JAPAN
James Bond volcano erupts
A volcano that figured in a 1960s James Bond movie erupted explosively yesterday for the first time since April, sending smoke thousands of meters into the air, less than a week after a strong earthquake shook the west of the country. Shinmoedake, in a mainly rural area about 985km from Tokyo on the southernmost main island of Kyushu, had quietened down since the earlier eruption, although admission to the 1,421m-high peak remained restricted. Television images showed smoke and ash billowing into the air above the peak, which featured in the 1967 spy film You Only Live Twice. Rock was thrown as far as 1,100m from the mountain, TBS television said. The country has 110 active volcanoes and monitors 47 constantly.
INDIA
Charity workers gang-raped
Five women working for a charity in the remote east were abducted and gang-raped at gunpoint, police said yesterday, in the latest horrific sex assault in the country. They were performing a play to raise awareness about human trafficking in the largely tribal Khunti district of Jharkhand state on Tuesday when they were abducted, the women said in their complaint. The assailants shot videos of the attack and threatened the women if they went to the police. The women worked for the non-governmental organization Asha Kiran, police officer Rajesh Prasad said. “We have been questioning several people,” Prasad said. Police have also rounded up some supporters of Pathalgadi, an anti-establishment self-rule movement. Pathalgadi supporters resent outsiders and do not allow them to enter or settle in their area. The women had undergone medical tests and that police are awaiting the results, Prasad said.
INDIA
Rat shreds ATM rupees
When bank technicians were finally summoned to investigate why an automated teller machine (ATM) had not been working for days, they began to smell a rat. What they found inside the ATM was almost US$18,000 worth of shredded Indian rupee notes and one dead rodent that had somehow eluded the machine’s security camera for its next, and last, meal, a State Bank of India (SBI) official said on Thursday. “The ATM was out of order for a few days and when our technicians opened the kiosk we were shocked to find shredded notes and a dead rat,” SBI branch manager Chandan Sharma said in Tinsukia in the state of Assam. Of the 2.9 million rupees (US$42,788) in the ATM, 1.7 million rupees were recovered intact, but banknotes worth 1.2 million rupees were destroyed.
BRAZIL
Dog in custody battle
Every dog has his day, but one dog is to have the equivalent of parental visiting days after a court ruled that a separated couple must share their pooch. The Sao Paulo couple got their Yorkshire terrier in 2008, but the dog became a bone of contention when they split up in 2011. The woman not only held on to the animal but, according to her former partner, “prevented him from entering into contact,” the Superior Justice Tribunal said in a statement from Brasilia. Taking his former companion to court, initially in Sao Paulo and then all the way to the Superior Justice Tribunal appeals court, the man claimed “intense anguish” over the separation. The tribunal on Tuesday ruled to uphold the Sao Paulo court’s earlier decision in favor of the dog-loving man. He is now entitled to visit the lucky dog “at times such as weekends, holidays and end-of-year celebrations,” the tribunal said.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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