SPAIN
Bodies recovered in collapse
Emergency services have recovered the bodies of four people from beneath the rubble of a six-story building that collapsed in central Madrid while being refurbished into a hotel, local authorities said yesterday. The victims have been identified as three men aged 30 to 50 from Ecuador, Mali and Guinea-Conakry, and employed at the site as construction workers, as well as a 30-year-old woman, the renovation project’s architect. Their remains were found early yesterday, nearly 15 hours after the collapse of the building’s interior structure that left its facade intact. Three other construction workers were injured.
Photo: Reuters
SINGAPORE
Drug trafficker executed
The government yesterday hanged a Malaysian drug trafficker, marking the second execution in two weeks and raising the number of executions in the city-state to 12 this year despite pressure to abolish the death penalty. Anti-death penalty activist Kirsten Han (韓俐穎) confirmed that 38-year-old Pannir Selvam Pranthaman was executed at Changi Prison. Han, who is accompanying his family, said they have collected Pannir’s belongings from the prison. Pannir was arrested in 2014 for possession of 52g of heroin and sentenced to death in 2017.
CHINA
Everest hikers rescued
About 900 hikers, guides and other staff who were stranded by a weekend snowstorm on the Chinese side of Mount Everest have reached safety, state media said late on Tuesday. A severe storm struck the area on Saturday night, cutting off access to where the hikers were staying in tents at an altitude of more than 4,900m. In all, 580 hikers and more than 300 guides, yak herders and other workers were stranded. About 350 hikers were able to descend by noon on Monday and the rest had arrived by Tuesday, state media said.
JAPAN
Bear injures two in market
An agitated bear on Tuesday night roamed the aisles of a supermarket in Numata, injuring two men and frightening shoppers; separately a man was found dead in a suspected mauling, officials and reports said yesterday. The man was found dead on a mountain yesterday in northern Iwate Prefecture, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing police. The 1.4m adult bear that entered the supermarket lightly injured a man in his 70s and another in his 60s, regional police and fire officials said. The store is close to mountainous areas, but has never had bears come near before, said Hiroshi Horikawa, a management planning official at the grocery store chain.
AUSTRALIA
Study links DNA to depression
Women are genetically at higher risk of clinical depression than men, researchers found in a study published yesterday. Billed as one of the largest-ever studies of its kind, scientists poured through the DNA of almost 200,000 people with depression to pinpoint shared genetic “flags.” Women had almost twice as many of the genetic markers linked to depression than men, according to the project led by the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. “The genetic component to depression is larger in females compared to males,” researcher Jodi Thomas said. “Unpacking the shared and unique genetic factors in males and females gives us a clearer picture of what causes depression — and opens the door to more personalized treatments.” About 13,000 genetic markers were linked with depression in women, compared with 7,000 markers in men, the researchers found.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
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