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WASHINGTON, D.C., United States (AFP) – Virgin Galactic, which last year flew its flamboyant founder Richard Branson to space, will re-open ticket sales to the general public starting Wednesday, for the sum of $450,000. Previously, only people who had paid a deposit to be on a waiting list could buy new tickets — but now sales are once more open to everyone. “We plan to have our first 1,000 customers on board at the start […]
WASHINGTON, D.C., United States (AFP) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is set Thursday night to deliver an eagerly-awaited update on SpaceX’s Starship, a prototype rocket the company is developing for crewed interplanetary exploration. The tycoon will make his presentation at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, south Texas, at 8:00 pm local time (0200 GMT Friday), against the impressive backdrop of the spacecraft in its fully-stacked configuration, standing 394 feet (120 meters) tall. It will […]
THE HAUGE, Netherlands (AFP) – The Dutch port city of Rotterdam said Wednesday it would temporarily dismantle an historic bridge to allow a superyacht built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to pass. Bezos’s gigantic, 430-million-euro ($485 million) yacht is too big for the iconic Koningshaven Bridge, which dates from 1878 and was rebuilt after being bombed by the Nazis in 1940 during World War II. The shipyard building the three-masted mammoth in Alblasserdam, near Rotterdam, has […]
by Jean LIOU Agence France-Presse On board the Vienna-Paris night train, Austria (AFP) – The timing could perhaps have been better. With a resurgence of Covid-19 gripping Europe, there were no paying passengers for the maiden voyage of the reborn night train linking Paris and Vienna. A return of night trains to the Old Continent is seen as symbolic of the efforts to shift travel from the air back to rail as Europe seeks to meet […]
by Haeril HALIM Indonesia (AFP) — Chef Ilhani used to serve up Japanese cuisine to holidaymakers every night, now he makes just $3 a day selling fried snacks on the near empty streets of once bustling Gili Trawangan. The coronavirus pandemic has shuttered almost all the resorts and restaurants across Indonesia’s Gili Islands, famed for their turquoise waters, sandy beaches, and diverse marine life. Situated close to Bali, tourism and the local economy had been […]
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AFP) – Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said Tuesday he was feeling “excited” ahead of his mission to the International Space Station, which marks Russia’s return to space tourism. Maezawa, a space enthusiast who made his wealth in online fashion, and his production assistant, Yozo Hirano, will spend 12 days on the ISS. Their Soyuz rocket operated by Russia’s Roscosmos space agency will blast off from the Moscow-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. “I […]
by Sophie Deviller and Thanaporn Promyamyai KHO PHI PHI LEY, Thailand (AFP) — While travel stopped and the world locked down, in the dazzling blue waters of Thailand’s idyllic Phi Phi islands, a gentle renaissance was under way. Mass tourism had brought the archipelago, immortalised in Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Beach”, to the brink of ecological catastrophe. Now Thailand hopes to make Phi Phi the standard-bearer for a new, more sustainable model of tourism as […]
by Robin MILLARD Agence France Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The WHO said Tuesday that those not fully vaccinated against Covid-19 who are also vulnerable to the disease, including over-60s, should put off travel to areas with community transmission. The World Health Organization also said blanket travel bans would not stop the spread of the Omicron variant. The new Covid-19 variant of concern, which the WHO says poses a “very high” risk globally, has […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Tel Aviv is the world’s most expensive city to live in as soaring inflation has pushed up living costs globally, according to a survey published on Wednesday. The Israeli city climbed five rungs to score top place for the first time in the authoritative ranking compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The Worldwide Cost of Living Index is compiled by comparing prices in US dollars for goods and services […]
by Laurence THOMANN Agence France-Presse AGRA, India (AFP) – Foreign tourists have been welcomed back to India after pandemic travel bans but intrepid travellers will have to brave the intense pollution season to visit the country’s most famous attraction. Around the palatial gardens of the Taj Mahal, air quality deteriorates each winter, enveloping the white marble mausoleum in a thick coat of hazardous smog. The problem is replicated across whole swathes of northern India, where […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Iran reopened museums in Tehran and other cities Sunday after a more than year-long closure because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Museums in Tehran and other large cities that are no longer red-coded, meaning the risk of contracting the virus was very high, reopened on Sunday,” the director of Iran’s museums, Mohammad-Reza Kargar, told AFP. “Tourists and visitors are welcome to return while observing (sanitary) measures.” A country with a millennia-long history, […]
One of the greatest joys of travelling is the memories that you keep. EBC’s Malou Francisco takes us to some of the places she’s been to these past years.
