Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that the Holocaust was a myth, sparking fresh wave of international condemnation.
"They have fabricated a legend under the name `Massacre of the Jews,' and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves," he told a crowd in the southeastern city of Zahedan yesterday in a speech broadcast live on state television.
European countries and the US called yesterday's remarks unacceptable and said they could undermine plans for talks with Tehran on its controversial nuclear program.
Israel said the comments showed Iran's "rogue regime" was acting outside acceptable international norms.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the Holocaust remarks could weigh on EU efforts to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
"The recent remarks by the Iranian president ... are certainly shocking and unacceptable," he told reporters. "I cannot deny that they may weigh on our bilateral relations and naturally also on the chances for the negotiations on [Iran's] so-called nuclear dossier."
The White House said it was "outrageous" that Ahmadinejad had once again asserted that the Holocaust was a myth.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the comments underscored the importance of the international community working together to "keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons."
"All responsible leaders in the international community recognize how outrageous such comments are," he told reporters.
Iran's hardline press largely rallied round the president's first Holocaust remarks but the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran's leading reformist party, printed a critical statement in the liberal Sharq daily yesterday.
"Provocation ... and starting this sort of talk, which benefits neither Iranians nor oppressed Palestinians, will only increase consensus on supporting the [Israeli] regime and will unify the approach against Iran," it said.
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
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