TRANSNISTRIA
Heating, hot water cut
The breakaway Moldovan region yesterday cut heating and hot water supplies to households, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, after Russia stopped supplying gas via Ukraine. Transnistria is a pro-Russian entity that split from the rest of Moldova after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It was receiving Russian gas via Ukraine, but that supply route was halted with the expiry of a transit deal between the two warring countries. RIA quoted local energy company Tirasteploenergo as saying the heating cuts took effect at 7am, but some facilities such as hospitals were exempt.
Photo: AP
UNITED STATES
Works enter public domain
Thousands of artistic works yesterday entered the public domain as copyright law expires after 95 years for books, films and other works of art, while sound recordings from 1924 also became copyright-free. By entering the public domain, the pieces can be copied, shared, reproduced or adapted by anyone without paying the rights owner. This year’s crop includes internationally recognized figures such as the comic character Tintin, who made his debut in a Belgian newspaper in 1929, and Popeye the Sailor, created by cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar. Every December, the Center for the Study of the Public Domain publishes a list of the cultural works that lose their copyright in the new year. Among the literary works that entered the public domain were the novels The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, while films include Blackmail, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and The Black Watch, the first sound film by Oscar-winning director John Ford.
UNITED STATES
Pearl Harbor medic dies
Harry Chandler, a navy medic who helped pull injured sailors from the oily waters of Pearl Harbor after the 1941 Japanese attack on the naval base, has died. He was 103. Chandler died on Monday at a senior living center in Tequesta, Florida, said Ron Mahaffee, the husband of his granddaughter Kelli Fahey. Chandler had congestive heart failure, but Mahaffee said doctors and nurses noted his advanced age when giving a cause of death. The third Pearl Harbor survivor to die in the past few weeks, Chandler was a hospital corpsman 3rd class on Dec. 7, 1941, when waves of Japanese fighter planes dropped bombs and fired machine guns on battleships in the harbor. He told reporters in 2023 that he saw the planes approach as he was raising the flag that morning at a mobile hospital in Aiea Heights, which is in the hills overlooking the base. “I thought they were planes coming in from the States until I saw the bombs dropping,” Chandler said. His unit rode trucks down to attend injured people. He said in a Pacific Historic Parks oral history interview that he boarded a boat to help pluck wounded sailors from the water. An avid golfer, he shot five hole-in-ones during his lifetime, his grandson-in-law said. Chandler had one biological daughter and adopted two daughters from his second marriage, to Anna Chandler, who died in 2004. He is survived by two daughters, nine grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren. Military historian J. Michael Wenger has estimated that there were about 87,000 military personnel on the island of Oahu the day of the attack. With Chandler’s death only 15 are still living, according to a tally maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
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