IRAN
Japanese freed on bail
A Japanese national who had been detained in Iran since Jan. 20 has been released on bail, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told reporters in Tokyo said yesterday. Japanese Ambassador to Iran Tamaki Tsukada met the person, who was released on Monday, and confirmed that he was in good health without providing further details, Kihara said. The person is believed to be a journalist at NHK public television. Another Japanese, who was detained in Iran in June last year, was freed and returned to Japan last month.
Photo: AFP
AUSTRALIA
Nanny to be extradited
A former nanny yesterday lost a final court fight to avoid extradition to Chile on allegations of kidnapping in the 1970s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Adriana Elcira Rivas Gonzalez, in her early 70s, was arrested in Sydney in February 2019, following an extradition request from Chile. She had been working part-time as a nanny and cleaner in the city’s Bondi suburb. Chile has accused Rivas of seven counts of “aggravated kidnapping” of figures who disappeared in the 1970s when she was an alleged member of Pinochet’s feared secret police.
PHILIPPINES
Filipina killed in airstrike
The Middle East war has claimed its second Philippine victim, when a missile struck the home of a Filipina living in Israel, the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The woman was killed in the city of Haifa on Sunday “alongside her Israeli husband and elderly parents-in-law,” it said, without naming the victims. Israeli rescue services on Monday said that the bodies of four people had been recovered from the rubble of a residential building after it was struck by an Iranian missile the previous day. Israeli news outlets identified the Filipina victim’s given name as Lucille-Jean. “The Philippine Embassy in Tel Aviv has informed the family and is providing all necessary assistance, including arrangements for the earliest possible repatriation of her remains,” the department said.
FRANCE
TGV driver killed in collision
The driver of a high-speed TGV train was killed and 27 people injured yesterday when the train collided with a truck, officials said. The accident occurred at a level crossing between the towns of Bethune and Lens in the northern region of Pas-de-Calais at about 7am, the rail operator SNCF said. “I am heading to the scene with the chief executive of the SNCF, Jean Castex,” Minister of Transport Philippe Tabarot said on X. Neither the SNCF nor the prefecture were able to provide details of the circumstances of the accident. Rail services were to be suspended between Bethune and Lens until at least late yesterday, the SNCF said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Doctors begin six-day strike
Resident doctors in England yesterday started a six-day walkout after rejecting an offer the government said would not get better, with the British Medical Association (BMA) saying it fell short of reversing years of pay erosion and staffing pressures. The strike action during the Easter holiday period is due to run until the morning of Monday next week after a 48-hour ultimatum from Prime Minister Keir Starmer passed without agreement. The government has withdrawn a pledge to fund 1,000 additional specialty training posts that it said had been contingent on the deal being accepted. The BMA represents about 55,000 of the so-called resident doctors who make up nearly half of the medical workforce.
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
Young Chinese, many who fear age discrimination in their workplace after turning 35, are increasingly starting “one-person companies” that have artificial intelligence (AI) do most of the work. Smaller start-ups are already in vogue in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, with rapidly advancing AI tools seen as a welcome teammate even as they threaten layoffs at existing firms. More young people in China are subscribing to the model, as cities pledge millions of dollars in funding and rent subsidies for such ventures, in alignment with Beijing’s political goal of “technological self-reliance.” “The one-person company is a product of the AI era,” said Karen Dai
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
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