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Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams had to shave. So did Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. But now Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and the rest of the current New York Yankees roster will be allowed to grow “well-groomed beards” if they so choose, after the club on Friday announced a change to its long-standing grooming policy. The all-clear for beards was announced by Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing general partner whose father started the beard ban — and vigorously enforced it for years. Source link

Kobe – A Hyogo Prefectural Assembly member from Nippon Ishin no Kai has offered to leave the party for his questionable act over data on a probe by an assembly panel into alleged harassment by Hyogo Gov. Motohiko Saito, the member said Sunday. At a news conference in Kobe, the assembly member, Makoto Masuyama, apologized for providing Takashi Tachibana, head of political group NHK Party, with undisclosed audio data of the special investigation committee and a document containing unconfirmed information. On whether to resign as a member of the assembly, Masuyama said he will listen to opinions of voters. “I apologize for leaking the audio data, which amounted to a violation of related rules,” he said. The audio data and the document contain information supporting the position of Saito, who has been under fire for suspected harassment. Masuyama said he provided the infoemation to Tachibana because he has an ability to communicate effectively, enabling people in the prefecture to know the content, while noting that he had no intention to defend the Hyogo governor. The news conference was also attended by two other Hyogo assembly members from Nippon Ishin: Minoru Kishiguchi and Takahiro Shirai. Kishiguchi was involved in supplying the document to Tachibana, while Shirai provided the NHK Party head with unconfirmed information over the phone. The two also apologized. Kishiguchi said that he read the document on the day it was provided to Tachibana. Kishiguchi added that he is unsure about the authenticity of most of the information included in the document. Source link

BEIRUT – Tens of thousands of people gathered on the outskirts of Beirut on Sunday to pay their respects to Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a stunning blow to the Iran-backed group. The killing of Nasrallah, who led the Shiite Muslim group through decades of conflict with Israel and oversaw its transformation into a military force with regional sway, was one of the opening salvos in an Israeli escalation that badly weakened Hezbollah. Carrying pictures of Nasrallah and Hezbollah flags, supporters gathered early on Sunday for a mass funeral for Nasrallah and other slain leaders of the group at a stadium in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut. Source link

Osaka – Japanese police on Sunday served a fresh arrest warrant for a man for alleged murder and robbery in connection with a case in which the dismembered body of a man was found abandoned in Osaka Prefecture recently. The suspect, Hiroto Oki, 28, has remained silent over the murder and robbery allegations, according to the Osaka Prefectural Police Department. After his first arrest on Feb. 3 for allegedly abandoning the body of Takamichi Kamioka, however, Oki told the police that he choked Kamioka to death after the victim came out of his house, investigative sources said. The suspect also said that he had no money so he therefore had no choice but to kill Kamioka, an employee of the Land, Infrastructure Transport and Tourism Ministry, according to the sources. Source link

BANGKOK – Thai and Cambodian police raided a building in a border town and freed 215 foreigners, a senior Thai official said on Sunday, in an expansion of a regional crackdown against cyberscam centers. Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked by criminal gangs and forced to work in scam centers and illegal online operations across Southeast Asia, according to the United Nations. A U.N. report in 2023 estimated that the fast-growing operations generate billions of dollars annually. The Sunday raid targeted a three-storey building in the Cambodian border town of Poipet in Banteay Meanchey province. The rescued foreigners included 109 Thais, 50 Pakistanis, 48 Indians, five Taiwanese and three Indonesians, Thai government spokesman Jirayu Houngsub said on Sunday. “This is the largest number of Thais freed from a building suspected of cyberfraud for the two countries,” Jirayu said. The raid was the result of a joint effort by Thailand and Cambodia to tackle scam centers, he said. Scam centers have been operating for years. But they now face new scrutiny after the rescue of Chinese actor, Wang Xing, who was lured to Thailand with the promise of a job, and then abducted and taken to a scam center in Myanmar. Southeast Asian countries have stepped up efforts to tackle scam centers with recent actions along the Thai-Myanmar border. Earlier this month, Thailand cut power, fuel and internet supply to areas linked with scam centers. China also repatriated 621 of its nationals rescued from scam centers in those areas over the past few days, the Thai Army said on Saturday. Source link

MUNICH – It has become a truism of foreign-policy debates nowadays that the world is at the dawn of a multipolar era. Whether such an international order will ever fully emerge is debatable. But the process of “multipolarization” is already under way, as a larger number of states gain the ability to influence global developments. But a more worrisome aspect of multipolarization is that these ongoing power shifts have been accompanied by deepening polarization within and between countries. Governments’ incompatible visions for the new global order make it harder to compromise and find solutions to shared challenges. These divisions are evident in the deepening bifurcation between democracies and autocracies, especially in policy fields such as human rights, global infrastructure and development cooperation. Polarization is also visible in new power brokers pursuing their own visions for their respective regions. The Kremlin, for example, is clearly working toward a Russian-led order in Eurasia, while China, buttressed by its Belt and Road initiative, is seeking to establish hegemony over East Asia. Global rules, principles and structures of cooperation are being supplanted by multiple competing and conflicting orders. Source link

For British consumers still reeling from Labour’s first budget, the watchword is caution. Pessimism is rife and households are looking to cut their expenses, for example by eating in rather than dining out, figures last week showed. Inflation is resurgent and fear of job losses mounting. Gone too are the so-called excess savings built up during the pandemic, the victim of the savage increase in prices since then. It’s a bleak picture for Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government, which swept to power in July promising to raise living standards. Instead, the economy is smaller on a per-capita basis and Labour is sliding in opinion polls. Alarm bells are also ringing at the Bank of England, where two policymakers this month called for interest rates to be slashed by a bumper half percentage point. Source link

Hong Kong – Hong Kong and Singapore are the front-runners in a push by Asian governments to become cryptocurrency hubs as they look to capitalize on the global resurgence of the sector thanks to the support of U.S. President Donald Trump. Bitcoin recently hit a record of close to $110,000 while others have also rallied on the back of Trump’s pro-crypto promises. With forecasts that they could rise further, governments are keen to get a piece of the action. Source link

Formula One’s governing body urged fans to show more respect after “tribalist” booing of four-time champion Max Verstappen and his Red Bull boss Christian Horner at a 10-team season launch. The FIA was also booed by the crowd, whose biggest cheer was reserved for Britain’s seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, at an event attended by more than 15,000 fans at London’s O2 Arena last Tuesday. Horner, who has steered Red Bull to six constructors’ world titles and eight drivers’ crowns since 2010, has become a target for some fans for his starring role in the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive. The Briton was also in the headlines last year after accusations of inappropriate behavior, of which he was cleared, were made by a female employee. Verstappen’s controversial 2021 title win, his first, has also made the Dutch driver a target of Hamilton fans who feel their hero was robbed of an eighth title by the FIA-appointed race director. “Great rivalries throughout the history of motorsport have contributed to making it such an exciting experience for fans,” an FIA spokesperson said in a statement issued on Saturday. “But what underpins sport at all levels is a culture of respect. “As such, it was disappointing to hear the crowd’s tribalist reaction to … Verstappen and his Red Bull team principal and CEO Christian Horner at the F1 launch in London. “Max and Christian have both contributed greatly to the sport we love. In the season ahead we should not lose sight of that.” The FIA is leading a coalition tackling online abuse in sport, and the spokesperson said the governing body urged the sporting community to consider the impact of their actions online and offline. The FIA’s World Motor Sport Council is due to hold its first session of the year virtually on Wednesday, also the first day of Formula One’s preseason testing in Bahrain, and could discuss the matter then. Verstappen’s father Jos told Dutch media that the booing was unacceptable and his son had no appetite to attend similar events in England. Hamilton has also experienced booing abroad, as have other British drivers, while Verstappen has been jeered by crowds at Silverstone. Source link

Dhaka – Bangladeshi high-schooler Laiba is being educated for the future, but what she learns has been determined by the latest chapter in her country’s battle over its past. Last year, a student-led revolution overthrew the government of iron-fisted premier Sheikh Hasina when public anger over her increasingly autocratic rule boiled over. Her ouster has prompted Bangladesh to do something that has followed every sudden change in national leadership: rewrite its history books to suit new orthodoxies. Source link