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  • Anthony Joshua’s driver attempted overtake before fatal crash, trial hears

    Anthony Joshua’s driver attempted overtake before fatal crash, trial hears

    A high-profile court case in Nigeria has unfolded to unpack the circumstances of a devastating December car crash that claimed the lives of two long-time members of British heavyweight boxing star Anthony Joshua’s entourage, as new procedural and testimonial details emerge during ongoing proceedings.

    At the center of the case is 46-year-old Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, the driver of the Lexus SUV that was carrying Joshua, his personal trainer Latif Ayodele, and strength coach Sina Ghami when the crash occurred. Kayode faces a series of serious charges, including two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and operating a motor vehicle without a valid national driver’s license, all of which he has formally denied in court. A second defendant, 35-year-old Abubakar Adamu, who was the owner and driver of the parked lorry that Kayode’s vehicle collided with, also denies a single charge of obstructing public road traffic flow.

    Witness testimony from Inspector Christopher Ajayi Taiwo, a senior officer with the Ogun State Motor Traffic Division, laid out a timeline of the incident and the immediate aftermath. The court heard that the entire group was traveling from Lagos to Ogun State, a southwestern Nigerian region where Joshua has deep family roots, to visit the boxing champion’s father. All passengers, including Joshua, were asleep at the time of the collision, when Kayode attempted to overtake a moving heavy goods truck on the public highway, lost control of his SUV, and crashed headlong into an unoccupied parked lorry registered to Adamu. Both Ayodele and Ghami died at the scene of the crash.

    When first responders arrived at the crash site, Taiwo told the court, both the damaged Lexus SUV and the stationary lorry had already been removed from the highway. Investigators were only able to recover physical evidence consisting of scattered crash debris, spilled soya beans that made up the parked lorry’s cargo spread across the road surface, and three small items recovered near the driver’s side of where the Lexus had come to rest: the vehicle’s logbook, a bottle of painkillers, and an energy drink.

    One key procedural development that has been questioned by the defense is the fact that investigating officers have not yet taken a formal witness statement from Joshua, who was a passenger in the vehicle and survived the crash unharmed. During cross-examination of Taiwo, Kayode’s defense counsel pressed the inspector on why no statement had been obtained from the high-profile witness. Taiwo responded that efforts to secure a statement were still ongoing, and that he had not reached out to Joshua directly because he did not have the boxer’s contact information.

    Joshua, who was born in Watford, UK, to a Nigerian father, has maintained close family and cultural ties to the Ogun State town of Sagamu, located close to the crash site. Shortly after the crash, he shared a heartfelt public tribute to his late team members on his social media channels, opening up about his personal grief. “I didn’t even realise how special they are,” Joshua wrote. “I’ll just be walking with them and cracking jokes with them, not even knowing God kept me in the presence of great men. 100% it’s tough for me, but I know it’s even tougher for their parents.”

    Following the most recent court session, the judge adjourned the trial until September 10, when proceedings will resume with further testimony and procedural steps.

  • Body of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic to be flown to Serbia, president says

    Body of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic to be flown to Serbia, president says

    BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed Wednesday that the remains of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for war crimes and genocide at a U.N. detention facility in the Netherlands, will be transported to Serbia for burial this Thursday. The United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, based in The Hague, has not yet issued an official statement on the release of Mladic’s body following his death in a Dutch hospital.

    Vucic told reporters that Mladic’s family will release detailed funeral arrangements in the coming days, but warned local security officials are bracing for an unprecedented turnout of the convicted war criminal’s supporters. Even after his 2017 conviction for some of the worst atrocities committed on European soil since World War II, Mladic retains widespread heroic status among large segments of the Serbian public. Vucic noted that Serbian police and state intelligence agencies currently project that tens of thousands of admirers could gather for the funeral, creating significant security challenges for authorities.

    “It will be hard to secure and guarantee security to everybody,” Vucic said. “It will be a demanding job for our security services and we will use everything at our disposal to provide security.”

    Mladic was found guilty of overseeing three of the conflict’s most infamous atrocities: the 1995 Srebrenica massacre that killed more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys, the 44-month siege of Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo that killed more than 10,000 civilians, and the systematic establishment of concentration camps where thousands of non-Serb civilians and enemy combatants were abused and executed. The Srebrenica massacre remains the first legally recognized act of genocide on the European continent since 1945; the enclave was designated a U.N. safe haven for Muslim refugees before Mladic’s forces overran the area, executed the civilian population, and buried their remains in unmarked mass graves.

    The Bosnian War, which broke out in 1992 after Bosnian Serb militias backed by Belgrade seized control of large swathes of Bosnian territory to form a separate breakaway state, ended in 1995 with a U.S.-brokered peace deal. The 3-year conflict left more than 100,000 people dead and displaced more than 1 million from their homes, leaving the region deeply ethnically divided decades later. Within hours of Mladic’s death being announced last week, thousands of Serbs gathered for public vigils and marches to honor his memory, a demonstration that drew sharp condemnation across the Balkans from survivors and political leaders.

    For surviving family members of Mladic’s victims, the 2017 conviction represented a long-delayed measure of justice for their murdered loved ones. But attitudes in Serbia, which is currently pursuing European Union membership, remain deeply defiant over the country’s role in the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict. Last week, Vucic launched a sharp attack on the international tribunal, accusing the court and Western powers of systemic bias that only holds Serbs accountable for war crimes while ignoring atrocities against Serb civilians. He previously condemned the tribunal for what he called “uncivilized behavior” after it denied requests to release Mladic on compassionate grounds to allow him to die at home in Serbia.

  • Tebogo says late mother ‘always there’ ahead of emotional return to Budapest

    Tebogo says late mother ‘always there’ ahead of emotional return to Budapest

    For Olympic 200-meter champion Letsile Tebogo, next week’s trip to the Hungarian capital of Budapest for the first-ever Ultimate Athletics Championships is far more than just another stop on the global track and field circuit. It is a return to the city that launched his international career, and a bittersweet journey back to the place where his mother watched him make history for Botswana.

    Three years ago, 20-year-old Tebogo stepped onto the track at Budapest’s 2023 World Athletics Championships for his first senior global competition, when his mother Seratiwa surprised him by making the trip to watch him compete. That outing became a landmark moment for both Tebogo and his home nation: he claimed silver in the 100m and bronze in the 200m, becoming the first male athlete from Botswana to win World Championship medals, and the first African man ever to reach the 100m podium at the event. Seratiwa, who shared an extraordinarily close bond with her son that she once described as more like a “brother and sister relationship,” told BBC Sport Africa at the time that she was overflowing with pride for his achievement.

    This time, however, Seratiwa will not be in the stands to cheer him on. She passed away in May 2024 after a sudden, short illness, and Tebogo has opened up about the difficulty of returning to the city that holds so many shared memories without her. “I haven’t really looked into the fact that I’m going now to Budapest without my mom,” he said. “It’s just been a bumpy ride having to think about it and having to continue with the grind.”

    Even amid the grief, Tebogo says the city remains a source of strength, a place where he can carry his mother’s memory forward as he competes. He believes her spirit stays with him, pushing him to give every race his all even on days when stepping away feels like an option. “She pushes me to give my absolute best and I believe the memories that we had in Budapest, they will still come again,” he said.

    In the years since that breakthrough 2023 World Championships, Tebogo has only scaled greater heights. In 2024, he made history once again as he won the 200m title at the Paris Olympic Games, becoming Botswana’s first ever Olympic gold medalist. He carried his mother’s legacy with him that day, marking her initials onto both his running shoes and his fingernails as a quiet tribute. Earlier this year in May, he also helped lead Botswana to 4x400m gold at the World Relays, hosted on his home soil in Gaborone, and has notched up 200m wins at top-tier Diamond League events in Oslo and Lausanne this season.

    The Ultimate Championships, the new biennial event hosted in Budapest from September 11 to 13, was created to cap off the track and field season by bringing together the very best performers from across the globe to determine the year’s undisputed best. The inaugural edition boasts a total $10 million prize pool, the largest single-event prize pot in track and field history according to organizers World Athletics, with individual gold medalists set to take home $150,000 each. Tebogo enters the competition as one of the sport’s biggest young stars and a clear favorite to contend in the men’s 200m.

    Beyond his own race, Tebogo will take on another role at the event: he is serving as a team captain for the Kids’ Athletics Ultimate Challenge, an event that invites young athletes from across Budapest to take part in fun developmental activities at the Gyula Zsivotzky National Athletics Centre the day before the main competition kicks off. The role gives him a chance to pass on the core lessons he has learned throughout his rapid rise from young hopeful to global champion.

    For the next generation of athletes, Tebogo highlights two key values he hopes to instill: accountability and unwavering sportsmanship. “I believe firstly you should start with accountability,” he explained. “Think about your preparation, how you want your journey or your season to be, and then also think of unwavering sportsmanship. I would love them to have that unwavering sportsmanship, so that they can share lanes, they can cheer for one another.”

    For Tebogo, this trip to Budapest is about more than competing for another major title. It is about honoring the woman who supported him from his earliest days, celebrating the shared memories that made him the athlete he is today, and chasing new glory while carrying her spirit with him every step of the way.

  • Vance’s Antichrist comments are a ‘common belief’, his friend tells BBC

    Vance’s Antichrist comments are a ‘common belief’, his friend tells BBC

    U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s recent public reflections on Christian eschatological ideas, including the possibility that the Antichrist already lives among humanity and that the world may be entering its final days, have been framed as a widely held mainstream Christian belief by one of his close personal friends. The comments emerged during a recent interview on a Christian podcast hosted by American creator Bryce Crawford, where Vance opened up about his personal religious views as a convert to Catholicism.

    During the discussion, Vance struck a measured tone about his eschatological speculations, emphasizing that these thoughts do not dominate his daily work or personal life. “Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know,” Vance told the podcast. “And I think that it’s probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it, because there are, like, things you gotta do. I gotta be good to my wife. I gotta be good to my kids. I have to be as good of a leader as I can for the United States of America.”

    He went on to add, “I think that there are, like, things about the world that make me feel, like, not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us.” Reiterating his commitment to his vice-presidential duties, Vance noted that his core priority is advancing what he sees as God’s work in his current role, rather than obsessing over apocalyptic timelines.

    In Christian theology, end times theology centers on prophecies about the final period of human history before the second coming of Jesus Christ, with most mainstream denominations holding that God has a preordained divine plan for the end of the world. The Antichrist, a core figure in these eschatological frameworks, is described as a deceptive evil figure opposed to God that will emerge to seize global power during the final phase of human civilization.

    Rod Dreher, a conservative writer and close friend of Vance who was present at Vance’s 2019 confirmation into the Catholic Church, pushed back against any claims that Vance’s comments would damage his political standing in an interview with BBC’s *Today* program. Dreher argued that apocalyptic beliefs like those Vance outlined are extremely common among Christian voters, particularly the Republican base that forms Vance’s core political support. “Most Americans who are inclined to vote Republican already believe this stuff,” Dreher stated. He added that while the comments may sound outlandish to people outside of Christian faith communities, they reflect a widely shared intuition among religious believers that the world is descending into chaos amid rapid technological change like artificial intelligence development and ongoing global armed conflicts.

    Dreher also drew a parallel to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who made similar apocalyptic comments during his time in office without facing significant political backlash from his base, framing the remarks as a perfectly normal expression of faith for conservative American politicians.

    Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 when he was in his mid-30s, and has previously spoken publicly about how Catholic social and family values align closely with his conservative political ideology. Since taking office as vice president, Vance has had public disagreements with both current Pope Leo and retired Pope Francis, most notably over the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy.

    Looking ahead, Vance is scheduled to lead the White House press briefing on Thursday afternoon, marking the first on-camera press briefing from the vice president following the departure of former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

  • Dozens missing, 5 dead after migrant boat is found drifting near Spain’s Canary Islands

    Dozens missing, 5 dead after migrant boat is found drifting near Spain’s Canary Islands

    A devastating maritime disaster off the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands has left at least five migrants dead and dozens more missing, with activists reporting an even higher death toll following the vessel’s catastrophic breakdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Only 44 people from the overcrowded boat were pulled to safety by Spanish rescue crews this week.

    Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service confirmed Thursday that a surveillance plane first detected the unstable, drifting vessel around 120 kilometers south of Gran Canaria on Wednesday afternoon. Responding quickly to the distress call, rescue teams immediately airlifted three of the most severely injured survivors to a Gran Canaria hospital by helicopter, while the remaining 41 passengers were transported to shore by rescue vessel. The group disembarked early Thursday at Arguineguín port, where local Red Cross teams stood by to provide urgent medical care and support.

    José Antonio Rodríguez Verona, a Canary Islands-based Red Cross spokesperson, told reporters that all 44 survivors are men, including several underage passengers, who originated from Mali and Senegal. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rodríguez Verona explained that the survivors arrived in a fragile state: many were severely disoriented and dehydrated, with a large number collapsing or vomiting immediately after setting foot on land after weeks adrift at sea.

    Due to the survivors’ poor physical and mental condition, it took responders time to piece together the details of the fatal voyage. Survivors told aid workers they departed from Gambia nearly a month earlier, and had been stranded adrift for far longer than anyone anticipated. When their food and fresh water supplies ran out, desperate passengers were forced to drink seawater to survive, a choice that left many gravely ill.

    The survivors also shared chilling accounts of the scale of the disaster: they told the Red Cross that more than 100 people, including multiple women and one infant, were originally on board the small vessel. As passengers died of dehydration and illness over the course of the journey, surviving passengers threw the bodies overboard, until they eventually became too weak to continue the practice.

    Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service stated in an official emailed statement that rough sea conditions, including 2.5-meter-high waves and strong gusting winds, prevented crews from recovering the remains of five deceased passengers found still on the boat when rescuers arrived.

    In a separate update, Helena Maleno, founder of migrant rights organization Walking Borders — a group that tracks fatalities and missing persons along migration routes leading to Spain — has put the total death toll from this voyage at 83, including three women and the infant. Maleno confirmed via a post on the social platform X that the boat departed Gambia 27 days before the rescue. Maleno’s organization regularly receives distress messages from relatives of missing migrants and coordinates rescue requests with Spanish authorities. The Associated Press has reached out to Maleno and Walking Borders for additional context, but has not yet received a response.

    This disaster highlights the ongoing deadly risk of the West African Atlantic migration route to the Canary Islands, which remains one of the most dangerous migration crossings into Europe. While the number of migrant arrivals to the Spanish archipelago has dropped sharply over the past year, tens of thousands of migrants have died or gone missing on the route in recent years. In multiple extreme cases, overcrowded migrant boats have become lost and drifted all the way across the Atlantic Ocean as far as the Americas before being found.

  • Renewed clashes erupt in southwestern Somalia between government and militias

    Renewed clashes erupt in southwestern Somalia between government and militias

    Fresh armed conflict broke out before dawn on Thursday between Somalia’s federal government troops and aligned militias in the peripheral areas of Baidoa, the key southwestern city at the center of a growing national political power struggle. Witnesses and local officials reported sustained heavy gunfire across the front lines, forcing hundreds of civilian residents to abandon their homes in search of safer shelter as the violence intensified.

    According to statements from Somalia’s Defense Ministry, the outbreak of hostilities followed an offensive launched by fighters loyal to Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen, the former president of Somalia’s South West state, alongside militants linked to al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-affiliated extremist group that has waged an insurgency in Somalia for decades. Wednesday’s clashes mark the most recent escalation of a bitter political and security dispute between Somalia’s central federal government and Laftagareen over administrative control of the strategic South West region.

    The current crisis traces back to late March, when federal security forces seized full control of Baidoa on March 30. Shortly after the government takeover, Laftagareen stepped down from his position as regional leader, a post he had held since 2018. After several hours of intense exchanges of fire, armed clashes tapered off by early Thursday afternoon. As of the latest updates, no official government statement has been released confirming total casualty numbers or the full scope of destruction caused by the fighting. In the aftermath of the violence, government military units deployed to conduct patrols across Baidoa’s urban streets, while emergency ambulances scrambled to reach injured people trapped near conflict zones. Local residents slowly began to reemerge from hiding to assess damage to their properties and clean debris from public walkways.

    Dr. Abdikafi Omar Mohamud, who leads the emergency department at Baidoa’s Bay Regional Hospital, confirmed to the Associated Press that medical teams at his facility had treated 24 wounded civilians and received the body of one civilian killed in the clashes. Abdullahi Haji, a long-term Baidoa resident, described the chaos of the outbreak in a phone interview with AP, saying he fled his residence immediately after hearing heavy gunfire erupt, noting that stray bullets began hitting residential neighborhoods within minutes of the first shots.

    Located roughly 245 kilometers, or 150 miles, northwest of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, Baidoa holds outsized strategic and humanitarian importance for the entire country. The city serves as a major coordination hub for international aid organizations working across southern Somalia, and it currently hosts more than 500,000 people who have already been displaced by previous rounds of conflict and the severe ongoing drought devastating much of the Horn of Africa. This latest violence comes just weeks after earlier clashes in and around Baidoa killed at least four civilians and left another 98 people wounded, adding to a growing toll of civilian harm in the already unstable region.

    This report was compiled with on-the-ground contributions from Associated Press correspondent Bishar Mayow Mukhtar in Baidoa, Somalia.

  • Eleven people sentenced to death in Vietnam drug trafficking case

    Eleven people sentenced to death in Vietnam drug trafficking case

    In one of the largest transnational drug trafficking busts in Vietnam’s modern legal history, a court has handed down death sentences to 11 convicted individuals, including the alleged ringleader of a billion-dollar smuggling operation that spanned Europe and Southeast Asia, state media confirmed this week.

    In total, 227 people faced trial for their roles in the coordinated network. Penalties across all defendants ranged from 18-month prison terms to life imprisonment, with 11 receiving the ultimate capital punishment. Ha Danh Nam, the man authorities identified as the mastermind who coordinated the shipment of illegal narcotics from France to Vietnam, was among those sentenced to death.

    The investigation into the criminal enterprise traces back to March 2023, when four Vietnam Airlines flight attendants arriving in Ho Chi Minh City from Paris were intercepted with more than 10 kilograms of illicit drugs hidden inside 157 toothpaste tubes. State-run legal newspaper Bao Cong Ly reported that the crew members were never prosecuted, as investigators confirmed they had unknowingly transported the contraband, which included MDMA and ketamine.

    Further probes uncovered that Nam’s smuggling operation systematically hid narcotics inside everyday consumer goods, including dietary supplements, laundry detergent, mouthwash, and coffee. The ring then recruited Vietnamese nationals living or studying in France to transport the hidden drugs, either in personal checked luggage or via international courier services directly to buyers in Vietnam. To evade detection, members of the network relied on end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms and processed financial transactions through bank accounts registered under stolen or fake third-party identities, prosecutors told the court. Over the course of the operation, the total value of illegal drug transactions linked to the network reached nearly 29 trillion Vietnamese dong, equal to roughly $1.1 billion or £815 million.

    Judges handed down sentences proportional to each defendant’s level of involvement in the ring, ranging from masterminding operations to low-level accomplice roles. In addition to the 11 death sentences, around 20 other defendants received life imprisonment for convictions on charges of illegal drug possession, distribution, transport, and organized trafficking.

    The verdict comes amid a period of gradual shift in Vietnam’s capital punishment policy. Vietnam remains one of 54 countries globally that retains the death penalty, according to human rights organization data. The Vietnamese government classifies the total number of people on death row as a state secret, but rights groups estimate that more than 1,000 prisoners are currently awaiting execution across the country.

    Just last month, the Vietnamese government tabled new legislative reforms that would remove the death penalty for six additional offenses, including drug trafficking. The proposed changes have not yet been enacted into law. This proposal follows a 2025 amendment to the national criminal code that eliminated capital punishment for eight other offenses, including embezzlement, espionage, and the charge of attempting to overthrow the government.

    The 2025 legal change already led to a high-profile sentence adjustment: real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, who was sentenced to death for embezzlement in 2024, had her capital sentence commuted to life imprisonment earlier this year after the reform went into effect.

  • Andy Burnham praises UK-EU ties in meeting with Emmanuel Macron

    Andy Burnham praises UK-EU ties in meeting with Emmanuel Macron

    In a landmark diplomatic meeting marking new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first bilateral talks with an overseas leader at 10 Downing Street, French President Emmanuel Macron and Burnham gathered Thursday to hash out a sweeping range of shared priorities, from irregular migration across the English Channel to global security conflicts and deeper UK-EU cooperation.

    The meeting opened with a warm public ceremonial moment: the two leaders shook hands and posed for official photos alongside their wives, Marie-France van Heel and Brigitte Macron, outside the prime minister’s official residence before heading into closed-door discussions.

    Macron’s visit to the UK carried a dual purpose: the trip was primarily scheduled to mark the historic loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to London’s British Museum, where the French leader met with King Charles III on Wednesday a week ahead of the medieval artifact’s public opening. But the bilateral talks that followed quickly centered on what has emerged as the most pressing bilateral policy challenge of the moment: the growing use of large “mega dinghies” by people-smuggling gangs to carry irregular migrants across the Channel to the UK.

    The rise of these large vessels, first documented in early August when a 15-meter craft carried a record 230 migrants toward British shores, has sparked fresh scrutiny of border security efforts. This development comes even as overall irregular small boat arrivals to the UK dropped to a seven-year low over the 2026 summer travel season.

    To address the new threat of oversized smuggling vessels, Downing Street announced Thursday that 45 additional British police officers will be deployed to northern French beaches as part of a targeted “surge team” focused on intercepting large dinghies before they can depart. Home Office Minister Anna Turley clarified Tuesday that this reinforcement adds to an existing deployment of more than 1,000 officers already conducting active water-based interventions along the French coast. Turley told BBC Radio 4’s *Today programme* that recent footage shows officers directly targeting smuggling operations: disabling vessels by slashing their hulls, pushing craft back to shore, and operating under dangerous conditions, often facing projectile attacks from smugglers.

    Burnham framed cross-Channel smuggling as a collective European problem requiring coordinated action rather than unilateral fixes. In a social media post on X outlining the latest data on small boat arrivals, return of undocumented migrants and asylum facility usage, Burnham emphasized he is pursuing a new approach to governing rooted in international partnership. Ahead of Thursday’s talks, he welcomed Macron as a key ally, noting it was entirely fitting that the French president was his first overseas guest at Downing Street, describing France as the UK’s closest neighbor and longstanding close partner. He added that the bilateral meeting demonstrates what collaborative action can deliver, pointing to already aligned work on Ukraine, border security and efforts to strengthen overall UK-EU ties.

    Beyond the migration crisis, the two leaders also held in-depth discussions on other pressing global and bilateral issues, including the ongoing armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, bilateral defence cooperation and the future framework for UK-EU engagement.

    The main opposition Conservative Party has criticized the current government’s approach, however. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch told the BBC that while she supports cross-border collaboration with France, the fundamental problem of irregular boat crossings has not been resolved. She argued that the UK has already poured hundreds of millions, potentially billions, of pounds into funding French border security operations, yet crossings continue. The meeting comes as UK politics remains deeply divided over migration policy, with the issue set to remain a central point of political debate in the coming months.

  • Japanese scientist Shirakawa, co-winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, dies at 90

    Japanese scientist Shirakawa, co-winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, dies at 90

    Hideki Shirakawa, the groundbreaking Japanese chemist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his transformative work on conductive polymers, has passed away at the age of 90.

    Shirakawa’s collaborative research with two American scientists, Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid, upended long-held assumptions about the properties of plastic, proving that this ubiquitous material could carry electrical current just as metals do. This counterintuitive discovery unlocked a vast new range of applications across modern electronics, laying the foundation for technologies that shape daily life around the globe today.

    The University of Tsukuba, the Japanese research institution where Shirakawa built his career as a professor and researcher after joining its faculty in 1979, confirmed his death on August 24. The university did not release any details about the specific cause of death. Japan’s leading daily newspaper, Yomiuri, reported that Shirakawa died at a medical facility in Yokohama, a major port city located just west of Tokyo.

    Born in Tokyo in 1936, Shirakawa built his academic foundation early, earning his doctoral degree in engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966. A decade later, he took a research position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began his landmark partnership with MacDiarmid and Heeger that would redefine materials science.

    Prior to their work, conventional scientific wisdom held that all plastics were natural insulators, incapable of conducting electricity. The trio’s breakthrough defied this common understanding, clearing a path for the development of low-cost conductive materials that outperform traditional metals in key areas: they are far lighter, far more flexible, and adaptable to a wide range of commercial and industrial uses. Today, these materials power critical modern technologies from photovoltaic solar cells to the touchscreens of smartphones and mobile devices, touching millions of lives worldwide.

  • Dolly Parton gets new star on Hollywood Walk of Fame after vandalism

    Dolly Parton gets new star on Hollywood Walk of Fame after vandalism

    The global entertainment community is still mourning the passing of iconic country music legend Dolly Parton, who died last week at the age of 80, leaving behind a decades-long legacy of art, philanthropy and cultural impact. In the wake of her death, an act of vandalism targeting her 40-year-old star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has prompted a swift, respectful replacement to honor her memory.

    Parton first received her star on the Los Angeles landmark in 1984, in recognition of her decades of contributions to entertainment across music, film and theme park development. In the days after her death was announced, grieving fans flocked to the star to lay tributes: bouquets of fresh flowers, glowing candles, and personal photos that reflected the joy she had brought to millions of lives around the world. That peace was broken earlier this week, when vandals scratched Parton’s name, leaving the plaque heavily defaced.

    Local officials confirmed that repairs had already been scheduled to address pre-existing cracks in the original star before the vandalism occurred. All fan tributes were carefully cleared from the site ahead of construction work, which wrapped up on Wednesday. The Hollywood Historic Trust, which manages the iconic 2,800-star Walk of Fame, announced the replacement in an official Instagram post this week.

    “The Hollywood Historic Trust and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce are proud to honour the legacy of Dolly Parton with a replacement of her star,” the statement read, confirming that the new plaque will be open for public viewing starting Friday. Photographs taken after the repair work show the star temporarily covered ahead of its official unveiling.

    As tributes continue to pour in from across the music industry and beyond, Parton was laid to rest last Friday in a private family funeral in Nashville, where she was buried beside her late husband Carl Dean. The following evening, her niece Jada Star took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry House — widely known as the home of country music — as part of a public tribute concert celebrating her aunt’s life and career.

    At Dollywood, Parton’s beloved Tennessee theme park that draws 4 million annual visitors, new permanent additions are being planned to honor her title as the park’s “dreamer-in-chief”. Parton purchased the then-failing park in 1982, reimagining it as a people-focused counterpart to California’s Disneyland, and grew it into the most visited ticketed tourist attraction in the state. New upgrades will include a tranquil waterfall built outside the park’s chapel, designed to give guests a quiet space to pause, reflect and connect with the natural landscape Parton loved. The chapel will also add custom stained-glass windows inscribed with Parton’s favorite Bible verse: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Next year, the park will also introduce a new character called the Dream Maker, a tribute to Parton’s lifelong commitment to children and her Imagination Library, a global program that has donated millions of free books to young readers across the world.

    For decades, Parton built her reputation as one of country music’s most enduring stars, thanks to chart-topping hits including *Jolene* and 9 to 5, and became a beloved cultural figure far beyond the music industry for her generosity, wit and commitment to public good. Her death has sparked an outpouring of love that continues to take shape in tributes across the United States, from the Hollywood hills to the hills of East Tennessee.