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Relaxnews Planning any holidays to Europe, Asia, or South America this summer? Booking a hotel now could save you 20 percent off the room rate. That’s according to the latest number crunching in a report from TripAdvisor, which breaks down the best time to book hotels in popular destinations around the world this summer. For its report, TripAdvisor analyzed hotel ...

London / Emirates Business This year marks the 40th anniversary of Britain’s World of Islam Festival, a ground-breaking series of exhibitions opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1976. That same year, Sotheby’s pioneered London’s first ‘Islamic Week’, which has taken place in April and October every year since. In celebration of these landmark events, Sotheby’s is staging its most wide-ranging ...

Cannes / AFP Tired of “Big Brother”, too afraid to turn on “The Apprentice” now that Donald Trump is at the gates of the White House? Never fear. In the television future dogs will fly, people will come back from the dead and parents will choose their children’s dates. These are just some of the new reality television concepts coming ...

Los Angeles / AFP A Technicolor scientist surrounded by the latest virtual reality technology inspects a vial containing a few droplets of water — and one million copies of an old movie encoded into DNA. The company has come a long way since the Hollywood golden age, when the world gazed in awe at the lush palette of “The Wizard ...

Almaty, Kazakhstan / AFP The season may be drawing to a close at Central Asian Kazakhstan’s Chimbulak winter sports resort, but skiiers and snowboarders are still carving their way down a broad piste framed by the snow-speckled spruces of the Tien-Shan mountains. After a dip in interest that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, the landlocked region is witnessing ...

Dubai / AFP “Daddy, where are you now? In Turkey or Sweden?” a Syrian girl asks her father in her first voice message to him since he joined hundreds of thousands fleeing the war. The recording, sent by smartphone, is one of many messages between Syrians that Jordanian photographer Tanya Habjouqa has compiled into her short film “Syria Via WhatsApp”. ...

Sydney / AFP Archaeologists have uncovered ancient human remains and various burial practices at the mysterious Plain of Jars in Laos, Australian researchers said, as scientists attempt to unravel the puzzle of the stone vessels. The Plain of Jars in Laos’ central Xieng Khouang province is scattered with thousands of stone jars and scientists have long been perplexed by their ...

Beijing / AP Stuffed into a tiny room off an alleyway are items that Wang Jinming readily admits were put out with the garbage: Paper string, a needle holder, a metal pancake maker built for thrusting into a fire. “These objects all look quite old and shabby,” he said. “But they record real history.” Wang’s Beijing Old Items Exhibition in ...

St Albans / AFP Once a daily sight on every British street, a dwindling but resilient band of milkmen still go out at the crack of dawn to deliver bottles of fresh milk to the nation’s doorsteps. The overwhelming majority of milk used to be sold at the front door until the supermarket revolution all but wiped out this very ...

Los Angeles / Reuters Volvo’s North American CEO, Lex Kerssemakers, lost his cool as the automaker’s semi-autonomous prototype sporadically refused to drive itself during a press event at the Los Angeles Auto Show. “It can’t find the lane markings!” Kerssemakers griped to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the wheel. “You need to paint the bloody roads here!” Shoddy infrastructure ...