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University student rescued from Mount Fuji twice in one week

The 27-year-old student from China living in Japan was found near the 8th station on the Fujinomiya trail, more than 3,000 meters above sea level on the mountain’s Shizuoka Prefecture side.

He was there to recover his items including a mobile phone, which he misplaced after being rescued from the summit by helicopter on Tuesday.

Bus driver who pocketed 1,000 yen [USD 6.93] in fares denied 12 million yen in retirement money

…a bus driver for Kyoto City received a banknote from a passenger for 1,000 yen, and instead of placing it in the fare collection box where it belonged, he slipped it into the pocket of his uniform. Unfortunately for him, the city’s transportation department happened to be doing a routine dashcam check and spotted him in the act of embezzling the fare.

As a result, he was dismissed and also had his taishokukin (retirement bonus) withheld. This is the money that accrues throughout one’s career with an organization and is paid out in a lump sum when they end employment either by retirement, resignation, or even dismissal unless the employee deems the reason too egregious to pay. In the case of the now 58-year-old former driver, that allowance grew to about 12 million yen.

Philippine Statistics Authority study: 19M senior high school grads ‘functional illiterate’

“That means that one out of five of our [high school] graduates cannot comprehend and understand a simple story, and that’s something that we need to address.”

“No one should graduate from our basic education system who is not functional literate,” the senator stressed.

Bali will come to a standstill on this day

Bali will come to a standstill for 24 hours on Saturday, March 29.

Everyone must stay at home and tourists are also required to stay in their accomodation.

Hotel hosts will advise guests what activities are and are not permissible. Some hotels provide a silent buffet for guests and allow limited access to resort facilities, while others require guests to stay in their rooms and deliver food to them, according to The Bali Sun.

The spiritual and cultural celebration is a time for reflection, meditation and self-purification.

The religious and cultural holiday is rooted in Balinese Hinduism where about 87 per cent of Bali identifies as Hindu.

Tourists have also been warned air travel will be halted with the main airport — I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport — closed for the full 24-hour period.

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German journalist sentenced to seven months of probation for a Twitter meme poking fun at the Interior Minister’s lack of commitment to free speech

It shows German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser holding a sign that has been manipulated to read “I hate freedom of speech!”1 Bendels posted the image to satirise Faeser’s disturbing plans to restrict the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents in Germany, which she had announced at a press conference a few weeks earlier.

Faeser personally filed criminal charges against Bendels for defamation after Bamberg police brought the meme to her attention. Last November, the Bamberg District Court summarily ordered Bendels to pay an enormous fine for this speech crime “against a person in political life.” This is yet another prosecution that proceeds from our lèse-majesté statute, or section 188 of the German Criminal Code, which provides stiffened penalties for those who slander or insult politicians, because politicians are special people and more important than the rest of us.

Outrage after German intelligence chief says Ukraine war should keep going for another 5 years

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‘Nowhere on Earth is safe’: Trump imposes tariffs on uninhabited islands near Antarctica

A group of barren, uninhabited volcanic islands near Antarctica, covered in glaciers and home to penguins, has been swept up in Donald Trump’s trade war, as the US president hit them with a 10% tariff on goods.

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How a CIA informant stopped Taiwan from developing nuclear weapons

Chang exposed Taiwan’s secret nuclear program to the United States, its closest ally, passing intelligence that ultimately led the US to pressure Taiwan into shutting down the program – which proliferation experts say was near completion.

While critics say he betrayed his homeland and undermined Taipei’s ability to deter a possible Chinese invasion, Chang told CNN in a rare interview he still believes he made the right call.

India’s ‘anti-corruption champion’ loses Delhi election as $6m reno of official residence surfaces

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Taxpayer-funded Opioid Research in Australia is Rife with Conflicts of Interest and Corruption

…we are now starting to see patients: (i) with pain who should (and previously would) legitimately receive opioid medications who are not – unresolved pain has escalated in Australia and some sufferers are resorting to suicide and unsafe illicit drugs to fill the gap that clean, regulated, pharmaceutical opioids would have filled1; and (ii) patients with pain who would have taken low-dose, less harmful and less-addictive analgesic medicines like over-the-counter codeine preparations are now forced to go to their GP who, it seems on the PBS data alone, is more likely to provide a prescription for a much stronger opioid that the data suggests is going to be a more expensive and in-patent one like the one made by the pharmaceutical company that funded these academics and that I mention in the paragraph above2. There is also suggestion that some with unresolved pain are resorting to illicit street opioids for relief. Both aspects of this second part have potential to increase the number of people addicted to strong opioids, which is entirely contradictory to the claims for potential benefits made by these researchers in their results and when promoting their recomendations become regulation.

Marty Sheargold cut from Triple M following Matildas comments

Marty is a highly paid radio presenter, Triple M is a radio station, and the Matildas are the Australian women’s soccer team.

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Left-wing theatre managers who invited 200 migrants to a free show will abandon the building and face bankruptcy as refugees still refuse to leave after three months and spark wave of sex-related violence

Beyond fights breaking out because of sexual tensions, migrants have been seen dealing and using drugs.

Staff have been acting as ‘on-site security guards, even though this is neither their skill set nor their job,’ says the statement.

Despite this, the statement says staff have also been ‘welcoming and sheltering the occupants’.

In December, Paris’s Socialist-led council, which owns the building, claims it looked for accommodation for the migrants but that none was available.

It called for the government to deal with the problem, but President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist cabinet is said to have ignored the request and is reluctant to get involved in the debacle.

The theatre is owned by the City of Paris, which is dominated by Socialists and Greens.

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Can Academic Fraud Be Stopped? (Update)

I’m not a mad fan of Freakonomics but this podcast has some interesting ideas.

Northern Territory leprosy case sparks outrage over disparity in Indigenous health outcomes

“It’s not because people are unclean themselves, or dirty. It’s because of the conditions they’re forced to live in – and there’s no alternative,” the Kamilaroi man said.

There are 50 people on the waitlist for every vacant public home in Darwin, according to the NT government’s website, and in remote areas of the NT, families of 10 to 20 people can occupy a three-bedroom house.

‘Horrific’ footage of man breaking woman’s jaw with single punch in Melbourne

In case you’re wondering what happened immediately before that, yes she did.

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