MALAYSIA
Snake diverts plane
An AirAsia plane was forced to divert and make an unscheduled landing after a snake was spotted slithering through the overhead lights, the Malaysian budget carrier said on Monday. In a video social media users were quick to link with the Samuel L. Jackson cult classic Snakes on a Plane, the creature’s silhouette could be seen wriggling in the cabin’s light fittings. The incident, which the airline described as “very rare,” took place last week aboard a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tawau, on the eastern coast of Borneo island. After the captain found out about the snake, he took “appropriate action” and landed in Kuching — 900km west of Tawau — so the plane could be fumigated, AirAsia said. The passengers then boarded another flight to continue their journey. “At no time was the safety of guests or crew at any risk,” AirAsia chief safety officer Liong Tien Ling said in a statement. Social media users said that the incident was reminiscent of the 2006 action film that featured Jackson. “Snakes on a plane is real,” one user wrote. “One of my worst nightmares. Too scary for me,” another wrote.
FRANCE
Paris installs noise radar
Paris on Monday inaugurated its first noise radar as part of a plan to fine loud motorcycles and other vehicles in one of Europe’s noisiest cities. High on a street lamp in 20th District, the noise radar is able to measure the noise level of moving vehicles and to identify their license plate. “Too much noise makes people sick. For our health and quality of life ... this first sound radar’s aim is to automatically issue fines for vehicles that makes too much noise,” Paris Deputy Mayor David Belliard wrote on Twitter. In the next few months, the city will test whether the radar can unequivocally identify the license plates of roaring motorcycles or other vehicles, after which the equipment will have to be officially approved by authorities. No fines will be issued, but Paris plans to start fining from early next year, while the government deploys more noise radars in other French cities and tests out procedures for automating the fines.
UNITED STATES
Kids’ boat found in Norway
A small boat launched in October 2020 by some New Hampshire middle-school students and containing photographs, leaves, acorns and state quarters has been found 462 days later — by a sixth-grade student in Norway. The 1.8m Rye Riptides, decorated with artwork and equipped with a tracking device that went silent for parts of the journey, was found on Feb. 1 in Smola, a small island near Dyrnes, Norway, the Portsmouth Herald reported on Monday. It had lost its hull and keel on the 13,360km journey and was covered in gooseneck barnacles, but the deck and cargo hold were still intact. The student who found it, Karel Nuncic, took the boat to his school, and he and his classmates eagerly opened it last week. The school in Norway plans a telephone call with the Rye Junior High students. “When you’re sending it out, you have no idea where it’s going to end up, how it’s going to get there, if it ends up [anywhere] at all,” said Cassie Stymiest, executive director of Educational Passages, a Maine non-profit organization that began working with the school on the project in 2018. “But these kids, they put their hopes and dreams and wishes into it, and I tend to think sometimes that helps.” “I was surprised the boat actually made it somewhere,” seventh-grader Molly Flynn said. “I thought it was going to get stuck in some middle spot [on the map] and it actually made it, and it was really, really cool and surprising.”
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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