Features

  Addis Ababa / AFP Surrounded by the rubble of her former neighbours’ homes, Getnesh Amare hangs her laundry in the shadow of the high-rise offices and hotels taking over the once insalubrious centre of Ethiopia’s capital. “They have come many times to force us to move quickly. I’m not happy, but it’s a must. I have to move,” the …

  Rosh Haayin / AFP An Israeli firm says a super-efficient engine it has created could drastically reduce fuel consumption and help power an auto industry revolution as manufacturers search for environmentally sound alternatives. Industry analysts, however, question the reinvented internal combustion engine’s chances of success at a time when purely electric car technology is advancing and attracting investors. The …

  Subang Jaya / AFP Collectors and music fans wearing the t-shirts of obscure rock bands brave the tropical heat outside a record store near Malaysia’s capital, waiting to get their hands on new cassette tapes. No, this isn’t a flashback to the 1980s, but an event marking recent International Cassette Store Day, an annual celebration of a music format …

  EMIRATES BUSINESS BlackBerry Limited (NASDAQ: BBRY; TSX: BB), a global software leader in securing, connecting and mobilizing enterprises, recently announced the latest in its series of most secure Android smartphones, DTEK60. As part of BlackBerry’s transition towards a device software licensing strategy – which allows it to focus on putting “the smart in the phone” — the DTEK60’s hardware …

  Emirates Business The new shine collection by Swiss watchmaker RAYMOND WEIL is dressing up in different colours. Feminine, elegant and sensual, this model is the perfect timepiece to complement the demands of a modern lifestyle thanks to its unique patented system enabling the strap to be changed in seconds to match the colour of any outfit. The shine ladies …

  Nairobi / DPA Sewing machines clatter and fumes from charcoal-burning irons fill the narrow aisles hung about with lengths of fabric in the Gikomba Market in Nairobi, one of the largest second-hand clothing markets in Africa. It is 7 am, and traders are already heaving large wooden carts fully laden with second-hand clothes pressed into plastic-covered packs weighing some …

  Gross Pampau / DPA Amateur palaeontologist Wolfgang Hoepfner painstakingly removed all the dirt surrounding some fossilized bones, gradually revealing the skeleton of a 6-metre baleen whale, 11 million years after it had died in the North Sea. “For a palaeontologist like me, it was almost like winning the lottery,” he later explained with pride. Fossil hunting is a hobby …

  Le Somail / AFP France’s Canal du Midi was once a bustling commercial artery crowded with lock keepers, boatmen and barges weighted down by wine and wheat. These days, 350 years after it was carved out of the soil of southwestern France, its banks and waters have become a haven for slow-living locals, artists and prosperous professionals. They are …

  Naha / AFP Hollywood may have kicked karate onto the world stage, but its first-ever inclusion at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics promises to shine a light on the rich history of the discipline. At 78, sensei Masahiro Nakamoto has been waiting decades for this decision, insisting there is far more to the martial art than the caricature depicted in …

  Berlin / DPA Olafur Eliasson’s fascination with natural light led him to illuminate the Tate Gallery in London with a giant fake sun 13 years ago. Since that debut before the wider public, the Danish-Icelandic artist has made hundreds of thousands of small plastic suns that not only bring solar light to the darkest corners of the earth, but …