JAPAN: CULT MEMBER GETS DEATH PENALTY

Japan's Supreme Court upheld a death sentence handed to Satoru Hashimoto, 40, a member of the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult for killing seven people in 1994 by releasing Nazi-invented nerve gas, officials said. The court ruled that Hashimoto and other members of the cult sprayed sarin gas in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto in June 1994, killing seven residents under the instruction of Aum guru Shoko Asahara. Asahara, a charismatic former acupuncturist who preached of a coming apocalypse, is himself on death row. "It was an organised, cruel crime," presiding judge Osamu Tsuno said as he confirmed Hashimoto's sentence. The court also ruled that Hashimoto killed an anti-sect lawyer and his wife and their baby in 1989.