The Daily Telegraph - 06.08.2019

The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 6 August 2019 *** 13

By Alec Luhn in Moscow

STATE television in Turkmenistan has
shown the country’s eccentric presi-
dent driving near a flaming gas crater
in the first footage of him since ru-
mours of his death last month.
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov,
who last appeared in public on July 5,
was shown on a Sunday news broad-
cast behind the wheel of a rally car
streaking through the desert of the gas-
producing former Soviet republic near
Iran and Afghanistan.
The car was then seen spinning in
the dust and driving circles around the
Gates of Hell, a 220ft-wide collapsed
natural gas field that has been burning
continuously since 1971.
The daring exploit was the culmina-
tion of 28 minutes of vainglorious foot-
age that also showed the dictator riding

a horse and a bicycle, singing, showing

government ministers how to lift

weights and apparently shooting bull-

seyes in a target with an assault rifle.

He appeared to roll three strikes in a

row while bowling with the mayor of

Ashgabat, the capital, although cuta-

way edits made it impossible to tell

how many he actually achieved.

Mr Berdymukhamedov’s overblown

TV antics with fast cars and high-pow-

ered firearms are such a fixture of the

media in the repressive Central Asian

country that any undue absence causes

confusion and gossip.

They distract from the dire eco-

nomic performance of Turkmenistan,

which is suffering hyperinflation and

food shortages, the London-based For-

eign Policy Centre reported in June.

The presidential press service said

last month that Mr Berdymukhamedov

was on a month’s holiday and pub-

lished a video of him playing with cats

and his grandchildren.

Less than a week later, rumours be-

gan on social media that he had died of

liver failure.

Mr Berdymukhamedov, 62, came to

power in 2006 and established his own

personality cult. Turkmenistan is

known as one of the most closed coun-

tries in the world, with an official ideol-

ogy enforced, and dissent ruthlessly

put down.

AP

World news

Car bomb kills 20 at

Cairo’s cancer hospital

Twenty people were killed and 47
injured when a car packed with
explosives intended for a militant
attack blew up outside Cairo’s main
cancer hospital yesterday.
Officials said it happened when a car
driving against the traffic hit three
other vehicles. The front of the hospital
was extensively damaged, with
victims’ belongings scattered among
the debris. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s
president, condemned the “cowardly
terrorist incident” on social media.

WORLD BULLETIN

Syria resumes air strikes

days into Idlib ceasefire

Damascus and Russia resumed air

strikes on Idlib in north-west Syria

yesterday, a monitor said, scrapping a

ceasefire for the jihadist-run bastion

and accusing the regime’s opponents

of targeting a Russian air base.

The region is one of the last major

centres of resistance to the regime of

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

Damascus said on Thursday it had

agreed to a truce to halt the three

months of bombardment, in which

more than 790 civilians have died.

Mass evacuation after

ammunition depot fire

Up to eight people were injured and

thousands were evacuated yesterday

because of a fire at a Siberian

ammunition depot that set off

explosions, authorities said.

The fire at the depot, near the city of

Achinsk, was the latest accident to hit

Russia’s military.

Witnesses shared footage showing a

huge column of black smoke.

Alexander Uss, the region’s

governor, said that between five and

eight people may have been hurt.

Gangster

tries to walk

out of prison

disguised as

daughter

By David Millward

GUARDS foiled an attempt by one of

Brazil’s most notorious drug lords to

escape from prison disguised as his

19-year-old daughter.

Clauvino da Silva donned a silicon

mask and long brunette wig in an effort

to sneak out of the Bangu 3 prison in

Rio de Janeiro, where he was serving a

73-year sentence for drug trafficking as

a leader of the Comando Vermelho

(Red Command) gang.

Similar in stature to his daughter, the

42-year-old, known as Baixinho –

which translates as Shorty – tried to

fool guards by switching places with

the teenager, leaving her in jail while

he made his escape. Several people

were involved in the plot, including a

pregnant woman who was able to bring

in the mask and clothing needed for

the escape without being searched.

Da Silva donned the mask, bra, T-

shirt, jeans, wig and glasses and at-

tempted to leave with other visitors.

But his nervous demeanour aroused

guards’ suspicion, and his requesting

his daughter’s ID card on his departure

did little to help the subterfuge.

They removed the disguise, and the

“woman” turned out to be Da Silva

when he pulled off the silicone mask.

The “striptease” was filmed by

guards who also made him pose for pic-

tures before being returned to his cell.

His daughter, Ana Gabriele Leandro

da Silva, and eight other people are be-

ing questioned by authorities about

their part in the attempted escape.

Da Silva was transferred to another

unit of the prison, and will face further

disciplinary action.

Officials said he will be transferred

to a maximum-security prison to pre-

vent further escape attempts.

In 2013, Da Silva broke out of the Vi-

cente Piragibe Penal Institute in Geri-

cino through the jail’s sewer system

but was caught soon afterwards.

Police comb jungle for missing British girl

By Nicola Smith and Selva Mariappen
in Seremban, Malaysia

MALAYSIAN police last night were
forced to call off an extensive search for
a missing London teenager as darkness
fell on dense jungle.
Nora Anne Quoirin, 15, has been
missing since Sunday morning, when
her family discovered her empty room
at Seremban’s Dusun Pantai Hill resort,
set in a rainforest nature reserve about
an hour’s drive from Kuala Lumpur.
The search will resume at first light.
More than 160 people have been scour-
ing the difficult terrain, including the

light infantry arm of the Malaysian po-

lice, members of the fire department,

civil defence staff, a volunteers’ corps,

forestry department officials and indig-

enous Orang Asli guides.

The police, who have deployed

sniffer dogs, have not dismissed any

line of inquiry, but believe the chances

of abduction are slim given the remote

location of the 12-acre resort in the

foothills of the Titiwangsa mountains.

“There have been no signs of forced

entry into the teen’s room at the re-

sort,” Senior Asst Commissioner Che

Zakaria Othman told The Telegraph.

One theory being pursued by police

is that Nora, who has learning difficul-

ties, may have been taken in by a local

family while exploring the jungle and

not been able to communicate since.

But her family said it would have

been out of character for Nora to leave

the safety of the hotel without them.

Her aunt, Aisling Agnew, who lives

in Belfast, said: “Nora is a child with

special needs and has learning and de-

velopmental disabilities which make

her especially vulnerable and we fear

for her safety.”

Nora was travelling on an Irish pass-

port. Her mother, Meabh, is from Bel-

fast and her father is French.

Clauvino da Silva in the full disguise as his

19-year-old daughter, left, and without the

wig, above. Below, how he looked once

the costume had been removed

On balance,

Japan thinks

a robotic tail is

what we need

By James Cook

JAPANESE researchers have created a
robotic tail that they claim can be used
to improve human balance and help
prevent falls among elderly people.
The tail prototype, called Arque, is
based on a seahorse’s tail and uses a se-
ries of artificial vertebrae and four
pneumatic muscles to move.
Researchers from Keio University
say they hope the 28in tail will have a
range of applications including helping
people to balance while carrying heavy
loads. The tail’s modular construction
means that vertebrae can be added or
removed as needed to make it longer or
shorter.
The tail could help elderly or disa-
bled people who have trouble balanc-
ing, as pressurised air can be used to
power the artificial muscles, helping
them to balance by moving the tail as
needed.
“The design of this proposed tail is
fluid and customisable in length,” re-
searchers wrote in a paper describing
the project.
Researchers also use a body tracker
that is worn on the torso in order to es-
timate a person’s centre of gravity. If
the estimated centre of gravity strays
too far away from the centre of some-
one’s body, the tail can swing round to
act as a counterbalance.
The tail is also fitted with weights in
order to make it heavy enough to prop-
erly work as a counterbalance. The re-
searchers wrote in the paper that the
tail needs to be around 5 per cent of a
wearer’s body weight in order to func-
tion correctly.
As well as serving as a mobility aide,
the researchers also foresee recrea-
tional uses for the tail.
They unveiled the device at the SIG-
GRAPH conference in Los Angeles last
week, which plays host to the latest ad-
vancements in computer graphics and
video games.
The researchers foresee the robotic
tail being used as part of virtual reality
games in order to make them more im-
mersive.
The tail is still at a prototype stage
and is not yet available for purchase,
researchers said.
“What if our bodies were capable of

integrating a functional tail to emulate

some of the functions presented in na-

ture, or even use it for different scenar-

ios,” the researchers wrote.

The Arque tail follows a previous ro-

botic tail prototype created in 2012 by

Japanese company Neurowear. Its

“Shippo” tail claimed to read human

brain waves using a sensor on people’s

foreheads in order to dictate how the

tail moved.

If people relaxed, then the tail would

move slowly. But if they concentrated

on something, then the tail would

move more rapidly.

One of the researchers who devel-

oped the Shippo tail attempted to raise

funding through crowdfunding to re-

lease a similar project – named Tailly –

which moved according to people’s

heart rate. The project was cancelled

after it only raised £16,000.

Inventions such as the Arque tail

have become popular in Japan as the

country faces a rapidly ageing popula-

tion, prompting a flood of investment

into technology to help the elderly.

The Japanese government has called

the issue a “national crisis” as the coun-

try faces its lowest annual numbers of

births since records began in 1899.

The number of babies estimated to

have been born in Japan in 2018 was

921,000, down 25,000 from the previ-

ous year and the third year in a row

where the estimate was below 1 million.

Japanese companies have invented

robots in order to try to meet the needs

of the country’s rapidly ageing popula-

tion.

Earlier this year, Groove X, a Japa-

nese manufacturer, showed its Lovot

robot at the Consumer Electronics

Show in Las Vegas. The robot has car-

toon eyes and follows its owner around,

and has been built to “nurture people’s

capacity to love” by demanding the af-

fection of its owner.

Mother has ‘perfect’ death in first use of Australian euthanasia law

By Phil Mercer in Sydney

THE family of an Australian woman

with terminal cancer has said she had

the “perfect” death after becoming the

first person to end their life under new

assisted dying laws in Victoria.

Kerry Robertson, 61, died in a nurs-

ing home in Bendigo last month, weeks

after Australia’s only euthanasia legis-

lation came into force. Relatives said

her final moments were “beautiful and

peaceful”.

“We were beside her, David Bowie

playing in the background, surrounded

by love, with final words spoken, sim-

ple and dignified,” her daughter,

Nicole, said.

Mrs Robertson was diagnosed with

breast cancer in 2010, and it spread into

her bones, lungs, brain and liver.

Jenny Mikakos, Victoria’s minister

for health, said: “Parliament legalised

voluntary assisted dying so that Victo-

rians with an insufferable, terminal

and incurable illness can have a genu-

ine and compassionate choice at the

end of their lives.”

The legislation divided MPs and the

Catholic Church has spoken out against

it, but was passed in 2017. It was de-

signed to be the most conservative eu-

thanasia code in the world, with

patients required to meet strict criteria

to be eligible. They must make three

requests to die to specially trained doc-

tors before they can access lethal drugs.

The states of Western Australia and

Queensland are considering similar

measures, 24 years after the Northern

Territory became the first jurisdiction

in the world to legalise euthanasia. The

state law was over turned by Australia’s

federal government a year later.

Gurbanguly

Berdymukhamedov

was shown singing,

shooting and driving

around a gas crater

on state television

Turkmen leader’s ‘Gates of Hell’

stunt quells rumours of death

Keio University’s

prototype tail is

fitted with weights

so it can act as a

counterbalance to

prevent falls

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