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.
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
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