FINLAND
Drone scare disrupts flights
The government early yesterday warned the public of drones possibly entering its airspace for the first time near Helsinki. Flights were disrupted at the country’s biggest airport, Helsinki-Vantaa, and about 1.8 million residents in the south were told to remain indoors after overnight Ukrainian strikes on Russia near Finland prompted concern that uncrewed aircraft had strayed into the country. The emergency warning was issued at 3:49am and authorities said a drone was expected to be heading toward an area between Helsinki and Porvoo, home to assets including Neste Oyj’s oil refinery on the south coast. The alert was lifted at 7:06am. The Finnish Defense Forces raised their readiness level and scrambled fighter jets, and air traffic at Helsinki-Vantaa airport and shipping traffic in the Gulf of Finland were rerouted. Some flights arriving from Asia were diverted to airports in the northern town of Rovaniemi and Stockholm. The Ministry of the Interior said one drone entered Finnish territory, but its location remains unknown and no damage or casualties have been reported.
PAKISTAN
Militant attack kills nine
Militants attacked a security compound in the northwest with an explosives-laden truck and gunfire, killing at least nine paramilitary officers, officials said yesterday. The violence on Thursday in Bajaur follows a deadly car bomb and mortar attack in the past week that left 21 people dead in the same restive region bordering Afghanistan. “In the attack, nine paramilitary officers and 10 militants were killed,” a senior security official in Peshawar said, adding that the attackers drove the explosives-loaded vehicle into the compound’s gate. The attackers fled after a prolonged exchange of fire with security personnel, at least 35 of whom were wounded in the assault, the official added. The militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, very active in the region, claimed responsibility for the attack.
PHILIPPINES
Power cuts hit millions
Widespread power cuts yesterday struck the nation, leaving millions without electricity in the tropical nation’s hottest month of the year. The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said rolling one-hour power outages hit parts of Metro Manila and the rest of the main island of Luzon from mid-afternoon. These were due to “major grid disruptions” that affected transmission lines, as well as a maintenance shutdown of several major power plants, the NGCP and the Department of Energy said. The disruptions are scheduled to spread to the central islands, leading to seven-hour power cuts, NGCP said.
DR CONGO
New Ebola outbreak: CDC
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the continent’s top public health body, yesterday confirmed a new Ebola outbreak in the remote Ituri province, with 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths recorded. The deaths and suspected cases have been recorded mainly in the Mongwalu and Rwampara health zones, the CDC said in a statement. Four deaths have been reported among laboratory-confirmed cases. Suspected cases have also been reported in Bunia, pending confirmation,” the agency said. The latest outbreak comes around five months after the nation’s last Ebola outbreak was declared over after 43 deaths. The new outbreak is the country’s 17th since the disease first emerged in the Congo in 1976.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
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