■JAPAN
Mass killer admits guilt
A man on trial for killing seven people in a stabbing frenzy in Tokyo’s neon-lit electronics district in 2008 pleaded guilty yesterday to the attacks, the country’s bloodiest crime in many years. “It is true that I am the culprit,” auto worker Tomohiro Kato, 27, said as his trial opened at the Tokyo District Court, Jiji Press reported. “Please let me use this occasion to apologize,” he said about the bloody rampage that also left 10 people wounded in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, the hub of Japan’s comic-book and video-game subculture. Kato is charged with multiple cases of murder and attempted murder and, if convicted, could face the death penalty for the attacks on June 8, 2008, which were the country’s worst mass-killing in seven years. Defense lawyers were expected to argue he is not mentally fit for trial. Kato was arrested on the spot shortly after the attacks, in which he rammed a rented two-tonne truck into a crowd of pedestrians before getting out and randomly stabbing people with a knife.
■AUSTRALIA
Scientists to track whales
Scientists from Australia and New Zealand are to set out on a whale research expedition to the Antarctic on Monday in an effort to disprove Japan’s argument that whales must be killed to be studied. The results of the six-week expedition are central to the whaling debate because Japan is allowed to kill whales provided it’s for research. Still, no matter what the outcome, both sides acknowledge it will likely do little to change Japan’s support for whaling. Japan is permitted to hunt whales in Antarctica under what it says is a scientific program allowed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), despite a 1986 ban on commercial whaling. Japan sends a whaling fleet to the Antarctic each year to hunt hundreds of mostly minke whales, which are not an endangered species. Whale meat not used for study is sold for consumption in Japan, which critics say is the real reason for the hunts.
■THAILAND
UN has no access to Hmong
The UN refugee agency said yesterday it still has had no access to thousands of ethnic Hmong expelled into to Laos last month, but was looking for “constructive dialogue” with Lao officials on the matter. Bangkok sparked outrage late last month when it defied global criticism and used troops to forcibly repatriate about 4,500 Hmong from camps on the border with communist Laos. Bangkok broke international law by sending back 158 of the Hmong recognized by the UN as refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said. “So far we have not had any access, but we are looking for a constructive dialogue with the Lao government,” UNHCR regional spokeswoman Kitty McKinsey said by telephone.
■CHINA
Foxconn offers reward
A manufacturer that produces iPhones and Nokia and Motorola handsets is offering a reward of half 500,000 yuan (US$73,000) to anyone who can prove foul play in the sudden death of a teenage worker. FoxConn, a division of the Taiwan electronics company Hon Hai, announced the reward of 500,000 yuan as it seeks information in the case of Ma Xiangqian, who was found dead near the stairway of the dormitory of one of its factories in Shenzhen last Saturday. Early stages of the investigation suggested he died of natural causes, but Ma’s relatives say they found scars on his body and that the 19-year-old had no previous health problems, the state newspaper China Daily reported.
■POLAND
Dog saved after icy journey
A dog had a lucky escape when a Polish boat rescued him from an ice floe that had carried him more than 100km up a river and out onto the icy waters of the Baltic Sea. “My crew saw ... a shape moving on the water and we immediately decided to get closer,” Jan Joachim, senior officer aboard the Baltica, told Reuters Television. “We saw that it was a dog struggling not to fall into the water.” Ship engineer Adam Buczynski scooped the dog off the floe and wrapped him in a blanket. “He didn’t even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes,” Buczynski said. The dog was first seen on the ice floe some 100km inland on the Vistula river, but firemen were unable to rescue him.
■NORWAY
Greenpeace fights for Arctic
Greenpeace called on Tuesday for a moratorium on industrial activity in the Arctic, a region said to be rich in natural resources but particularly fragile. “In the shorter term there might be economic development and jobs, but they do not come with a guarantee that the ecosystem won’t be destroyed and in turn, negatively affect communities,” Greenpeace’s Nordic Executive Director Mads Flarup Christensen said at a seminar in the Arctic town of Tromsoe. Greenpeace called for a moratorium applying to the exploitation of fossil fuels and minerals, commercial fishing and maritime transport, but not to traditional fishing, whaling or the seal hunt, practiced by the region’s indigenous peoples.
■BELGIUM
Building collapses after fire
A five-story apartment building in Liege caught fire and collapsed on Wednesday after an apparent gas explosion, injuring at least 21 people, including a teen who was pulled from the rubble, officials said. The blast occurred at about 2am and as darkness fell on Wednesday night, firefighters were still digging through the rubble looking for other survivors. Two separate voices had been heard from within the wreckage, officials said. Smoke and small fires were making the search difficult, especially for the sniffer dogs being used. Bricks and twisted metal remained piled piled meters high.
“It is likely there was a gas explosion,” Liege Mayor Willy Demeyer said. “It was such a noise that we thought the explosion happened inside City Hall, even though the actual explosion was more than 100m away,” Demeyer said.
■LEBANON
Plane’s black boxes located
A search team on Wednesday found the black boxes from an Ethiopian aircraft that crashed off the coast with 90 people on board, all presumed dead, a military spokesman said. “The boxes were found approximately 10km west of the airport, 1,300m below the surface of the sea,” the spokesman said on condition of anonymity. “We have not yet reached them, however. We will now evaluate how to access them,” he said. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, bound for Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after takeoff from Beirut at 2:37am during a raging thunderstorm on Monday. All passengers and crew of the Boeing 737-800 are feared dead, but only 14 bodies and some body parts have been recovered so far. An international search operation since Monday had combed a 35km² area around the crash site just south of Beirut. Officials have cautioned against blaming the pilot without sufficient evidence and pinned their hopes on the black boxes to answer the question of what had happened on flight ET 409.
■UNITED STATES
Laser shot breaks barrier
US scientists have produced a laser shot with an unprecedented energy level that could be a key step toward nuclear fusion, the US National Nuclear Security Administration said on Wednesday. The researchers for the first time delivered a megajoule of energy to a target by focusing 192 laser beams at the same time at a temperature of 111 million degrees Celsius, it said in a statement. “Breaking the megajoule barrier brings us one step closer to fusion ignition,” the body’s administrator, Thomas D’Agostino, said in a statement. Nuclear fusion is the form of energy that powers the sun and stars and would provide a potentially clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves, but producing it in a controlled fashion has so far eluded scientists.
■CANADA
Facebook under probe
The privacy commissioner is starting another investigation into Facebook Inc, the social networking site, after concluding a probe last year. The new investigation focuses on a tool introduced by Facebook last month that required users to review their privacy settings. Facebook said at the time it would prevent third-party makers of applications such as games and quizzes from accessing personal information unless users provide explicit consent and that users would receive clearer information about how to cancel accounts. But Elizabeth Denham, the assistant privacy commissioner who led the original investigation, said some users felt the changes had made personal information more exposed than before.
■BRAZIL
President falls ill
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was briefly hospitalized for high blood pressure and canceled his trip to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, his office said yesterday. TV images showed the 64-year-old Lula, visibly tired and dressed in a white track suit, saying goodbye to doctors as he left hospital in the northeastern city of Recife. His high blood pressure was caused by stress, frequent trips and lack of sleep, his doctor Cleber Ferreira said. Lula’s public schedule has been canceled through Sunday.
■HONDURAS
Zelaya vows to return
Ousted president Manuel Zelaya and his family left Honduras on Wednesday for the Dominican Republic after more than four months holed up in Brazil’s embassy, reporters said. The jet took off at 2135 GMT from the Tontontin airport amid hopes that the swearing-in of newly elected President Porfirio Lobo earlier in the day could end the turmoil triggered by Zelaya’s June overthrow. “We’ll be back, we’ll be back,” Zelaya told reporters moments before boarding the plane at the airport where some 10,000 of his followers had gathered to see him off.
■UNITED STATES
Ex-jailer accused of bribery
A former sheriff’s deputy at the Nevada jail where Girls Gone Wild video mogul Joe Francis was held a year ago is on trial, accused of accepting nearly US$10,000 in gifts as bribes. Another deputy testified at the trial in federal court in Reno on Tuesday that ex-jailer Sergeant Michon Mills treated Francis better than other inmates while Francis was imprisoned on tax charges. Prosecutors said Mills accepted a US$4,500 Cartier watch and a US$5,000 Saks Fifth Avenue gift card from a Francis associate who pleaded guilty to a related charge. Mills said she never got a gift card. Her lawyer said she gave the watch back when she learned its value.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
BORDER SERVICES: With the US-funded International Rescue Committee telling clinics to shut by tomorrow, Burmese refugees face sudden discharge from Thai hospitals Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said. The IRC did not respond to a request for comment. Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy. The freeze has thrown
PINEAPPLE DEBATE: While the owners of the pizzeria dislike pineapple on pizza, a survey last year showed that over 50% of Britons either love or like the topping A trendy pizzeria in the English city of Norwich has declared war on pineapples, charging an eye-watering ￡100 (US$124) for a Hawaiian in a bid to put customers off the disputed topping. Lupa Pizza recently added pizza topped with ham and pineapple to its account on a food delivery app, writing in the description: “Yeah, for ￡100 you can have it. Order the champagne too! Go on, you monster!” “[We] vehemently dislike pineapple on pizza,” Lupa co-owner Francis Wolf said. “We feel like it doesn’t suit pizza at all,” he said. The other co-owner, head chef Quin Jianoran, said they kept tinned pineapple
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