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.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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