Features

  Madrid / AFP They may be cute, colourful and chatty, but South American quaker parrots have taken up residence in Madrid and other Spanish cities, irritating residents with their shrill squawks and destabilising the ecosystem. The small, bright green and grey-breasted birds — also known as monk parakeets — first arrived in Spain in cages as entertaining pets, but ...

Ranomafana / AFP “Last time, I burnt a section about that big,” says Mihareta Laivoa, pointing to a parcel of land about the size of a football field, as the farmer admitted to having destroyed forest to make way for his crops. “I don’t own a piece of land in the valley, so I have no choice,” explains the 41-year-old ...

  Tehran / AFP Mansour Faridfar did well on the black market until the law caught up and left him jobless, forcing him to join the thousands of “shakhsi” unofficial taxi drivers clogging Tehran’s streets. “I used to be very well off and I thought my fate was in my hands, but I gradually learned that was not true,” said the ...

AFP As cities expand, eating up swathes of countryside in the process, agricultural pioneers are finding new ways to grow the fresh produce we need, in containers, empty buildings and any other spare space they can find to create new vertical farms. “We are just trying to imitate nature. It’s not as futuristic as it might sound,” insists a smiling ...

  Kumasi / AFP It’s a Wednesday night and Rose’s Luxury won’t open for nearly another hour, but a line is already snaking out from under the brightly colored awning of one of Washington’s buzziest restaurants. The flock of eager diners is a testament to the capital city’s newfound foodie street cred, which grabbed the attention of international culinary tastemakers ...

Angers / AFP Dusty and somewhat faded, as befits its onetime use as insulation for horse stables, a priceless piece of medieval artistic heritage, France’s Apocalypse Tapestry, is getting a welcome clean-up. As the French culture ministry says, it’s high time “to see what state this old lady of upwards of 600 years of age is in.” In truth, she ...

Bogota / AFP Spray-paint cans in hand, a generation of street artists is covering Colombia’s run-down walls with rifles that shoot heart-shaped bullets and rainbow-colored pleas for peace. After half a century of conflict, the end of which remains just beyond reach, war and peace have become central themes in Colombia’s graffiti art. On the streets of Bogota, corncobs that ...

  Emirates Business Honda Motor Co. Africa and Middle East Office announced the official launch of the ‘2017 New Accord’ at Four Seasons Resort Jumeirah Beach, Dubai on Thursday. The New Accord gets a major facelift with sportier, more sophisticated styling. New Accord features restyled alloy wheels on the 4 cylinders and Honda SensingTM Technology on V6 grades. An additional ...

  Emirates Business The Oris Aquis Depth Gauge was hailed by the international press as one of the most innovative diving watches of the century when it was launched in 2013. It answered the challenge of how to build a depth gauge into a mechanical watch. It had a pioneering depth gauge function, developed and patented by Oris. Marking the ...

  Bloomberg There’s an art fair every day this month — for collectors who have the stamina to hop from Seoul to Santiago, Budapest to Buenos Aires, Moscow to Manila. Art fairs have been sprouting across the globe, with 269 in 2015 compared with 105 a decade earlier, according to a report by The Art Newspaper and Momart. ArtBinder, which ...