An eccentric Japanese musician-cum-inventor who’s been described as the “mad professor of home-made instruments” is set to liven up the classrooms of a West Cork school where he will perform as part of the Clonakilty Guitar Festival.

Search teams lost hope of finding any more survivors under the rubble left by a massive earthquake as torrential rain held up aid in the remote hills of western Indonesia where several villages were wiped out.

HEAVY rains hampered search teams yesterday in the hills of western Indonesia where hundreds of people were buried alive in landslides triggered by a massive earthquake that wiped out four villages.