China’s Tianducheng is unlike any other residential development in the world. Built for more than US$1 billion on the outskirts of Hangzhou, the neighbourhood recreates the look and feel of Paris with its own Eiffel Tower, French-style boulevards and elegant European architecture. Over the years, viral videos and social media posts have repeatedly portrayed it…
Trump to award top civilian honour to teen lifeguard. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that a 16-year-old lifeguard who rescued a 10-year-old boy from powerful waves off a California beach will be invited to the White House and awarded a “high civilian honour.““We’re going to bring this heroic young man, and his family,…
In 1999, retired electrical engineer Bruce Campbell paid 100,000 dollars for a decommissioned Boeing 727-200 that had spent its working life flying for Olympic Airways in Greece, then had the aircraft flown to Oregon and hauled in pieces to a wooded property near Hillsboro, where it was reassembled and slowly converted into his home. More…
In 1991, American businessman Douglas Tompkins, who had co-founded the outdoor clothing companies The North Face and Esprit, bought a semi-abandoned plot of land in the Renihue River Valley in southern Chile, drawn by the region’s ancient, untouched temperate rainforest. What began as a personal effort to protect one threatened valley grew, over the following…
When Captain James Cook sailed through New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds during his second and third voyages in the 1770s, he deliberately released pigs and goats into the bush, hoping to establish a self-sustaining source of meat for future European sailors who might pass through the region. Cook could not have known that these animals would…
China has achieved a major milestone in its pursuit of commercial nuclear fusion by completing the construction and testing of a colossal 582-ton superconducting magnet designed for its next-generation “Artificial Sun” programme, according to Xinhua News Agency. Measuring 21 metres in length, the toroidal-field magnet is the largest of its kind ever built for a…
On the evening of 26 September 1954, the Japanese passenger ferry Toya Maru prepared to cross the Tsugaru Strait, the narrow but often treacherous stretch of water separating the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Thousands of passengers relied on ferries to make the crossing long before the construction of the Seikan Tunnel, and despite worsening…
The sounds of singing birds drifting through a leafy forest may do more than create a peaceful atmosphere; they could measurably improve mental health. A new study has found that spending just 10 minutes in a restored urban forest while listening to birdsong reduced people’s stress, increased positive emotions and made them feel more mentally…
On a quiet Saturday evening in May 2018, walking through a street in Paris, Mamadou Gassama, a 22-year-old individual from Africa, noticed a crowd gathered beneath a residential building where a four-year-old child hung from a fourth-floor balcony. He quickly climbed the exterior of the building and rescued the boy to safety within no time….
Indian AI engineer laid off after company moved project to India/Image: Getty Images An Indian AI engineer on an H-1B visa, who spent around six years in the United States, has said he lost his job after his employer moved the entire project to India, leaving him to decide whether to return home or continue…