Features

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...