Fire brigade personnel conduct rescue operations after eight people got stuck high in the air on a giant funfair ride in the Brittany city of Rennes late on December 31, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

“It was long, it was cold and it was frightening,” said 23-year-old Antoine, wrapped in a survival blanket around dawn Tuesday.

    “I never thought I’d get out. It was very traumatic,” he said after the fire brigade brought an end to the nine-hour ordeal in the Brittany city of Rennes.

Five teenagers, Antoine and two other adults had climbed aboard the 52-metre metal arm called “BomberMaxxx” for a spin above the town centre during the evening.

“We saw sparks, heard a big metal noise and feared the worst,” said Beatrice, mother of 13-year-old Louna.

The ride’s owner Alexandre Thinel said “a new part broke and it blocked”.

“It’s a technical incident that has never happened before.

“Fortunately there was no danger to clients. The only problem was getting them down,” he said.

Firemen made several attempts to extract the revellers but their 30-metre ladder was too short.

A helicopter was later called in and the first to be rescued was winched up to the helicopter just before midnight.

Then over several hours a rope system was set up to help evacuate the others one by one.

Fire brigade personnel (bottom) conduct rescue operations after eight people got stuck high in the air on a giant funfair ride in the Brittany city of Rennes late on December 31, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

In the early hours of the morning a fight broke out between the families and fairground workers. Teargas filled the air but it was unclear who used it.

The last person to be rescued touched the ground at 6am (0500 GMT).

“Next year, I’m staying at home with my champagne and biscuits,” said 47-year-old Nicholas.

Pope Francis “has accepted the resignation of the director and deputy director of the press office of the Vatican, Greg Burke and Paloma Garcia Ovejero, and named Alessandro Gisotti as acting director,” it said in a statement.

// AFP PHOTO

A smaller fireworks was launch at 9pm for children and families.

This handout picture released by the Chelyabinsk region governor press service on December 31, 2018, shows emergency officers as they gather after a gas explosion rocked a residential building in Russia’s Urals city of Magnitogorsk. // AFP PHOTO

An entire section of the 12-storey residential building collapsed when a gas explosion tore through the high-rise in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk nearly 1,700 kilometres (1,050 miles) east of Moscow in the Ural mountains.

    “Three people have been pulled alive from the rubble and three are dead,” Boris Dubrovsky, governor of the Chelyabinsk region where the city is located, said in a statement.

Officials said that the fate of 79 people was unclear, with police working to locate their whereabouts.

National television broadcast footage of the mangled heaps of concrete as hundreds of rescue workers combed the debris in temperatures of minus 18 Celsius (minus 0.4 F).

This handout picture released by the Chelyabinsk region governor press service on December 31, 2018, shows emergency officers as they gather after a gas explosion rocked a residential building in Russia’s Urals city of Magnitogorsk. // AFP PHOTO

In a sign of the seriousness of the situation, President Vladimir Putin ordered emergencies minister Yevgeny Zinichev and health minister Veronika Skvortsova to travel to Magnitogorsk to personally oversee the rescue operation.

The Soviet-era high-rise was built in 1973 and was home to around 1,100 people. The residents have been evacuated.

A total of 110 people were registered as residents of the affected section of the building, regional authorities said. Sixteen of them have been evacuated, and another 15 were not home at the time of the blast.

Deadly gas explosions are relatively common in Russia where much of the infrastructure dates back to the Soviet era and safety requirements are often ignored.

Japan ranked 20th among the 36 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in labor productivity in 2017 at $47.50 per hour, keeping the same ranking as the previous year, but marking the worst standing among the Group of Seven major economies, according to a report by the Tokyo-based Japan Productivity Center.

At the top of the OECD list was Ireland at $97.50 of productivity created per hour, followed by Luxembourg and Norway. Among the G7, the United States was the most productive country at $72 — about 1.5 times higher than Japan — but ranked 6th among all OECD members.

Labor productivity, a measure of worker output, is calculated using such national data as gross domestic product.

 Observers say Japan’s labor productivity tends to be relatively low as its economy is centered on service industries — represented by small-sized enterprises and eating and drinking establishments — that place priority on securing human resources.

The innovation index, a figure that measures and evaluates the innovation capability of the zones, has risen from 100 points in 2010 to 233 points in 2017, according to a 2018 evaluation report. The report has been published annually since 2013 by the Institutes of Science and Development of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The problem of unbalanced development among high-tech zones has also greatly improved, the report added. High-tech zones from central and western parts of China saw strong growth in their overall innovation capabilities last year. This was in part thanks to major cities in those regions working closely with the zones to unleash their innovation potential.

The index is based on five main criteria for innovation: resources, start-up environment, company activity and performance, international cooperation and the effects on development.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of China’s high-tech development zones, which added 12 new zones this year to reach a total of 169 as of October, said Wang Shengguang, director of the research center on China’s high-tech zones at the academy’s Institutes of Science and Development.

“After 30 years, the high-tech zones have successfully fulfilled their mission of pioneering China’s innovation systems, driving socioeconomic development, leading high-tech industries’ growth and radiating their positive influence to the nation and the world,” he said.

In 2017, the 156 national high-tech zones that provided data reported a total of 9.51 trillion yuan ($1.38 trillion) in goods and services, representing 11.5 percent of the national GDP last year, the report said. These zones also yielded a net profit of around 2.14 trillion yuan, and exported goods and services valued at $478 billion last year.

Some of the zones’ most profitable high-tech fields included electronics and telecommunications, biomedicine, mechatronics, new materials, new and efficient energy, environmental protection and space technologies. Mechatronics is the combination of mechanical engineering, computing and electronics.

The national high-tech zones are also heavyweights in research and development. Companies from those 156 zones spent more than 616 billion yuan in R&D last year, making up around 35 percent of the total R&D spending in China.

In 2017, there were 2,922 national research institutes, including 341 important “state-key laboratories”, that were either located in or worked with the national high-tech zones. This meant two-thirds of the nation’s state-level research institutes were linked to high-tech zones.

But in comparison to Silicon Valley, the world’s leading innovation ecosystem, China’s high-tech zones are still behind in terms of attracting quality foreign talent and venture capital investments, Wang said.

In 2016, over 37.8 percent of the population of the Silicon Valley area was foreign born, with many working in computer science, engineering, medicine and other high-tech sectors, the report said. Only around 1 percent of personnel working in China’s high-tech zones were foreigners.

As for venture capital, Silicon Valley received $14 billion worth of investment last year. The national high-tech zones received 37.4 billion yuan last year, which was just around 39 percent of the amount Silicon Valley had.

“We still need more effort to transform high-tech zones into a fertile ground for attracting and nurturing quality talent,” Wang said. “At the same time, we need to create innovative mechanisms to facilitate the commercialization of knowledge and scientific output.”

But the fish, despite a deadly toxin that it contains, is also sought after by many for its tasty flesh, cooked in a curry or spicy tamarind sauce, grilled or fried, according to Bernama news agency.

The people who cook puffer fish know how to remove the toxin, which is said to be 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide.

One such person is 56-year-old Dari Sait (rpt) Dari Sait of Kampung Manggut, Spaoh, who claims to have been handling the yellow puffer fish from the time she was just 20.

“Removing the toxin requires the use of a proper technique. The poison is in the blood vessels. Puffer fish eggs are also delicious. The toxin is found in the egg membrane. Steaming the eggs with bamboo shoots also drains away the poison,” she said.

Dari said the yellow pufferfish is popular in the Spaoh area, where the people are experts at draining away the toxin and cooking the fish, according to their respective recipes.

She put on gloves to protect her hands against the thorns and showed this reporter how adept she was at removing the toxin in less than a minute, the news agecy reported.

According to Assoc Prof Dr Samsur Mohamad, a lecturer at the Department of Aquatic Sciences of the Faculty of Resource Science and Technology of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), people in Japan eat the pufferfish to feel a ‘sensation’.

“A numbness is felt after eating the fish, and people in Japan seek the numbness when eating the pufferfish,” he said.

Dr Samsur said the season of the yellow pufferfish is between April and October annually along the Batang Saribas with Kampung Manggut, Spaoh, close to the river as the point of focus.

Fresh yellow puffer fish goes for RM10 per kg, dried puffer fish at RM10 for three fish while the yellow puffer fish eggs cost RM40 per kg, he said.

Mohd Remy Husin, 32, said he catches the puffer fish twice a month during the season using a net or the traditional method of using a tool called ‘sagang’.

“When the puffer fish enters Batang Saribas, fishermen snare the fish with a net fastened in the middle of the river. During the season, up to 180 kg of catch are landed compared to only 10 kg during the off-season,” said Mohd Remy who has been catching the fish since he was 12.

He said that after the fish had laid its eggs in the Tanjung Asam area of Batang Saribas, the fish become hungry and are caught with the ‘sagang’ with the use of shark meat as bait.

Dr Samsur said studies show that the Batang Saribas area is the focus of the puffer fish because the narrow passage of the river with its many promontories offers a conducive place for the breeding of the fish.

“During the breeding season, the pufferfish from the coastal area will come up the Batang Saribas to lay their eggs, after which they return to the coastal area. We are still studying how long it takes for the fish fry to go to the coastal areas,” he said.

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary and a vocal Brexit campaigner during the 2016 referendum, warned colleagues planning on voting against May that her plan was the only way to be “100 percent certain” that Britain would leave.

“If we were not to vote for that, I’m not sure I would give it much more than 50-50,” he told The Sunday Times.

May’s government is trying to persuade a sceptical British parliament to endorse a broad withdrawal deal she struck with European leaders last month.

    But the bill’s passage is far from certain, with May having to pull an initial vote with a crushing defeat looking, rescheduling it for the week beginning January 14.

Pro-Brexit supporters are particularly concerned about the deal’s so-called “backstop” provision, which could keep Britain locked in a customs union with the EU in order to avoid a “hard” border between British province Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

But Fox urged his colleagues to “put their own pride behind them” and take what was on offer.

“The worst possible outcome of this process would be no Brexit,” he told the paper.

“For me that would induce a sense that we had betrayed the people that voted in the referendum.

“What you can be sure of is that if we vote for the prime minister’s deal then its 100 percent certain that we will leave on March 29.”

He also warned parliament against trying to thwart the process through a series of legislative procedures.

“Shattering that bond of trust between parliament and the people, I think, would be incendiary,” he said.

    While the original stations were conceived as “palaces for the people”, the new designs are less formal with light boxes for seats and laser-printed glass patterns.

In a major break with tradition, the Moscow city government has allowed outside architects to submit designs for several new stations in competitions that included a public vote on a phone app.

It has paved the way for “truly interesting and original stations that are outside any tradition,” says architecture journalist Nina Frolova.

    The first of these to open is in the high-rise suburb of Solntsevo, once notorious for its local mafia.

Moscow’s Nefa Architects won with a design inspired by the sun, the Russian word for which forms the root of the suburb’s name.

“We wanted to let the sun inside,” said Nefa’s lead architect Dmitry Ovcharov, surveying the newly opened station on a recent afternoon.

They punched holes in the walls of the station entrances to “create light and shadow”, he said.

Down on the platform, cylindrical white light boxes serve as seats that Ovcharov promises are sturdy enough to withstand passengers’ weight.

This year the transport system, which dates back to 1935, opened 16 new stations and carried around two billion passengers.

– ‘A battle for quality’ –

Frolova, editorial director at the Archi.ru architecture website, said Solntsevo is a bright example of new metro trends.

“There’s a concept that any passenger can see. It feels pleasant being in the station.”

But she said another design competition for the Novoperedelkino station ended less happily, with “significant changes” to the design.

It featured dramatic patterned glass ceilings that ended broken up with ugly seams and “turned out much less interesting than was planned”, she said.

Architect Ovcharov has grumbled about Solntsevo too, pointing out incorrectly printed panels and overhead lights that do not work.

“It was a really unrelenting battle for quality, to get the design decisions complied with,” he said.

Yet he adds that he’s now considering taking part in another metro design competition.

Another architect with a winning station design, Tatiana Leontyeva of Moscow’s Blank Architects, said the prestige of the commission was a draw.

She was part of a team who designed a station called Rzhevskaya, which will have an “archway” theme in a nod to its location near a mainline railway station.

The brief was to create a station for “the new times”, she said, using Russian materials and “without excessive decoration.”

“There was a large number of applications and (the competition) had a big impact, not just on the Russian architectural scene but abroad too because, of course, a lot of people wanted to get their hands on a site like the Moscow metro.”

The historic Moscow metro was a monumental construction in the 1930s, built as an example of quality and solidity, symbolising the grandeur of Stalin and the young Soviet Union. The country’s history was told in the mosaics that adorned the stations’ walls and the metro could serve as a bunker if needed.

– Metro expertise –

Previously the state company Metrogiprotrans had a monopoly on the transport system’s architecture, and it still designs the majority of new stations.

One of its architects recently argued that the company was the only one with the expertise to design the facilities.

“There’s a popular opinion that you can just come along to the metro and draw a picture of a station,” Alexander Orlov said at a recent presentation.

“Even if a drawing of something seems beautiful, it can be incompatible with all the metro technology.”

But Metrogiprotrans is also modernising.

The company’s latest station interiors feature laser-printed designs on glass or glossy aluminium panels, a simple approach that critic Frolova says also works.

“I think they kept a good balance with not many details and some simple, modern forms.”

– ‘Deprived of art’ –

The company is also behind more elaborate stations such as Fonvizinskaya, which depicts characters from the work of a playwright by the same name in ceiling-high 3-D panels.

“I’d never dreamed I’d do the metro,” digital artist Konstantin Khudyakov said.

“That’s monumental art,” said the designer, who explained his work is usually much smaller in scale.

Khudyakov’s stereoscopic panels use the same technology as novelty rulers or pens where figures appear to move — but using many more high-resolution images.

“It’s the first time in the world that this has been done” in the metro, Khudyakov said.

Public reaction to the decor at the station has been mixed.

School teacher Lyudmila told AFP she didn’t much care for the “gloomy” pictures, but was glad the metro system had been linked up to her neighbourhood.

But designer Alexandra, travelling on a weekday afternoon, said she liked the images “purely visually — they’re cool”.

Either way, Khudyakov believes the metro should still be a showcase for decorative art in a city with relatively few galleries.

“There’s not enough art. People are deprived of art… Let there be art at least in the metro.”

    The LA Times said Saturday that the attack, which was first assumed to have been a server outage, hit a computer network at Tribune Publishing which is connected to the production and printing process of multiple newspapers around the country.

As a result, the delivery of the Saturday editions of the LA Times and San Diego Union Tribune were delayed.

It also hit the distribution of the West Coast editions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which are printed at the LA Times’ printing plant.

    The report said it could not provide firm numbers on how many subscribers were impacted but a majority of LA Times customers received their papers Saturday morning, albeit several hours late.

“We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information,” the LA Times quoted a source with knowledge of the situation as saying.

The paper cited officials as saying it was too soon to know whether it was carried out by state or non-state actors.

“We are aware of reports of a potential cyber incident effecting several news outlets, and are working with our government and industry partners to better understand the situation,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.