While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Jan 4
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State television said that at least 103 people had been killed and 211 others injured in twin blasts in Iran.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Blasts kill nearly 100 at slain commander Soleimani’s memorial
Two explosions killed nearly 100 people and wounded scores at a ceremony in Iran on Jan 3 to commemorate commander Qassem Soleimani who was killed by a US drone in 2020, Iranian officials said, blaming unspecified “terrorists”.
Iranian state television reported a first and then a second blast after 20 minutes during a crowded fourth-anniversary event at the cemetery where Soleimani is buried in the southeastern city of Kerman.
No one claimed responsibility for the blasts.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the “heinous and inhumane crime”, and Iran’s top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed revenge for the bloody twin bombings.
Three injured in stabbing incident on Tokyo train
PHOTO: @KAZUNABLE_ECN13/X
Three men were injured on Jan 3 in a stabbing incident and taken to hospital, after a woman wielded a knife on a train at Akihabara Station in Tokyo, Japanese police said.
The police received an emergency call at just before 11pm local time (10pm Singapore time) saying the woman had inflicted injuries with a knife on the Yamanote loop line, one of the busiest transport routes in the city, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson said.
The woman was taken into custody and the condition of the three injured men was unknown, the spokesperson said.
Mossad chief vows to ‘settle score’ with Hamas
EPA-EFE
Israel’s spy chief David Barnea on Jan 3 vowed to make Hamas pay for its attacks on Israel, after a drone strike attributed to Israel killed the group’s deputy chief, Saleh al-Arouri, in Lebanon.
The Mossad spy agency “is committed to settling the score with the murderers who descended upon the Gaza envelope on Oct 7” and with Hamas’ leadership, Mr Barnea said.
“It will take time, just like after the Munich massacre, but we will lay our hands on them wherever they will be.”
US interest rates likely to stay high ‘for some time’
AFP
US Federal Reserve officials expect interest rates will need to remain high “for some time” to tackle stubborn inflation, according to minutes of the most recent rate decision published on Jan 3.
The Fed announced in December that it would continue to hold interest rates at a 22-year high, and pencilled in up to three rate cuts in 2024, sending US stock markets surging to new records.
Since then, Fed officials have looked to dampen the buoyant market expectations that cuts were imminent, stressing that inflation remains stuck above the central bank’s long-run target of 2 per cent.
Boy, 13, is believed to be the first to ‘beat’ Tetris
On Dec 21, Willis Gibson, 13, put his hands to his head and rocked back and forth in an office chair in his bedroom in Stillwater, Oklahoma, unable to believe what he had just accomplished.
His screen had frozen, and his Tetris score read “999999.”
Willis had just become the first person to advance so far in the original Nintendo version of the puzzle game Tetris that the game froze, achieving a feat previously credited only to artificial intelligence.
