Yemen’s Al-Heswa nature reserve was once hailed as a beacon of conservation efforts by the UN, but civil war has turned it into a rubbish-strewn wasteland reeking of sewage. The ticket office has been abandoned at the entrance to the 19ha site in Yemen’s southern city of Aden, where trees have been cut down and construction waste dumped. What was long a haven for flamingos and other migratory birds is now swarmed by crows. “Al-Heswa used to be a recreational outlet for residents and tourists,” said Aden resident Ibrahim Suhail. “It has now become a rubbish dump, full of insects…
Author: post staff
Statues wrapped in foam and fireproof material can be seen all around the historic city of Lviv, where the race is on to protect cultural treasures against possible Russian bombardment. In the western Ukrainian city’s Market Square, only a trident can be seen sticking out from a statue of Neptune – the Roman god of the seas – that is entirely covered in a plastic sheeting. “I got some money, gathered a team and bought some material,” said Andriy Salyuk, head of the Society for the Protection of Monuments, and one of the main drivers behind the protection effort. Volunteers…
On Cape Town’s beaches, swimmers shower off sand from their feet. Irrigation pipes water the region’s famed vineyards. And Shadrack Mogress fumes as he fills a barrel with water so he can flush his toilet. It’s been four years since South Africa’s tourist capital nearly ran dry, during a drought that left the city limping towards a “Day Zero” when all the pipes would empty. Now water flows liberally – but not for everyone. South Africa is the most unequal country in the world, with race playing a determining factor, a World Bank report said last week. The taps at…
The Mediterranean’s first offshore wind farm is rising from the shallows off Italy, its turbines a symbol of hope for a Europe suffering an energy crisis exacerbated by war. The park will stretch out from the port in Taranto, a city in the south blighted by a noxious steel plant and unemployment, but which now finds itself centre stage in the country’s race to scale up green power. “This is a big chance to change hearts and minds on renewables,” said Fabio Matacchiera, an activist in Taranto, where child tumours are well above the average but poor locals cling to…
Indonesia hosts its first motorcycle grand prix in 25 years on Sunday, confident that concerns surrounding the new track will be forgotten once racing begins in front of a sell-out crowd. The archipelago nation of 270 million people is motorbike mad – many get around on two wheels – and there is a palpable sense of excitement at the prospect of world-class racing returning. Even President Joko Widodo is a fan and tried out the Mandalika International Street Circuit when he officially opened it in November, having a go on a custom-made green Kawasaki bike. Sunday’s race is the second…
Eugene Parker, a pioneering American astrophysicist whose mathematical prediction that charged particles streamed from stars in a solar wind was met with disbelief before he was ultimately vindicated, has died aged 94, NASA said on Wednesday. Parker was hailed as a visionary who laid the groundwork for the field of heliophysics, the science of understanding the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, including space weather. In 2018, he became the first person to witness the launch of a spacecraft bearing his name, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. “We were saddened to learn the news that one of…
Chicago Cubs owners the Ricketts family have confirmed they are leading a consortium that will bid to buy English Premier League club Chelsea, as British athletics great Sebastian Coe announced his involvement in a rival effort to purchase the Blues. New York merchant bank Raine Group has set a Friday deadline for bids, with Roman Abramovich’s trophy-filled 19-year tenure as owner of the Stamford Bridge club coming to a close. “The Ricketts family, owners of [Major League Baseball team] the Chicago Cubs, can confirm they will be leading an investment group that will make a formal bid for Chelsea Football…
Villarreal reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League on Wednesday after humiliating Juventus 3-0 in Turin to go through 4-1 on aggregate. Penalties from Gerard Moreno and Arnaut Danjuma and Pau Torres’s tap-in in the final quarter of an hour were enough for Unai Emery’s well-organised side to see off the Italians at the Allianz Stadium and make Friday’s last-eight draw. Villarreal stunned Juve with three sucker punches after spending most of the match on the back foot, content to hold off the hosts’ attacks which got less potent as the match wore on. An embarrassing defeat was just Juve’s…
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has described the line-up for this week’s World Indoor Championships in Belgrade as one of an “incredibly high standard”. The championship features a loaded field including 12 gold medallists from the Tokyo Olympics and a host of other world champions. “Wherever you look, we’ve got some tasty head-to-heads,” Coe said, describing the likes of Swedish pole vault star Mondo Duplantis as one of the sport’s “rock stars”, with the personality to back up stellar performances and better promote athletics. “The raw competition between two athletes at the top of their game is really what the…
Serbia’s 61st-ranked Miomir Kecmanovic shocked sixth-seeded Matteo Berrettini 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 6-4 on Wednesday to book a quarter-final clash with Taylor Fritz at the ATP Indian Wells Masters. The 22-year-old Kecmanovic equalled the biggest win of his career as he reached the last eight of a Masters level event for the second time. Berrettini, runner-up to Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon in 2021, is at a career-high sixth in the world after reaching the Australian Open semi-finals in January. But he couldn’t find the answer against an aggressive Kecmanovic, who pressured Berrettini’s serve throughout. Unable to convert two break points in…