TRANSNISTRIA
Heating, hot water cut
The breakaway Moldovan region yesterday cut heating and hot water supplies to households, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, after Russia stopped supplying gas via Ukraine. Transnistria is a pro-Russian entity that split from the rest of Moldova after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It was receiving Russian gas via Ukraine, but that supply route was halted with the expiry of a transit deal between the two warring countries. RIA quoted local energy company Tirasteploenergo as saying the heating cuts took effect at 7am, but some facilities such as hospitals were exempt.
Photo: AP
UNITED STATES
Works enter public domain
Thousands of artistic works yesterday entered the public domain as copyright law expires after 95 years for books, films and other works of art, while sound recordings from 1924 also became copyright-free. By entering the public domain, the pieces can be copied, shared, reproduced or adapted by anyone without paying the rights owner. This year’s crop includes internationally recognized figures such as the comic character Tintin, who made his debut in a Belgian newspaper in 1929, and Popeye the Sailor, created by cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar. Every December, the Center for the Study of the Public Domain publishes a list of the cultural works that lose their copyright in the new year. Among the literary works that entered the public domain were the novels The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, while films include Blackmail, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and The Black Watch, the first sound film by Oscar-winning director John Ford.
UNITED STATES
Pearl Harbor medic dies
Harry Chandler, a navy medic who helped pull injured sailors from the oily waters of Pearl Harbor after the 1941 Japanese attack on the naval base, has died. He was 103. Chandler died on Monday at a senior living center in Tequesta, Florida, said Ron Mahaffee, the husband of his granddaughter Kelli Fahey. Chandler had congestive heart failure, but Mahaffee said doctors and nurses noted his advanced age when giving a cause of death. The third Pearl Harbor survivor to die in the past few weeks, Chandler was a hospital corpsman 3rd class on Dec. 7, 1941, when waves of Japanese fighter planes dropped bombs and fired machine guns on battleships in the harbor. He told reporters in 2023 that he saw the planes approach as he was raising the flag that morning at a mobile hospital in Aiea Heights, which is in the hills overlooking the base. “I thought they were planes coming in from the States until I saw the bombs dropping,” Chandler said. His unit rode trucks down to attend injured people. He said in a Pacific Historic Parks oral history interview that he boarded a boat to help pluck wounded sailors from the water. An avid golfer, he shot five hole-in-ones during his lifetime, his grandson-in-law said. Chandler had one biological daughter and adopted two daughters from his second marriage, to Anna Chandler, who died in 2004. He is survived by two daughters, nine grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren. Military historian J. Michael Wenger has estimated that there were about 87,000 military personnel on the island of Oahu the day of the attack. With Chandler’s death only 15 are still living, according to a tally maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS