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MADRID, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – Temperatures were soaring across Spain on Monday with the mercury set to touch 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) in the south as the country braced for its second heatwave in a fortnight. The AEMET weather agency said the heat was caused by a mass of hot air arriving from North Africa, indicating it would last until at least Wednesday, with the southern Andalusia region expected to be worst hit. […]
By Deva LEE Pictures by Amna Yaseen, Video by Faisal Satti LAHORE, Pakistan, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – Pakistani mountaineer Shehroze Kashif faces sub-zero temperatures and biting winds in his race to scale the world’s highest peaks, but his biggest challenge is finding the money. Kashif, 21, aims this year to become the youngest person to climb every peak above 8,000 metres (26,247 feet), all of which are in Asia, with five in Pakistan. Summiting […]
PARIS (AFP) – The Threads app launched by Instagram as a rival to Twitter has signed up more than 100 million users in less than five days, data tracking websites said on Monday, smashing the record of AI tool ChatGPT for fastest-growing consumer app. While ChatGPT took two months to hit the 100 million user mark and video-sharing app TikTok took nine months, Instagram itself took two and a half years to reach that mark […]
By Daniel Lawler Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — A scorching hot world where metal clouds rain drops of titanium is the most reflective planet ever observed outside of our Solar System, astronomers said on Monday. This strange world, which is more than 260 light years from Earth, reflects 80 percent of the light from its host star, according to new observations from Europe’s exoplanet-probing Cheops space telescope. That makes it the first exoplanet comparably […]
By Daniel Lawler PARIS, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – As scientists make the case that humans have fundamentally transformed the planet enough to warrant our own geological epoch, another question arises: is there anything left untouched by humanity’s presence? Soaring greenhouse gases, ubiquitous microplastics, pervasive “forever chemicals”, the global upheaval of animals, even old mobile phones and chicken bones — all have been put forward as evidence that the world entered the Anthropocene, or era […]
BRIESKOW-FINKENHEERD, Germany, July 8, 2023 (AFP) – Fisherman Henry Schneider stopped work for several months after a toxic algae bloom hit the Oder river last August, decimating his catch. Schneider, 43, whose family has made its living from the river for over a century, finally took up his activities again in May. But fears of a repeat are growing, as global warming adds to the toxic mix of pollution putting the delicate ecosystem under pressure. […]
TOKYO, July 7, 2023 (AFP) – Plans to discharge treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant cleared their last regulatory hurdle in Japan on Friday, as China said it would ban some food imports over the move. South Korea meanwhile said Tokyo’s plan to dilute the treated water and release it into the sea over several decades met or exceeded international standards. Some 1.33 million cubic metres of groundwater, rainwater and water used for cooling […]
Japan’s plan to release treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant would have “negligible consequences” for South Korea, Seoul said Friday, as it tried to assuage rising public concern. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this week gave the green light for a decades-long project to discharge accumulated water from the plant, which was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami that hit the eastern coast of Japan in 2011. But the plan has encountered widespread […]
By Aymeric VINCENOT in Addis Ababa, with Joris FIORITI in Paris ADDIS ABABA, July 7, 2023 (AFP) – Kubik is proud of its pioneering, climate-friendly technology that recycles one of the world’s environmental curses — plastic waste — into construction blocks. But for the award-winning Ethiopian startup to achieve liftoff has been no easy task. It has had to fight tooth and nail to raise funds, says its youthful boss. Kubik takes in bundles of […]
PARIS, July 6, 2023 (AFP) – UNESCO on Thursday condemned the bombing of a historic building in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and expressed “its sincere condolences” to the families of five victims. “This attack, the first to take place in an area protected by the World Heritage Convention since the outbreak of the war on 24 February 2022, is a violation of this Convention,” the UN cultural agency said. UNESCO added that the […]
By Anuj CHOPRA WASHINGTON, July 7, 2023 (AFP) – Meta-owned Facebook has handed US users the controls over fact-checked content, in a potentially significant move that the platform says will give them more power over its algorithm but some analysts insist could benefit purveyors of misinformation. For years, Facebook’s algorithm automatically moved posts lower in the feed if they were flagged by one of the platform’s third-party fact-checking partners, including AFP, reducing the visibility of […]
WASHINGTON, July 7, 2023 (AFP) – Twitter threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk. In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.” The letter accused Meta of hiring dozens […]
