Life

One in five cars on Norway’s roads are electric

  Oslo, Norway (AFP) One in five cars on Norway’s roads are electric, a share that has doubled in less than three years, the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association said Monday. “The snowball is rolling faster and faster and a growing number of good electric car models are on Norway’s roads”, the head of the association, Christina Bu, said on its website. While it took almost 10 years for the country’s electric car fleet to go […]

Striking UK nurses say walkouts over pay ‘last resort’

by Helen ROWE Agence France-Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — UK nurses are set to walk out on strike for the first time in their union’s 106-year history this week, insisting they are taking action as a “last resort”. Up to 100,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will hold a one-day stoppage on Thursday after rejecting a government pay offer. Chemotherapy, dialysis, intensive care and high-dependency […]

Guatemala volcano eruption eases after forcing airport closure

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AFP) — One of the most active volcanoes in Central America erupted over the weekend, spewing lava and ash and forcing Guatemalan authorities to briefly close the country’s largest airport before activity eased on Sunday. The volcano named Fuego — Spanish for fire — rumbled into activity overnight Saturday into Sunday, with molten rock oozing down its slopes and ash belching two kilometers (more than a mile) into the sky. Winds carried […]

NASA capsule Orion splashes down after record-setting lunar voyage

  by Lucie AUBOURG Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — NASA’s Orion space capsule splashed down safely in the Pacific on Sunday, completing the Artemis 1 mission — a more than 25-day journey around the Moon with an eye to returning humans there in just a few years. After racing through the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) per hour, the uncrewed capsule floated down to the sea with the […]

Let the lava flow! Iceland’s volcano show is a hit

by Jeremie RICHARD Agence France Presse In a dark auditorium in Reykjavik, bubbling orange lava flows down a slide to within inches of awe-struck visitors. The flow, contained on both sides by black sand, lights up the room like a sunrise. This is the Lava Show, Iceland’s latest tourist attraction, that uses reheated lava from a real eruption of the island’s Katla volcano more than 100 years ago. The heat emanating from the molten rock […]

Japanese billionaire Maezawa announces crew of artists for lunar voyage

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced Thursday eight crew members who will join him for a journey around the Moon planned for 2023 on a SpaceX rocket that is still under development. The mission, known as dearMoon, was first announced in 2018. Maezawa initially said he would invite a crew of six-to-eight artists, but later changed the entry requirements to a competition which applicants could apply for online. The eight people […]

Royals brace as ‘Harry & Meghan’ airs on Netflix

by Joe JACKSON Agence France-Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — The first three episodes of a docuseries on Prince Harry and his wife Meghan air on Thursday, with expectations of more damaging claims about British royal family life. The six-part fly-on-the-wall documentary, “Harry and Meghan”, promises to lift the lid on events that prompted the pair to quit royal life and move to the United States in 2020. Trailers aired in the run-up to the […]

Biodiversity crisis | Videographic

UN biodiversity talks opened in Montreal on Wednesday, in what is being billed as the “last best chance” to save the planet’s species and ecosystems from irreversible human destruction. What do all of these species have in common? They have all gone extinct due to human activities. Extinction is a natural process and, in fact, 99% of the four billion species that have existed on our planet have disappeared. It is balanced by the evolution […]

Apple loosens tight grip on App Store pricing

SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) – Apple on Tuesday announced the biggest upgrade to the App Store pricing system since the launch of the shop, allowing developers to charge from 29 cents to $10,000 for their offerings. The enhanced pricing options to be available for all transactions at the App Store by spring of next year were touted along with new capabilities intended to make it easier for those offering their wares to manage sales, returns, […]

As chatbot sophistication grows, AI debate intensifies

by Julie Jammot with Laurent Barthelemy in Paris Agence France Presse San Francisco, United States (AFP) — California start-up OpenAI has released a chatbot capable of answering a variety of questions, but its impressive performance has reopened the debate on the risks linked to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The conversations with ChatGPT, posted on Twitter by fascinated users, show a kind of omniscient machine, capable of explaining scientific concepts and writing scenes for a play, […]

‘Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,’ warns UN chief

by Benjamin LEGENDRE Agence France-Presse MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday slammed multinational corporations for turning the world’s ecosystems into “playthings of profit” and warned failure to correct course would lead to catastrophic results. “With our bottomless appetite for unchecked and unequal economic growth, humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” he said, in a speech ahead of biodiversity talks in Montreal. Since taking office in 2017, Guterres, a former […]

NASA’s Orion spaceship slingshots around Moon, heads for home

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — NASA’s Orion spaceship made a close pass of the Moon and used a gravity assist to whip itself back towards Earth on Monday, marking the start of the return journey for the Artemis-1 mission. At its nearest point, the uncrewed capsule flew less than 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the surface, testing maneuvers that will be used during later Artemis missions that return humans to the rocky celestial body. Communication […]