Variety

A 116-year-old Japanese woman who loves playing the board game Othello was honored Saturday as the world’s oldest living person by Guinness World Records. The global authority on records officially recognized Kane Tanaka in a ceremony at the nursing home where she lives in Fukuoka, in Japan’s southwest. Her family …

More than 80 people were injured after a high-speed boat collided with a “marine creature” off the northwest coast of Japan, the country’s Coast Guard said. The boat was carrying 121 passengers during the collision, injuring 87 people traveling on the vessel, according to the Coast Guard from the Niigata …

The former boss of a major New York crime gang has died, after serving 33 years of a 139-year prison sentence. Carmine Persico’s lawyer said he died of complications arising from diabetes. He leaves a wife, two children, and 15 grandchildren. The 85-year-old was known as The Snake, a nickname …

French supercar maker Bugatti has unveiled the world’s most expensive new car, sold to an unnamed buyer for at least $11m (£9.5m) before tax. The exact price is not being revealed but is thought to have overtaken the previous new car record – about £8-9m for a Rolls-Royce Sweptail. With …

Slightly over a year ago, Chinese archaeologists revealed that the first emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang, was obsessed with finding the elixir of life by any means and even ordered a nationwide search for the miraculous potion. Archaeologists in central China’s Henan province have discovered an “elixir …

Quebec’s appeals court on Friday upheld a historic ruling ordering three tobacco firms to pay Can$15.5 billion (US$11.6 billion) to smokers in the Canadian province who claimed they were never warned about the health risks associated with smoking. Imperial Tobacco Canada, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, Rothmans Benson & …

In 2014, French auctioneer Marc Labarbe received a phone call from a friend. The attic of their Toulouse home had yielded a surprising discovery: a painting, coated in dust and stained by a water leak, that looked all the same to be something of value. Labarbe approached gingerly, cleaning one …

With majestic glaciers, fjords, and mountains, Norway is famous for its dramatic natural landscape. Its rugged terrain does not make traveling easy, however. More than 1,000 fjords line the Scandinavian country’s west coast, which is home to a third of the country’s population of 5.3 million. To make the 1,100-kilometer …

Brazilian wildlife experts have been left baffled after discovering a dead humpback whale in the Amazon rainforest. The 10-ton mammal was found in the jungle undergrowth on the island of Marajo, which sits at the mouth of the Amazon River. Although scientists presume the enormous creature was hurled onshore during …

Rami Malek won his first Oscar on Sunday as best lead actor for his portrayal of singer Freddie Mercury, the flamboyant late frontman of the British rock band Queen, in the musical drama “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Malek, 37, had emerged as a favorite for the Oscar in recent weeks after winning …

Production has been suspended at the world’s largest Nutella factory after a “quality defect” was discovered in an ingredient. A quarter of the world’s Nutella is made at the Villers-Ecalles factory in northern France, which produces around 600,000 jars of the spread every day. Confectionary company Ferrero announced in a …

A researcher inadvertently discovered the remains of Central America’s oldest marine mammal – a 20-million-year-old tusked sea cow. Steven Manchester, a curator of paleobotany at the Florida Museum of Natural History, had been looking for fossil plants when he stumbled across bones during fieldwork close to the Panama Canal. The …

High-altitude kites or drones could be used to harness dependable wind power and could revolutionize approaches to renewable energy generation, scientists believe. A research team at the University of Madrid are using the giant aerofoil kites used in kitesurfing to experiment with onboard energy generation, in the form of small …

Nurses and trade union members in a busy Italian emergency department have been accused of releasing an infestation of cockroaches in a bid to be transferred elsewhere or discredit officials. Local media have been following the suspected sabotage since a video emerged on social media of an infestation in a …

An Australian couple staved off pests for more than nine months to grow a giant cabbage almost as big as a person. Rosemary Norwood and her husband, Sean Cadman, who live in the Tasmanian valley of Jackeys Marsh, began growing the giant vegetable in April last year at their eco-tourism …

Flights at Dubai International Airport have been grounded on Friday due to what authorities said suspected drone activity, leaving several thousand passengers stranded in the world’s third busiest airport. The airport said in a statement that departing flights were suspended for half an hour between 10:13 and 10:45 on Friday …

A remote Russian region has declared a state of emergency over the appearance of dozens of polar bears in several towns and villages in the Arctic. Footage from the Novaya Zemlya archipelago shows the animals roaming through building and exploring populated areas. We ask the experts why this is happening, …

The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, has said he was the target of “extortion and blackmail” by the US tabloid, the National Enquirer, alleging it threatened to publish intimate photos he sent to his mistress. In a post on the online platform Medium, Bezos said that the Enquirer’s parent company, …

A new study from Stanford and NYU finds logging off causes ‘small but significant improvements in wellbeing’ Despite all the scandals of the past year, here we are, still on Facebook, a couple of billion of us spending about an hour a day in its iron grip. Now a new …

Archeologists have discovered a lost 200-year-old city on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, that was once home to more than 10,000 people. The metropolis, called Kweneng, was previously thought to be a scattering of ancient stone huts, but three decades of intricate research have finally revealed it to have …