JAPAN
Scaffold collapse kills two
A 12-story scaffold collapsed on Tuesday, killing two workers and leaving one missing, local media reported. The 40m structure gave way during the dismantling of a crane at a JFE Steel construction site in Kawasaki, public broadcaster NHK reported. Aerial footage showed a large, water-filled hole at the portside complex, with fire engines and rescue crews at the scene and divers conducting searches. Five people fell when the scaffold collapsed, NHK said, citing police and fire officials. Initial reports said that three of them were unconscious in critical condition, while one was conscious and another remained missing, but local media later reported that two of the workers had died. The site is in a part of the Kawasaki waterfront where work was under way to dismantle cranes used for unloading cargo from ships, NHK said.
Photo: Kyodo News via Reuters
AUSTRALIA
Ex-soldier to remain in jail
Military veteran Ben Roberts-Smith did not apply for bail when war crime murder charges against him were listed in a Sydney court yesterday. The charges relate to the deaths of five Afghans who died in 2009 and 2012 while Roberts-Smith served in Afghanistan as an elite Special Air Service Regiment corporal. Police on Tuesday said he had been charged with five counts of war crime murder, but the charges laid in court yesterday were two counts of war crime murder and three counts of aiding or abetting a war crime murder. All charges carry the same potential maximum sentence of life in prison. Roberts-Smith, 47, spent the night in jail after he was arrested at the Sydney Airport on Tuesday morning, and he did not appear in court either in person or by video link yesterday. His lawyers did not enter pleas to the charges or apply for his release on bail. The case was adjourned until June 4.
GREECE
Social media ban approved
The government is to ban access to social media for children younger than 15 from Jan. 1 next year, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said yesterday. “We have decided to go ahead with a difficult, but necessary, measure: ban access to social media for children under 15 years old,” he said in a video posted on TikTok. “Greece is among the first countries in the world to adopt such a measure,” he said, adding that he would put pressure on the EU to follow suit. Mitsotakis said he used social media to make the announcement so he could address teenagers and children directly: “I know that some of you are going to be angry... Our aim is not to keep you away from technology, but to combat addiction to certain applications that harms your innocence and your freedom.” He added that the “science is clear: When a child is in front of screens for hours, their brain does not rest.”
NIGERIA
Armed men kill 20 people
Armed men killed at least 20 people, including security guards, and abducted an unknown number of people after attacking villages in northwestern Niger State, police and residents said late on Tuesday. The attack happened in Shiroro District, where kidnapping gangs and Islamist militants are known to operate. Niger State Police spokesman Wasiu Abiodun said gunmen invaded Bagna and Erena villages on Tuesday and, when security responded, two community guards and a driver were killed, and others were injured. However, residents said that at least 20 people were killed and that the attackers, who also destroyed homes, operated for several hours and overwhelmed security personnel in the area.
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
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
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
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
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