The man behind one of Japan’s most disturbing serial murder cases—dubbed the ‘Twitter killer’—has been executed, breaking a nearly three-year pause in the country’s use of capital punishment.
Japan on Friday executed Takahiro Shiraishi, known as the 'Twitter killer', who was convicted of murdering nine people in 2017. The victims, eight women and one man, were lured via social media before being strangled and dismembered in his apartment in Zama city, near Tokyo.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki approved the execution, calling Shiraishi’s motives "extremely selfish" and noting the social harm caused by the case.
"It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed," Suzuki said, adding that 105 people remain on death row in Japan.
This marks the first use of the death penalty in Japan since July 2022, when another convicted murderer was executed for a 2008 stabbing spree in Akihabara.
It is also the first execution since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s government took office in October.
Japan retains the death penalty by hanging, a method and system criticised by human rights advocates due to the short notice given to inmates.
Last year, attention was drawn to Japan’s capital punishment system when courts acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who spent decades on death row following a wrongful conviction dating back nearly 60 years.
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Shoppers packed malls and downtown streets in Caracas on Black Friday (28 November) as retailers offered discounts despite Venezuela’s prolonged economic crisis. Customers queued in shoe and electronics stores and browsed signs advertising cuts of up to 50%.
The famed Nuremberg Christmas Market opened on Friday (28 November) with its traditional ceremony featuring the Nuremberg Christkind, an angel-like child figure said to deliver Christmas gifts in some European countries.
A joint operation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday resulted in the seizure of more than four tons of cocaine and the arrest of two suspects off Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast.
Peru will declare a state of emergency along its border with Chile, President José Jerí said on Friday, as migrants seek to cross into the country following a Chilean presidential frontrunner's vow to expel undocumented migrants.
At least 47 people have died and another 21 are reported missing following ten days of heavy rainfall, floods, and landslides across Sri Lanka, local media reported on Thursday (27 November).
Hong Kong fire authorities said they expected to wrap up search and rescue operations on Friday after the city's worst fire in nearly 80 years tore through a massive apartment complex, killing at least 128 people, injuring 79 and leaving around 200 still missing.
Netflix crashed on Wednesday for about an hour in the U.S. as it launched season five of "Stranger Things", with the service becoming inaccessible to many subscribers within minutes of the episodes going live at 8 p.m. local time.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited sailors aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in the Latin American region on Thursday, amid a military buildup by President Donald Trump’s administration that has heightened tensions with Venezuela.
French health experts are warning that the highly pathogenic H5 strain of bird flu, already devastating wild and farm animals, could evolve into a virus capable of human-to-human transmission — potentially sparking a pandemic worse than COVID-19.
Shoppers packed malls and downtown streets in Caracas on Black Friday (28 November) as retailers offered discounts despite Venezuela’s prolonged economic crisis. Customers queued in shoe and electronics stores and browsed signs advertising cuts of up to 50%.
The famed Nuremberg Christmas Market opened on Friday (28 November) with its traditional ceremony featuring the Nuremberg Christkind, an angel-like child figure said to deliver Christmas gifts in some European countries.
A joint operation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday resulted in the seizure of more than four tons of cocaine and the arrest of two suspects off Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast.
Peru will declare a state of emergency along its border with Chile, President José Jerí said on Friday, as migrants seek to cross into the country following a Chilean presidential frontrunner's vow to expel undocumented migrants.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to skip a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels next week, two U.S. officials told reporters, marking a highly unusual absence for the top American diplomat at a major transatlantic gathering.
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