Features

Resurrecting ‘therapy beach’

  Broome / DPA The Dead Sea shimmers blue-green under a mild winter sun, waves rippling gently to the beach as a tourist couple enters the water. The high salt content – at 34 percent almost 10 times the level in the world’s seas – means that a human floats on the water like a cork with no danger of ...

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For these students, free tuition doesn’t mean free college

  BUFFALO, NY / DPA They don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but … New York public college students who would stand to gain from the nation’s most ambitious free-tuition proposal are quick to point out a sobering reality from their own meager finances: Free tuition doesn’t mean free college. Take Brooklyn College senior Florencia Salinas, who despite having her tuition ...

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A ‘staircase to the moon’!

  Broome/ DPA The sun has dipped behind the horizon but still hundreds of tourists remain on the mangrove beach at Broome in north-western Australia. All are looking out to sea. Slowly, a golden moon rises over the black water and a spectacular phenomenon takes place. The moonlight reflected off the mudflats makes it appear as if the moon has ...

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Video game cache serves as an archive of fun

  ANN ARBOR, Mich / AP The University of Michigan collects video games. Lots of them. The Ann Arbor university‘s Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA) features over 7,000 titles — everything from time-honored favorites such as “Pac-Man” and “Frogger” to newer fare, including “Call of Duty” and “Halo”— on dozens of gaming systems. Now in its 10th year, the ...

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UK’s ‘loquacious’ cabbies

  London / DPA Sitting in a room full of maps, Paul Defendi and Tommy Bartram ask each other over and over again the quickest way from A to B. Trance-like, they recite the names of streets and check the length of routes with a piece of string. The pair are students at London’s Knowledge Point, where they’re studying to ...

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They can cross the border legally only as ‘dead’

  Tijuana / DPA Hector Barajas was 17 years old when he joined the US Army. Born in Mexico, he crossed the border illegally when he was just a child. He was able to join the military after obtaining legal residency in the United States. “When I enlisted they promised me that if I served the United States they would ...

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Learning the power of positive thought

  JUBA / AP Warnings of possible genocide hang over the world‘s youngest nation, but here on a basketball court under a fierce morning sun, South Sudan‘s civil war seems like another country. Flashing up and down the court in blue and yellow jerseys, the players laugh and sweat as their wheelchairs jostle for position. This wheelchair basketball tournament in ...

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Helping migrants gives him ‘peace of mind’

  BELGRADE / DPA Yaser Harawi wasn’t too happy when his father sent him to study in Serbia rather than the US or Canada. Years later, the Syria-born doctor thinks it was a touch of fate. The 51-year-old from Damascus, who’s lived in Serbia for more than 30 years, has found meaning in helping Syrian and other migrants passing through ...

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Turning failures into successes!

  Husum / AP “I’m an athlete, not an adventurer,” says Freya Hoffmeister. But the journeys the extreme paddler undertakes are nothing if not adventurous – and dangerous. Paddling across the estuary of the Amazon in South America on one expedition she was “washed out” of her canoe by the “pororoca,” a tidal wave that can reach heights of 5 ...

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Long layover, how about a workout at an airport gym?

  AP Work out while waiting for your flight? That’s an option now at Baltimore Washington International Airport, where the only gym at a U.S. airport past security opened this week with plans to open 20 more at airports by 2020. It’s the latest example of how fitness and health trends have started showing up at airports. Yoga rooms and ...

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