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.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
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