, are being held on immigration violations, said the sources, who were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. The individuals entered the country last year and passed through the government’s screening process without turning up information that would have identified them as potential terrorism-related concerns, one of the sources said.
FRANCE
Francoise Hardy dies
Singer Francoise Hardy, whose crystalline voice and melancholy lyrics shot her to international stardom in the 1960s, has died, her son, Thomas Dutronc, said on Tuesday. She was 80. “Mom is gone,” he wrote on Instagram alongside a baby picture of himself with his mother. Hardy became a pop icon and fashion muse of the 1960s and beyond. In 1962 she released her debut single, Tous les garcons et les filles (All the girls and boys), in which the singer-songwriter lamented her loveless status. “All the boys and girls my age walk hand in hand in the streets two by two ... but not me, I walk alone through the streets, my heart aching,” she sang. Her career spanned more than 50 years and almost 30 studio albums.
It is usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train, but on Saturday, the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror. Organizers of the adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the world’s first haunted house experience on a running Shinkansen. On board one chartered car of the Shinkansen, about 40 thrill-seekers were ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka. The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and
IRANIAN THREATS: Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami said that it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to attack Iran and if it did ‘we will strike you again painfully’ Israel yesterday bombed a Syrian coastal city, while the US conducted multiple strikes on targets in Yemen nearly a month into Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza all belong to the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran, which on Oct. 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel. Israel has vowed to retaliate for the strike. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami yesterday said in a speech that Tehran would hit Israel “painfully” if it attacks Iranian targets. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in
NEW RECRUITS: A video released by Ukrainian officials allegedly shows dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect military fatigues from Russian servicemen Russian aerial strikes wounded more than a dozen and knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of Ukrainians overnight in attacks on residential areas as temperatures dropped toward freezing, Kyiv said yesterday. Ukraine also said it had targeted a crucial Russian explosives factory, about 750km from the border, in an overnight drone attack, while Moscow said it had shot down 110 drones, the largest attempted aerial barrage by Kyiv in more than two weeks. At least 17 people were wounded in an attack on Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine, including a first responder, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said. “At night, the enemy attacked Kryvyi
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the