Features

  London / AFP A rare handwritten letter from a young Queen Elizabeth II telling the story of her romance with Prince Philip before their 1947 wedding has been sold at auction. The note, penned when she was a 21-year-old princess, recounts the early stages of their relationship from their rare meetings in wartime to the London dances they attended together. ...

  DPA Charlie Chaplin touched the hearts of millions of fans and now they can visit the English-born silent-film comedian’s former Swiss home, which has just been converted into a museum. Chaplin’s World is comprised of the entertainer’s former mansion, studio and park stretching out over nearly 10 acres alongside Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The museum promises “an extraordinary adventure ...

  Beijing, China / AFP Chinese manufacturers and Internet giants are in hot pursuit of their US counterparts in the race to design driverless cars, but the route to market is still littered with potholes. While Google has been working on autonomous vehicles for at least six years, with the likes of BMW, Volvo and Toyota in its wake, more recently ...

  London / AFP London has more billionaires — measured in pounds sterling — than any other city in the world, according to The Sunday Times’ Rich List 2016. Some of the richest tycoons in Britain have lost vast chunks of their fortunes because of a retail slump, sinking oil prices and the steel industry crisis.. Nevertheless, the overall fortune of ...

  Tokyo / Bloomberg As the average age of farmers globally creeps higher and retirement looms, Japan has a solution: Robots and driver-less tractors. The Group-of-Seven agriculture ministers met in Japan’s northern prefecture of Niigata for the first time in seven years to discuss how to meet increasing food demand as aging farmers retire without successors. With the average age ...

New Mexico / DPA While Spaceport America, which claims to be the world’s first commercial spaceport, hasn’t yet launched any tourists into space, ordinary mortals can already tour the site. The futuristic building designed by rockstar architect Norman Foster is located in the middle of the desert in the US state of New Mexico. Here, it is hoped, rich tourists ...

  Natendorf, Germany / DPA Two polar bears, Nanuq and Sprinter, play in their zoo enclosure: Using their powerful teeth and enormous claws, they press a white ball under the water and then let it shoot up again to the surface. The bears, both males weighing around 500 kilograms and measuring 3 metres in length, are comparable to teenaged human boys ...

  New York / AP Walking through most doors at the Tribeca Film Festival means taking a seat in a theater full of chattering moviegoers. But there are also darkened, cloth-wrapped chambers — like old carnival booths promising never-before-seen wonders — that offer nothing but a headset, headphones and perhaps some advice, like: “Watch for the dragon.” Virtual reality has steadily ...

  London / AFP A plaque was unveiled in central London on Thursday, marking the place where William Shakespeare lodged in the city, in time for the 400th anniversary of the playwriter’s death. Actress Fiona Shaw read out Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 55”, while hand bell ringers and a children’s choir performed. “William Shakespeare had lodgings near here in 1604, at the house ...

Johannesburg / AFP Hundreds of coffee lovers queued early Thursday in an upmarket Johannesburg shopping centre as international chain Starbucks opened its first cafe in sub-Saharan Africa. The US-based global brand plans to open 12-15 more stores in South Africa over the next two years, with a long term plan of up to 150 outlets. “The timing is right. We are ...