RUSSIA
Rescuers die in mine
Six people have died — most of them rescuers — in a new explosion in a mine in the Komi region where 26 miners went missing following an accident on Thursday, officials said yesterday. Minister of Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov also said that the 26 miners were most likely also dead. Four miners had already been declared dead on Thursday after the collapse at the Severnaya mine in Vorkuta, which is within the Arctic Circle. A massive search operation involving hundreds of rescue workers has been underway since then.
ARGENTINA
urassic find announced
Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a major Jurassic-era fossil site four years after it was first discovered. The site, which spans 60,000km2 in Patagonia, came to light this week with the publication of a report in the journal Ameghiniana. “No other place in the world contains the same amount and diversity of Jurassic fossils,” said geologist Juan Garcia Massini of the Regional Center for Scientific Research and Technology Transfer. The fossils — between 140 and 160 million years old — lie on the surface because they were recently exposed by erosion, said Garcia Massini, who leads the research team investigating the site. “You can see the landscape as it appeared in the Jurassic — how thermal waters, lakes and streams as well as plants and other parts of the ecosystem were distributed.” The fossils are so well preserved, that researchers say each rock extracted from the site could possibly open the door to a new discovery.
GERMANY
Bachelor party ejected
Police in Berlin on Saturday said the pilot of a Ryanair plane on a flight from London to Bratislava made an unscheduled landing to eject members of a bachelor party — including the groom. They said the six men had disturbed security on board the plane and ignored the crew’s instructions, prompting the pilot to land in Berlin late on Friday. Police said the drunken Englishmen aged 25 to 28 from Southampton were met by officers upon landing at Berlin-Schoenefeld Airport. They face fines of up to 25,000 euros (US$27,330) each and civil claims from the airline. The rest of the passengers, including six members of the bachelor party who had not been rowdy, continued their flight to Slovakia.
PUERTO RICO
Cocaine shipment seized
The US Customs and Border Protection on Saturday said it is investigating the origin of almost a half-tonne of cocaine seized last week from a shipping container at San Juan port. Officers said 413kg of cocaine worth an estimated US$11.5 million was found during an inspection after an X-ray of the container revealed irregularities. Several brick-shaped objects wrapped in plastic bags contained a substance that tested positive for cocaine. The container was headed for the US.
UNITED STATES
Burmese pythons nabbed
Florida wildlife officials said 106 Burmese pythons were caught during a state-sanctioned hunt for the invasive snakes. The longest was 4.5m. More than 1,000 people from 29 states registered to remove pythons from south Florida’s wetlands between Jan. 16 and Feb. 14. University of Florida professor Frank Mazzotti said the stomach contents of the pythons are still being analyzed, but so far the prey has included a fawn and a wood stork and other large wading birds.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of