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by Marina LAPENKOVA Agence France-Presse MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) – “I asked her to forgive us and I even cried as I stroked her for the last time,” says 90-year-old Russian biologist Adilya Kotovskaya, recalling the day she bid farewell to her charge Laika. The former street dog was about to make history as the first living creature to orbit the earth, blasting off on a one-way journey. The Soviet Union sent Laika up […]
by Janet MCEVOY Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Three and a half years before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, a dog called Laika was in 1957 the first living creature to orbit the Earth. The stray from Moscow is one of many animals who preceded humans in the conquest of space; like most of the others, she did not survive. “These animals performed a service to their respective […]
by Pascale MOLLARD-CHENEBENOIT Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Sixty years after Laika the dog became the first living creature to go into orbit, animals are still being sent into space — though these days much smaller creatures are going up. Julie Robinson, chief scientist for the International Space Station programme, explains what we are still learning from animals in orbit. Why no more dogs, cats or monkeys? When those animals were sent […]
by Paula RAMON Agence France-Presse SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) – Only nine of 194 countries which pledged last year to eradicate hepatitis by 2030 are working towards that goal, according to figures revealed Wednesday at the second World Hepatitis Summit in Brazil. Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Japan, The Netherlands, Australia, Qatar and Brazil are the only countries taking steps to overcome the disease, a liver inflammation which kills 1.3 million people every year. The three-day summit […]
by Glenn Chapman Agence France Presse SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Facebook on Wednesday reported profits leapt on booming revenue from online ads in the third quarter, topping investor forecasts and buoying shares already at record highs. The leading social network said it made a profit of $4.7 billion in the quarter that ended on September 30, a jump of 79 percent from the same period a year earlier. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Grieving South Korean film fans packed a Seoul hospital Wednesday to pay their respects after the death of an actor dubbed “Korea’s Hugh Grant.” Kim Joo-Hyuk, 45, died Monday from head injuries after his Mercedes crashed into an apartment wall and flipped over. No other vehicles were involved, police said. Kim, whose father was also a famous actor, made his debut in 1999 and quickly gained popularity for his […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Non-smoking employees at one Japanese firm are getting six additional days’ holiday to compensate for the time their colleagues spend puffing away at work. Piala, a Tokyo-based online commerce consulting and marketing company, kicked off the program in September after an employee complained about the time lost by smoking colleagues who frequently disappear to light up. “Because our office is located on the 29th floor … it takes at least 10 […]
by Julie Carnis Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Since early September, the denizens of this normally hushed burg in central France have been serenaded by an industrial drill poking holes around town and pulling up cylinders of rock. That’s because Rochechouart, population 3,800, and its medieval castle are built on top of an astrobleme. “An astrobleme — which literally means ‘star scar’ — is the name given to traces left by a major […]
by Ben Simon Agence France Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has hit a new high, the UN said Monday, warning that drastic action is needed to achieve targets set by the Paris climate agreement. “Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a record-breaking speed in 2016 to the highest level in 800,000 years,” the World Meteorological Organization said. “Globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached […]
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AFP) — A plague that has claimed 128 lives in Madagascar has slowed down, health authorities on the island nation said Tuesday, citing a decline in the numbers of the infected and dying. “There is an improvement in the fight against the spread of the plague, which means that there are fewer patients in hospitals,” Dr. Manitra Rakotoarivony, Madagascar’s director of health promotion, told local radio. “There are almost no more deaths due […]
MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Baby bats learn language from peers in their colony, and will adopt the group’s dialect, or accent, instead of their mother’s, researchers said Tuesday. The difference is similar to speaking with a London accent versus a Scottish accent, said the report in the journal PLOS Biology. The findings shed new light on crowd-learning of language, a skill thought to belong to mainly to humans and just a few other mammals. […]
SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) — Singapore’s Changi Airport opened a cutting-edge terminal Tuesday with a fully automated check-in system including facial scanning and computerized baggage drop points, but some passengers struggled with the new technology. Terminal 4, built at a cost of Sg$985 million (US$723 million), will have an annual capacity of 16 million people and is aimed at coping with an expected increase in passenger numbers through one of Asia’s top travel hubs. It is […]
