News Headlines - 15 January 2021
▽Ex-Japan farm minister Yoshikawa indicted for bribery without arrest
Former Japanese farm minister Takamori Yoshikawa was indicted without arrest Friday on a charge of receiving bribes from an egg production company while in office, prosecutors said.
Yoshikawa, 70, received a total of 5 million yen ($48,000) from a former representative of Akita Foods Co. on three occasions between November 2018 and August 2019, when he was agriculture, forestry and fisheries minister, although he was aware of the company head's intention to seek favors, according to the indictment.
▽Hopes for Tokyo's Summer Olympic Games Darken Due to Virus - The New York Times
As coronavirus cases rise throughout Japan and in several large countries in Europe and the Americas, officials both in Tokyo and with the International Olympic Committee have begun to acknowledge that holding a safe Games might not be possible, endangering dreams that the Olympics could serve as a global celebration of the end of the pandemic.
Instead, the I.O.C. may be forced to cancel the Olympics for the first time since World War II. That would be a huge financial blow to both the Olympic organization and Japan, which has spent more than $12 billion building stadiums and improving its infrastructure to prepare for the Games, and billions more to delay the event by a year.
▽Armed robbery and piracy incidents up 32% in Asia last year
A 32% rise in actual incidents of piracy and armed robbery last year could resulted from economic hardships caused by Covid-19 in coastal communities, according to ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre (ISC).
The former pastor of a Houston megachurch who advised former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama was sentenced on Wednesday to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to cheating investors in a multimillion-dollar scheme, prosecutors said.
The former pastor, Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, 67, was the leader of the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston and rose to prominence as a friend and adviser to Mr. Bush from his days as Texas governor... He supported Mr. Obama when he ran for president in 2008 and was part of a small circle of Christian pastors who would pray with him, sometimes in person and sometimes over the phone.
Following Mr Trump's permanent ban from Twitter and other social media sites in the wake of the Capitol riots on 6 January, a number of internet memes suggested his cameo in Home Alone 2: Lost In New York should be cut.
Now, Macaulay Culkin, who played enterprising, burglar-thwarting youngster Kevin in the films, has backed calls for his removal.
