WORLD

Smartphone-obsessed Finns rank tops in screen time Helsinki, Finland | AFP | On the crowded morning metro in Helsinki, silence prevails. Everyone is hunched over their smartphone screens, reading the news, checking emails or watching videos. A loud “yeah!” breaks the quiet, along with delighted screech from a toddler whose …

New York, United States | AFP |  No, Britney Spears is not dead. Yet her fans’ hearts may have skipped a beat today when tweets purportedly from Sony Music Entertainment said “RIP @britneyspears #RIPBritney 1981-2016” and “Britney spears is dead by accident! We will tell you more soon #RIPBritney.” The …

Paris, France | AFP | Humans used ceramic pots to cook wild plants more than 10,000 years ago, well before the advent of agriculture, researchers reported. The findings are the earliest direct proof that our species processed plants for food. The vessels, discovered in Libya, contained traces of wild grasses …

2016 rocked by corruption scandals Panama City, Panama | AFP | From the Panama Papers to the impeachments of the presidents of Brazil and South Korea, 2016 was a year marked by corruption scandals, and by rising public outrage over graft. The question is, will that translate into a lasting …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | An unexploded British bomb from World War Two forced 54,000 people out of their homes in Germany on Christmas Day, the country’s biggest such evacuation since the end of hostilities. The huge operation on Sunday in the southern city of Augsburg took 11 hours, involved …

Paris, France | AFP | AFP Sport looks back at a selection of ‘heroes’ and ‘zeros’ from 2016: THE Heroes Leicester City Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester City pulled off one of the greatest shocks in English football history by defying title odds of 5,000-1 to lift the Premier League trophy. Having …

Ikitsuki, Japan | AFP | Japanese rice farmer Masatsugu Tanimoto doesn’t think of himself as a Christian, and you’d almost never find him in a church. But every so often, he and others meet to recite prayers drawn from another time and place. The group, dressed in sober kimonos and …

Vatican City, Holy See | AFP |  Pope Francis urged the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to feel compassion for children, notably victims of war, migration and homelessness in his Christmas Eve mass but also those “not allowed to be born”. Addressing a 10,000-strong crowd late Saturday, the pontiff urged worshippers …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | Tunisia said Saturday it had arrested three men linked to the suspected Berlin Christmas market attacker, including his nephew. Here is what we know about the case so far. – Shot dead in Italy – German authorities launched a Europe-wide manhunt for 24-year-old Tunisian Anis …

Washington, United States | AFP |  An online Santa tracker run by a Canadian and American defense agency mapped the jolly old gift-giver’s path around the globe Saturday, in what has become a Yuletide tradition. Every Christmas Eve since 1955, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking …