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by Harumi OZAWA Agence France Presse CHOSHI, Japan (AFP) — Ben Lecomte dived into the Pacific Ocean Tuesday, kicking off an epic quest to swim 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) from Tokyo to San Francisco, through shark-infested waters choking with plastic waste. Under sunny skies, the 51-year-old Frenchman slipped into cool and placid waters shortly after 09:00am (0000 GMT), in warm and pleasant conditions with a slight breeze. He will face giant waves, sharks and jellyfish, […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — At a recycling plant outside Tokyo, workers in face masks pick through an unending torrent of plastic rubbish, fuelled by a national obsession with pristine packaging — and famously strict rules that ensure much of it is reclaimed and reused. Some 10 tonnes of recyclable plastics are brought in every day to be processed at the Ichikawa Kankyo Engineering center, where workers hover over conveyor belts removing any stray items or […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — SpaceX will not send tourists around the Moon this year as previously announced, and will delay the project until the middle of next year, US media reported on Monday. “A new timetable for the flight — now postponed until at least mid-2019 and likely longer — hasn’t been released” by the California-based company, said the report in The Wall Street Journal. The reason for the delay is unclear. But it is […]
by Bhuvan Bagga © Agence France-Presse KANPUR, India (AFP) — Soot turned the white handkerchief around Abhash Kumar Sharma’s face to black as the police officer tried to direct gridlocked traffic in the Indian city with the world’s dirtiest air. It was all he had to ward off the pollution blamed for filling Kanpur’s hospital beds with growing numbers of chronic lung and cancer cases. “It is the same story for everyone who spends such […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — A painting by a young Vincent Van Gogh was sold at an auction in Paris Monday for more than seven million euros ($8.2 million), the Artcurial auction house said. “Raccommodeuses de filets dans les dunes” (Women mending nets in the fields) dates from 1882 and was bought by an American collector in a hot bidding battle that boosted the selling price far above the estimated value of between three to five million euros. […]
by Jenny Vaughan and Asia bureaus © Agence France-Presse THANH HOA, Vietnam (AFP) — A Vietnamese mangrove draped with polythene, a whale killed after swallowing waste bags in Thai seas and clouds of underwater trash near Indonesian “paradise” islands — grim images of the plastic crisis that has gripped Asia. About eight million tonnes of plastic waste are dumped into the world’s oceans every year, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic being tipped into […]
by Dana Rysmukhamedova Agence France-Presse Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov made it back to Earth Sunday along with an official match football that could be used later this month in the opening game of the World Cup in Moscow. Shkaplerov, Scott Tingle of the United States and Norishige Kanai of Japan touched down on the Kazakh steppe on time at 1239 GMT after a 168-day mission aboard the International Space Station. Footage from the Russian space […]
BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — A whale has died in southern Thailand after swallowing more than 80 plastic bags, officials said, ending an attempted rescue that failed to nurse the mammal back to health. Thailand is one of the world’s largest consumers of plastic bags, which kill hundreds of marine creatures living near the country’s popular beaches each year. The small male pilot whale became the latest victim after it was found barely alive in a […]
SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Facebook on Friday said it is getting rid of a “trending” topics feature as it tests ways for publishers to deliver reliable breaking news. The Trending feature introduced four years ago listed stories buzzing on Facebook at any given time. “We’re exploring new ways to help people stay informed about timely, breaking news that matters to them, while making sure the news they see on Facebook is from trustworthy […]
BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — It’s one small step for Thailand, one giant leap for Southeast Asia’s smelliest fruit. Thailand plans to shoot durian into orbit to test its durability in a project that could see the staple “king of fruits” consumed in zero-gravity conditions. “In the future we want astronauts to be able to eat Thai food,” said a spokesperson for Thailand’s Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA). “We want to see whether […]
TAMPA, United States (AFP) — Pluto is covered with surprising dunes made of methane ice, which have formed relatively recently despite the frigid dwarf planet’s very thin atmosphere, international researchers said Thursday. Pluto’s atmosphere has a surface pressure 100,000 times lower than Earth’s, which researchers suspected might be too little to allow tiny grains of solid methane to mobilize and become airborne. Yet mild winds blowing across Pluto’s surface at speeds of some 19-25 miles […]
(AFP) — Check out this football that’s out of this world…literally. In this video, Russian cosmonauts are seen playing football on the International Space Station. https://youtu.be/PqhioYZt0Xw
