Notre Dame to reopen this week
Paris, Dec 2: The reopening of Notre Dame this coming weekend is going to be a high-security affair, with a repeat of some of the same measures used during the Paris Olympics and the sealing off to tourists of the cathedral’s island location in the heart of the French capital.
After more than 5 years of reconstruction following the fire that devastated Notre Dame in 2019, invite-only ceremonies Saturday and Sunday will usher in its rebirth.
Police chief Laurent Nuñez said only people with invitations and the island’s residents will have access to the Ile de la Cité in the middle of the River Seine, which includes Notre Dame and habitually hums with tourists.
He said about 50 heads of state and government are expected and that security arrangements are drawing on the police measures that sealed off large sections of central Paris for the Paris Games’ flamboyant opening ceremony. “A very high level of security will be applied,” Nuñez said in an interview published Monday in Le Parisien. (AP)
‘Brain rot’ is Oxford word of the year
London, Dec 2: Many of us have felt it, and now it’s official: “brain rot” is the Oxford dictionaries’ word of the year.
Oxford University Press said on Monday the evocative phrase “gained new prominence in 2024”, with its frequency of use increasing 230 per cent from the year before.
Oxford defines brain rot as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging”.
The word of the year is intended to be “a word or expression that reflects a defining theme from the past 12 months”.
“Brain rot” was chosen by a combination of public vote and language analysis by Oxford lexicographers. It beat five other finalists: demure, slop, dynamic pricing, romantasy and lore.
While it may seem a modern phenomenon, the first recorded use of “brain rot” was by Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 ode to the natural world, “Walden”. (AP)
Scientists gather to decode puzzle of world’s rarest whale
Wellington, Dec 2: It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.
“I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name to distinguish it from other beaked species. “For me personally, it’s unbelievable.” Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he has participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. In fact, the careful study of the creature — which washed up dead on a New Zealand beach in July – is the first ever to take place.
None has ever been seen alive at sea.
The list of what scientists don’t know about spade-toothed whales is longer than what they do know. They don’t know where in the ocean the whales live, why they’ve never been spotted in the wild, or what their brains look like. All beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers don’t know how the spade-toothed kind processes its food. (AP)
Hong Kong launches panda sculpture tour
Hong Kong, Dec 2: Thousands of giant panda sculptures will greet residents and tourists starting Saturday in Hong Kong, where enthusiasm for the bears has grown since two cubs were born in a local theme park.
The 2,500 exhibits were showcased in a launch ceremony of PANDA GO! FEST HK, the city’s largest panda-themed exhibition, at Hong Kong’s airport on Monday. They will be publicly displayed at the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui, a popular shopping district, this weekend before setting their footprint at three other locations this month.
One designated spot is Ocean Park, home to the twin cubs, their parents and two other pandas gifted by Beijing this year. The design of six of the sculptures, made of recycled rubber barrels and resins among other materials, was inspired by these bears.
The displays reflect Hong Kong’s use of pandas to boost its economy as the Chinese financial hub works to regain its position as one of Asia’s top tourism destinations.
Pandas are considered China’s unofficial national mascot. The country’s giant panda loan programme with overseas zoos has long been seen as a tool of Beijing’s soft-power diplomacy. (AP)