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by Celia CAZALE Agence France Presse HONG KONG, China (AFP) — The red sails of the “Dukling” junk boat have glided across Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour for more than six decades. But the wooden ship has been docked after new measures to stem a fourth wave of the coronavirus were introduced earlier this month, threatening the city’s last remaining antique junk. Strict social distancing rules were brought back after daily cases repeatedly spiked to […]
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that it had been illegal for car companies to install devices to defeat emissions tests and mislead motorists about diesel pollution levels. “A manufacturer cannot install a defeat device which systematically improves, during approval procedures, the performance of the vehicle emission control system and thus obtain approval of the vehicle,” the court said. The statement identified the manufacturer subject to the complaint as […]
BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — Eating fruit and drinking from plastic bottles, two Sumatran orangutans stared from their cages at Bangkok airport on Thursday before flying home to Indonesia, years after being smuggled into Thailand. Poachers in Southeast Asia frequently capture the critically endangered orangutans to sell as pets, and police said four-year-olds Ung Aing and Natalee were supposed to be sold to a tourism business. Wildlife traffickers tried to smuggle the two in via Malaysia […]
by Andrea TOSTA Agence France-Presse CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) — Alfredo Araya used to dig wells on farms or out in the countryside, but due to a failing water supply he says demand for his services has recently exploded in Venezuela’s capital Caracas. Using a huge drill to perforate the soil, Araya struck the underground aquifer below an apartment bloc in Caracas’ comfortable Los Palos Grandes neighborhood so that residents now have access to water that […]
by Adrien MAROTTE Agence France-Presse ZADIE CAVES, Gabon (AFP) — The scene looks like something out of a science fiction movie, or maybe some dystopian TV series. Six men in yellow biohazard suits clamber in suffocating heat towards a cave in the heart of the Gabonese jungle. Their quest: to unlock new knowledge on how pathogens like coronavirus leap the species barrier to humans. In the cave is their goal — a colony of bats. […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — An unmanned Chinese spacecraft carrying rocks and soil from the Moon returned safely to Earth early Thursday in the first mission in four decades to collect lunar samples, the Xinhua news agency said. The return module of the space probe known as Chang’e-5 landed in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, Xinhua said, quoting the China National Space Administration. Beijing is looking to catch up with the US and Russia after taking […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — A British legal first was made on Wednesday when a coroner ruled that air pollution contributed to the death of a nine-year-old girl with severe asthma who lived by a busy road. Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah died in February 2013 after a serious asthma attack. In the previous three years, she had been taken to hospital nearly 30 times with breathing difficulties. The young girl lived in southeast London just 30 metres […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The Americas reported some five million new Covid-19 infections in a week, mostly in the United States and Canada, the Pan American Health Organization said Wednesday. Since the start of the pandemic the Americas region has recorded some 31 million cases and 787,000 deaths, which is roughly half the known infections and fatalities worldwide. “In the last week alone, there were nearly five million new COVID-19 infections reported – most […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Twitter said on Wednesday that it would crack down on false posts about Covid-19 vaccines beginning next week, following in the footsteps of Facebook and YouTube. The social media platform already targets posts containing false information on how the virus spreads and the efficacy of public health measures such as mask-wearing. “We will prioritize the removal of the most harmful misleading information, and… begin to label tweets that contain […]
OSLO, Norway (AFP) — Norway gave approval Tuesday to a giant project to capture and store CO2 below the North Sea, a technology that could help efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The Northern Lights project aims to inject CO2 captured from Norwegian industrial firms into geological formations 2,600 metres (8,530 feet) below the seabed where it should be trapped permanently. Initially the project aims to capture and store 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year […]
by Alfath Asmunda Agence France-Presse INDONESIA (AFP) — Sumini gets up at dawn to do her household chores — then leads a team of women into the jungles of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, on a mission to battle rampant deforestation and wildlife poaching. The 45-year-old mother of five heads a unique team of female rangers taking on illegal loggers and hunters threatening Sumatran tigers, pangolins and other at-risk wildlife. The culprits are mostly men, including neighbours […]
by Leon LORD Agence France-Presse CORAL COAST, Fiji (AFP) — Fiji dive operator Ashwin Pal was living his dream until the global pandemic hit, guiding tourists around an underwater wonderland of dazzling Pacific coral reefs. Now the 35-year-old hunts the neon-hued fish he once proudly showed off to international visitors, forced to kill the creatures he loves to feed his wife and four children. And the coronavirus-induced shutdown of Fiji’s tourism industry is not the […]
