Features

  New York / DPA Duke Riley was just a child when he rescued an injured pigeon, taking care of it until it was ready to fly away again.But then the bird came back.Now, many years later, the experience has motivated the Boston artist to use a huge flock of pigeons in a piece of performance art high in the ...

  Bloomberg Investors looking for a break from the doom and gloom of the past two years in the oil market need only turn to a hot, noisy lot in Mumbai. There on a recent Saturday, a tall, cricket-loving, 34-year-old engineer named Anil Gaikwad took part in a rite of passage that for nearly a century has helped define entry ...

  Bloomberg As entrepreneurs around the world founded technology startups in the past few years to deliver food to diners’ doors, perhaps no market grew quite as riotously as India. Customers could order entrees, main dishes and desserts from different startups, none of which required a minimum order. Discounts were plentiful and delivery was free. Now the all-you-can-eat buffet is ...

  Seoul / AFP After more than a decade of global dominance, South Korea’s shipbuilders face an unprecedented crisis that threatens the very survival of one of the flagship industries of Asia’s fourth largest economy. South Korea’s “Big Three” shipbuilders were once considered the holy trinity of Korea Inc. — controlling nearly 70 percent of the global market after seeing ...

  Mexico / AFP Sharks swim around a platform off Mexico’s east coast as scientists drill deep into the ocean floor, extracting the remains of the asteroid widely blamed for the demise of the dinosaurs. Some 30 meters (98 feet) above the ocean floor, the researchers pull out cylinders filled with rocks that could unlock the mysteries of life and ...

  Sidoarjo / AFP Harwati forces a smile as she guides visitors around a bubbling mud volcano in Indonesia, pausing as they snap selfies on the bleak wasteland she once called home. These disaster tourists are a lifeline for the single mother who lost everything when the earth beneath a paddyfield near her village opened up without warning ten years ...

  Wageningen / AFP Establishing a human colony on the Moon and travelling to Mars has been the stuff of dreams since the dawn of the space age.But these visions face many hurdles. How can humans survive for months or years in the ultra-hostile environment of space? What, for instance, will they eat? Agricultural researchers at a Dutch university say ...

  Moscow / AFP Moscow’s Aragvi restaurant — once the legendary haunt of KGB spies and cosmonauts — has reopened with its Soviet-era grandeur restored.The high-end eatery on the main Tverskayastreet, which opened in 1938 at the height of Stalin’s purges, has re-launched under the same name after a $20 million (17 million euros) restoration. The restaurant opened on the ...

  Munich / DPA Everybody knows that environmental pollution is bad for animals and plants. But in Lake Constance, bordered by three European nations, the opposite is proving true. At moderate levels, some types of environmental pollution are nourishing for fish. Over the last 30 years, the lake wedged between Germany, Austria and Switzerland has become so clean that the ...

  Kalisari / AFP In a dark and steamy room in Indonesia’s tofu heartland three men sweat over bubbling cauldrons, churning creamy beancurd with wooden paddles before draining it by hand and slicing it into silky cubes. Tofu has been cooked this way for generations but today, innovative villagers on Java island are producing something extra from the simple soybean ...