Features

  Detroit / AP Louis Cervi was looking to buy a small car for basic transportation with a monthly payment in the mid-$200 range. After six months of looking, Cervi, 41, drove off a dealer lot north of Pittsburgh in a Ford Focus for US$192 a month. The dealership even accepted his 2001 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with a failed transmission as ...

  Chile / AFP Every morning at dawn, a thick mist known as “The Darkness” blows in from the Pacific to the edge of the Atacama Desert, the most arid place in the world. After tantalizing the northern Chilean desert with the promise of moisture, the mist evaporates in the sun, leaving the heat to bake the stark lunar landscape. But ...

  Venetia Mine, South Africa / AFP Proof that diamonds are getting harder to find can be seen in the South African bush, where one of the world’s largest mining companies is spending $2 billion tunnelling beneath a vast open-pit mine. De Beers spent 25 years digging a 450-metre (1,500-foot) deep by one-kilometre wide hole to access diamond-rich rock from the ...

  Washington / AFP The smartphone revolutionised how people live and work, but the technology world is now struggling to see what comes next. As smartphone sales have peaked in most major markets, Apple, Samsung and others are being forced to rethink their business models to keep growing and connecting with consumers. The trend in smartphones appears to follow similar peaks ...

  Horn, Austria / DPA There is nothing very Asian about the quiet little Austrian town of Horn. It is surrounded by rolling hills and forests, and like any respectable central European town, it boasts a medieval church, old buildings with red-tile roofs, and the manor-house of a local noble family. But when you enter the stadium of the Horn football ...

  DPA “A greener world” is the underlying theme at the just-opened world exposition in Turkey’s southern coastal city of Antalya, a place which, with its mass tourism industry and towering concrete hotel complexes, is not exactly known as an environmental paradise. Turkish officials hope this jaded image will be improved when visitors see the EXPO 2016 Antalya International Horticultural ...

  Bangkok / AFP For nearly a century, Thanuan has watched history sweep through the bustling maze of alleyways that make up Bangkok’s Chinatown, one of the city’s few districts yet to be devoured by malls and high-rise condos. But change is coming — and fast. A new metro service will soon plough straight into the heart of the historic quarter, ...

  HAWTHORNE, Calif. / AP Decked out in high-tech goggles, pilot Steve Zoumas dives low and sees the final gate zooming toward him — a 20-foot-tall metal-framed box ringed with neon. Boom! His sight goes black. The crowd lets out a collective “Whoa!” as pieces of his aircraft, which has just smashed into a concrete barrier, go flying. Zoumas is just ...

  Rome / AP Armed with shovels and sacks of cold asphalt, Rome’s residents fill potholes. Defying rats, they yank weeds and bag trash along the Tiber’s banks and in urban parks. Tired of waiting years for the city to replace diseased trees, neighbors dig into their own pockets to pay for new ones for their block. Romans are starting to ...

  Buenos Aires / AFP The paintings in Buenos Aires’ newest gallery may look like the work of great artists, but they are actually rip-offs — and the exhibition’s organsers want you to know it. One of the works doesn’t even look the part — it is supposed to be a masterpiece by the late Argentine painter Antonio Berni, but the ...