World news in brief
Taliban publicly flogs nine men at football stadium
Nine men were publicly flogged in front of hundreds of people at a stadium in Afghanistan for crimes under the country’s new rulers, a Taliban official said. The lashings took place at a sports stadium in Kandahar and each man was struck between 35 and 39 times in front of officials, religious clerics, elders and local people.
Haji Zaid, spokesperson for the governor’s office in the southern Kandahar province, wrote on Twitter: “In Kandahar, nine
criminals were given penal sentences. The sentences were 35 for some of them, and some were given 39.” According to the hardline Islamist group, the maximum number of lashes a person can receive is 39.
The Taliban official did not specify the crimes that the nine men were accused of. The punishments have been publicly staged since November in parts of Afghanistan despite condemnation from the international community.
Last month, the Taliban executed an Afghan convicted of killing another man, the first public execution since the insurgents returned to power. The execution was carried out with an assault rifle by the victim’s father in western Farah province as hundreds of spectators and many top Taliban officials watched.
World’s oldest person dies in her sleep
The world’s oldest person has passed away aged 118. Lucile Randon, who took the name of Sister Andre when she joined a Catholic charitable order in 1944, was born on 11 February 1904.
She assumed the title of oldest person alive last April at the age of 118 and 73 days, not long after claiming the record for the oldest survivor of Covid-19. Sister Andre’s nursing home in Toulon, France shared news of her death on Monday. She died in her sleep, spokesperson David Tavella said.
“There is great sadness but … it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it’s a liberation,” Mr Tavella, of the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure home, told AFP. Guinness World Records said Sister Andre had lived through the invention of plastic, television, microwave ovens, the internet and smart phones.
Two arrested over deaths of frozen Indian family
Police in India have arrested two suspected people-smugglers over the deaths of an Indian family of four whose frozen bodies were found near the US-Canada border last January. The four
were attempting to cross from Manitoba, Canada into the United States but were found lying together in a field just 12m away from the Minnesota border.
Police in the western Indian state of Gujarat said on Tuesday that besides the “illegal immigration agents” they have arrested, they are also looking for two other agents based in the US and Canada.
The family of four were part of a larger group of people attempting to cross into the United States. While this family of four from Gujarat – identified as Jagdish Patel, 39, Vaishaliben, 37, their daughter, Vihangi, 11 and son, Dharmik, 3 – froze to death, others were detained by the US authorities after they crossed the border.
“The city crime branch has registered an offence in a case wherein the accused (agents) had forced 11 people to walk in the snow in a bid to get them illegally cross the US-Canada border, causing the death of four members of a family,” Chaitanya Mandlik, a senior police official in Gujarat’s capital city of Ahmedabad told reporters.
Fans attempt to save Tokyo stadium
Thousands of fans have signed a petition in an effort to save a stadium in Tokyo where baseball legend Babe Ruth once played. Nearly a century-old Meiji Jingu stadium is also touted to be the place that inspired best-selling author Haruki Murakami to first pick up a pen.
The stadium, often compared to legendary US baseball venues Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, is slated to be torn down and rebuilt in a massive redevelopment project undertaken by the city administration that would surround it and an equally famed rugby ground with towering skyscrapers and hotels.
“The citizens of Tokyo are going to regret it,” said Robert Whiting, who has written books on Japanese baseball and started an online petition to save the stadium. “They’re going to lose a really beautiful, quiet, relaxing spot and a great place to watch a
baseball game,” he told Reuters. The petition addressed to city governor Yuriko Koike and several others, had garnered more than 11,500 signatures by yesterday afternoon. “There are so many things that will be lost and could go wrong if this goes forward,” he said.
Developers Mitsui Fudosan Co Ltd said they were aware of the opposition to the razing of the stadium and are taking steps to reflect it.
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