While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Jan 3
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An Israeli drone struck a Hamas office in Beirut on the night of Jan 2, leaving a total of six people dead, Lebanon’s state news agency reported.
PHOTO: AFP
Israeli drone kills senior Hamas official in Beirut, say sources
Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed on the night of Jan 2 in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, a stronghold of allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, three security sources told Reuters.
In response to questions from Reuters, the Israeli military said it does not respond to reports in the foreign media.
Mr Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC that Israel had not taken responsibility for this attack, but “whoever did it, it must be clear: That this was not attack an attack on the Lebanese state.”
“Whoever did this, did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” Mr Regev told MSNBC, in an interview.
‘It was a miracle’: How passengers escaped a JAL fireball in Tokyo
AFP
The flight between the northern city of Sapporo and Tokyo’s Haneda airport is Japan’s busiest air route, and one of the most frequent services anywhere in the world. Japan Airlines (JAL) operates 16 round-trip flights a day.
But when JAL516 followed that route to Haneda on Jan 2, what unfolded was a runway collision that is baffling aviation experts and a smooth evacuation and rescue that some described as miraculous.
All 379 passengers and crew escaped the Airbus A350 aircraft which erupted into a fireball after colliding with a smaller Coast Guard plane shortly after landing. Five of the six Coast Guard plane crew were killed.
‘No protection’: Kyiv residents lose homes to Russian missiles
Ms Mariya Kadurina wrapped a quilt around her four-year-old son as he sat in front of their still-smoking block of flats in Kyiv after a Russian missile attack on Jan 2.
Kyiv’s residents were woken on Jan 2 by sirens and explosions as Russia fired a deadly barrage of missiles at Ukrainian cities, leading Ukraine’s defence minister to accuse Moscow of “deliberately” targeting residential areas.
“We live – we used to live – here,” the 29-year-old said, her eyes looking wild and her lips bleeding. “That’s it. We don’t have anything.” Ms Kadurina is a taxi driver, and her car was also destroyed in the attack.
Harvard president resigns over plagiarism, anti-Semitism
NYT
The president of Harvard University resigned on Jan 2, after coming under ferocious attack over plagiarism accusations and her response to anti-Semitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Professor Claudine Gay was criticised in recent months after reports surfaced alleging that she did not properly cite scholarly sources. The most recent accusations came on Jan 2, published anonymously in a conservative online outlet.
Prof Gay was also engulfed by scandal after she declined to say unequivocally whether calling for genocide of Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct, during testimony to Congress alongside the heads of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania last month.
Mickey Mouse horror films, as Disney copyright expires
Oh boy! Barely 24 hours after Disney’s initial copyright on Mickey Mouse expired, two new indie horror films starring the beloved character have been announced.
Steamboat Willie, the first Disney movie to feature Mickey, entered the public domain under US law on Jan 1, 95 years on from its initial release.
That means anyone is now free to copy, share, reuse and adapt the primitive, early versions of the characters that appear within the film, including Mickey and his girlfriend Minnie.
