HANOI (XINHUA) – Two samples taken from dead tigers in southern Vietnam have tested positive for H5N1 bird flu virus, local media reported.
Twenty tigers and one leopard have died since early September at Mango Garden eco-resort in Dong Nai province.
The animals refused to eat, showed fatigue and had fever after having eaten chicken meat and chicken heads provided by a local company.
Head of the Department of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control at the Dong Nai Center for Disease Control Phan Van Phuc said it was likely that the deceased tigers were infected with the H5N1 virus from infected chicken meat, Vietnam News Agency reported.
Authorities are tracing the origin of the chicken to determine the infection source, he said.
The zoo has disinfected the enclosures and isolated the tiger zone to prevent further outbreaks, according to VnExpress.
The resort has been asked to restrict visitors and monitor the health of 30 people having close contact with the infected animals.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has recently reported sporadic cases of avian flu among poultry in several localities.
Director-General of CERN Fabiola Gianotti and French President Emmanuel Macron visit the ATLAS experiment at CERN. PHOTO: AP
GENEVA (AP) – The research centre that is home to the world’s largest particle accelerator is celebrated its 70th anniversary on Tuesday, with the physicists who run it aiming to unlock secrets about dark matter and other mysteries to promote science for peace in today’s conflict-darkened world.
Over the last seven decades, CERN, the sprawling research center on the Swiss-French border at Geneva, has become a household name in Europe, the West and beyond, but its complex inner workings remain a puzzle to many people.
Here’s a look at CERN and how its discoveries have changed the world and our view of the universe – and could change them more in coming years.
WHAT IS CERN?
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has retained the French-language acronym CERN for its predecessor outfit, had its origins in a 1951 meeting of the United Nations’ scientific organisation that sought to build a state-of-the-art physics research facility in Europe and ease a brain drain toward America after World War II.
Groundbreaking was on May 17, 1954.
Today, for cognoscenti, CERN is probably best known as home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), trumpeted as the world’s biggest machine, which powers a network of magnets to accelerate particles through a 27-kilometre underground loop in and around Geneva and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.
By capturing and interpreting the results of the collisions – as many as a billion per second – of such beams of particles, thousands of scientists both on hand at the centre and remotely around the world pore over the reams of resulting data and strive to explain how fundamental physics works.
CERN said collisions inside the LHC generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the core of the sun, on a small scale and in its controlled environment.
At the LHC, “we are able to reproduce every day the conditions of the primordial Universe as they were a millionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Yet, many crucial open questions remain”, CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti said in a prepared speech she made before many leaders of its 24 member countries.
Over the years, CERN and its experimental facilities have grown into a vast research hub with applications in many scientific fields and industries.
“In a world where conflicts between countries, cultures and religions sadly persist, this is a truly precious gift that cannot be taken for granted,” Gianotti added.
HOW HAS CERN CHANGED OUR WORLD AND OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNIVERSE?
Experiments in the collider helped confirm in 2012 the subatomic Higgs boson, an infinitesimal particle whose existence had been theorised decades earlier and whose confirmation completed the Standard Model of particle physics.
CERN is also where the World Wide Web was born, in the mind of British scientist Tim Berners-Lee 35 years ago, as a way to help universities and institutes share information.
In 1993, the software behind the web was put into the public domain – and the rest is history, in smartphones and on computers worldwide.
The spillover science and tools generated at CERN have rippled through the world economy.
Thousands of smaller particle accelerators operate around the world today, plumbing applications in fields as diverse as medicine and computer chip manufacturing.
Crystals developed for CERN experiments roughly four decades ago are now widely used in positron emission tomography (PET) scanners that can detect early signs of health troubles like cancer and heart disease.
Some sceptics have over the years stirred fears about CERN. Insiders variously argue and explain that such fears are overblown or inaccurate, and CERN has issued its own retort to some of the theories out there.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
For the most part, CERN technicians, researchers and theoreticians of more than 110 nationalities today carry out new experiments that aim to punch holes in the Standard Model – smashing up conventional understandings to move science forward – and explain a long list of lingering scientific unknowns.
Its scientific whizzes hope to solve riddles about dark energy – which makes up about 68 per cent of the universe and has a role in speeding up its expansion – and test hypotheses about dark matter, whose existence is only inferred and which appears to outweigh visible matter nearly six-to-one, making up slightly more than a quarter of the universe.
CERN has two big projects on its horizon. The first is the High-Luminosity LHC project that aims to ramp up the number of collisions – and thus the potential for new discoveries – starting in 2029.
The second, over the much longer term, is the Future Circular Collider, which is estimated to cost CHF15 billion (about USD17.2 billion) and is hoped to start operating in an initial phase by 2040.
ABOVE & BELOW: The Science Gateway Museum at CERN in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland; and a scale model of CERN’s Science Gateway project. PHOTO: APPHOTO: APDirector-General of CERN Fabiola Gianotti and French President Emmanuel Macron visit the ATLAS experiment at CERN. PHOTO: APA guest is reflected in an installation of an exhibition at the Science Gateway Museum. PHOTO: AP
UPI – A group of students from Pennsylvania, United States set a Guinness World Record by successfully dropping an egg from a height of 83 feet without it breaking.
The T/E Egg Drop Team, from the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District, designed a protective casing that enabled the egg to survive the high fall without cracking its shell. The team dropped their egg from a height of 83 feet and broke the record of 54.13 feet, which was set by Ritesh N of India in December 2023.
The Egg Drop Team comprised of Conestoga High School seniors Matthew Ma, Charlie Gawthrop and Jeffrey Wang, along with Valley Forge Middle School student Breckin Shefflerwood and teacher Derrick Wood.
“It was a lot of video evidence and paperwork to compile over the past few weeks, but it was definitely worth it,” Wood told Patch. “Hopefully this record will be like our egg – unbroken – for quite some time!”
Competitors during the eating contest in New Jersey, United States. PHOTO: AFP
TRENTON (AFP) – Each man gobbled up 44 meat rolls in 10 minutes, but it was the last bite that earned one of them the USD2,000 top prize in the very American pastime of competitive eating.
The winner, Geoffrey Esper, ate just a bit more of roll number 45 than his closest competitor, sealing his triumph in this chapter of a sport called Major League Eating (MLE).
The runner-up, James Webb, said that in most of the contests this year the winner down to the fourth place finisher were separated by “a swallow or a mouthful or a serving size”.
The 35-year-old Australian, who moved to the United States (US) to compete full-time, added, “It’s very competitive.”
The prize money is nowhere near enough to live on, said Webb, a bearded, healthy-looking man who gets by financially with help from sponsors and his YouTube channel, which has 115,000 viewers.
“Everybody’s got another job but Joey,” said Crazy Legs Conti, a maitre d’ at a New York restaurant who said he has made several thousand dollars this year on the pro-eating circuit.
That Joey is Joey Chestnut, an eating superstar who has won 16 of the last 18 editions of the yearly Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island, the Super Bowl of the MLE season.
Because of a problem with a sponsor Chestnut did not take part this year. But he did win USD100,000 by beating another competitive eating legend, Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, in a duel organised by Netflix.
Even with Chestnut absent, thousands of spectators gathered on Coney Island in July and around one million watched online as a man named Patrick Bertoletti took the title held by Chestnut and won USD10,000 by wolfing down 58 wieners in 10 minutes.
“There’s a lot of media coverage. We got more media coverage this year than ever before,” said MLE co-founder George Shea.
He has visions of expanding overseas, after organising an event in Thailand.
Competitors during the eating contest in New Jersey, United States. PHOTO: AFP
A car drives past a fallen tree as Typhoon Krathon nears Kaohsiung, Taiwan. PHOTO: AFP
KAOHSIUNG (AFP) – Typhoon Krathon made landfall in Taiwan’s south yesterday, the weather agency said, after forcing schools and offices to shut for a second day amid winds and rain that have left two dead and more than 100 injured.
Krathon was packing sustained wind speeds of 126 kilometres per hour (kph) and gusts of up to 162kph just before reaching the southern seaport city of Kaohsiung, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA).
“Typhoon Krathon made landfall near Kaohsiung’s Xiaogang district at around 12.40pm,” it said in a post on messaging app Line.
While CWA chief Cheng Chia-ping said on Wednesday that the typhoon was expected to weaken rapidly after landing, residents of Kaohsiung were urged to take shelter.
“There will be winds of destructive force caused by typhoon in this area. Take shelter ASAP,” the CWA said in a warning sent five times to residents’ mobile phones yesterday.
Kaohsiung’s mayor Chen Chi-mai told reporters they were experiencing “the strongest winds” ahead of the typhoon’s landfall.
“We urge residents not to go out unless necessary,” he said. “So far, Kaohsiung has recorded 356 disaster cases, mostly falling trees and advertising signs.”
A car drives past a fallen tree as Typhoon Krathon nears Kaohsiung, Taiwan. PHOTO: AFP
Torrential rain and powerful winds have already left at least two people dead, two missing and 123 injured, said the fire agency.
A 70-year-old man was rushed to hospital on Tuesday after he fell while trimming trees and died in hospital the next day.
And a 66-year-old man, hospitalised in nearby Taitung on Monday after his truck hit a huge rock that had fallen onto the road, also died on Wednesday.
Krathon has disrupted traffic, causing all domestic flights to be suspended for a second day and the cancellation of around 240 international flights.
Across Taiwan, nearly 10,000 people had been evacuated as of yesterday.
Krathon has caused mudslides and flooding, and damaged houses and roads in some areas as it slowly moves towards Taiwan, officials and reports said.
In Kaohsiung, strong gusts swept three motorcyclists to the ground as they were driving, while swaying buildings, shattering windows in some houses and uprooting trees.
Powerful waves pounded the coast with some seawater spilling onto a road and causing it to collapse in two places, TV footage showed.
In New Taipei city, where rain and wind was intensifying, a mudslide sent a large rock tumbling down onto a temple near a slope, partially smashing its roof, SET TV reported.
TOKYO (AFP) – Flights resumed at a regional Japanese airport yesterday after an unexploded World War II United States (US) bomb blew up less than a minute after a passenger jet taxied past.
Miyazaki airport in southern Japan originated in 1943 as an imperial Japanese navy base, sending dozens of kamikaze aircraft on suicide missions.
Footage obtained by AFP showed a plume of earth blasting at least 10 metres into the air on the edge of a taxiway at the airport on the island of Kyushu.
The explosion, which blew a hole in the tarmac a few metres across, occurred just less than a minute after an aircraft rolled past towards a runway, footage showed.
There were no reports of injuries but dozens of flights were cancelled on Wednesday, affecting more than 3,400 passengers.
The Self-Defense Forces’ (SDF) bomb disposal team investigated and concluded that it was a “US-made 250 kilogramme bomb,” an SDF spokesman told AFP.
Other unexploded US ordnance dropped was reportedly found in 2021 and 2011 in the airport, as well as at a nearby construction site in 2009.
Before the nuclear bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, the US airforce heavily bombarded dozens of Japanese cities.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens were killed, including around 100,000 in Tokyo on one night in March 1945 alone.
In the year to April 2024, the military safely removed 2,348 unexploded devices, 441 of them in the southern region of Okinawa, according to the SDF.
SYDNEY (XINHUA) – Health authorities in Australia’s most populous state have urged people at risk of contracting mpox to get vaccinated amid a spike in cases.
New South Wales (NSW) Health yesterday reported that there have been 433 confirmed cases of mpox in the state since June 1, the largest outbreak in NSW since its first case of the infectious disease was confirmed in May 2022.
Of those cases, 37 per cent were fully inoculated – having received two doses of a vaccine – 14 per cent had received one dose and 46 per cent were not vaccinated.
“The rapidly rising numbers of mpox cases detected across the state are very concerning, with 26 people requiring hospitalisation due to the severity of their symptoms,” NSW’s chief health officer Kerry Chant said in a statement.
She said that no cases of the fast-spreading clade 1b strain of mpox that has been circulating in Africa are detected in Australia.
A scenic lookout point on the west bank of Lake Songkhla. PHOTO: SAM CHEONG
ANN/THE STAR – Hatyai, one of Southern Thailand’s largest cities, is a popular destination, known for its delicious cuisine and lively shopping scene.
For cyclists, Hatyai is a gateway to many southern destinations. One highly recommended route is the 28 kilometres (km) ride to the picturesque coastal town of Songkhla, an ideal trip for first-time riders.
This popular route can be completed in a day, with more adventurous cyclists choosing to explore the port town further.
Starting on Route 414 towards Songkhla, you’ll find wide roads with ample space for cyclists, along with many petrol stations offering rest stops, coffee shops, and convenience stores. The ride to Songkhla takes about three hours by bike.
Once in Songkhla, you can detour to Ko Yo island via the Tinsulanonda Bridge or continue on the coastal Route 408 towards Nakhon Si Thammarat. This route is favoured by long-distance cyclists making the 920km journey to Bangkok.
Exploring Songkhla’s old town along Route 407 is a fantastic way to immerse yourself in the local culture. To save on costs on accommodations, consider booking in advance and avoiding peak seasons.
Don’t miss the old town’s pre-war buildings, showcasing Chinese architectural influences, or the local museum chronicling the history of the Chinese community.
Another highlight is the Mermaid of Samila Beach, an iconic monument facing the South China Sea, accessible via a scenic bike ride. The beach area is also home to numerous seafood restaurants.
Cycling around Songkhla is a great way to avoid the usual traffic congestion. The town offers excellent street food at night markets, with delicious stir-fried dishes.
With a moderate ride from Hatyai to Songkhla, you can visit key attractions and savour local cuisine all within a day.
After a night in Songkhla, it’s advisable to head back to Hatyai before sunrise. If you’re on a folding bike and prefer not to cycle back, chartered vans or commuter buses are available. Spend a night in Hatyai for an enjoyable vacation. – Sam Cheong
A scenic lookout point on the west bank of Lake Songkhla. PHOTO: SAM CHEONGFishing boats moored at Songkhla’s pier. PHOTO: SAM CHEONG
Israeli security personnel inspect the area around the Tel Aviv apartment building where a drone hit. PHOTO: AFP
SANAA (AFP) – Huthi rebels yesterday said they carried out a drone attack on Tel Aviv, although there was no direct confirmation from Israeli authorities.
In a statement, the Huthis said they “carried out a military operation targeting a vital target in the Jaffa (Tel Aviv) area in occupied Palestine with a number of Jaffa drones.
“The operation achieved its goals successfully as the drones reached their targets without the enemy being able to confront or shoot them down”.
The Israeli military said it intercepted “a suspicious aerial target” off central Israel overnight, without giving further details. On Wednesday, the Huthis claimed to have fired cruise missiles at Israel.
Last week, the rebels said they fired a missile at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, prompting Israeli air strikes on Yemen including the vital port of Hodeida.
Since November, they have been attacking ships off Yemen’s coast in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in what they say is a show of solidarity with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Israeli security personnel inspect the area around the Tel Aviv apartment building where a drone hit. PHOTO: AFP
File photo show demonstrators during a protest in Ermua against Partido Popular councillor Miguel Angel Blanco’s death at the hands of armed Basque group ETA. PHOTO: AFP
MADRID (AFP) – A Spanish court on Wednesday closed a probe into the alleged role of a former Basque separatist group leader in the 1997 murder of a politician that traumatised Spain, citing the statute of limitations.
A judge in July 2022 formally named Maria Soledad Iparraguirre, a member of the now-defunct armed Basque separatist group ETA, as a suspect on charges of “terrorist kidnapping and murder” after she was identified in a police report as a leader in the ETA’s executive committee at the time of the assassination.
The decision was announced almost 25 years after ETA militants snatched Miguel Angel Blanco, a local councillor with the right-wing Popular Party (PP), on July 10, 1997.
They gave the government 48 hours to meet their demands but when the deadline expired, they shot the 29-year-old twice in the head and dumped him. He died a day later.
His murder shocked Spain, sparking mass nationwide protests that ended up being a turning point in the fight against the ETA.
The police report said Iparraguirre, alias “Anboto”, along with two other members of the ETA’s executive at the time, had “sufficient power” to ensure that Blanco was not kidnapped and to “prevent” his execution and “order his release”.
But Spain High Court, the country’s top criminal court, dropped its probe, arguing too much time has passed since her alleged crimes were committed.
The court said that while Spanish law was reformed in 2010 so that the statute of limitations no longer applies to “terrorist crimes resulting in death”, this could not be applied retroactively to crimes dating from 1997. Iparraguirre and the other two members of the ETA’s executive are now in their 60s and have spent several years behind bars for the bloodshed committed while part of the group.
The ETA is estimated to have killed 853 people during its decades-long campaign for Basque independence, which began in 1959 under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. The group announced a permanent ceasefire in 2011 and formally disbanded in 2018.
File photo show demonstrators during a protest in Ermua against Partido Popular councillor Miguel Angel Blanco’s death at the hands of armed Basque group ETA. PHOTO: AFP
