A celebrity gossip YouTuber turned MP will become Japan’s first lawmaker to be kicked out of parliament without ever actually entering it. Yoshikazu Higashitani was expelled on Tuesday by his Senate colleagues for never coming to work. He has not attended a single day of parliament sessions since being elected to office seven months ago. The parliament’s discipline committee stripped him of his status because of the continued absence. Voters had elected Mr Higashitani to the upper house last July. He is better known as GaaSyy on YouTube where he is famous for his celebrity gossip videos. Expulsion is the most severe punishment a lawmaker can receive. It has happened only two times since 1950 and this is the first time an MP has been expelled due to continued absence. The chamber is set to formalise the decision later this week. The lawmaker – who has been nicknamed ‘No-show MP’- is believed to be living in the United Arab Emirates.(BBC)…[+]

US President Joe Biden is set to issue an executive order that aims to increase the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales. It aims to move the US “as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation”. The Democratic president will sign the measure during a visit Tuesday to Monterey Park, California, where a gunman killed 11 people in January. Action on gun control appears unlikely in a divided Washington. Last year, Mr Biden signed a cross-party gun violence reduction measure into law and he has repeatedly asked Congress to do more about what he calls an “epidemic”.  But his call for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks on gun sales and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from prosecution are unlikely to make headway while Republicans control the US House of Representatives. Mr Biden’s executive order – a law a US president can enact without Congress – acknowledges this political reality and lays out a series of actions within his authority, beginning with the expansion of background checks.(BBC)…[+]

Japanese billionaire Masatoshi Ito, who helped turn 7-Eleven convenience stores into a global business empire, has died aged 98. He died last Friday from old age, operator Seven & i Holdings said in a statement. “We would like to express our sincere gratitude to him for his kindness during his lifetime,” the firm said. There are more than 83,000 7-Eleven stores around the world, with a quarter of them located in Japan.  In 1956, Mr Ito took over a small Tokyo apparel store business that had been run by his uncle then half-brother. Mr Ito later renamed it Ito-Yokado and turned the business into a chain of one-stop stores that sold everything from groceries to clothes. It went public in 1972. Around the same time, an executive at Ito-Yokado, Toshifumi Suzuki, spotted a 7-Eleven store during a visit to the US. Ito-Yokado later forged a deal with 7-Eleven’s owner – the US-based Southland Corporation – and opened Japan’s first 7-Eleven in 1974. Mr Ito’s firm moved to acquire a controlling stake in Southland Corporation in March 1990.(BBC)…[+]

At least eight people have died after two boats capsized off the California coast, emergency services have said. A search began after the boats got in trouble off Black’s Beach, San Diego. A 911 caller told emergency services she had been on a boat with eight people that made it to shore, but another vessel, carrying eight to 10 people, had capsized. San Diego Lifeguard chief James Gartland called it one of the state’s worst maritime smuggling tragedies. Officials said they did not know the nationalities of the victims but they were all adults. One San Diego police officer told local media the 911 caller had said she was Mexican. Carlos González Gtez, the Mexican consul general in San Diego, wrote on Twitter that his office “laments the maritime tragedy” and is “working to identify people of Mexican origin and assist their families”. Emergency responders from several agencies found two overturned boats with bodies spread over an area of 400 yards (366m). The search operation was suspended on Sunday evening.(BBC)…[+]

Israel’s education minister has apologised to Ethiopian Israeli schoolgirls whose teachers mocked them in a WhatsApp group on a school trip. The girls spotted the teachers messaging each other in a chat group they created called Black School Trip. One of the girls filmed the chat over a teacher’s shoulder, then shared it on social media, calling the teachers “a disgrace”. The teachers involved were suspended and the incident is being investigated. There are about 150,000 citizens of Ethiopian origin in Israel, the first of whom arrived in sizeable numbers in a series of top secret Mossad-led operations in the 1980s. The Ethiopian Jews’ integration in Israel has been challenging, with the community suffering disproportionately high levels of unemployment and poverty as well as discrimination, although their situation has shown signs of improvement in recent years. Last Monday, teachers and pupils from a religious high school in Netivot, southern Israel, set off on a three-day trip. Girls sitting behind one of the teachers saw her messaging in the group chat, which contained disparaging comments towards the Ethiopian Israeli pupils.(BBC)…[+]

The Dutch government is to put restrictions on the country’s “most advanced” microchip technology exports to protect national security, following a similar move by the US. It will include products by chip equipment maker ASML, a key firm in the global microchip supply chain. In response, China has launched a formal complaint against the move. It said it hoped the Netherlands would not “follow the abuse of export control measures by certain countries”. China has frequently called the US a “tech hegemony” in response to export controls imposed by Washington. Semiconductors, which power everything from mobile phones to military hardware, are at the centre of a bitter dispute between the US and China. A spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, said the Dutch move aimed to deprive China of its right to develop. Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank, told the BBC that the decision by the Netherlands was “a real step forward, a real victory for the US and also very bad news for China”. “US-China relations are already in a pretty bad place. This clearly will make things even worse.”(BBC)…[+]

The Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province has been killed in an explosion in his office. Mohammad Dawood Muzammil is the most senior official to be killed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Violence has since decreased sharply, but prominent pro-Taliban figures and others have been killed in a string of attacks, many claimed by Islamic State. Local police said the cause of the latest blast was unclear. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter that the governor had been “martyred in an explosion by the enemies of Islam”. An investigation is under way, he added.

Muzammil is reported to have led the fight against Islamic State militants in his previous posting as governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar. He was moved to Balkh last October. Balkh police spokesperson Mohammed Asif Waziri said the explosion occurred “around 9am… inside the second floor of the governor’s office”. Police said at least one other person also died in the attack. A number of others are reported to have been injured.(BBC)…[+]

Protesters in Israel have blocked roads and attempted to stop the prime minister flying out the country amid nationwide demonstrations against controversial judicial reforms. Vehicles obstructed access roads to Ben Gurion airport, from where Benjamin Netanyahu is due to fly to Rome. The weeks-old protests are some of the biggest Israel has ever seen. Critics say the reforms will undermine democracy; the government says planned changes are better for the electorate. Thousands of protesters, many waving Israeli flags and carrying signs with slogans against the reforms, massed on main roads in Tel Aviv, causing major disruption to traffic. A line of police on horseback stood by as the demonstrators flowed past, with some chanting to the police: “We’re also here for you,” Haaretz newspaper reported. Meanwhile convoys of cars streamed towards the airport from early morning, causing gridlock at the entrance to try to block Mr Netanyahu from leaving for Rome. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin landed at the airport on Thursday and was reportedly forced to alter his schedule because of the protests.(BBC)…[+]

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a text message after the 2020 election that he “passionately hated” Donald Trump, according to new court filings. Mr Carlson’s message to a colleague in January 2021 emerged as part of a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. The electronic voting firm accuses the network of promoting baseless claims of vote-rigging in the election. Fox News denies defamation and says on-air comments were taken out of context. The latest filings in the case suggest Mr Carlson expressed his dislike of the outgoing US president two days before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to derail lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election win. “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”  I hate him passionately,” he added. Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air. “That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”(BBC)…[+]

Two people died and eight were injured in a crush after a concert by rapper GloRilla in Rochester, New York. Police said the crowd began to surge and rush toward the exit, possibly when they thought they heard gunshots. However, there was “no evidence to support a shooting having occurred”, Rochester police lieutenant Nicholas Adams told ABC News. GloRilla, who had finished performing before the incident, said she was “devastated and heartbroken”. The Memphis musician, whose song F.N.F. (Let’s Go) was nominated for best rap performance at last month’s Grammy Awards, said she did not hear about the crush until she left the venue. “My fans mean the world to me,” she wrote on social media. “Praying for their families and for a speedy recovery of everyone affected.”(BBC)…[+]