Daniel Radcliffe to play US journalist investigating Japanese underworld in 'Tokyo Vice'

Daniel Radcliffe is to play the lead role in the film adaptation of "Tokyo Vice", the real-life experiences of Jake Adelstein, an American journalist who waded dangerously far into the murky waters of Japan's underworld.

Daniel Radcliffe is to play the lead role in the film adaptation of "Tokyo Vice" 

By Julian Ryall in Tokyo

BST 02 May 2013

Adelstein co-wrote the screenplay for the movie, which will be directed by Anthony Mandler, with filming expected to get under way in Tokyo in the early part of 2014.

Adelstein - who grew up on a farm in Missouri - was the first American to get the crime beat at the Yomiuri newspaper in Tokyo, although the job did bring him into direct conflict with Tadamasa Goto, one of Japan's most notorious and ruthless gangsters.

The death threats escalated after Adelstein revealed that Goto and three other yakuza had undergone liver transplants in the United States after doing a deal with the FBI to provide information on the activities of other Japanese underworld groups in the US.

"Daniel read the book last year, said that he really liked it and said he wanted to do the project," Adelstein told The Daily Telegraph. "One of the things that impressed me from the outset was that he said he wanted to learn Japanese to play the part.

"Initially I was not sure about him for the role, but once he said that, showed such an interest in journalism and was just so enthusiastic about the whole thing, then I thought he would be great for the role."

HIVI NDIVYO FRANCIS CHEKA ALIVYOMZIMISHA MASHALI KWA KO

May 2, 2013 at 9:30am

 
Thomas Mashali akidondoka nje ya ulingo baada ya kupigwa konde la Francis Cheka.

 
...Mashali akijaribu kurudi uwanjani bila mafanikio.

 
...Akisaidiwa kurudi ulingoni na mwamuzi.

 
...Cheka akimtupia konde Mashali.

 
...Cheka baada ya kumaliza kazi.

 
...Mashali akiwa hoi chini.

 
...Akiulizwa kama ataweza kuendelea.

 
...Mashali akijaribu kuinuka.

 
Francis Cheka akitangazwa kuwa mshindi baada ya kumpiga Mashali kwa KO raundi ya kumi.

Indian 'spy' dies after attack in Pakistan prison

An Indian national on death row in Pakistan who was attacked last week by fellow inmates has died from his injuries. 

 

 

By AFP.BST 02 May 2013

Sarabjit Singh, who was sentenced to death 16 years ago on espionage charges, died at 1am local time (2000 GMT) after lying in a comatose state for the last five days, a senior doctor at Jinnah hospital in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore said.

Singh's lawyer Owais Sheikh confirmed the 49-year-old's death and said that his body "has been moved to the hospital mortuary".

The doctor said arrangements were under way for an autopsy.

Singh sustained several injuries, including a fractured skull, when six prisoners attacked him on Friday last week, hitting him on the head with bricks.

"(His death) was already feared. His condition was more than critical and he had less chances of survival," Mr Sheikh said.

Father Ian Weatherhill, last link to the British Raj, dies in India

  

The last British missionary in India, Father Ian Weatherall, has died in New Delhi, aged 91.

Fr Weatherall, who grew up in British India and served as an officer in the Punjab Infantry regiment in the Second World War, was described as one of the last links between the British Raj and the new independent India.

He knew India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the members of his first cabinet, and witnessed many of the key events in the creation of modern India.

Britain's military advisor in India, Brigadier Brian McCall, and Sir Mark Tully, the veteran author and broadcaster, led tributes to him and described him as a "citizen of two cultures" who dedicated his life to India but remained passionately British to the end.

Fr Weatherall spent his early years in Calcutta, where his father was a British Army officer, and Scotland before returning to serve as a jungle warfare specialist on the North East Frontier, training troops to fight the Japanese in Burma. At the end of the war, he spent a few nights at a monastic seminary in Delhi on his way home to demobilisation in Britain, and was so moved he decided he would become a priest.

He studied theology in Britain and returned to India in the late 1940s to Delhi to serve as an Anglican priest. He became a prominent member of the Cambridge Brotherhood order in Delhi and the founder of its social work with leprosy victims and the poor and elderly in East Delhi. He served as a director of Delhi's St Stephen's Hospital, and vice-chairman of St Stephen's College, the most prestigious of the Delhi University colleges.

North Korea sentences American tour guide to 15 years hard labour

North Korea has sentenced an American tour guide to 15 years in a labour camp for unspecified crimes against the state.

 

By By Malcolm Moore in Beijing

4:20AM BST 02 May 2013

Kenneth Bae (Pae Jun-ho), a 44-year-old ethnic Korean with United States citizenship, appeared on trial before the Supreme Court in Pyongyang on Tuesday, according to the North Korean state news wire.

He was charged with "committing crimes aimed at toppling the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with hostility towards it".

Mr Bae was arrested last November as he led a tour group of five Europeans into the Rason Special Economic Zone, a pilot region on the border of China and Russia which is open to foreign companies.

Mr Bae, who is believed to live in China, ran a travel company called Nation Tours and had led several trips into North Korea without incident.

North Korea has not revealed what crime he committed, but said "his crimes were proved by evidence".