Japanese billionaire Masatoshi Ito, who helped turn 7-Eleven convenience stores into a global business empire, has died aged 98. He died last Friday from old age, operator Seven & i Holdings said in a statement. “We would like to express our sincere gratitude to him for his kindness during his lifetime,” the firm said. There are more than 83,000 7-Eleven stores around the world, with a quarter of them located in Japan.  In 1956, Mr Ito took over a small Tokyo apparel store business that had been run by his uncle then half-brother. Mr Ito later renamed it Ito-Yokado and turned the business into a chain of one-stop stores that sold everything from groceries to clothes. It went public in 1972. Around the same time, an executive at Ito-Yokado, Toshifumi Suzuki, spotted a 7-Eleven store during a visit to the US. Ito-Yokado later forged a deal with 7-Eleven’s owner – the US-based Southland Corporation – and opened Japan’s first 7-Eleven in 1974. Mr Ito’s firm moved to acquire a controlling stake in Southland Corporation in March 1990.(BBC)…[+]

At least eight people have died after two boats capsized off the California coast, emergency services have said. A search began after the boats got in trouble off Black’s Beach, San Diego. A 911 caller told emergency services she had been on a boat with eight people that made it to shore, but another vessel, carrying eight to 10 people, had capsized. San Diego Lifeguard chief James Gartland called it one of the state’s worst maritime smuggling tragedies. Officials said they did not know the nationalities of the victims but they were all adults. One San Diego police officer told local media the 911 caller had said she was Mexican. Carlos González Gtez, the Mexican consul general in San Diego, wrote on Twitter that his office “laments the maritime tragedy” and is “working to identify people of Mexican origin and assist their families”. Emergency responders from several agencies found two overturned boats with bodies spread over an area of 400 yards (366m). The search operation was suspended on Sunday evening.(BBC)…[+]

Israel’s education minister has apologised to Ethiopian Israeli schoolgirls whose teachers mocked them in a WhatsApp group on a school trip. The girls spotted the teachers messaging each other in a chat group they created called Black School Trip. One of the girls filmed the chat over a teacher’s shoulder, then shared it on social media, calling the teachers “a disgrace”. The teachers involved were suspended and the incident is being investigated. There are about 150,000 citizens of Ethiopian origin in Israel, the first of whom arrived in sizeable numbers in a series of top secret Mossad-led operations in the 1980s. The Ethiopian Jews’ integration in Israel has been challenging, with the community suffering disproportionately high levels of unemployment and poverty as well as discrimination, although their situation has shown signs of improvement in recent years. Last Monday, teachers and pupils from a religious high school in Netivot, southern Israel, set off on a three-day trip. Girls sitting behind one of the teachers saw her messaging in the group chat, which contained disparaging comments towards the Ethiopian Israeli pupils.(BBC)…[+]