Cttv footage

Flooding risk and evacuation warnings were in place for about 12 areas in New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s most populous state with 8 million people, with rivers swelling and rain accumulation posing danger.

“It’s not just the rain which is causing the devastation,” Jonathan How, senior meteorologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, told the ABC News state broadcaster. “It’s strong winds as well.”

How added that the heavy downpour is set to continue for the rest of Sunday in Sydney and throughout the state, with some areas expected to get up to 200 millimetres (7.9 inches) of rain.

Emergency services said they had received about 600 calls overnight asking for help; more than 60 of those were pleas for rescue from floods.

Television and social media footage showed fast-moving water unmooring houses, engulfing roads, breaking trees and damaging road infrastructure.

The extreme weather was affecting Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine delivery to Sydney and throughout the state and disrupting the country’s plans to deliver the first vaccine doses to almost 6 million people over the next few weeks.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who is expected to hold a briefing later on Sunday, said the weather system moving through the state could be a one-in-25-year rain event.

“This will be a deep-seated, extreme weather event,” she said on Saturday.

TOKYO — An earthquake struck off the coast of northeastern Japan on Saturday, shaking buildings and generating a tsunami of 1 metre in the same area devastated a decade ago by a quake and tsunami.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.2, hit off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture at 6:26 p.m. (0926 GMT) at a depth of 60 km (40 miles), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

While there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, the quake was strong enough to shake buildings in Tokyo, some 400 km (250 miles) away.

An official for the meteorological agency told reporters it was an aftershock of the deadly 2011 quake. The 2011 disaster, one of the strongest earthquakes on record, is still generating aftershocks a decade later, experts have said. A magnitude 7.3 quake last month had also been deemed to be an aftershock.

About an hour after Saturday’s quake, all tsunami alerts were lifted, broadcaster NHK said, after warning the public not to go near the shore.

“It was a really bad, long shaking from side-to-side. It was even longer than the quake last month, but at least the building here is all right,” Shizue Onodera told NHK from the shop where she works in the city of Ishinomaki.

“Lots of bottles smashed on the floor,” she said. “The electricity is on.”

Tokyo Electric Power said it had found no irregularities at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant – wrecked by the massive March 2011 quake that caused nuclear meltdowns and mass evacuations. A spokesman said there were also no irregularities at its nearby Daini facility.

There were no irregularities at Tohoku Electric Power Co’s Onagawa nuclear plant, the nuclear regulator said in an email.

Service on the Tohoku shinkansen bullet train was halted, NHK said.

About 200 households in Kurihara city, Miyagi Prefecture, lost power because of the quake, the trade and industry ministry said.

NHK footage from inside its Sendai bureau showing a plaque suspended from the ceiling shaking for about 30 seconds following the tremor. It did not report any items falling from shelves or any immediate damage.

By Hara Nguyen

A Vietnamese footballer has been rigorously criticized both in Vietnam and abroad after he brutally ruptured his colleague’s leg in a league game on Tuesday.

Ngo Hoang Thinh, a 29-year-old midfielder of Ho Chi Minh City FC, horrendously fouled Do Hung Dung, a 28-year-old midfielder of Hanoi FC, during their clash in the fifth round of the V-Leauge 1 on the former’s soil.

Twenty-seven minutes into the game, Thinh jumped in recklessly and lunged right in on Dung’s ankle, causing it to buckle at sickening impact, after a heavy ball touch from the Hanoi FC player.

The slow-motion footage from a live feed showed just how nasty the challenge and subsequent injury were.

Many international sports news sites, including GiveMeSports, Marca, AS, and SPORTBible , have covered the incident, using words deemed as a rebuke of Thinh.

SPORTBible called his tackle “one of the worst we have seen for a long, long time,” while Marca headlined their article, “A hard to watch horror tackle in Vietnam.”

GiveMeSports described it as “a truly horrendous challenge,” and AS named it “a hard to watch horror tackle in Vietnam.”

Netizens in Vietnam have taken to social media to criticize Thinh’s horrifying play.

“What a vicious tackle. Looks like he wanted to knock him down,” a Facebook user named Tien Minh commented under the incident footage shared on the social networking site.

“It’s murder, not football,” another user, Thanh Vu, commented below Tien Minh.

Hanoi FC’s midfielder Do Hung Dung is pictured on his bed at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City on March 23, 2021. Photo: Hanoi FC

“What’s left for his career now,” wrote Do Thanh Tuyen as he showed concerns for Dung’s health condition and that he would be set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines.

“The kick was so cruel, [he] should be banned for life. It’s a football field, not a boxing ring,” reads another comment by Hoang Long Tran, suggesting a heavy punishment for Thinh.

Even the supporters of Ho Chi Minh City FC disapproved of their player’s tackle.

“Hoang Thinh, you should take a break to self-review your behavior,” Ky Nguyen wrote on the club’s verified Facebook page.

The Vietnam Football Federation on Wednesday banned Thinh from football until the end of December 31 this year, Vu Xuan Thanh, chief of the Vietnamese football governing body’s disciplinary board, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper the same day.

Thinh was required to pay a VND40 million (US$1,725) fine and Dung’s medical bill as well, Thanh added, citing local football regulations.

Dung underwent a successful 1.5-hour surgery on Wednesday morning, his surgeon in Ho Chi Minh City said, noting that it will take him at least six months before he can probably play professional football again.

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An octopus named Marshmallow lies at rest at the bottom of her tank, suddenly shifting in color from a pale white-green to brown and then orange, as her muscles twitch, suckers contract and her closed eyes shift around.

This moment was captured in remarkable footage shot by scientists in Brazil, who published a new study in the journal iScience on Thursday that says the sophisticated cephalopods experience at least two different types of sleep.

One of these states, which they dubbed “active sleep,” is akin to rapid eye movement (REM) in mammals, birds and some reptiles — raising the intriguing possibility that, like humans, octopuses experience dreams.

“Octopuses are unique in terms of their complexity, both behavioral and neural,” senior author Sidarta Ribeiro of the Brain Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil told AFP , noting they have the most complex brains of any invertebrates.

“But they’re nevertheless very different from us.”

To explore the question of octopus sleep patterns, the researchers continuously recorded four octopuses in their tanks over several days, then went back to analyze the footage.

They found during “quiet sleep,” the animals were still, with pale skin and their pupils contracted to a slit.

During “active sleep,” however, they dynamically changed their skin color and texture, noticeably heaved and twitched, and their eyes moved around.

The pattern was cyclical, with the quiet period lasting around six or seven minutes and followed by an active cycle lasted about 40 seconds.

The cycle might then repeat, or the octopus could wake up, but usually fell back asleep 30 to 40 minutes later. All told, their slumbers take up a quarter of the day.

To establish whether these states really represented sleep, the researchers devised visual and tactile stimulation tests, the paper’s first author, graduate student Sylvia Medeiros told AFP .

The first test involved playing a video of a crab on a screen that was placed next to the octopuses.

“When they are awake, because crab is a natural prey, they try to attack,” she said.

But they didn’t try to pounce in the two states where they were presumed sleeping.

In the second test, they struck the octopus tanks with a rubber hammer, with the animals physically reacting and changing their color when awake, but not when asleep.

‘Video clips, or even gifs’

Learning more about what makes us similar to octopuses, whom our species diverged from 500 million years ago, can shed new insight into our distinct evolutionary paths, said Ribeiro.

“If we see a similar phenomenon, in this case, a sleep cycle comprising quiet sleep and then active, it’s most likely due to convergent evolution,” he said, meaning our two species independently evolved the same biological mechanisms.

That in turn sheds light on the evolutionary pressures that shaped this behavior.

For mammals, REM sleep represents a time of memory consolidation and triggers a variety of molecular mechanisms that have a restorative effect on brain health and cognition.

The authors think this could be the case for octopuses too.

Most human dreaming also comes during REM sleep — so might this also be the case for the eight-limbed molluscs?

“We cannot affirm it for sure,” said Medeiros.

But if they do, it’s unlikely to be similar to the complex narratives we can experience, given how short the active phase is for octopuses, she added.

“It should be more like small video clips, or even gifs.”

The color patterns the octopuses form on their skins during sleep could offer a window into their minds, as they can mirror patterns they exhibit while they are awake.

For example, the “half and half,” where they are black on one side and white on the other, is sometimes seen during courtship — so might an octopus that displays this pattern during sleep be dreaming of romance?

Maybe, but it’s too early to say, said Ribeiro, and the subject of future research.

The team next hopes to find ways to record octopuses’ neural data — a tricky proposition given they are moving around in water — and to learn more about the role sleep plays for the animals’ metabolism and cognition.