World/Nation

Slain Japanese hostage inspires forgiveness

TOKYO - Kenji Goto's words, now more than four years old, have taken on a new poignancy.

"Closing my eyes and holding still. It's the end if I get mad or scream. It's close to a prayer. Hate is not for humans. Judgment lies with God. That's what I learned from my Arabic brothers and sisters."

That tweet from Sept. 7, 2010, has been embraced by social media users as a fitting memorial to the 47-year-old freelance journalist. It had 20,000 retweets by Monday, and was being repeated by others by the minute.

Early Sunday, news emerged that Goto had been killed by extremists of the Islamic State group after efforts to secure his release from months of captivity failed. His reported death followed that of another Japanese hostage, adventurer Haruna Yukawa, who was also being held by the militants.

The Twitter account was verified as Goto's by his friend Toshi Maeda, who heads Tokyo-based venture Pacific Bridge, which created the mobile-video application Goto used for some of his reports from Syria.

Forecasts along Northeast warn of 'flash freeze'

BOSTON - Boston scrambled to dig out Monday from the second major winter storm in a week and delayed a celebratory Super Bowl parade, and forecasters from Philadelphia to Portland, Maine, warned that "flash freezing" could make roads dangerously slippery.

Officials said a Massachusetts woman was run over and killed by a snowplow, and New York state police said two people were killed in a multivehicle crash on an interstate in Rye.

Ukrainian troops repel rebels near key rail hub

DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine - As Ukrainian troops fought Monday to defend a strategic railway hub, Russian-backed separatists pledged to boost the size of their force and Washington pondered whether to expand its assistance to Ukraine to include lethal aid.

President Barack Obama has so far opposed sending lethal assistance, but an upsurge in fighting in eastern Ukraine has spurred the White House to take a fresh look at supplying Ukraine with such aid, a senior administration official said.

Since the unrest in eastern Ukraine surged anew in early January, the separatists have made notable strides in clawing territory away from the government in Kiev. Their main offensive is now directed at Debaltseve - a government-held railway junction once populated by 25,000 people that lies between the rebel-held cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Almost 2,000 residents have fled in the last few days alone.

Rebel forces have mounted multiple assaults on government positions in Debaltseve but all were repelled, a spokesman for Ukrainian military operations in the east, Andriy Lysenko, said Monday.

Journalist feels 'relief, excitement' over release

CAIRO - Al-Jazeera journalist Peter Greste expressed "relief and excitement" Monday at being freed after more than a year in an Egyptian prison, but also said he felt real stress over leaving his two jailed colleagues behind.

His first public comments came as a court in Egypt sentenced 183 people to death in the violence following the 2013 ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi in the latest in a series of harsh punishments that have drawn condemnation at home and abroad.

Greste, an Australian, told Al-Jazeera English he experienced a "real mix of emotions" when he was freed Sunday because fellow journalists Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian Canadian, and Baher Mohammed, an Egyptian, remained imprisoned on terrorism charges and for spreading false information. The three were arrested in December 2013 and received sentences of seven to 10 years before their convictions were overturned on appeal. A retrial began Jan. 1.

Authorities presented no concrete evidence to back the charges against them. They insisted they were doing their jobs and are widely seen as having been caught up in a quarrel between Egypt and Qatar, which funds Al-Jazeera and was a strong backer of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood.

"It was a very difficult moment walking out of that prison, saying goodbye to the guys, not knowing how much longer they all have to put up with this," said the 49-year-old Greste.

Hezbollah faces hard choices between fighting

BEIRUT - Hezbollah's ambitions are spreading far beyond its Lebanon home as the militant Shiite movement appears increasingly bent on taking on Sunni foes across the Middle East. It has sent thousands of its fighters into Syria and senior military advisers to Iraq, helped Shiite rebels rise to power in Yemen and threatened Bahrain over its abuse of the Shiite majority.

But the regional aspirations also are taking a heavy toll and threatening to undermine Hezbollah's support at home. The group has suffered significant casualties, there is talk of becoming overstretched, and judging by the events of recent days, even a vague sense that the appetite for fighting the Israelis is waning.

- The Associated Press