■UNITED KINGDOM
Snappy crackers guaranteed
Researchers have devised what they say is a guaranteed method of pulling crackers to avoid disappointment, reports said yesterday. The experts say the method for always winning the long end of the cracker, and therefore the prize inside, is in the angle that you grip it — and they have released a mathematical formula to follow. You are guaranteed success if you follow the formula O=11xC/L+5xQ, which is based on the angle, grip and quality of the cracker. You must first multiply the circumference of the cracker in inches (C) by 11 before dividing that number by the length (L) of the barrel. Take that total and add it to the figure you get when you multiply the quality (Q) — either 1, 2 or 3 depending on whether the cracker is cheap, standard or premium — by five, the Daily Mail said. The formula ought to produce a figure between 20 and 55 degrees, which is the optimum pulling angle (O). The cracker should also be pulled 2.54cm from the end of the tail. A quality control team at Debenhams department store pulled hundreds of crackers in the run-up to Christmas before discovering the winning formula.
■GERMANY
Helpful boy pulled over
A seven-year-old boy was stopped by police in the northern town of Reinfeld while trying to plow snow with a front loader he borrowed from his parents’ business. Officers found the boy atop the 3.5m-tall excavator after he had cleared a street and was driving back to the parking lot. “He opened the door, got out and admitted immediately that he did not have a driving license,” the police report said. When asked why he had begun plowing, he said his father had complained about the state of the roads. He saw the key in the ignition of the vehicle and took off.
■UNITED STATES
New roach discovered
A Rockefeller University study appears to have uncovered a new species of cockroach in New York City. “The cockroach is genetically modified. Species don’t differ more than 1 percent, this cockroach is 4 percent different, which suggests it is a new species of cockroach,” said Mark Stoeckle, an expert on genomics and DNA barcoding at the university. The previously unidentified creepy-crawly was uncovered as part of a project undertaken by two high-school students, Brenda Tan, 17, and Matt Cost, 18, under Stoeckle’s supervision. The pair trawled New York apartments, stores and street, collecting 217 specimens between November last year and March. They took samples from supermarket food, the remains of an insect found in a box of fruit, a feather from a duster, dried dung and a cockroach and matched DNA sequences using the Barcode of Life Database and GenBank. The American Museum of Natural History laboratory identified 170 genetic codes, leading the researchers to identify 95 different animal species, including some that were unexpected. “A feather from a duster yielded ostrich DNA. A delicacy labeled ‘sturgeon caviar’ instead turned out to be from the paddlefish. A popular Asian snack was revealed as giant flying squid. Bison DNA was found in a dog biscuit,” the pair wrote on the university Web site.
■UNITED STATES
Hallyday home for Xmas
French rocker and entertainment icon Johnny Hallyday has left Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles after about two weeks of hospitalization for back surgery. Hallyday’s press agency says the 66-year-old star joined his wife and two daughters at their Los Angeles home.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not