UNITED STATES
Bees can recognize by touch
The ability to see an object and then identify it by touch based on a mental recollection has been shown to exist in bumblebees, scientists reported on Thursday. Studying the insects’ sesame-sized brains, which contain about 1 million neurons as opposed to the 100 billion in human brains, sheds light on how cross-modal object recognition works, said Queen Mary University of London researcher Cwyn Solvi, lead author of a paper in Science. About 40 bees were tested with objects in a dark and windowless room and then with the lights on, but the bees still went to objects associated with a reward. “The bees have some unified internal representations of objects,” Solvi said.
AUSTRALIA
Two killed as train derails
Two people were killed and 12 injured when an interstate train derailed outside Melbourne on Thursday evening, police said. The train, which was traveling from Sydney, came off the rails about 50km from Melbourne. An unnamed male driver and an unidentified man died in the derailment, police said yesterday. Media carried photographs showing several carriages of the train askew off the tracks, with the locomotive on its side. Ambulance Victoria confirmed that one of the injured had been flown to a Melbourne hospital and another four people had been taken to a second hospital, where they were in stable condition. Transport authorities in New South Wales said that there were about 160 passengers on board.
LESOTHO
PM to be charged with murder
Prime Minister Thomas Thabane is to be charged with the June 2017 killing of his estranged wife, Lipolelo, a top police official said on Thursday, and the prime minister announced that he would be stepping down. The kingdom already has watched, shocked, as Thabane’s present wife, Masesaiah, was charged earlier this month with the murder after briefly fleeing the country. When the 80-year-old leader appeared yesterday at the Maseru Magistrates’ Court, he was also to face an attempted murder charge for the shooting of a person who was with his wife at the time, Deputy Commissioner of Police Paseka Mokete said.
FRANCE
Bed bug offensive begins
The government on Thursday launched a campaign to combat an influx of bed bugs that have settled in homes and hotels. After disappearing from the country in the 1950s, the insects have made a resurgence, the Ministry of Housing said. “We can all be affected,” the government warned on a Web page dedicated to the problem, complete with advice on how to prevent and treat an infestation, and a hotline number to call for expert help.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of