Saudi Gazette/ Life/ Explore

advertise Subscribe E-paper

Monday August 26, 2019 / 25 , Dhu al-hijjah , 1440

Life

1 - 10 from 128 . In "Life / Explore"

Tourists take a cruise on August 19, 2019, in the Scandola Nature Reserve, on the western coast of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. -AFP

August 25, 2019

'Red lights' as over-tourism threatens Corsican nature reserve

GIROLATA, FRANCE - "It's nature's magical design," says a tourist guide, waxing poetic as he comments on the impressive red cliffs plunging into a turquoise sea at the Scandola nature reserve on France's Corsica island."Amazing!" exclaims Irena Snydrova, a Czech tourist visiting the UNESCO World Heritage site with her family, along with groups from Italy, Spain and France.Their boat sidles up to the Steps of Paradise, rocks shaped into a ...

This file photo taken on August 6, 2019 shows a view of the resort on an artificial island made with around 700,000 recycled pieces of plastic waste collected in the surrounding area, on the Ebrie Lagoon in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. -AFP

August 25, 2019

Ivory Coast's 'Floating Island' points to greener tourism

ABIDJAN - The seaside resort offers visitors a cool drink or tasty meal, a dip in a pool, a karaoke session or an overnight stay, all with a view.Nothing much new there, you may say -- creature comforts like this are pretty much standard in tropical hotels.The big difference, though, is that this mini resort is also a moveable island that floats on plastic bottles.Riding on the laguna in Abidjan, ...

Cape Coast Castle is one of several UNESCO World Heritage slave forts along the southern coast of Ghana. –Courtesy photo

August 20, 2019

Ghana cashes in on slave heritage tourism

ASSIN MANSO, GHANA - In a clearing at the turnoff to Assin Manso, a billboard depicts two African slaves in loincloths, their arms and legs in chains. Beside them are the words, "Never Again!"This is "slave river," where captured Ghanaians submitted to a final bath before being shipped across the Atlantic into slavery centuries ago, never to return to the land of their birth. Today, it is a place of ...

In this picture taken on July 26, 2019 barriers are plugged in to protect houses from the sea waves as seen in northern Jakarta. -AFP

August 16, 2019

Sinking city: Indonesia's capital on brink of disaster

JAKARTA - Time is running out for Jakarta. One of the fastest-sinking cities on earth, environmental experts warn that one third of it could be submerged by 2050 if current rates continue.Decades of uncontrolled and excessive depletion of groundwater reserves, rising sea-levels, and increasingly volatile weather patterns mean swathes of it have already started to disappear.Existing environmental measures have had little impact, so authorities are taking drastic action: the nation ...

In Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, reticulated giraffe numbers fell 60 percent in the roughly three decades to 2018. -AFP

August 16, 2019

Gentle giraffes threatened with 'silent extinction'

LOISABA, KENYA - For most of his life as a Samburu warrior, Lesaiton Lengoloni thought nothing of hunting giraffes, the graceful giants so common a feature of the Kenyan plains where he roamed."There was no particular pride in killing a giraffe, not like a lion... (But) a single giraffe could feed the village for more than a week," the community elder told AFP, leaning on a walking stick and gazing ...

This photo taken on August 8, 2019 shows the exterior of Darulaman Palace, which is undergoing a complete renovation, in Kabul. -AFP

August 16, 2019

Afghan palace emerges from ruins as centenary nears

KABUL - Inside an imposing building in Kabul, a team of welders hastily fuse a sweeping metal bannister to a grand staircase. Outside, gardeners spray torrents of water over the parched earth, willing the grass to grow.They have just days to finish a total renovation of the once-ruined Darulaman Palace, a hulking showpiece of Afghan architecture that came to symbolize the country's turmoils during decades of war.With questions looming over ...

People take photos as they walk along a hiking trail -part of a projected 8,000-kilometer trail across Brazil, which will be one of the losgest in the Americas- in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 21, 2019. -AFP

August 16, 2019

Trans-Brazil trail raises hopes for future of Atlantic Forest

RIO DE JANEIRO - Luiz Pedreira walks with other hikers beneath the Atlantic Forest's thick canopy in Brazil, where an 8,000-kilometer trail stretching the full length of the country is being opened up.He says he hopes that the creation of the trail, one of the world's longest, will raise awareness about the fragility of the forest -- long devastated by loggers and farmers, and now facing a renewed threat under ...

Protest leader Pania Newton (C) is seen at a protest at Ihumatao, Auckland, in this undated handout photo released on Sunday. -Reuters

August 11, 2019

In New Zealand, young Māori women lead the battle for indigenous rights

AUCKLAND/WELLINGTON - Five years ago, law graduate Pania Newton and her cousins got together around a kitchen table and agreed to do everything in their power to prevent a housing development on a south Auckland site considered sacred by local Māori.Newton, now 29, is today leading thousands of protesters occupying the land at Ihumātao, one of a number of grassroots movements spearheaded by young, educated and tech-savvy Māori women.Using social ...

Workers press ahead with demolishing the arches which were rebuilt after World War II when British troops blew up the original medieval bridge over the Scheldt at Tournai. –Courtesy photo

August 10, 2019

Medieval bridge faces troubled waters in Belgium

TOURNAI, BELGIUM - The demolition of a historic bridge across a Belgian river is triggering fears among residents of Tournai that the city symbol will be disfigured permanently when a new span replaces it.The authorities insist they chose the most cost-effective option to build a new crossing that will allow larger barges to sail underneath while preserving the character of the medieval monument, known locally as the "bridge of holes".Workers ...

Job Kibii, head of the National Museums of Kenya's paleontology department, holds a piece of the 23-million-year-old bones of the newly-discovered giant 'simbakubwa kutokaafrika' (big lion from Africa), whose unveiling made headlines around the world, at the Nairobi National Museum, in Nairobi on May 23, 2019. -AFP

August 9, 2019

Hidden mysteries lie in wait inside Kenya's fossil treasury

NAIROBI - The only hint that something extraordinary lay inside the plain wooden drawer in an unassuming office behind Nairobi National Museum was a handwritten note stuck to the front: "Pull Carefully".Inside, a monstrous jawbone with colossal fangs grinned from a bed of tattered foam -- the only known remains of a prehistoric mega-carnivore, larger than a polar bear, that researchers only this year declared a new species."This is one-of-a-kind," ...

Next >>