Features

  Banjar Jembrana / AFP Wearing crowns and colourful horn coverings, the buffaloes haul wooden carts at high speed past paddy fields on Bali, with the racers aboard cracking whips in a bid to push their beasts on to victory. Hundreds of spectators cheer from the sidelines, hoping their team will come out on top in the annual festival on …

  Cairo / AFP On a Friday morning in Cairo, Ahmed Shazly stopped a few cars to allow some 3,000 joggers to cross a near-deserted road in the normally gridlocked metropolis. Streets that during the week are snarled with exhaust-spewing cars turn almost silent on weekend mornings — Fridays and Saturdays in Egypt — as most shops and businesses are …

  Berlin / DPA Legend has it that polo originates in Persia and dates back to around 370 BC. Alexander the Great, whose armies swept through some 40 years later, is said to have become an instant fan. By the mid 19th century the sport had taken hold among Europe’s upper classes, with British army officers among the most passionate …

  EMIRATES BUSINESS Palm Lights is a UAE-based brand specializing in eco-friendly candles. Started as a small home business in 2013, it has now grown into a trading establishment. With a vision to offer environmentally sustainable products in UAE, Palm Lights offers an exotic range of natural candles made with vegetable palm wax and essential oils. The crystalline finish on …

  Emirates Business Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG), the market’s leading independent solid-state array vendor has retained its position in the Leaders Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Solid State Arrays (SSAs) by Gartner, Inc., a leading global research firm. For the third straight year, Pure Storage is positioned furthest along the “Completeness of Vision” axis in the Leaders Quadrant. Since …

  Buenos Aires / DPA Patients wait in long lines for turns to see physicians, mothers hold their babies close to their bosoms and scores of people walk up and down staircases, some of them carrying the results of medical tests. But none of that seems to bother musicians and singers at the Dr. Cosme Argerich Hospital in Buenos Aires, …

  Ketapang / AFP Ignoring the shrieks of his rowdy, wrestling classmates, baby orangutan Otan practises swinging alone at his “jungle school” on Borneo island, switching hands and hanging upside down as he builds confidence high above the forest floor. The three-year-old is learning to fend for himself since being found wandering a palm oil plantation, alone and suffering smoke inhalation, …

  Bloomberg When Deona Duke woke up from a medically-induced coma to begin recovering from burns that covered almost a third of her body, one of her treatments was hurling snowballs at penguins. The 13-year-old was set on fire when a bonfire exploded on her and her friend. To prevent infection, burn victims need their bandages changed and dead skin …

  Gaza City / DPA From the roof of his house, Said Abu Nasser gazes over the concrete jungle of Gaza. There are no seating areas, no parasols and hardly any plants on the surrounding rooftops. But next to Abu Nasser, green and red pepper, and mint thrive in blue plastic tubs. Six stories below, the 53-year-old has also created …

  Bloomberg In a giant warehouse near Lake Ziway in central Ethiopia, hundreds of women in aprons work at yellow workbenches under the flags of Dutch soccer clubs PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord, sorting bunches of multicolored roses. Within two days the stems, shipped in perforated cardboard tubes from Dutch-owned AQ Roses’ flower farm, will be on sale at florists across …