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The Japanese government said Thursday it has pulled advertisements from Fuji Television in the wake of sexual assault allegations lodged against its celebrity host, as the company slashed profit forecasts.Dozens of companies have already scrapped advertising contracts with Fuji since the furore over J-pop megastar turned TV presenter Masahiro Nakai erupted last month.The government has …

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A man who repeatedly burnt the Koran in 2023 in Sweden, sparking outrage in Muslim countries, has been shot dead, media reported Thursday as police confirmed a man died in a shooting the day before.A Stockholm court was due to rule on Thursday whether Salwan Momika, a Christian Iraqi who burned Korans at a slew of protests, was guilty of inciting ethnic hatred. It postponed the ruling until February 3, saying that “because Salwan Momika has died, more time is needed.”Police said in a statement they had been alerted to a shooting in the city of Sodertalje, where Momika lived.The shooting occurred indoors and when police arrived they found a man who had been “hit by shots and the man was taken to hospital”, the statement said.In a later update, police said the man had died and a murder investigation had been opened.Several media outlets identified the deceased as Momika, and reported that the shooting may have been broadcast live on social media.In August, Momika, along with co-protester Salwan Najem, was charged with “agitation against an ethnic group” on four occasions in the summer of 2023.According to the charge sheet, the duo desecrated the Koran, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims — on one occasion outside a Stockholm mosque.Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s protests.Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.In August of that year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after the Koran burnings had made the country a “prioritised target”.The Swedish government condemned the desecrations while noting the country’s constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly laws.In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted a man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 Koran burning, the first time the country’s court system had tried the charge for desecrating Islam’s holy book.Prosecutors have previously said that under Swedish law, the burning of a Koran can be seen as a critique of the book and the religion, and thus be protected under free speech.However, depending on the context and statements made at the time, it can also be considered “agitation against an ethnic group.”

Israel and Hamas were set to carry out their third hostage-prisoner exchange on Thursday, with three Israelis and five Thai captives slated for release as part of a ceasefire deal aimed at ending the Gaza war.A fourth exchange is scheduled for the weekend, but Hamas accused Israel on Wednesday of jeopardising the deal by holding up aid deliveries, an allegation Israel dismissed as “fake news”.The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu identified the three Israelis to be released on Thursday as Arbel Yehud, Agam Berger and Gadi Moses, adding that five Thais held in Gaza would also be freed.Ahead of the release, which sources in Hamas and allied militant group Islamic Jihad said would take place at Jabalia refugee camp and Khan Yunis at around 0900 GMT, Islamic jihad aired video footage of Moses and Yehud hugging each other and smiling.On Wednesday, a Moses family statement said it had “received with great excitement the wonderful news of our beloved Gadi’s return”.The ceasefire that began on January 19 hinges on the release of Israeli hostages taken during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, in exchange for 1,900 people — mostly Palestinians — in Israeli custody.Hamas has so far released seven hostages, with 290 prisoners freed in exchange. Israel is to release 110 prisoners, including 30 minors, in exchange for the three Israelis, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said.The next swap on Saturday will see three Israeli men released, according to Netanyahu’s office.- Aid trucks row -The truce deal has allowed truckloads of aid into the devastated Gaza Strip, where the war has created a long-running humanitarian crisis.But two senior Hamas officials accused Israel of slowing aid deliveries, with one citing key items such as fuel, tents, heavy machinery and other equipment.”According to the agreement, these materials were supposed to enter during the first week of the ceasefire,” one official said.”We warn that continued delays and failure to address these points will affect the natural progression of the agreement, including the prisoner exchange.”Israel hit back, with a spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, calling it “totally fake news”.Between Sunday and 1100 GMT on Wednesday, “3,000 trucks entered Gaza”, the spokesman said. “The agreement says it should be 4,200 in seven days,” he added.As the text of the agreement — mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States — has not been made public, AFP was not able to verify its terms on aid.Both Hamas officials said representatives of the group had raised the issue during a meeting with Egyptian officials on Wednesday.- Displacement ‘injustice’ -The ceasefire deal is currently in its first, 42-day phase, which should see 33 hostages freed.Next, the parties are due to start discussing a long-term end to the war. The third and final phase of the deal should see the reconstruction of Gaza and the return of any remaining dead hostages.US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for sealing the agreement despite it taking effect just ahead of his inauguration, and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who took part in the talks, met Netanyahu in Israel on Wednesday.Trump has invited Netanyahu to the White House on February 4, according to the premier’s office.After the truce took effect, Trump touted a plan to “clean out” Gaza, calling for Palestinians to relocate to neighbouring countries such as Egypt or Jordan.The idea has faced strong backlash from both countries, and from European governments.Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Wednesday the forced displacement of Palestinians was an “injustice that we cannot take part in”.Jordan’s King Abdullah II stressed “the need to keep the Palestinians on their land and to guarantee their legitimate rights, in accordance with the Israeli and Palestinian two-state solution”.More than 376,000 displaced Palestinians have gone back to northern Gaza since Israel reopened access earlier this week, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA, with many returning to little more than rubble.”My house is destroyed,” 33-year-old Mohammed Al-Faleh told AFP. “This morning, we built a small room with two walls made from the remains of our home. There is no cement, so I used mud.”The biggest problem is that there is no water — all the water wells are destroyed,” he added.”Food aid is reaching Gaza… but there is no gas or electricity. We bake bread on a fire fuelled by wood and nylon.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has vowed to ban on Thursday, is seen by some as an irreplaceable humanitarian lifeline in Gaza, and as an accomplice of Hamas by others.The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has for more than seven decades provided essential aid and assistance to Palestinian refugees. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has described the organisation as “a lifeline” for nearly six million Palestinian refugees under its charge.But the agency has long been a lightning rod for harsh Israeli criticism, which ramped up dramatically after Hamas’s deadly attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023 sparked the war in Gaza.Israel has accused the agency of bias and of being “riddled with Hamas operatives”, and last October, Israeli lawmakers voted to bar the agency from operating on Israeli territory as of January 30.  – Created in wake of war -UNRWA was established in December 1949 by the UN General Assembly following the first Arab-Israeli conflict after Israel’s creation in May 1948.The agency began its operations on May 1, 1950, tasked with assisting some 750,000 Palestinians who had been expelled or fled during the war.It was supposed to be a short-term fix, but in the absence of a lasting solution for the refugees, the General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate, most recently extending it until June 30, 2026.- Millions of refugees -The number of people under its charge has ballooned to nearly six million across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.Palestinian refugees are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict”. Their descendents also have refugee status.- Operations -UNRWA is the main provider of basic public services, including education, healthcare, and social services for registered Palestinian refugees. It employs more than 30,000, mainly Palestinian refugees themselves and a small number of international staff.The organisation counts 58 official refugee camps and runs more than 700 schools for over 540,000 students.It also runs 141 primary healthcare facilities, with nearly seven million patient visits each year, and provides emergency food and cash assistance to some 1.8 million people.- Gaza -In the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas since 2007, the humanitarian situation was already critical before the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023, with more than 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line. The territory, squeezed between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, counts eight camps and around 1.7 million refugees, the overwhelming majority of its 2.4 million inhabitants, according to the UN.Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed more than 47,300 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.Before a fragile ceasefire took effect on January 19, around two-thirds of all buildings in Gaza had been destroyed, and nearly the entire population had been displaced, many of them multiple times, according to the UN.UNRWA, which employs some 13,000 in Gaza, has seen 273 of its staff killed and two-thirds of its facilities there damaged or destroyed.The agency says it had brought in 60 percent of the food that has reached Gaza since the war began and had provided shelter to over a million displaced people.- Israeli criticism -Israel has long alleged that UNRWA is perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem and that its schools use textbooks that promote hatred of Israel.Since October 7, the criticism has ballooned, particularly targeting UNRWA in Gaza.Israel claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the deadly 2023 attack.A series of probes found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA, but found no evidence for Israel’s chief allegations.The agency, which traditionally has been funded almost exclusively through voluntary contributions from governments, was plunged into crisis as a string of nations halted their backing over Israel’s allegations.Most donors have since resumed funding, although not the United States.Under US President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House earlier this month, the United States has thrown its weight behind Israel’s UNRWA ban.Both Israel and the US insist other agencies can pick up the slack to provide essential services, aid and reconstruction — something the UN and many donor governments dispute.Warning that implementation of the Israeli order would be “disastrous”, Lazzarini said this week that the agency was determined “to stay and deliver until it is no longer possible to do so”.UN chief Antonio Guterres meanwhile demanded that Israel retract its order, insisting that UNRWA was “irreplaceable”.

Asian equities were mixed in another holiday-thinned trading day Thursday, with investors digesting broadly positive tech earnings that came days after the upheaval caused by China’s DeepSeek explosion onto the global AI scene.With most markets closed for the Lunar New Year break, there was little major reaction to the Federal Reserve’s widely expected pause in …

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