Briefly

UNITED KINGDOM

Ex-leaders urge G7 to pay more for jabs

One hundred former presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have urged the Group of Seven nations to pay for global coronavirus vaccinations to help stop the virus mutating and returning as a worldwide threat. The leaders made their appeal ahead of a G7 summit in England that begins on Friday, when US President Joe Biden will meet the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan. In their letter to the G7, the former leaders said global cooperation had failed in 2020, but that 2021 could usher in a new era. Among the signatories were ex-British premiers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and 15 former African leaders.

JAPAN

Suicide suspected in Games official's death

A staff member of the Japanese Olympic Committee has reportedly died in a suicide in Tokyo's subway on Monday, private broadcaster Nippon Television reported, citing Tokyo metropolitan police sources. Yasushi Moriya, 52, who worked as an accounting manager with the committee, jumped in front of an approaching train from a subway platform in the morning. He was sent to a hospital for treatment but died two hours later. The police have viewed his death as suicide but are investigating the details, the TV network added.

SOUTH KOREA

Seoul court rejects slave labor claim

A South Korean court on Monday rejected a claim by dozens of wartime Korean factory workers and their relatives who sought compensation from 16 Japanese companies for their slave labor during Japan's colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula. A total of 85 plaintiffs had sought a combined 8.6 billion won ($7.7 million) in damages against the Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel, Nissan Chemical and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The decision by the Seoul Central District Court appeared to run against landmark Supreme Court rulings in 2018 that ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate Korean forced laborers.

GERMANY

Last Soviet liberator of Auschwitz dies

David Dushman, the last surviving Soviet soldier involved in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, died in a Munich hospital on Saturday. He was 98. As a young Red Army soldier, Dushman flattened the forbidding electric fence around the notorious death camp with his T-34 tank on Jan 27, 1945. More than a million people, most of them Jews deported there from all over Europe, were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945.

Agencies - Xinhua