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LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Some of Queen Elizabeth II’s royal residences will reopen to the public later this month after closing during the coronavirus shutdown, the Royal Collection Trust announced Wednesday. Windsor Castle, west of London, where the 94-year-old monarch has been staying since the start of the pandemic, will be open for pre-booked, timed visits from July 23. The Royal Mews and the Queen’s Gallery at her London home of Buckingham Palace will […]
by Kelly MACNAMARA PARIS, France (AFP) — Hunger, poor nutrition and obesity not only present a health burden in developing countries but carry a hidden economic penalty that costs businesses up to $850 billion a year, according to a new report published Wednesday. Researchers said malnutrition reduces the resilience of populations to risks such as infectious disease outbreaks and extreme climate events, as well as causing a reduction in productivity and earnings. With the coronavirus […]
by Phineas RUECKERT PARIS, France (AFP) — Global warming is turning clear mountain lakes green in the western United States because of an increase in algae blooms “without historical precedent”, researchers reported on Tuesday. The concentration of algae in two remote mountain lakes more than doubled in the past 70 years, researchers at Colorado State University found. Their results, published in the British Royal Society journal Proceedings B, highlight the potentially harmful effects of climate […]
by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France (AFP) — Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average in June across much of permafrost-laden Siberia, with last month in a dead heat for the warmest June on record globally, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said Tuesday. An Arctic hourly temperature record for the month — 37 degrees Celsius — was set on June 21 near Verkhoyansk in northeastern Russia, where a weather station logged a blistering 38C on […]
by Issam AHMED Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — As countries ease their lockdowns, authorities need to recognize the coronavirus can spread through the air far beyond the two meters (six feet) urged in social distancing guidelines, an international group of 239 scientists said Monday. In a comment piece that takes direct aim at the World Health Organization for its reluctance to update its advice, researchers recommended new measures including increasing indoor […]
by Olga NEDBAEVA PARIS, France (AFP) — The ebullient French chef Frederic Anton is having none of the talk that the world will not be the same again after the coronavirus. From the kitchen of his Jules Verne restaurant perched high on the Eiffel Tower 125 metres (410 feet) above Paris, the combative cook is determined that it will make not one iota of difference to the glories of French gastronomy. “Nothing is going to […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — US pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson announced Monday an immediate cut in the price of its tuberculosis treatment course — a move NGOs have long been calling for. Bedaquiline, sold under the brand name Sirturo, was approved for medicinal use in the United States in 2012, becoming the first new tuberculosis drug in 40 years to be given the green light. Johnson and Johnson said it would make its bedaquiline tablets […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Authorities in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region have stepped up precautions after a herdsman was confirmed at the weekend to have the bubonic plague. The man was in stable condition at a hospital in Bayannur, the city health commission said in a statement. The commission has forbidden the hunting and eating animals that could carry plague — particularly marmots — until the end of the year, and urged people to report […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — BioNTech of Germany and the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer reported positive preliminary results on Wednesday from a joint project to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Known as BNT162b1, it produces antibody responses at or above the levels seen in any convalescent serum — blood from people who have recovered — at relatively low doses, according to BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin. The preliminary data come from a so-called phase 1/2 trial that […]
GABORONE, Botswana (AFP) — Hundreds of elephants have died mysteriously in Botswana’s famed Okavango Delta, the head of the wildlife department said Thursday, ruling out poaching as the tusks were found intact. The landlocked southern African country has the world’s largest elephant population, estimated to be around 130,000. “We have had a report of 356 dead elephants in the area north of the Okavango Delta and we have confirmed 275 so far,” Cyril Taolo, the […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Amazon forest fires in Brazil increased by 19.5 percent in June compared to the same month last year, making it the worst June in 13 years, authorities revealed on Wednesday. June marks the start of the dry period and there were 2,248 recorded fires, leaving analysts expecting a worse year for the rainforest than the devastating 2019, which provoked anger throughout the world. The National Institute for Space Research […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Archaeologists have for the first time found Aboriginal artefacts on the seabed off Australia, opening a door to the discovery of ancient settlements flooded since the last ice age, they reported Thursday. Hundreds of ancient stone tools made by Australia’s Indigenous people at least 7,000 years ago were discovered two metres underwater off the remote Western Australia coast, the research published in the PLOS ONE journal said. A second site nearby […]
