Life

Pastry chef of year says pleasure comes first

By Olga NEDBAEVA PARIS, Nov 13, 2023 (AFP) – Nina Metayer, the first woman to win one of the world’s top pastry chef awards, doesn’t believe in cutting back on the butter. Metayer’s cakes have just won her the coveted “World Confectioner” award from the International Union of Bakers and Pastry Chefs. This is the first time the award has gone to a woman in its 92-year history. But you won’t find the 35-year-old following […]

AI images of white faces are now ‘hyper-real’: study

Images of faces generated by artificial intelligence (AI) can now appear more real than pictures of real people — as long as they are white, a study said on Monday. AI is now so good at depicting white people that the images are “hyper-real”, said the report in the journal Psychological Science. But AI tends to depict people of other ethnicities with white features because the data used to train the algorithms is biased, said […]

Indigenous writer Ailton Krenak, postponing the end of the world

By Luján Scarpinelli SAO PAULO, Nov 14, 2023 (AFP) – The year was 1987, Brazil was just exiting a long military dictatorship, and Indigenous writer Ailton Krenak stood before the country’s constitutional assembly in a pristine white suit, smearing black paint across his face. “Indigenous peoples have watered every scrap of Brazil’s eight million square kilometers with their blood,” the handsome young activist defiantly told the assembly, using a traditional mourning ritual to protest centuries […]

1962 Ferrari auctioned for $51.7 mn in New York: Sotheby’s

A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sports car sold for $51.7 million in New York on Monday, making it the second most expensive car ever sold at auction, Sotheby’s said. The bright red roadster had been the property of an American collector for the past 38 years, and its auction price was surpassed only by that of a Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe that went for 135 million euros in 2022, the auction house said. That […]

South Asia worst in world for water scarcity: UN

NEW DELHI, Nov 13, 2023 (AFP) – More children in South Asia are struggling due to severe water scarcity made worse by the impacts of climate change than anywhere else worldwide, the United Nations said Monday. “A staggering 347 million children under 18 are exposed to high or extremely high water scarcity in South Asia, the highest number among all regions in the world,” the UN children’s agency said in a report. The eight-nation region, […]

All 40 workers in India tunnel collapse ‘safe’

DEHRADUN, India, Nov 13, 2023 (AFP) – Rescue workers in northern India said Monday they had made contact with 40 workers trapped for over 24 hours after the road tunnel they were building collapsed. “All the 40 workers trapped inside the tunnel are safe,” Karamveer Singh Bhandari, a senior commander in the National Disaster Response Force told AFP, from the site in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. “We sent them water and food.” The collapse […]

Critically endangered Sumatran elephant born in Indonesia

A critically endangered Sumatran elephant was born in western Indonesia over the weekend, according to officials, giving renewed hope to conservation efforts after several other baby elephant and rhino births in recent months. Weighing about 108 kilograms (238 pounds), the yet-to-be-named male calf was born at the Way Kambas National Park in Lampung province in southern Sumatra, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry said Sunday. The calf was in good health and his mother Riska […]

Titanic menu sells for £84,000 at UK auction

A first-class dinner menu from the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage offering oysters, beef and mallard duck has sold for £84,0000 ($103,000), the UK auction house responsible for its sale said Sunday. The menu, for a meal served on April 11, 1912, is decorated with a red White Star Line burgee but the original gilt lettering is no longer visible. More than 1,500 passengers and crew died when the vessel sank after hitting an iceberg on […]

Endangered sea turtles get second life at Tunisian centre

By Aymen JAMLI SFAX, Tunisia, Nov 13, 2023 (AFP) – A crowd has gathered to see off Rose, a loggerhead sea turtle, who labours across the Tunisian sand to rejoin the waters of the Mediterranean. For the last month, Rose has been recovering at the First Aid Sea Turtle Center in the coastal city of Sfax after she was ensnared in a fishing net. The facility, one of two in North Africa, is run by […]

Samsung to add real-time translation to smartphone model

South Korean smartphone giant Samsung Electronics will roll out a real-time translation service on calls using AI technology next year, a company representative told AFP on Friday. Samsung is the world’s largest smartphone maker accounting for a fifth of global sales between July and September, as Apple trails in second with 16 percent of the market, according to market tracker Counterpoint. The new real-time translation feature will be incorporated into Samsung’s new Galaxy flagship model, […]

Astronaut who led humanity’s first mission around the Moon dead at 95

Frank Borman, the NASA astronaut who led the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon, has died at the age of 95, the US space agency said Thursday. He passed away on November 7 in Billings, Montana. “Today we remember one of NASA’s best,” said the agency’s administrator Bill Nelson, in a statement. “His lifelong love for aviation and exploration was only surpassed by his love for his wife Susan.” […]

US approves first vaccine against chikungunya virus: drug regulator

US health authorities on Thursday approved the world’s first vaccine for chikungunya, a virus spread by infected mosquitoes that the Food and Drug Administration called “an emerging global health threat.” The vaccine, developed by Europe’s Valneva which will be marketed under the name Ixchiq, was approved for people 18 and over who are at increased risk of exposure, the FDA said. Ixchiq’s green-light by the US drug regulator is expected to speed the vaccine’s rollout […]