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NEW YORK, May 16, 2024 (AFP) – A Monet sold for nearly $35 million at auction Wednesday evening, Sotheby’s said, marking a solid start to New York’s spring art sales. Both Sotheby’s and rival auction house Christie’s launched their spring season Monday. Though the global art market softened last year, strong sales in London and Paris have sparked optimism for 2024. Claude Monet’s “Meules a Giverny,” which the French impressionist painted in 1893, went […]
TOKYO, March 22, 2024 (AFP) – A theme park based on Japan’s “Dragon Ball” manga franchise will be built in Saudi Arabia’s new high-end tourist attraction of Qiddiya just outside Riyadh, authorities said Friday. The announcement comes two weeks after fans of the massively popular and influential series were shocked by news of the death of its creator Akira Toriyama, aged 68. The 500,000-square-metre (125-acre) park will allow fans to “live the adventures at the […]
LISSE, Netherlands, March 22, 2024 (AFP) – The world’s biggest tulip garden opened to the public on Thursday for its 75th edition, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to enjoy a bewildering array of seven million bulbs in the western Dutch city of Lisse. Keukenhof park, southwest of Amsterdam in the heart of “bulb country”, contains millions of tulips of every colour as well as other flowers across 32 hectares (80 acres). The park […]
TOKYO, March 8, 2024 (AFP) – Akira Toriyama was already famous to comic fans in the early 1980s with “Dr. Slump” but he won manga immortality with the global sensation and Japanese success story that is “Dragon Ball”. But as his creation and his fame exploded when his creation won over kids the world over, Toriyama, who has died in Japan aged 68, shunned the limelight and preferred to focus on drawing. “‘Dragon Ball’ is […]
By Tomohiro OSAKI, Natsuko FUKUE TOKYO, March 8, 2024 (AFP) – The creator of Japan’s hugely popular and influential “Dragon Ball” comics and anime cartoons, Akira Toriyama, has died aged 68, his production team said Friday. First serialised in 1984, “Dragon Ball” is one of the best-selling manga franchises of all time and has spawned countless anime series, films and video games. Toriyama died on March 1 because of a blood clot on his […]
France’s iconic Eiffel Tower was closed for a fourth day on Thursday as employees extended a strike over the monument’s management, unions said. The stoppage at one of the world’s best-known tourist sites is the second within two months in protest of what unions say is insufficient investment. The tower’s operator, SETE, has advised ticket holders to check its website before showing up, or to postpone their visit. E-ticket holders were asked to check their […]
WASHINGTON, Nov 27, 2023 (AFP) – In an age where forces from AI to Donald Trump have left Americans doubting the truth, US dictionary Merriam-Webster says that 2023’s most looked-up word was “authentic.” The venerable publisher, whose dictionary is especially popular online, said the trend was driven by people reading and talking about artificial intelligence, celebrity culture, identity and social media. “Authentic” beat out other contenders such as “deepfake,” “rizz” (young-people speak for charisma) and […]
TOKYO, Aug 9, 2023 (AFP) – Japan’s second-oldest museum has raised $3.4 million through crowdfunding after reportedly being denied additional financial support to cover soaring utility bills to preserve its collection of animal and plant specimens. More than 30,000 people have donated a total of 480 million yen to the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, easily surpassing the 100-million-yen target, campaign platform READYFOR said on Wednesday. The head of the 146-year-old museum, […]
By Brigitte HAGEMANN Agence France-Presse CREMONA, Italy (AFP) — For over three centuries, music lovers the world over have been trying to unlock the secrets of Antonio Stradivari’s prized string instruments. Budding luthiers and young musicians can now get a step closer to the master by honing their skills in his original house and workshop, which have been transformed into a center of learning and a musical pilgrimage site in northern Italy. “The Stradivarius myth […]
By Cat BARTON Agence France-Presse SEOUL, June 28, 2023 (AFP) — Lee Jung-hee was set to turn 60 next year but South Korea dropped its traditional age counting system Wednesday, so the Seoul-based housewife just got a year younger — and she’s thrilled. South Korea is the last East Asian country to officially still use a method of calculating age that determines babies are aged one at birth, counting their months in the womb as […]
JAKARTA, June 9, 2023 (AFP) – An Indigenous community in Indonesia has requested an internet blackout in their area to minimise the “negative impact” of the online world, officials said Friday. The Baduy, a community of 26,000 people in Banten province on Java island, divide themselves into an outer group that partly adopts technology, and a sacred inner group that shuns the trappings of contemporary life. The inner group asked authorities to shut down internet […]
By Hervé BAR Agence France-Presse JAVARI, Brazil (AFP) — In a remote pocket of the Brazilian Amazon under siege from illegal fishermen, poachers, loggers and drug traffickers, Indigenous people have taken it upon themselves to defend the land and its resources. With bows, arrows and spears, young men of the Sao Luis village patrol the Javari River by motorboat in the valley of the same name. They call themselves the “Warriors of the Forest,” the […]
