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.”
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS