STOCKHOLM, Sept 11, 2023 (AFP) – Several countries have blocked imports of Swedish pork after a recent outbreak of African swine fever in wild boars in the Scandinavian country, industry officials said Monday. Armenia, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Ukraine have halted Swedish pork imports even though the disease has only been detected in wild boars at this stage, the Swedish Meat Industry Association told AFP. “This meat poses no danger… I think […]
Life
Robot fried chicken: entrepreneur seeks to improve S. Korea’s favourite food
By Claire LEE In fried-chicken-obsessed South Korea, restaurants serving the nation’s favourite fast-food dish dot every street corner. But Kang Ji-young’s establishment brings something a little different to the table: a robot is cooking the chicken. Eaten at everything from tiny family gatherings to a 10-million-viewer live-streamed “mukbang” — eating broadcast — by K-pop star Jungkook of BTS fame, fried chicken is deeply embedded in South Korean culture. Paired with cold lager and known as […]
Small islands take ocean protection case to UN court
The UN maritime court will on Monday hear a landmark case brought by a group of small island states seeking protection of the world’s oceans from catastrophic climate change. The nine island states have turned to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to determine if carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the oceans can be considered pollution, and if so, what obligations countries have to prevent it. Ocean ecosystems create half the oxygen […]
Ecuador to reintroduce species on Galapagos island
Ecuador’s government has announced it will spend $3.4 million on reintroducing 12 endemic bird and turtle species that have disappeared from an island in the Galapagos archipelago. The project, funded with government money and donations, will also seek to weed out invasive rodents and cats on the island of Floreana, the environment ministry said late Saturday. The government plans to reintroduce vegetarian finches, vermillion flycatchers, lava gulls, barn owls, Galapagos hawks and giant turtles through […]
‘No time to rest’ for AC repairmen in sweltering Saudi
By Haitham El-Tabei Mohammed Sayed wipes sweat from his brow as he repairs another broken air conditioning unit at the height of the Saudi summer, his most stressful time of year. The 28-year-old Sudanese national and his fellow technicians clock long hours as temperatures in the capital Riyadh clear 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on a daily basis, highlighting the Gulf kingdom’s dependence on machines the government is trying to make less environmentally taxing. “The […]
Scientists grow human-like kidneys in pigs
By Issam AHMED Chinese scientists have succeeded in growing kidneys containing human cells in pig embryos, a world first that could one day help address organ donation shortages. But the development, described in a study in the journal Cell Stem Cell on Thursday, raises ethical issues — especially since some human cells were also found in the pigs’ brains, experts said. The researchers from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health focused on kidneys because […]
Billion-light-year-wide ‘bubble of galaxies’ discovered
By Pierre Celerier Astronomers have discovered the first “bubble of galaxies,” an almost unimaginably huge cosmic structure thought to be a fossilised remnant from just after the Big Bang sitting in our galactic backyard. The bubble spans a billion light years, making it 10,000 times wider than the Milky Way galaxy. Yet this giant bubble, which cannot be seen by the naked eye, is a relatively close 820 million light years away from our home […]
Japan’s Mount Fuji ‘screaming’ from too many tourists
By Mathias CENA With its millions of visitors every year and the buses, supply trucks, noodle shops and fridge magnets, Japan’s Mount Fuji is no longer the peaceful pilgrimage site it once was. Now authorities have had enough, saying the number of hikers trekking up the world-famous volcano — night and day — is dangerous and an ecological embarrassment. “Mount Fuji is screaming,” the governor of the local region said last week. Hailing its religious […]
Hong Kong flooded by heaviest rainfall in 140 years
Hong Kong was flooded by the heaviest rainfall in nearly 140 years on Friday, leaving the city’s streets and some subway stations under water and forcing its schools to close. Just across the border, authorities in China’s tech hub Shenzhen recorded the heaviest rains since records began in 1952. Climate change has increased the intensity of tropical storms, experts say, with more rain and stronger gusts leading to flash floods and coastal damage. The heavy […]
Climate change supercharged this summer’s record heat: study
Record-shattering temperatures that impacted billions of people in the northern hemisphere this summer were given a massive boost by human-caused climate change, an analysis showed Thursday. The new paper by the nonprofit Climate Central group examined the period from June to August 2023, finding that greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial era made the heat waves that baked Asia, Africa, Europe and North America far more likely. Nearly […]
From the rear end of a pheasant, Brazil’s best coffee
By Florian PLAUCHEUR In Brazil, the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg is in reality something closer to a pheasant that excretes coffee beans. At the Camocim coffee farm, deep in the bucolic hills of Espirito Santo state in Brazil’s southeast, jacus — a type of pheasant native to tropical forests there — are considered some of the most astute pickers (or rather, eaters) of coffee cherries. “He chooses the best fruits, the ripest,” […]
Tencent claims new AI chat bot skills comparable to ChatGPT
Chinese tech giant Tencent on Thursday claimed its new chatbot had some capabilities on par with top US rival ChatGPT, as the global artificial intelligence race heats up. Tencent’s “Hunyuan Aide”, which it released to the public on Thursday, follows the similar ERNIE Bot rolled out by fellow Chinese company Baidu last month. Beijing introduced fresh regulations last month for AI developers, aiming to allow them to stay in the race with the likes of […]
