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By Mauro PIMENTEL RIO DE JANEIRO, April 17, 2024 (AFP) – Leonardo Muylaert was just another mild-mannered professional on vacation with his girlfriend when the 36-year-old Brazilian went viral on social media thanks to an unexpected superpower that has changed his life: his uncanny resemblance to Superman. Muylaert — a strapping, bespectacled civil rights lawyer from Brasilia — was in line at the 2022 Comic-Con convention in Sao Paulo when a stranger surreptitiously shot a […]
By Agnès PEDRERO GENEVA, April 17, 2024 (AFP) – Women’s bodies have become political “battlegrounds”, putting at risk 30 years of progress on sexual and reproductive health for women and girls, the UN warned Wednesday. Though maternal mortality rates and unwanted pregnancy rates have been steadily falling, progress is now slowing or even flatlining on key measures, said the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency. Thirty years ago, at […]
By Juliette COLLEN PARIS, April 16, 2024 (AFP) – Astronomers identified the largest stellar black hole yet discovered in the Milky Way, with a mass 33 times that of the Sun, according to a study published on Tuesday. The black hole, named Gaia BH3, was discovered “by chance” from data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, an astronomer from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Observatoire de Paris, Pasquale Panuzzo, […]
DUBAI, April 16, 2024 (AFP) – Microsoft is to invest $1.5 billion in United Arab Emirates artificial intelligence firm G42, taking a minority stake and a seat on the board, the companies said on Tuesday. The deal, in which G42 will run its applications and services on Microsoft’s Azure platform, comes days after the US giant said it would plough $2.9 billion into Japanese AI. Microsoft has become a major player in the advancement of […]
NASA said Monday it was looking for ways to bring Martian rocks collected by the Perseverance rover back to Earth earlier and at a lower cost than planned after facing criticism for going massively over budget. The effort comes as China is making progress towards a simpler “grab-and-go” sample return mission to the red planet “around 2030,” according to state media, which would make it the first nation to achieve the feat. “The bottom line […]
By Huw Griffith Agence France-Presse (AFP) — The armorer who loaded the gun that killed a cinematographer on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie “Rust” was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a US court on Monday. Hannah Gutierrez stood impassive as a judge in New Mexico told her she would serve the maximum sentence after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the October 2021 death of Halyna Hutchins during filming of the […]
TOKYO, April 15, 2024 (AFP) – Temperatures in Japan’s northern city of Sapporo — famous for winter sports — passed 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) on Monday, the earliest point of the year on record, a weather agency official said. Sapporo, the main city on the country’s northern island of Hokkaido, hosted the Winter Olympics in 1972 and each winter holds a snow festival where massive ice sculptures draw tens of thousands of visitors. “The […]
By Guillaume Lavallee JERUSALEM, April 15, 2024 (AFP) – Gaza’s ancient Greek site of Anthedon has been bombed, its “Napoleon’s Palace” destroyed and the only private museum burned down: the war has taken a terrible toll on the rich heritage of the Palestinian territory. But in a strange twist of fate, some of its greatest historical treasures are safe in a warehouse in Switzerland. And ironically, it is all thanks to the blockade that made […]
By Julie JAMMOT SAN FRANCISCO, April 14, 2024 (AFP) – As Google races with Microsoft and OpenAI to create world-changing generative artificial intelligence, some critics see Amazon as lagging behind. “I respectfully disagree” with that viewpoint, said Adam Selipsky, Amazon’s cloud chief, in an interview with AFP. Tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Meta have made headlines talking about their own foundational models, or those of their close partners, that are key to AI and […]
ORENBURG, Russia, April 13, 2024 (AFP) – Russian emergency services on Saturday said they had evacuated thousands of people from the Orenburg region in the south of the Urals as flood water continued to rise. Fast-rising temperatures have melted snow and ice, and along with heavy rain have caused a number of major rivers that cross Russia and Kazakhstan to overflow this month. In the city of Orenburg, one of the worst affected areas in […]
By Rosa SULLEIRO BARCELONA, April 12, 2024 (AFP) – Scientists at a United Nations conference in Spain called Friday for more research into the sharp rise in ocean temperatures which they warn could have devastating consequences. “The changes are happening so fast that we are not able to keep pace with the impact,” the executive secretary of UNESCO’s intergovernmental oceanographic commission, Vidar Helgesen, told AFP on the sidelines of the three-day “Ocean Decade” conference in […]
HANOI, April 6, 2024 (AFP) – Thousands of people in Vietnam are suffering a “severe” shortage of fresh water because of drought and salinisation, prompting authorities to declare a state of emergency on Saturday. A weeks-long heatwave has brought drought and saline intrusion to an area of Tien Giang province, 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of business hub Ho Chi Minh City. The province’s Tan Phu Dong area — with 12 kilometers of coastline along […]
