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From the outside, Seoul’s main hospitals seem unchanged: ambulances pull up, patients walk in, staff in white coats walk around purposefully. But for weeks, South Korean healthcare has been struggling. Surgeries have been cancelled, crucial chemotherapy sessions delayed, and it is nearly impossible to get a walk-in appointment since thousands of junior doctors walked off the job on February 20 in a standoff with the government over medical training reforms. AFP spoke with those involved: […]
It may have deadly animals and wild weather, but Palm Cove in Australia’s northeast has been named the world’s best beach, beating rivals in Hawaii, Greece and Fiji. The two-kilometre stretch of pristine white sands backed by rows of palm trees was ranked number one beach in the world by the magazine Conde Nast Traveller. Palm Cove sits well within Australia’s “Croc Country” and its bustling restaurants and high-end hotels were battered by Tropical Cyclone […]
Natural predators like birds, beetles and bugs might be an effective alternative to pesticides, keeping crop-devouring pests populations down while boosting crop yields, researchers said Wednesday. Pests are responsible for around 10 percent — or 21 million tonnes — of crop losses every year, but controlling them has lead to the widespread use of chemical pesticides. Could birds, spiders and beetles among other invertebrate predators do the job as well? Researchers in Brazil, the United […]
After two years of rigorous training, ten Americans officially became astronauts on Tuesday, and are now eligible for planned NASA missions to the International Space Station, the Moon, and — if all goes well — to Mars. Two Emiratis who trained alongside them also graduated Tuesday during a ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Members of the class, nicknamed “The Flies,” were selected from more than 12,000 applicants in 2021 and their training […]
(AFP) — Three US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut arrived Tuesday at the International Space Station for a six-month mission on board the orbiting laboratory. During their stay, in which they are rotating in to replace departing crew, some 200 scientific experiments are scheduled to be carried out. The quartet blasted off from Florida late Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The capsule docked with the ISS and its hatch was opened at 3:50 […]
By Robin MILLARD GENEVA, March 5, 2024 (AFP) – The warming El Nino weather phenomenon that peaked in December was one of the five strongest ever recorded, the United Nations said Tuesday, predicting that it would produce above-normal temperatures from now to May. Though El Nino is now gradually weakening, its impact will continue over the coming months by fuelling the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) […]
By Katie Forster TOKYO, March 5, 2024 (AFP) – “Caution: robot!” chirps the green self-driving delivery vehicle as it trundles down the street to a pork cutlet restaurant in Tokyo to pick up a meal ordered on Uber Eats. Starting Wednesday, robot deliveries will be offered in a small area of the city by the US-based food app, which hopes to eventually roll out the service more widely in Japan. The country, facing growing labour […]
Anthropic, a major player in generative artificial intelligence, announced new models to fuel its Claude chatbot, the company said on Monday, as ChatGPT faces more rivals. The company said three new AI models – called Claude 3 Opus, Sonnet and Haiku – were its most high-performing tools yet and were industry leading in terms of their ability to match human intelligence. Founded in 2021, Anthropic was created by former employees of OpenAI, the company behind […]
Hikers using the most popular route to climb Japan’s Mount Fuji will be charged $13 each from July, with numbers capped to ease congestion and improve safety, a regional official said Tuesday. Increasingly large crowds are scaling Japan’s highest mountain, which is covered in snow most of the year but draws more than 220,000 visitors each July-September climbing period. From July 1, an entry fee of 2,000 yen ($13) will be charged per person to […]
Vietnamese capital Hanoi was blanketed by a thick haze of pollution on Tuesday that obscured high-rise buildings and left the city’s nearly nine million people breathing toxic air. The city topped air monitoring website IQAir’s table of the world’s most polluted cities early Tuesday afternoon. Levels of PM2.5 pollutants — cancer-causing microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs — were classified as “very unhealthy” and hit more than 24 times the World […]
By Bruno KALOUAZ In the Tian-Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan, villagers have made an artificial glacier to provide water for their drought-hit farms. Standing on the ice hillock, farmer Erkinbek Kaldanov said he was optimistic about harnessing nature to counteract climate change. “We won’t have any more problems with water,” said the farmer, who was worried for his sheep last year after some unusual temperature spikes. “When the glacier melts, there will be enough water for […]
One-fifth of fish species in the Mekong river face the threat of extinction, according to a new report from a coalition of regional and international environmental groups. The Mekong — among the world’s most biodiverse rivers, surpassed only by the Amazon and the Congo — is home to some 1,148 recognised species of fish, with millions of people relying on its waters for their incomes. But it faces a multitude of threats, according to environmentalists, […]
