IRAQ
Shopping mall fire kills 61
A fire tore through a shopping mall in the eastern city of Kut overnight, killing at least 60 people, authorities said yesterday, as grief-stricken families searched for missing relatives. Officials have launched an investigation into the blaze, the latest in a country where safety regulations are frequently neglected. At least two people said they lost five relatives who had gone to the newly opened Hyper Mall for shopping and dinner. “The tragic fire claimed the lives of 61 innocent citizens, most of whom suffocated in bathrooms, and among them 14 charred bodies yet to be identified,” the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement.
Photo: AP
MALAYSIA
Police raid ‘gay party’
Authorities arrested more than a dozen men in the northeastern state of Kelantan last month during a late night raid of a “gay party,” a police official said yesterday. Homosexuality is a crime in the Muslim-majority nation, and rights groups have warned of growing intolerance toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Kelantan State Police Chief Mohd Yusoff Mamat said police arrested 20 men after responding to a tip-off and conducting surveillance of a rented property in the state capital, Kota Bharu. “During questioning, they admitted to being part of a gay group,” he told a news conference. Police charged three of the men for possession of homosexual pornographic material on their mobile phones, but authorities could not prosecute the other men as there were no specific laws or physical evidence to charge them with, he added.
UNITED STATES
Earthquake rocks Alaska
A magnitude 7.3 earthquake on Wednesday struck off the coast of Alaska, triggering a tsunami warning that was later withdrawn, the US Geological Survey said. The earthquake took place at 12:37pm, with its epicenter about 87km south of the island town of Sand Point, the agency said. The epicenter had a relatively shallow depth of 20km.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Potter’ stars lose licenses
Two stars of the Harry Potter films, including actress Emma Watson, were each banned from driving for six months on Wednesday after being caught speeding in separate incidents. Watson, 35, who played Hermione Granger, was banned for driving 61kph in a 48kph zone in southeastern Banbury in July last year. Zoe Wanamaker, 76, who played Quidditch teacher Madame Hooch in Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, was banned for six months for driving 74kph in a 64kph in southeastern Berkshire in August last year.
JAPAN
Man seeks go-kart revenge
A man enraged by the noise of go-karting popular with foreign tourists was arrested on Wednesday for trying to set fire to the motor vehicles, police and local media said. The 28-year-old man was arrested on charges of attempted arson, Tokyo police said. He was suspected of setting fire last month to waste on the premises of a Tokyo company that operates go-karting tours, with flames spreading to its parked go-karts, police said. Public broadcaster NHK quoted the suspect as telling investigators that he was “stressed out by the engine noise of the go-karts.” His workplace was reportedly located adjacent to the scene of the fire. The go-karting operator received a letter in May threatening to “set karts aflame if engines are turned on after tomorrow,” NHK reported, adding that police were probing a link to the arson attack.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
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