JAPAN
Nuclear site sought
Tokyo is investigating the use of a remote, deserted Pacific island as a site for burying nuclear waste, officials said on Tuesday as the nation pivots back toward “maximum use of nuclear power” in a safe manner 15 years after the Fukushima Da-ichi disaster. The government wants to conduct a preliminary survey on Minamitorishima, the nation’s easternmost island in the Pacific, to see if it is fit to host a facility. State-owned Minamitorishima, uninhabited by civilians and off-limits to tourists, has “some unexplored landmass capable of hosting a facility,” Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Ryosei Akazawa told reporters. The triangle-shaped island surrounded by coral atoll also has some “scientifically favorable traits,” Akazawa said. A request was later submitted to a Tokyo municipality that administers the island to inspect its land conditions and volcanic activity through geological documents — the first stage of a three-part survey to select the ultimate disposal site.
Photo: Reuters
UNITED STATES
Yakuza member sentenced
A member of Japan’s yakuza crime group was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a New York court on Tuesday after being convicted of trafficking nuclear material, as well as drugs and weapons. Takeshi Ebisawa, 61, has been jailed since April 2022 on the drug and weapons charges, along with his Thai codefendant, Somphop Singhasiri, following years of investigations by the Drug Enforcement Administration. In February 2024, he was also accused of trying to sell military-grade nuclear material, along with narcotics including heroin and methamphetamine, to buy weapons, including surface-to-air missiles for armed groups in Myanmar. He pleaded guilty to six charges in January last year.
UNITED STATES
Attack suspects sought
Police on Tuesday were searching for two suspects believed to have been involved in an attack near Manhattan’s Penn Station when a 37-year-old man was set on fire as he slept. New York City Police said three men approached the sleeping man at about 8:40pm on Monday and lit his clothing on fire before fleeing into the Amtrak train station. Emergency personnel extinguished the flames and took the man to hospital in a stable condition, police said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Mosiuoa Lekota dies
Anti-apartheid activist Mosiuoa Lekota, who broke away from the African National Congress (ANC) to found a new political party, died in the early hours of yesterday, his party said in a statement. He was 77. Lekota died after a period of illness and had stepped back from active politics. He was a close ally of former president Thabo Mbeki and served as minister of defense from 1999 to 2008. Lekota, nicknamed “Terror” for his fearsome skills on the soccer pitch as a young man, quit in protest at Mbeki’s ousting and was voted off the ANC’s National Executive Committee after repeated criticism of Mbeki’s successor, former president Jacob Zuma. He cofounded the Congress of the People (COPE) party in 2008. COPE won about 7 percent of the vote in the first national election it contested, in 2009, but its vote share has been below 1 percent at every national election since then. Lekota worked as a student activist during the 1970s. He served jail time on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela before he became president.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
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