Mind games: How football stars are fuelling chess boom

From Japan's wacky racers to JD Vance's demons... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

- Japan's office hell riders -

It takes true grit and buttocks of steel to compete in Japan's ISU-1 Grand Prix, a test of endurance modelled on France's Le Mans 24 race. Except the gruelling Japanese race is run on office chairs.

Their faces contorted in pain and exhaustion, the losing drivers lay prostrate at the finish line amid a mess of broken dreams and chair wheels. 

But Naoki Nishikawa, a member of the victorious team, said the two hours of hell on the Kyotanabe track near Kyoto was worth it. It "really showed me how important it is to keep going without giving up," he told AFP.

Yasunori Miura missed out on the top prize -- 90 kilos of rice -- but thinks the race could go global. "I really hope it spreads across the world," he said.

- There be demons -

Pause for thought all those who think anyone else would be better than Donald Trump in the White House.

Vice President JD Vance this week admitted that he is "obsessed" with unidentified flying objects -- though he is convinced they are actually demons, and they are up there zipping around skies ready to do us mischief. 

"I've still got three more years as vice president. I will get to the bottom of the UFO files," he told a podcast.

"I don't think they're aliens. I think they're demons," which he defined as "celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people".

- Udderly crazy -

Five young cows have been enrolled in a French primary school in a bid to boost numbers.

Parents in the Alsatian village of Moosch -- yes, that's really its name -- brought Arlette, Abondance, Amsel, Amandine and Abeille to the school to register them for next year's intake in September.

While they took care of the paperwork, the cows amoosed themselves in a paddock in playground to the delight of the school's two-legged pupils.

Mayor Jose Schruoffeneger said the school risks losing a class after falling four students short, "so we had the idea to enroll the heifers" to make up the numbers.

"Obviously it's tongue-in-cheek," he told AFP, "but since this morning the phone has been ringing off the hook with enquiries".

- Won't be Russian to Moscow -

A German's sense of humour has landed him in deep trouble with the Kremlin. 

Jacques Tilly, who depicted Russian leader Vladimir Putin taking a bath in blood for a carnival float, was sentenced to eight years and six months in jail by a court in Moscow.

But the artist -- who was convicted in absentia -- does not seem overly bothered, and hit back with a paper-mache creation for this year's Duesseldorf carnival of Putin being whacked on the head by a jester marked "satire".

- All-you-can-eat marathon -

To China where two runners whose antics at the Chengdu marathon went viral have been banned from all races in Sichuan province for two years.

One woman who stopped suddenly to perform the splits without breaking her stride -- and make a heart with her arms at the same time -- was condemned for endangering other runners.

Another competitor sparked outrage and laughter in equal measure by shamelessly filling his large backpack with energy gels and other snacks offered along the route.  

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(The Center Square) - The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in March, exceeding expectations, after one month of conflict between the United States and Iran. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.3%, according to a new report from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. 

The March job's report shows a significant uptick from Februrary's "dismal" loss of 133,000 jobs. The healthcare, construction, transportation and warehousing industries drove most of the increases in March. 

The unemployment rate went down to 4.3% in March, slightly improved from 4.4% in February. 

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal, said job gains in March were the best since December 2024. 

"There's no sign of the war in Iran hurting the job market yet," Long said. 

The healthcare industry added 76,000 jobs in March, driven by a 54,000 increase in ambulatory services. The construction industry added 26,000 jobs in March, similar to the previous 12 month span. 

The transportation and warehousing industries added 21,000 jobs in March. Employment in the industry is down after reaching its peak in February 2025 with 139,000 jobs. 

Jobs in social assistance also increased by 14,000 in March, mainly from an 11,000 increase in family services. 

"Bottom line: It's been a rocky in the job market since last April, but March was a strong gain," Long wrote. 

With the war in the Middle East sending global fertiliser prices soaring, the EU is coming under pressure from farmers and some member states to take action. 

Agriculture sector representatives are due in Brussels for talks with the European Commission on April 13, as many complain the conflict risks plunging an already strained industry into a deeper crisis. 

"The situation is very dire," lamented Amaury Poncelet, a cereal farmer in central Belgium.

This winter he bought fertilisers for 380 euros ($439) a tonne, up from 330 euros last summer, he noted. "And since things flared up in Iran, prices are going further up," he told AFP. 

About a third of fertilisers shipped by sea reach the global market through the Strait of Hormuz that Iran has effectively closed in retaliation against US-Israeli strikes.

That sent prices up, with the UN expressing concern in particular about the impact on developing countries.

In Europe, the price of nitrogen fertilisers, which are derived from gas, has risen by around 20 percent over the past month, and is approaching 500 euro per tonne -- a one-two punch for farmers already facing higher costs because of the war in Ukraine.

Cereal producers, who need vast amounts of the stuff, have been hit particularly hard, said Luc Vernet of Farm Europe, an agriculture sector think tank.

"They haven't been able to make a living for the past three years," he said. 

In France alone, about 300,000 hectares of land once used for cereal farming has been left fallow or abandoned since 2022, he said. 

- 'Strategically important' -

Brussels, which has slapped high tariffs on fertilisers from Russia -- a major producer -- with plans to end imports by 2022 in a bid to hit Moscow's war coffers, has found itself again the target of requests for help. 

France and farmers groups are pushing for a pause in the application of the EU's carbon border tax on fertilisers. 

But the commission, which has promised an action plan for May, has so far ruled that out. 

Supporters point out that the levy targets carbon-intensive imports to level the playing field for European industries subject to strict emissions rules, noting their development is key if Europe wants to avoid a similar crisis in the future. 

The crisis sparked by the Iran war has made it "clear that maintaining strong domestic fertiliser production is strategically important for Europe", said Fertilizers Europe, an industry group. 

A commission spokeswoman said the EU executive was continuously monitoring prices and has already "taken several measures to help farmers with affordability of fertilisers".

These included suspending duties on all imports with the exception of those from Russia and Belarus and adjusting the carbon border tax to soften its impact, she said.

Its May plan will be addressing "structural vulnerabilities and market imbalances" and look to boost domestic production, including low-carbon alternatives. 

But there is a long way to go before these can become a competitive reality.

Some such green projects have been abandoned as too costly and others are in the initial stages, said Vernet. 

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During the war in the Gaza Strip and two wars with Iran in the space of a year, Israel has used artificial intelligence to fine-tune its missile early warning system. 

In last year's 12-day conflict with Iran, incoming missiles would spark city-wide air raid alerts, and Israelis would have to rush for cover, often several times a day.

But now the systems that warn of an impending attack have become increasingly more sophisticated and localised.

Sarah Chemla is a 32-year-old mother whose second child was born in a delivery room set up in an underground hospital bunker in Tel Aviv during the 2025 war with Iran.

Back then, every alert that sounded applied to the whole city, she said, but now the system has become more precise.

"We spend less time in shelters, even if the stress is still there," Chemla said.

As the new war with Iran rages, Chemla said the refined warning systems are making lives easier.

She no longer has to shake her children awake whenever a siren sounds, and some nights they even manage to sleep through.

"Before, alarms would sound across all of Tel Aviv whenever a missile targeted the area," she told AFP.

"Now alerts are ultra-localised. If a projectile is heading for the south of the city, I only get a pre-alert and no longer have to wake my children."

Between the wars with Iran and during the Gaza conflict, Israeli civil defence has significantly upgraded its public warning system, to make daily life more manageable under the constant threat of missile fire.

Behind the shift lies the growing use of artificial intelligence, AI, to predict where incoming projectiles are likely to hit.

- Continuous surveillance -

Since the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas that triggered the Gaza war, "more than 60,000 missiles, rockets, drones and aerial threats have been fired at Israel", former air defence commander Ran Kochav told AFP.

"Each launch has been the subject of a full analysis ... incorporating all its characteristics: trajectory, timing, weather, launch angle, radar signature."

This data is "processed ... with the help of AI", added Kochav, now an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in Britain.

Israel's defence firm Elbit Systems has also deployed its "SkyEye" system to analyse launches, media reports say.

"The system has the capability to continuously monitor vast areas, intercept events and maintain multiple regions of interest (ROI) under constant surveillance with high spatial resolution," Elbit Systems says on its website.

Experts say AI is processing data at a speed and depth beyond human capacity.

"AI gathers millions of data points and performs what is known as data fusion," Yehoshua Kalisky, a laser specialist and researcher at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), told AFP.

"It provides strategic planning and forecasting tools at levels the human brain cannot reach, thereby supporting decision-makers."

For each launch from Iran or Lebanon -- where Israel is also at war with Tehran-backed Hezbollah -- the prediction is passed on to the military's Home Front Command, which is responsible for civilian protection.

- 1,700 alert zones -

Nearly 20 years ago, during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, "the country was divided into 25 alert zones", a Home Front Command source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Today there are 1,700."

Major cities are now split into sub-zones to avoid unnecessarily confining millions of people to shelters during frequent alerts.

The Command relies on multiple channels to reach the public: street sirens, a dedicated website, the media, and a silent radio frequency that activates only in emergencies for observant Jews who switch off their phones during the Sabbath.

But above all else, it is the smart phone that has transformed the management of life during wartime.

The Israeli military says an app downloaded on more than four million phones in a country of 10 million people delivers real-time geo-located alerts, the time needed to reach a shelter and "all-clear" messages when the threat recedes.

During the June 2025 war with Iran, civil defence added cell broadcast technology, enabling alerts to be sent to all switched-on phones within range of relay antennas.

At dawn on June 13, 2025, thousands of phones across the country sounded a piercing tone, warning that Israel had struck Iran and urging people to brace for retaliation, which followed within hours.

Since February 28 this year, for many Israelis that sound has become the soundtrack of war.

Tel Aviv resident Chemla said the improvements in the early warning system over the past year have been "life-saving".

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Greece on Friday reshuffled its government after three cabinet members resigned as a burgeoning EU farm subsidy scandal pisled pressure on the country's conservative government.

The government resignations came after European Union prosecutors this week said they were probing 20 members of the ruling New Democracy party, including active and former lawmakers.

Prosecutors are reportedly probing whether beneficiaries of agriculture subsidies had made false claims.

According to Greek authorities, the network defrauded at least 23 million euros ($27 million) since it started around 2018. 

- 'Widespread corruption' -

"The removal of the current leadership of the Ministry of Rural Development highlights the widespread corruption whose core and heart lie deep within the government" and the prime minister's office, the main opposition socialist Pasok party said in a statement.

"Of course, until yesterday the prime minister was claiming that this leadership had brought order to the chaos of illegal subsidies," it said.

The EU's European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) on Wednesday demanded that Greece lift the parliamentary immunity of 11 lawmakers, for acts allegedly committed in 2021.

The agency said it also had information regarding the possible involvement of a former agriculture minister, his deputy and five former MPs.

On Thursday, it said there were another two MPs under suspicion.

It said the investigation concerns "instigation of breach of trust, computer fraud and false attestation with the intent to obtain for another an unlawful benefit."

The suspects have not been formally named, but their names were widely circulated by Greek media.

According to news reports, the EPPO investigation was partly based on phone recordings in which politicians are allegedly heard attempting to secure subsidy payments for their constituents.

"You had wolves guarding the sheep," Konstantinos Barkas, parliament speaker for the leftist Syriza party, told lawmakers.

Ministers cannot be independently prosecuted by Greek courts. Any probe must first pass through parliament in a cumbersome process that is frequently blocked by the government's majority lawmakers.

Greek police last year made dozens of non-political arrests over the scandal.

EU prosecutors first detailed the scam last May, accusing subsidy beneficiaries of making claims for land that they did not own and exaggerating the number of animals on farms. 

Some people receiving payments had no link to agriculture.

The scheme started after the EU's Common Agricultural Policy began calculating subsidies based on land instead of livestock in 2014.

The incomplete land registry at the time made ownership across much of Greece unclear. Farmers were therefore allowed to declare land owned elsewhere in the country to claim subsidies.

- 'Thieves' -

Cases under investigation include pastures declared on archaeological sites, olive trees in a military airport and banana plantations on Mount Olympus.

The allegations led to a string of raids and arrests last October, as well as long-running protests from farmers who had their legitimate subsidies held up.

Most of the fraudulent subsidies went to the island of Crete, where the family of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been politically influential for over a century. 

"To conceal the illicit origin of the proceeds, the suspects are believed to have issued fictitious invoices, routed the funds through multiple bank accounts, and mixed them with legitimate income," the EPPO said in October.

According to Greek authorities, approximately 80 percent of subsidies for pastures granted from 2017 to 2020 ended up in Crete.

And while the number of livestock farmers in Greece is decreasing, 13,000 new farmers were registered in Crete between 2019 and 2025. The number of declared sheep and goats doubled over the same period.

Mitsotakis, who notes the fraud began before he came to power in 2019, has vowed to imprison the "thieves" responsible and to reclaim the funds.

Elections are scheduled in Greece next year. Mitsotakis's conservative party leads in opinion polls, but is not expected to secure an absolute majority.

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Ukraine on Friday faced nearly 500 Russian missile and drone attacks that killed at least six people, officials said, the latest in an increasing number of daytime strikes by Moscow.

Russia has been launching aerial barrages at Ukraine throughout its invasion, mostly at night, but in recent weeks it has stepped up daytime  attacks.

"Terrorist Russia strikes in broad daylight deliberately -- to maximise civilian casualties and damage," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said, adding that Moscow fired almost 500 drones and missiles.

Images from Ukrainian emergency services showed damaged residential buildings, with a block of flats ripped and rubble strewn on a street. 

The attack killed one person and left eight wounded in the capital region of Kyiv, regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk said. 

"Unfortunately, animals were also affected by the attack -- approximately 20 animals died due to damage to a veterinary clinic," Kalashnyk added.

Some residents of the capital sheltered in the metro or in basements, AFP reporters said, but many people sat in cafes unfazed by the barrage and despite blaring air raid sirens. 

In the Kyiv region, "a drone struck a residential building in Obukhiv, and another attack occurred between a kindergarten and a school in Vyshneve, damaging homes," Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

Three people were killed in Ukraine's northern Sumy region. One person was killed in the northwestern Zhytomyr region and another in northeastern Kharkiv, local officials said. 

- Easter truce? -

The barrage prompted emergency power outages in several regions, operator Ukrenergo said. 

"This is how Moscow responds to Ukraine's Easter ceasefire proposals -- with brutal attacks," Sybiga said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was ready for a truce over the Easter holidays but the Kremlin said it had not received any proposals.

Ukraine has accused Russia of prolonging the war to capture more  territory and says Moscow is not interested in peace.

Talks between the two warring parties, mediated by the United States, have been stalled by the war in the Middle East.

In comments to reporters, including from AFP, published on Friday, Zelensky said he had invited an American delegation to Ukraine to relaunch negotiations with Moscow.

"The delegation will do everything possible in the current conditions -- during the war with Iran -- to come to Kyiv," Zelensky said.

"The American group can come to us and, after us, go to Moscow. If it does not work out with three parties, let's do it this way," he added.

US President Donald Trump's envoys have been engaged in a three-way shuttle diplomacy with Ukrainian and Russian teams in a bid to end the four-year war. 

But these have stalled as Washington has been occupied with an aerial campaign on Iran it launched late February.

Amid the Middle East war, Kyiv has sought to leverage its expertise in fighting off Russian drones similar to those used by Iran in retaliatory attacks across Gulf nations.

Last week, Zelensky visited several Middle Eastern countries and signed defence agreements with Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

He also suggested Kyiv could help unblock the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure by Iran has rattled the global economy.

He did not specify how Ukraine could contribute, but cited Kyiv's experience in restoring passage through the Black Sea, which Russia had blocked at the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine.

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A container ship declaring itself to have a French owner has passed through the Strait of Hormuz, according Marine Traffic data analysed by AFP Friday.

The Maltese-flagged Kribi belonging to the French maritime transport group CMA CGM crossed the strait -- which has been virtually blocked by Iran since early in the Middle East war -- to exit the Gulf on Thursday afternoon, the maritime tracking website showed.

It appears to be the first known transit by a major European shipping group since March 1, when Iranian attacks against ships near the Strait of Hormuz, in retaliation for US-Israel strikes, reduced crossings to a trickle. 

The ship was off Muscat, Oman, early Friday, still broadcasting the message "owner France" on its transponder system in the field usually used to give the destination.

The vessel's navigation data showed it crossed via a new Iranian-approved route through its waters, dubbed the "Tehran Toll Booth" by leading shipping journal Lloyd's List.

At least two vessels have paid to use the corridor around Larak Island just off Iran's coast, a Lloyd's List Intelligence analyst said in a briefing on Thursday.

The few commercial vessels transiting through the waterway with their transponders on since the start of the war have passed close to Larak Island, according to maritime data analysed by AFP.

Most of the transits made since March 1 have been ships coming from or heading to Iran, with some linked to the United Arab Emirates, India, China or Saudi Arabia.

In peacetime, around 20 percent of the world's crude oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the chokepoint. 

In early March, vessels began displaying links to China while sailing or anchoring in the Gulf region in a effort to signal political neutrality and reduce the risk of being targeted by Iran, according to analysts.

Beijing expressed "gratitude" on Tuesday after three of its ships passed through the strait, including two container ships on Monday belonging to state-owned shipping giant Cosco.

The war broke out on February 28, when the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate with strikes across the region and by severely restricting access to the Strait of Hormuz. 

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Human remains have been found aboard a cargo ship struck by Iran while transiting the Strait of Hormuz last month, the vessel's owner said Friday, after three crew members were reported missing following the attack.

US-Israeli strikes on Iran late February prompted Tehran to respond by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial artery for global oil supplies.

The Thai-flagged Mayuree Naree was struck in March while travelling through the strait after departing Khalifa port in the United Arab Emirates.

"Certain human remains were found within the affected area of the vessel," a statement from transport company Precious Shipping said Friday, adding it could not yet confirm the identities or the number of individuals.

Twenty Thai crew members returned home in mid-March, while three of their colleagues were missing and presumed trapped in the damaged engine compartment.

A search was carried out under "challenging conditions" as the vessel's engine room had been flooded and damaged by fire, the company said.

Thailand's foreign ministry said it was "saddened" by the development and that families of the missing crew had been informed.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in March they had struck the Mayuree Naree, as well as a Liberia-flagged vessel, in the strait because the ships had ignored "warnings".

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Fraudsters running cyberscam operations in Cambodia could face life in prison after the Senate approved a new law on Friday targeting criminals involved in the multi-billion-dollar illicit industry.

The Southeast Asian nation has emerged as a hotspot for crime syndicates running fake romantic relationship and cryptocurrency investment schemes in which scammers -- some willing, others trafficked -- defraud internet users around the world.

Operated out of fortified compounds across the region, the global cyberscam industry has reached "industrial proportions", with estimates of its annual revenues as high as $64 billion, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Ringleaders of cyberscam centres that engage in human trafficking, detention and torture will now face prison sentences of up to 20 years and a fine of up to two billion riel ($500,000) under the law approved on Friday.

Scam centre bosses could face life in prison if their operations lead to the death of one or more people.

The law would deal "serious punishment" to deter repeat offenders, Cambodian justice minister Koeut Rith told a news conference.

Its passage aimed to "send a message to cyber scammers that Cambodia is not a place to do scams".

A draft of the law -- the first of its kind that aims to stamp out transnational cyberscam operations in Cambodia -- was initially approved by the government in March.

A joint statement by UN experts in May said that "hundreds of thousands of people of various nationalities are trapped and forced to carry out online fraud".

Several countries have enacted anti-cyberscam laws to combat the rise of online fraud, romance and cryptocurrency scams, with con artists in Singapore facing 24 strokes of the cane for serious cases.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet told AFP in February that scam centres were destroying his country's economy and giving the nation a bad name, vowing to "clean this out".

Authorities have pledged to close all online scam centres by the end of April, but analysts have said the government's crackdown on the industry is unlikely to stamp it out.

The US State Department said last year that "official complicity, including at senior levels, inhibited effective law enforcement action against trafficking crimes" in Cambodia.

Cambodia has denied suggestions its government is complicit.

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The French capital's new mayor on Friday pledged to prioritise preventing sexual violence in after-school programmes, after allegations that poorly recruited school monitors abused preschool pupils.

Emmanuel Gregoire, a Socialist elected last month who says he too suffered sexual abuse as a primary school pupil, in comments to Le Monde newspaper promised to invest 20 million euros ($23 million) in the plan.

"If another 10 million euros need to be put in, I'll do it," he said, promising better monitor recruitment and training, clearer channels to report alleged abuse, as well as transparency with parents.

In Paris, school monitors recruited and trained by the city help look after children outside the classroom, including in the evening before their parents can pick them up.

Allegations that abusers slipped through the recruitment system to look after small children became a central theme in the run-up to the Paris mayor election.

Last year, 30 of these monitors were suspended in the capital, including 16 on suspicion of sexual abuse, according to figures from the city hall.

Since January, nine more people -- all working at the same Paris nursery school --- have been suspended on suspicion of physical and sexual violence.

Parents of pupils have accused school management of failing to inform them about their suspicions.

"If there was a collective mistake, it was treating these cases as isolated incidents when in fact they reflect a systemic risk, and perhaps even a systemic code of silence," said Gregoire, who left city hall in 2024 to become a lawmaker.

Kindergarten pupils were especially vulnerable, and almost all alleged perpetrators were men, he said.

"Each quarter, I will share the statistics and the number of suspensions," he said.

Gregoire has spoken publicly about being a victim of sexual abuse in an after-school swimming programme for several months when he was in primary school.

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