Features

  Cologne / DPA Every time one meets Gerhard Richter, something doesn’t seem to add up. Is this “Europe’s greatest painter,” as the New York Times has called him? Or the “Picasso of the 21st Century,” as the Guardian says? The most expensive artist, the most influential painter? A superstar? He just doesn’t appear to match such superlatives. Nondescript is ...

  WELLS, Maine / AP The Ridgway’s rail is a rare bird that relies on the salt marshes south of Los Angeles to survive. And that’s why its future is in doubt — the salt marsh is disappearing under rising seas. Scientists working with the federal government said the rail’s plight at Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge is indicative of what’s ...

  Potsdam / DPA “Everything’s a bit dusty in here,” Peter Armbruester, who looks after the props at the Babelsberg Film Studio outside Berlin, says apologetically. “But we’re not allowed to clean in here.” In fact, Armbruester’s customers value a used look. “If everything was brilliantly polished they wouldn’t want it any more,” he says. The Babelsberg studio is the ...

  LOS ANGELES / DPA Victor Leonardo stares out through the window of the tour bus winding its way through the palm-lined streets of the popular resort town of Varadero, Cuba. “Cuba has changed rapidly over the last decade,” he says. Leonardo, 50, comes from the eastern province of Granma. He worked as a Spanish teacher for decades, but it ...

  Bloomberg From oozing blisters and wheezing to rashes, itchy eyes, and sore throats, numerous American Airlines Group Inc. flight attendants say their new work uniforms are making them sick. But after a battery of tests and a tense back-and-forth among their union, the airline, and the uniform supplier, it’s still not clear what exactly is behind the rise in ...

  AL-KHARQANIYAH / AP There is an unlikely industry thriving in a village north of Cairo: The making of mannequins. The use of mannequins in Egypt dates back to the early years of the last century, when department stores imported them to display Western attire sold to expatriates and wealthy Egyptians. Soon afterward, Egyptians took up the manufacturing of mannequins. The ...

  Goma / DPA In the crater of the Nyiragongo volcano in eastern Congo, the world’s largest lava lake cooks restlessly above the city of Goma, occasionally emitting 1,100-degree-Celsius bursts in what experts warn can precede a cataclysmic eruption. Hundreds of thousands of people who built homes in the immediate path of any new lava flow are acutely endangered. Yet ...

  LOS ANGELES / DPA In the exclusive Bel Air neighbourhood of Los Angeles sits a new monument to opulence, a $250 million mega-mansion that’s now the most expensive home listed in the United States. The four-level, 38,000-square-foot mansion comes with a seven-member staff, a $30 million car collection and an infinity pool complete with a swim-up bar, 270-degree views ...

  Dura Al Qari’a / DPA Plastic tarps on the ground are slowly filling up with green and black olives. Imad Hasan, clad in a blue pullover, a cap and jogging pants, is standing on a metal ladder five metres above the ground, picking the olives by hand from the tree, the ripe fruit nestled between narrow pointed leaves. Down ...

  Carlini Base / DPA What’s it like to live surrounded by an immense swath of sea, ice and mountains, 900 kilometres from the nearest city? Julia Luna, 28, is the first woman to spend a winter here on Argentina’s Carlini Base, an Antarctic scientific research site. As a systems engineer, she has one of the most unusual jobs on ...