JAPAN
Kobayashi factory searched
Health officials yesterday raided a factory producing health supplements that they say have killed at least five people and hospitalized more than 100 others. About a dozen people wearing dark suits solemnly walked into the Osaka plant of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co in the raid shown widely on Japanese TV news. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the City of Osaka jointly inspected the factory in Osaka that had made the supplements containing beni-koji, or red fermented rice, suspected of having caused health damage, a ministry official said. The ministry could search other locations, they added. The factory, which made the product until December, had been closed due to aging facilities, Japanese media said.
MALAYSIA
‘Allah’ socks spark attack
A Molotov cocktail was yesterday thrown into a convenience store in Kuantan district in the eastern state of Pahang just before dawn, police said, after the chain’s top executives were charged with hurting religious feelings for selling socks with the word “Allah” printed on them. Photographs of the socks on sale at a KK Supermart store sparked outrage on social media among Muslims who viewed the association of Allah with feet as offensive. KK Supermart founder and chairman Chai Kee Kan and his wife Loh Siew Mui, a company director, were on Tuesday charged with wounding religious feelings, along with three representatives of its supplier, state news agency Bernama reported. All pleaded not guilty. Police have not yet identified a suspect in yesterday’s attack.
UNITED STATES
China chip rules revised
Washington on Friday revised rules aimed at making it harder for China to access US artificial intelligence (AI) chips and chipmaking tools, part of an effort to hobble Beijing’s chipmaking industry over national security concerns. The rules, released in October last year, seek to halt shipments to China of more advanced AI chips designed by Nvidia and others as Washington cracks down on Beijing over concerns its advancing tech sector could help boost China’s military. The new rules, which are 166 pages long, go into effect on Thursday. They clarify, for example, that restrictions on chip shipments to China also apply to laptops containing those chips. The Department of Commerce, which oversees export controls, has said it plans to continue updating its restrictions on technology shipments to China as it seeks to bolster and fine-tune the measures.
UNITED STATES
Louis Gossett Jr dies
Louis Gossett Jr, the first black man to win a best supporting actor Oscar for his performance as a hard-man drill instructor in An Officer and a Gentleman, has died. He was 87. Gossett’s family said he died on Thursday night in Los Angeles without stating the cause, multiple US media outlets including CBS News reported. An Officer and a Gentleman also netted the actor a Golden Globe, and he later picked up another supporting actor Globe for The Josephine Baker Story, as well as an Emmy for the eight-part smash-hit miniseries Roots. Gossett chronicled his experiences as a trailblazing black actor in his memoir, An Actor and a Gentleman, including his first trip to Los Angeles in the 1960s when he was pulled over by police four times during a single car journey. “The only time I was really free was when the director said ‘action’ in front of a camera or on the stage and that’s when I flew,” he told the LA Times in 2008.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home