Features

  Bloomberg Think of it as Mother Nature’s roller-coaster ride: the shift between the weather patterns known as El Nino and La Nina that, at their worst, can cause havoc worldwide. El Nino — spurred on by a warming of the equatorial Pacific — has dried up rice crops across Southeast Asia, cocoa fields in Ghana, coffee in Indonesia and ...

  Bloomberg Frustrated by the difficulty of finding dates while living in London, Dutchman David Vermeulen started InnerCircle, a matchmaking website focused on highly educated singles. Yet rather than set up in Europe’s biggest city, he moved to Amsterdam, home to about 800,000 people and a much smaller pool of potential customers. The city, he says, offered an inexpensive place ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP Apple is getting ready to unveil a stylish new product that’s not for sale — a new look for its stores. The iPhone maker is overhauling its nearly 480 stores worldwide, starting with its new two-storey location in San Francisco. Apple provided a glimpse of its revised approach to retailing, the 15th anniversary of the ...

  Los Angeles / AFP Bernard Minor spent 26 years behind bars for murdering a drug dealer who owed him US$400. Now, the ex-con spends his days teaching others to keep their rage in check, one of the swelling ranks of America’s anger therapists. “I was a very angry person,” the 58-year-old said. “I’d been living a violent life. Living ...

  Bologna / DPA A group of Italians stares out onto a market from an office in Bologna where they are discussing plans for a new gourmet amusement park which only Italians could have dreamed up. Although much of the world is familiar with pizza and pasta only, Italians relish a rich-tasting array of meats, exotic vegetables, cheeses and sauces ...

  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 ...