Bees are vital for growing the world’s food as they help fertilise three out of four crops around the globe, by transferring pollen from male to female flowers.

But in recent years bee populations around the world have been dying off from “colony collapse disorder”, a mysterious scourge blamed on mites, pesticides, viruses, fungi or some combination of these factors.

Medical breakthrough

UN-led research in 2016 found that more than 40 per cent of invertebrate pollinators, particularly bees and butterflies, are facing extinction.

The study also found that 16.5 per cent of vertebrate pollinators, such as birds and bats, are under threat.

Scientists warn that the die-off will result in higher food prices and the risk of shortages.

The vaccine, developed by a team at Helsinki University in Finland, works by giving bees resistance to fight off severe microbial diseases that can be fatal for pollinator communities.

“If we can save even a small part of the bee population with this invention, I think we have done our good deed and saved the world a little bit,” lead researcher Dalial Freitak said.

“Even a two to three per cent increase in the bee population would be humongous,” she said.

Vaccinating insects was previously thought to be impossible because the creatures lack antibodies, one of the key mechanisms humans and other animals use to fight disease.

But a breakthrough came in 2014 when Freitak, a specialist in insects and immunology, noticed that moths who are fed certain bacteria can in fact pass on immunity to their offspring.

“They could actually convey something by eating. I just didn’t know what the mechanism was,” Freitak said.

“I met with Heli Salmela, who was working on honey bees and a protein called vitellogenin. I heard her talk and I was like, ‘OK, I could make a bet that it is your protein that takes my signal from one generation to another.’”

The pair started to collaborate and created a vaccine against American foulbrood, the most globally widespread and destructive bee bacterial disease.

The treatment is administered to the queen bee via a sugar lump, similar to the way many children are given polio vaccines. The queen then passes the immunity to her offspring, spreading it through the bee community.

As well as working on vaccines against further diseases, the team has also begun trying to raise funding to make the vaccine commercially available, with “very positive” feedback so far, according to Freitak.

“There are many regulatory hurdles. Four to five years until reaching the market is an optimistic estimate,” she said.

Diseases are believed to be just one of a number of reasons for the loss of pollinators, alongside pesticides and intensive farming, which reduces the diversity of insects’ nutrition.

But the team believes that protecting bee populations against disease will make them stronger, and therefore better able to withstand the other threats.

The EU and Canada have voted to introduce bans on insecticides based on neonicotinoids after studies showed the chemicals harmed the ability of bees to reproduce.

Crop growth affected

UN-backed research in 2016 estimated that up to $577 billion worth of food grown every year relies directly on pollinators.

The study said the volume of food produced that depends on pollinators has risen by 300 per cent in the last half century.

As pollinator numbers have declined, some farmers have turned to either renting bees or pollinating by hand – as with fruit trees in some parts of China – in order to replace the processes that nature previously provided free of charge.

In Helsinki the project relied on external funding, but the team has now taken up a more secure tenure at Graz University in Austria, where further research on vaccinations will begin early next year.

Graz is also the previous seat of noted zoologist Karl von Frisch, whose discovery that honey bees communicate by performing the figure-of-eight “waggle dance” won him the Nobel Medicine Prize in 1973.

Images from the scene showed large flames and plumes of smoke rising in the night air after the blast in the northern city of Sapporo.

The cause of the blast was still under investigation, police said. One witness reportedly said he had smelled gas after the explosion.

A police official for the Hokkaido region told AFP “there are 42 injuries” but no one was killed.

The Jiji Press agency said one of the injured was seriously hurt, suffering burns to his face, but none of the victims had life-threatening wounds.

Several children were reportedly among those hurt in the explosion, which hit in the city’s Toyohira district.

“I heard a ‘bang,’ which sounded like thunder, and my condo was shaken,” a man in his 50s who lived nearby told The Japan Times.

The building that housed the restaurant was heavily damaged, as were other nearby businesses, including a real estate company, Jiji said.

National broadcaster NHK said it took firefighters several hours to extinguish the flames, with dozens of vehicles mobilised to deal with the accident.

Police had initially warned of the possibility of secondary explosions, according to Kyodo, which described buildings collapsing following the incident around 8.30 pm (1130 GMT).

The city government had opened at shelter to house dozens of people whose homes were damaged in the blast.

People in Hong Kong witnessed the startling sight of banknotes floating down from above on Saturday afternoon (Dec 15).

Videos posted online suggest that the notes were thrown from the roof of a building along Fuk Wa Street in Sham Shui Po.

The notes flutter through the air before landing on the busy street below.

Passers-by can be seen eagerly grabbing the notes, with some climbing on to the roof of the subway exit to ‘harvest’ this unlikely windfall, seemingly from the heavens.

Photos on social media show that the notes were of the HK$100 (RM53) denomination.

One Facebook user appeared to have picked up at least six notes.

Police were called to the scene after receiving reports of someone distributing money at Fuk Wa Street, and told people not to pick up the money, said South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Officers collected around HK$5,000, and no one was arrested, according to the report.

A live video on the Facebook page of Epoch Cryptocurrency, that began at 2.42pm, showed a man dressed in a black hoodie saying in Cantonese: “I hope everyone here will pay attention to this important event…

“(I) don’t know whether any of you will believe money can fall from the sky.”

The man is believed to be the owner of Epoch Cryptocurrency, a Facebook page that promotes the virtual currency.

The man is widely known online as “Coin Young Master” and his real name is Wong Ching-kit, reported the South China Morning Post.

Bowen Press said that the 24-year-old man refuted claims that he was behind the incident when interviewed at his home.

The police are trying to locate the person behind the stunt.

Despite initially facing disapproval from his family, Cheab Sibora continued to design and produce intricate outfits for the dolls in traditional Khmer style.

“Although I did not receive much support at first, my friends and family have really got behind my project – making Khmer designed outfits for Barbie dolls,” he said.

Invented by Ruth Handler in 1959, Barbie is the most successful doll of all time, selling more than one billion of them since it was first launched.

Now Sibora hopes to add to that legacy by giving the dolls, for the first time, a traditional Khmer twist.

He says each costume is inspired by the different cultures and identities across the Kingdom’s 25 provinces and cities, with the outfits proving popular among the Cambodian diaspora and foreigners as well.

“Most people who bought them are Khmer people in Cambodia, but I’ve also had many foreigners. I’ve not opened a formal design studio for the business yet as I’m currently responding to a backlog of preorders from clients,” he says.

The 26-year-old is a self-taught artist and spends two to three days finishing one doll, which sells for $30-$50 each.

“Each doll needs a lot of work and attention to design the embroidery. The fabric needs to be sewn with small beads and sequins one-by-one to create the traditional Khmer designs,” he said.

Among the designs is Reachny Ney Krong Kuch (Empress of Pearl Capital), representing Phnom Penh. As part of this design, the Barbie is dressed in a sparkling silver costume adorned with embroidery and pearls from head to toe.

For Pailin Province, famous for its traditional peacock dance, the Moyurana costume is made from bird feathers that compliment the blue pattern silk skirt, all finished with a golden peacock head.

Another outfit representing the ancient capital in Siem Reap, named Neang Tep Apsara, incorporates the Apsara sculptures and carvings of the city’s iconic temples.

Sibora’s passion for fashion and design began in 2011 when he was a high school student where he drew inspiration from traditional Khmer art, paintings and history books. In 2013, he began his current project.

“Although I did not study art skill, I liked watching fashion shows, browsing catalogues and reading arts book. I was so interested that I decided to try them out even though it was the exact opposite of my studies in IT.”

The young designer said he was inspired by a book written by well-known arts scholar Pich Tum Kravil named Khmer Dance.

Tum Kravil’s book explored ancient Khmer scripts discovered at Lor Ley Temple dating from the 9th century, describing scenes of a woman dressing up and dancing for holy spirits. This inspired him to bring this ancient beauty into the modern era through the medium of Barbie.

While his classmates encouraged and praised his work, his family initially proved less enthusiastic.

“As my family is very poor, they were concerned that I would not be able to make any money from this and asked me to stop. But because I love what I’m doing, every day and night I would continue in secret without them knowing,” he said.

With years spent designing and producing these costumes, Sibora’s aspiration is to take his work to the public through a formal exhibition to promote Khmer heritage and culture.

“I’ve received an offer to display my work. I hope to make younger generations interested in Khmer identity, and help preserve our beautiful tradition and culture passed down by our ancestors,” he said.

Sibora publicises his designs through Facebook. For more information, visit his Facebook pages Bora Apsara or Banjureth Art Page.

Police and firefighters joined hands in getting the accident site in the Toyohira Ward of the city in Hokkaido under control, fighting flames and smoke, and warned people in the neighborhood of the possibility of another explosion.

Further details about the incident that occurred around 8:30 p.m local time are unknown, according to the police

Asean, which Thailand will chair next year, must take tough measures to put pressure on Myanmar and its de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to end atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said this weekend.

More than 720,000 refugees have fled Myanmar’s strife-torn Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August last year, when militant attacks on security outposts prompted a heavy-handed “clearance operation” by the military (Tatmadaw) that claimed thousands of lives. Muslim residents of Rakhine faced arson, torture, gang rape and murder and many were forced to flee their homes.

The United Nations and United States dubbed the onslaught by the Tatmadaw “genocide”.

The UN called for Myanmar’s generals to face the International Criminal Court or an international tribunal on the charge.

“We can appeal to the government of Myanmar, but if there is no response and the atrocities continue, Asean must support international moves to stop this abuse of authority and injustice in Myanmar,” Mahathir said in an interview with The Nation over the weekend.

“Asean has to learn how to bring pressure on governments that are not treating their own people with fairness and justice,” he said. “If Asean just allows these people to be massacred, it doesn’t seem we are acting responsibly.”

While the government in Nay Pyi Taw set up and sponsored several committees to address the crisis in Rakhine, Suu Kyi was criticised for delaying action and doing little to tackle the problem at its roots.

Mahathir said he and other foreign leaders has urged Suu Kyi to help the Rohingya, just as other nations rallied to protect her when she was a victim of injustice under Myanmar’s former military regime from 1989-2010.

“Aung San Suu Kyi once fought against the military, but now she is a member of the government and is not able to have any influence over the military,” Mahathir said. “She should not associate herself with the military. They were unjust to her and now they are unjust to the Rohingya.”

Thousands of Rohingya have refused plans set out by Myanmar and Bangladesh to repatriate them, fearing for their safety should they return. Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar does not seem to want them back, Mahathir pointed out. Their fear of more violence is such that they would risk a dangerous journey across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia, where thousands have sought asylum in mainly Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, he said.

Mahathir said Malaysia wanted to send them back to Myanmar, but they don’t want to go. “They might stay longer – they won’t become Malaysian citizens, but they will be [accepted as] refugees.”

Visiting Thailand since Saturday, Mahathir was yesterday conferred a prestigious Thai honorary doctorate by Rangsit University in recognition of his statesmanship.

He told The Nation that Malaysia’s newly appointed peace facilitator Abdul Rahim Noor, a former police chief who is familiar with problems in the southern border area with Thailand, would help to install peace in the predominantly Muslim region.

Violence has rocked the South since early 2004 claiming over 7,000 lives so far. Dialogue with insurgent groups, initiated in 2013, has yielded no significant results.

As the MARA Patani, a so-called umbrella organisation, is widely believed to not represent the insurgents on the ground, Mahathir suggests that Thailand authorises invitations for other groups to join the talks.

“We are aware of the fact that there is not only one group, but several groups, so if one group achieves a kind of settlement, it doesn’t mean other group will accept the result of such negotiation. Therefore, it’s important to meet as many groups as possible,” he said.

Abdul Rahim Noor reportedly informed the Thai authority early this month that he would introduce leaders of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) separatist group to the talks but they were not expected to be willing to take part.

While the establishment of peace talks with the insurgents is an uphill task, Mahathir said the Thai authorities should try offering certain autonomy to local people in order for them to give up the struggle for independence.

Michael Weatherly made several lewd comments or jokes in front of the production team referring to Dushku’s physique, with sexual connotations, according to The New York Times, which first reported the development.

The actor acknowledged having made most of the comments but insisted that they were not sexual advances.

Dushku shared her discomfort at the remarks with the production team before speaking with Weatherly, and the situation did not improve.

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Several days later, the actress learned that she had been written off the show even though the production team had previously told her it was planning to give her character a recurring role in the series.

After weighing taking legal action against CBS, the 37-year-old actress turned to mediation, which led to an agreement. The settlement amount corresponds to the payment she would have received had she fulfilled the entire term of her contract.

The network is reeling from having had to fire its CEO Les Moonves in September over sexual harassment and assault claims. Last year, star host Charlie Rose was fired after eight women accused him of sexual harassment.

“The allegations in Ms Dushku’s claims are an example that, while we remain committed to a culture defined by a safe, inclusive and respectful workplace, our work is far from done,” CBS said.

But no action was taken against the man who since 2016 plays the role of Jason Bull, a psychologist who counsels lawyers during trial.

“During the course of taping our show, I made some jokes mocking some lines in the script,” Weatherly, who was a star of the network’s leading drama NCIS for 13 seasons, told the Times.

“When Eliza told me that she wasn’t comfortable with my language and attempt at humor, I was mortified to have offended her and immediately apologized.

“After reflecting on this further, I better understand that what I said was both not funny and not appropriate, and I am sorry and regret the pain this caused Eliza.”