- Demand for Japanese content booms post 'Shogun'
- As India's Bollywood shifts, stars and snappers click
- Mystery drones won't interfere with Santa's work: US tracker
- Djokovic eyes more Slam glory as Swiatek returns under doping cloud
- Australia's in-form Head confirmed fit for Boxing Day Test
- Brazilian midfielder Oscar returns to Sao Paulo
- 'Wemby' and 'Ant-Man' to make NBA Christmas debuts
- US agency focused on foreign disinformation shuts down
- On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis launches holy Jubilee year
- 'Like a dream': AFP photographer's return to Syria
- Chiefs seek top seed in holiday test for playoff-bound NFL teams
- Panamanians protest 'public enemy' Trump's canal threat
- Cyclone death toll in Mayotte rises to 39
- Ecuador vice president says Noboa seeking her 'banishment'
- Leicester boss Van Nistelrooy aware of 'bigger picture' as Liverpool await
- Syria authorities say armed groups have agreed to disband
- Maresca expects Man City to be in title hunt as he downplays Chelsea's chancs
- South Africa opt for all-pace attack against Pakistan
- Guardiola adamant Man City slump not all about Haaland
- Global stocks mostly higher in thin pre-Christmas trade
- Bethlehem marks sombre Christmas under shadow of war
- 11 killed in blast at Turkey explosives plant
- Indonesia considers parole for ex-terror chiefs: official
- Postecoglou says Spurs 'need to reinforce' in transfer window
- Le Pen says days of new French govt numbered
- Villa boss Emery set for 'very difficult' clash with Newcastle
- Investors swoop in to save German flying taxi startup
- How Finnish youth learn to spot disinformation
- 12 killed in blast at Turkey explosives plant
- Panama leaders past and present reject Trump's threat of Canal takeover
- Hong Kong police issue fresh bounties for activists overseas
- Saving the mysterious African manatee at Cameroon hotspot
- India consider second spinner for Boxing Day Test
- London wall illuminates Covid's enduring pain at Christmas
- Poyet appointed manager at South Korea's Jeonbuk
- South Korea's opposition vows to impeach acting president
- The tsunami detection buoys safeguarding lives in Thailand
- Teen Konstas to open for Australia in Boxing Day India Test
- Asian stocks mostly up after US tech rally
- US panel could not reach consensus on US-Japan steel deal: Nippon
- The real-life violence that inspired South Korea's 'Squid Game'
- Blogs to Bluesky: social media shifts responses after 2004 tsunami
- Tennis power couple de Minaur and Boulter get engaged
- Supermaxi yachts eye record in gruelling Sydney-Hobart race
- Hawaii's Kilauea volcano erupts, spewing columns of lava
- El Salvador Congress votes to end ban on metal mining
- Five things to know about Panama Canal, in Trump's sights
- NBA fines Minnesota guard Edwards $75,000 for outburst
- Haitians massacred for practicing voodoo were abducted, hacked to death: UN
- Inter beat Como to keep in touch with leaders Atalanta
Pythons on your porch? Call Myanmar's 'Snake Princess'
At four in the morning outside a Yangon monastery, Shwe Lei and her team were wrestling 30 writhing pythons into old rice sacks and loading them into a van.
It was just another day in the life of Myanmar's premier snake removal squad, prising pythons and cajoling cobras from dangerous entanglements with the human world before returning them to their natural habitat.
Stuffed into the sacks were three months' worth of work, rescued from homes and apartments around Yangon and cared for at the monastery until they are fit for release to the wild.
"I love snakes because they are not deceitful," Shwe Lei told AFP at the snake shelter run by the group, a python entwined around her body.
"If you acknowledge their nature, they are lovely."
Her mentor Ko Toe Aung, a burly 40-year-old who said he has been hospitalised seven times since he started catching snakes in 2016, was more prosaic.
Anyone in the snake-catching game has to be "fast and agile", he said.
"Wherever we catch a venomous snake, it is 90/10... It's a 90 percent chance the snake will bite me."
Their team -- called Shwe Metta, or "Golden Love" in Burmese -- has around a dozen members and rescued around 200 snakes last year from around Yangon.
Social media videos of the pair pulling snakes out of sink plugholes and extricating them from roof eaves have earned them the moniker "prince and princess of snakes" from local media.
- On the scent -
The team all have day-jobs and rely on donations for everything from their protective gear to petrol to run their purple-coloured snake "ambulance".
They mostly catch Burmese pythons -- non-venomous snakes that typically grow to around five metres (16 feet) long and squeeze their prey of rats and other small mammals to death.
Cobras and banded krait also make homes in Yangon's apartments and are a trickier prospect -- their venom can be fatal.
More than 15,000 people were bitten by snakes in Myanmar in 2014, according to the latest available figures from the World Health Organization.
Of those, 1,250 died, a fatality rate higher than many other countries, largely due to Myanmar's creaking healthcare system and patchy access to antivenoms.
It is a danger never far from the team's work.
In March, they spent two days trying to remove several cobras nesting underneath a Yangon house.
Tunnelling into the foundations as neighbours watched, their digging was frequently interrupted by the snakes inside spitting venom towards them.
"It stinks," said Ko Ye Min, 31, a tattooed member of the team, as he took a break from trying to reach the nest.
Recognising exactly which kind of stink is another skill a snake-catcher must hone, according to Ko Toe Aung.
"We have to be familiar with their smells... to identify the species of snakes before removing them," he said.
Cobras smell "rotten", he said.
"But the smell of a python is much stronger. Sometimes we even vomit when we bring it into the ambulance."
- 'Compassion' -
Through their online videos and growing fame, the Shwe Metta team hope to encourage people to be more compassionate towards the slithering reptiles -- especially if one turns up in their house.
"In the past people... used to kill snakes whenever they found them," said Shwe Lei.
"But they have more knowledge and they know we can release snakes back into the wild. So they call us to capture and remove them."
The rescued snakes are kept under observation in a nearby monastery until there are enough of them to justify a journey into the bush to release them.
In late March, the team walked into the sweltering backwoods of the Bago Yoma hills, 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of Yangon, on such a journey.
Each member carried a python in a bag slung over their shoulder until they reached a suitable spot to release it.
A few of the dazed reptiles needed gentle prods to get going, but after weeks in a cage and a five-hour car journey, Shwe Lei sympathised.
"Nobody likes the feeling of being locked up," she said after the last one had slithered off -- hopefully not to return to the human world for a long time.
"I feel happy releasing the snakes... from the point of view of compassion for each other, it is satisfying."
N.Esteves--PC