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Essaouira, Morocco (AFP) by Kaouther Larbi Morocco’s argan oil is highly prized by the cosmetics industry, yet it is now mostly produced by elderly workers, raising questions about how long the artisanal practice can continue. A dozen women, sitting on the floor of a workshop inland from Essaouira, a port town on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, work to deftly shell argan nuts, crush them and extract the oil. It is a time-honoured and labour-intensive craft, […]
by Abhaya SRIVASTAVA Agence France-Presse NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — All that balding Indian television executive Athar Rasheed wanted was to look handsome and get married. But the 30-year-old’s seemingly harmless hair transplant went fatally wrong. Women have been judged on their appearance for millennia, but in an increasingly materialistic Indian society, men are also feeling pressure to look young and presentable for fear of losing their social standing. More and more prematurely balding men […]
by Margioni Bermudez Agence France-Presse CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) — Judith, a 90-year-old great-grandmother in Venezuela, examines a stuffed animal meticulously in her hands before finding a hole. “This one needs surgery,” she says, adding “we’re going to sew it up here.” Judith is one of 40 volunteers at what amounts to a hospital for stuffed toys. Since being founded in 2017, the hospital has delivered 30,000 recycled toys to schools and associations in poor […]
by John Biers © Agence France-Presse NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Twitter’s shares soared after Tesla CEO Elon Musk disclosed on Monday a large stake in the social media company, which he has criticized for its approach to speech rights. Musk, who has more than 80 million followers on the microblogging platform, became its largest shareholder following the purchase of 73.5 million shares or 9.2 percent of common stock, according to a securities filing. […]
HELSINKI, Finland (AFP) — Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for the fifth year running, in an annual UN-sponsored index that again ranked Afghanistan as the unhappiest, followed closely by Lebanon. Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania recorded the biggest boosts in wellbeing. The largest falls in the World Happiness table, released on Friday, came in Lebanon, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Lebanon, which is facing economic meltdown, fell to second from last on the index of […]
by Pierre-Henry DESHAYES Agence France-Presse OSLO, Norway (AFP) – Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are known for their tiny heads, English bulldogs for their smushed wrinkled muzzles — traits their owners love. But in an unprecedented move, Norway has banned the breeding of these dogs because being cute is causing them suffering. In a recent ruling, the Oslo district court banned the breeding of the two purebreds on the grounds that it inflicts harm on them, […]
by Joshua MELVIN WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — False Covid death reports, a vast gender gap, Nazi “fan fiction”: These are some of the perils an international crowd of volunteers battle across Wikipedia’s tens of millions of online entries. The world’s largest internet encyclopedia is often the first result to pop up when users ask the internet a question — and thus a massively influential source of free information but which also reflects humanity’s faults. […]
by Paula BUSTAMANTE Agence France-Presse ALTO HOSPICIO, Chile (AFP) – A mountain of discarded clothing including Christmas sweaters and ski boots cuts a strange sight in Chile’s Atacama, the driest desert in the world, which is increasingly suffering from pollution created by fast fashion. The social impact of rampant consumerism in the clothing industry — such as child labor in factories or derisory wages — is well-known, but the disastrous effect on the environment is […]
MINNEAPOLIS, United States (AFP) — A woman was killed and three other people injured when a man drove into a crowd of demonstrators who were protesting the shooting death by US Marshals of a Black man in Minneapolis, police said Monday. Police said the man, who may have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol, drove his vehicle into a group of protestors shortly before midnight. “Protesters pulled the suspect from the vehicle and, […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — An elderly Japanese man has anonymously donated his life’s savings — in cash — to a city outside of Tokyo, an unexpected financial windfall as the economy reels from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The man, who did not identify himself, appeared at city hall in Yokosuka on Monday and asked that a backpack with a letter inside be given to the mayor, the official who met him told AFP. […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — South Korea’s population fell for the first time in 2020, with more people dying than were born, the government said Monday, warning that towns in poor regions faced a “crisis of extinction”. The world’s 12th-largest economy has one of its longest life expectancies and one of its lowest birthrates, a combination that presents a looming demographic disaster. As of December 31, South Korea had 51,829,023 people, down 20,838 from a […]
by Alfath Asmunda Agence France-Presse INDONESIA (AFP) — Sumini gets up at dawn to do her household chores — then leads a team of women into the jungles of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, on a mission to battle rampant deforestation and wildlife poaching. The 45-year-old mother of five heads a unique team of female rangers taking on illegal loggers and hunters threatening Sumatran tigers, pangolins and other at-risk wildlife. The culprits are mostly men, including neighbours […]
