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Pakistan's Punjab Province Shuts Schools in Smog-hit Main Cities

Commuters ride along a highway engulfed in smog, on the outskirts of Lahore - AFP
Commuters ride along a highway engulfed in smog, on the outskirts of Lahore - AFP
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Pakistan's Punjab Province Shuts Schools in Smog-hit Main Cities

Commuters ride along a highway engulfed in smog, on the outskirts of Lahore - AFP
Commuters ride along a highway engulfed in smog, on the outskirts of Lahore - AFP

Pakistan's most populated province of Punjab on Wednesday ordered schools closed in smog-hit main cities, shifting them to online learning until November 17, as the country battles record air pollution.

The province, home to more than half of Pakistan's 240 million people, had earlier closed primary schools, curbed tuk-tuks and shuttered some barbeque restaurants in megacity Lahore.

On Wednesday, it ordered all schools to be shut in several major cities enveloped by smog, a mix of fog and pollutants caused by low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal agricultural burning and winter cooling, AFP reported.

"Looking at the predicted air wind and air quality index we are closing all higher secondary schools," said Marriyum Aurangzeb, a senior minister in Punjab during a press conference in Lahore.

The decision will affect millions of children in some of Pakistan's largest cities, including Punjab's provincial capital Lahore.

The minister said on Wednesday the air quality index (AQI), which measures a range of pollutants, spiked above 1,000 -- well above the level of 300 considered 'dangerous' - according to data from IQAir.

"This morning's AQI crossed 1,100," Aurangzeb said.

"I appeal to citizens, that for god's sake don't come out of your houses," she said adding that wearing a face mask was made mandatory in affected cities.

She also announced that half of the staff in public and private offices will work remotely.

"It's like a slow horror movie, constantly creeping up behind you," said Ayishm Ahmed Khan Burki, a 22-year-old student who transferred her courses from Lahore to capital Islamabad after suffering from allergies and asthma.

"Everyone has a right to clean air," she told AFP.

- Lahore admits 900 patients -

Seasonal crop burn-off by farmers on the outskirts of Lahore also contributes to toxic air the WHO says can cause strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.

The minister said in Lahore alone, more than 900 patients including children and the elderly were admitted in hospitals on Tuesday.

"Colds and fevers have become so widespread that everyone is heading to the hospitals," Muhammad Yousaf, a 50-year-old banker told AFP in Lahore.

"There are long queues at the hospitals' receptions, and patients are facing extended waiting times for their turn".

Other affected cities include Faisalabad, Pakistan's third-largest, as well as Multan and Gujranwala.

The decision follows last month's announcement by the provincial environmental protection agency of new restrictions in four "hot spots" in Lahore. Tuk-tuks with polluting two-stroke engines were banned, along with restaurants that operate barbecues without filters.

Pollution in excess of levels deemed safe by the WHO shortens the life expectancy of Lahore residents by an average of 7.5 years, according to the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute.

According to UNICEF, nearly 600 million children in South Asia are exposed to high levels of air pollution and half of childhood pneumonia deaths are associated with air pollution.

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End of the Line for Finland’s Analogue Phone Network

Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)
Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)
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End of the Line for Finland’s Analogue Phone Network

Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)
Countries across the world have rolled out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls. (Reuters)

Finland on Tuesday pulled the plug on analogue landline phone calls after almost 150 years, the latest country to push forward in a global transition towards digital infrastructure.

Estonia, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain have already made the jump, as countries across the world roll out fiber optic cable that can handle both internet services and voice calls.

Finland's fixed-line network began operating in the 1880s, but like everywhere else the digital revolution has swallowed up the old technology based on copper wires.

And the Nordic country, home of mobile phone pioneer Nokia, has seen the use of landline phones gobbled up by mobile technology.

Elisa, the country's last major telecom operator with a fixed-line copper-wire network, marked the end of its service with a call between the firm's CEO Topi Manner and Jarkko Saarimaki, head of the country's communication and transport agency.

The two chatted about their memories of landline phones, with Manner recalling his time as a teenager in London in the 1980s when he would call home once a week at an agreed time to make sure the family were all there.

They also discussed the future of mobile technologies, before ending the call with a casual "kuulemiin", meaning "speak later" in Finnish.

When announcing its decision to retire the network in January -- a move its competitors had already made earlier -- Elisa said its customers had just a "few thousand" landline-only plans, with no new ones being sold in years.

After Tuesday, the only providers of landline plans in Finland will be local operators, currently covering a few thousand plans for local calls, public broadcaster Yle said.

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Japan Police Investigate Another Suspected Fatal Bear Attack

Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
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Japan Police Investigate Another Suspected Fatal Bear Attack

Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)

Japanese police are investigating another suspected fatal bear attack, a local official told AFP on Tuesday, as the number of such deaths remains unusually high.

Bear attacks have been on the rise in Japan in recent years, something scientists attribute to a spike in the animals' population and a declining number of people in rural areas.

Authorities in northern Aomori prefecture said on Monday that a man found dead on a mountain that day may have been attacked by a bear.

"Police are still investigating the cause" of the man's death, but bear bite marks had been found on his body, a local official told AFP on Tuesday, not giving his name in line with common practice in Japan.

Fatal maulings in the last three months have jumped fivefold compared to last year, according to government data.

Five people have died due to bear attacks since April, according to separate statistics from the environment ministry.

Publicly available ministry data, dating back to the fiscal year ending March 2018, shows that this year is the first to see more than two deaths in the period from April to June.

A record 13 people were killed by bears in Japan last year, and there has been a jump in encounters as the animals emerge hungry from hibernation.

In the year to March, bear sightings nationwide topped 50,000 -- more than double the previous record set two years earlier, according to official data.

Earlier this month, dozens of police officers, hunters and city officials were deployed in the city of Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, to catch a bear that roamed the streets for four days, forcing mass school closures.

In the Fukushima region this month, a bear attacked four people at two factories and in a residential area, before escaping hunters.

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Bird Nests of Fiber-Optic Cables Show War’s Impact on Ukraine

Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)
Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)
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Bird Nests of Fiber-Optic Cables Show War’s Impact on Ukraine

Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)
Bird's nests made with fragments of optic fiber, which were found by a Ukrainian serviceman on the front line and then passed to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, lie on a table in a museum, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 23, 2026. (Reuters)

Woven from fiber-optic cable and grass, a small bird's nest found near the front line of the war in Ukraine shows how the more than four-year-old conflict is reshaping the natural environment, researchers say.

Areas along the 1,200-km (746-mile) front line are covered with ultra-thin fiber-optic cables, which are used by Ukrainian and Russian troops to guide aerial attack drones to make them impervious to electronic jamming.

The cables, which can stretch for 20 km, lie tangled in trees and scattered across fields and on the rooftops ‌of towns in ‌Ukraine's frontline regions, glistening in the sunlight like giant spider ‌web.

Birds ⁠have begun repurposing ⁠the discarded cables to weave their nests, says Yana Hrynko, a senior researcher at Kyiv's War Museum, cautiously examining two delicate nests which the armed forces sent to the museum from the front line.

"Objects such as bird nests with fragments of optic fiber demonstrate the change in the nature of war," said Hrynko.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 with tanks, armored vehicles and artillery. Trying to counter ⁠Russia's advantage in such conventional equipment, Ukraine has poured resources ‌into developing aerial drones. Drones now dominate ‌the battlefield.

Hrynko said researchers did not know which birds made the nests nor how they ‌had gathered the long cables.

"The first nest mainly contains dry grass ‌and fiber-optic cable. And it's pretty tightly twisted," she said.

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Reuters spoke to several Ukrainian servicemen in the frontline regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia who had found such nests and posted their pictures and videos online.

One of the two nests ‌will remain in Kyiv as a part of the War Museum's war collection, and the other will be sent ⁠for study in the ⁠Netherlands and later returned, researchers said.

Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a 33-year-old biologist based in the Dutch city of Leiden who specializes in artificial nest materials, said Ukraine had rich avian biodiversity and there were many species that could have built the nests.

"We're going to look for DNA traces still in a nest to determine who actually made the nest," she said. "I have never seen nests like this before - and I have seen many, many bird nests."

The impact of the fiber-optic on birds could be mixed, Hiemstra said. It could cause harm as the birds could become entangled but it could also benefit them by helping them make a strong nest. "And by documenting this nest, we're also documenting the impact of war on nature in Ukraine," Hiemstra said.