TOKYO – A female bottlenose dolphin has died at a Japanese aquarium only weeks after breaking a national record of more than four decades in captivity, an official said Thursday.

Nana, thought to be around 47 years old, was discovered drowned on Tuesday at a natural cove of Shimoda Aquarium in Shizuoka, central Japan, said official Kiyoshi Sakamoto.

The death came less than a month after Nana reached 42 years and 10 months under human care, beating the previous record held by another dolphin at Kamogawa Sea World, southeast of Tokyo.

The aquarium will conduct an autopsy on the dolphin as the exact cause of its death could not immediately be established, said Sakamoto, adding that Nana had recently lost her appetite.

Many bottlenose dolphins die between the age of 10 and 15 years.

Nana, which drew media attention after breaking the record, was given an award and special residence certificate by the city of Shimoda last month.

“Nana was a symbol of our aquarium and had attracted a lot of fans with her cute behaviour,” Sakamoto said.

“We miss her so much,” he said, adding that the facility is considering holding a ceremony in the dolphin’s memory.

Nana was captured off the coast of Ito in 1974 and had lived at the aquarium ever since. She gave birth to eight calves while also taking part in dolphin shows, the official said.

Dolphin shows are popular at Japanese aquariums, while some local fishermen hunt the animals for meat, which they say is a traditional part of their diet.

A woman delivered a baby boy inside the women’s toilet at a bus terminal in Pattaya on Thursday morning.

A medical team from Pattaya Hospital arrived at the Nakhon Chai Transport bus terminal on Sukhumvit Road in Central Pattaya at 9am and helped Samlee Suangsuwan, 37, deliver the baby.

The woman and her husband had booked tickets to return to their home in Nakhon Ratchasima.

While waiting for their bus, the woman went to the toilet and her husband sought help from the bus company, which in turn alerted the hospital. Both the mother and baby were in stable condition and taken to the hospital.

The bus company refunded their tickets in full.

SITTWE, Myanmar – Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrived on her first visit to conflict-battered northern Rakhine State on Thursday, an official said, an unannounced trip to an area that has seen most of its Rohingya Muslim population forced out by an army campaign.

Suu Kyi, a nobel laureate who leads Myanmar’s pro-democracy party, has been hammered by the international community for failing to use her moral power to speak up in defence of the Rohingya.

Some 600,000 of the stateless minority have fled to Bangladesh since late August carrying accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar’s powerful army, after militant raids sparked a ferocious military retaliation.

The UN says that crackdown is likely tantamount to ethnic cleansing, while pressure has mounted on Myanmar to provide security for the Rohingya and allow people to return home.

In addition to the state capital Sittwe, Suu Kyi is also visiting two of the epicentres of the violence, Maungdaw and Buthidaung, as part of the “one day trip,” government spokesman Zaw Htay told AFP.

It is her first trip in office to northern Rakhine, which has seen some of the worst of the communal violence that has cut through the western state since 2012, severely damaging Myanmar’s global reputation.

It was not clear if Suu Kyi would visit some of the hundreds of Rohingya villages torched by the army – allegedly aided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist locals.

But “The Lady” – as she in known – did meet with Rohingya in Maungdaw, according to local media, a first for a leader keen to convince observers inside the country and abroad that the crisis has abated and reconstruction of Rakhine can begin.

The UN on Thursday again called for unfettered humanitarian access to a zone still under army lockdown.

On Thursday 2,500 Rohingya arrived by land at the Bangladesh border, a sign hunger and fear is still driving people from their homes.

“The army didn’t attack us but made our life very difficult,”Mohammad Zafar, 35, from a village in Buthidaung told AFP at the Bangladesh border.

“We were not paid for any work and couldn’t go to markets. How long is it possible to live like that?” .

HERE FOR GENERATIONS

Suu Kyi heads a committee charged with rebuilding Rakhine.

She was joined on Thursday by businessman Zaw Zaw, one of a host of military “cronies” who thrived under junta rule and are now taking prominent roles in rebuilding the battered region.

There are fears a carve-up of contracts in Rakhine by big business will further divorce the Rohingya from their land.

She says the Rohingya who have fled are now welcome back, if they meet contested “verification” criteria for re-entry to Myanmar.

The Rohingya are loathed in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and denigrated as illegal “Bengali” immigrants.

Their legal status is at the crux of communal tensions, with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists adamant that Rohingya are foreign interlopers.

A Rohingya resident who has remained in Maungdaw town appealed to Suu Kyi to reconsider foisting a controversial national verification card (NVC) on the minority.

The card grants them limited rights of residence in Myanmar, but does not recognise them as an ethnic group with citizenship.

The Rohingya say it is a bureaucratic attempt to erase their identity and force a shaky legal status onto them in a region where many claim generations of ancestry.

“We can not do anything with this NVC card, so we do not want to receive it,” the resident said, requesting anonymity fearing reprisals.

“We are not Bengalis from Bangladesh, we are Rohingya living here for generations.” Observers say Suu Kyi has chosen not to criticise the army in fear of a backlash from a powerful institution that controls all security matters.

The plight of the Rohingya garners little sympathy inside Myanmar, making a defence of the minority a politically toxic cause.

The Rohingya have packed into makeshift camps on a poor, already overcrowded slip of border land inside Bangladesh.

Aid groups say the risk of major outbreaks of disease is high, while they struggle to deliver food and basic supplies to the unprecedented number of refugees.

Myanmar’s army denies abuses in its campaign to flush out Rohingya militants whose attacks in late August sparked the latest round of a festering communal crisis.

PUBLIC TOURS of the Royal Crematorium at Sanam Luang in Bangkok begin today following yesterday’s trial run.

Deputy Prime Minister Tanasak Patimapakorn said Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn would officially open the grounds to the public at 7am, with tours beginning shortly thereafter. As many as 100,000 people are expected to visit the exhibition each day, with the eight roads adjacent to Sanam Luang remaining closed.

Yesterday morning, 16,500 governmental officials, monks, students, physically disabled people and other invited citizens took part in three separate hour-long tours of the complex. About 5,500 visitors at a time will be led through three areas, first seeing exhibits related to Royal Projects initiated by His Majesty the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

These include a demonstration rice field, “monkey cheek” water-retention ponds and the Chaipattana water-aeration device he invented. Other exhibits illustrate aspects of the Royal Funeral.

Visitors, who are required to be formally attired, will then have a chance to take photos in a polite manner with the Royal Cremation as a backdrop. Selfies and live online broadcasts are not allowed. The highlight of the tour is viewing the ornately decorated interior of the crematorium, which has not been accessible to the general public until now.

“First, we planed for visitors to enter only to the first level of the Royal Crematorium. As we realised all visitors need to see the Royal Crematorium up close, we now allow them to visit the second level,” said Tanasak, who was accompanied by Culture Minister Vira Rojpojchanarat yesterday.

‘Once in a lifetime’

He said the government understood that people were keen to view the interior but urged visitors to keep moving to give others their chance.

The tour ends at the Songtham Pavilion, with its three murals depicting his royal projects and an exhibition of the late monarch at different stages during his 70-year reign.

The massive golden-gilded Royal Crematorium, which is as tall as a 60-storey building, is the centrepiece. “It’s the masterpiece of the world as it shows our rich art and culture,” said 65-year-old monk Phra Wimol Thaichayon from Phra Phradaeng Temple in Samut Prakan. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to visit the Royal Crematorium of the late monarch.

Being here makes me miss him so much; the King is still in my heart,” said 82-year-old grandmother Urai Wiriyarungrueng, who was in a wheelchair.

The tour includes recorded audio commentary for the hearing impaired and tactile exhibits for the visually impaired, including a replica of the crematorium. “By touching the replica with explanations by the guide, I can imagine the grandeur of the Royal Crematorium,” said Wiriya Namriripongpun, 65, a retired blind lecturer.

Visitors are required to bring ID cards or passports and will have to proceed through one of five screening points.

There are four screening points for ordinary Thai people at the Territorial Defence Command, Tha Chang, the Earth Goddess Statue and Thammasat University, where wheelchairs will be provided, while monks and foreign visitors are invited to check in at the Defence Ministry screening point.

At Saman Luang, tents will be provided for people to wait before entering through one of two entrances.

One is near the Earth Goddess Statue while the other is close to Thammasat University.

Visitors will be provided with pamphlets about the Royal Crematorium and, before leaving the exhibition, they will receive postcards coming in nine different versions.

Three million each of the pamphlets and postcards will be available, with pamphlets printed in English and Chinese for foreign visitors. More than 3 million people are expected to visit through November, after which demand would be assessed to determine whether the period should be extended, Tanasak said.

If demand remained high, he said, the government would seek His Majesty the King’s permission to extend the timetable.

Jakartans spend a longer time in traffic compared to citizens of other major Asian cities, a study revealed on Wednesday.

App-based transportation firm Uber, in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group, released a study revealing that drivers in Jakarta spend an average of 22 days a year in traffic.

The number is higher than many other major cities in Asia, in which drivers spend around 19 days stuck in traffic, Uber Indonesia’s head of public policy and government affairs John Colombo said.

“In a day, drivers in Jakarta spend an average of 68 minutes in traffic and 21 minutes looking for parking,” Colombo said in Central Jakarta on Wednesday, as quoted by kompas.com.

Regarding the difficulty of finding a parking space, the study found 74 per cent of Jakartans missed important events, such as wedding parties, appointments with doctors, job interviews and funerals.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno, who attended the release of the study’s results, deplored the findings. “Imagine, 22 days are the same as two years of annual leave,” he said.

He expected ride-sharing apps would help decrease traffic congestion in the city.

The survey was conducted in major Asian cities from July to August involving 9,000 participants from 18 to 65 years old. Besides Jakarta, the study also took place in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Manila in the Philippines, Bangkok in Thailand, Hong Kong, Taipei in Taiwan, and Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.