Life is all about relationships, and no less so in the animal world. As two recent UK wildlife photography contests reveal, the fleeting moments of interaction between predators, prey and parasites in the wild can be stunningly beautiful—and less bloody than you might expect.
One of the world’s most popular totems of the need for wildlife conservation may now become a symbol for the movement’s success: the beloved giant panda is officially no longer an endangered species.
The top administrative court in France, the Council of State, overturned the burkini ban in the town Villeneuve-Loubet today (Aug. 25), the Associated Press reports.
It sounds almost biblical. More than 300 Airbnb hosts have opened up their homes for free to people wracked by earthquakes, floods, and fires in central Italy, Louisiana, and California, according to listings found on the website.
At least 1.3 billion people around the world are disconnected from the grid, without electricity for basic appliances like lights, fans and televisions. But with the help of small solar panels, life is starting to brighten for some.
This week, zookeepers at the London Zoo are weighing all 17,000 animals in their care, and looks like a lot of fun.
The Airlander 10, currently the largest aircraft in the world, has just gracefully crashed onto the ground during its second test flight in the north of London, UK.
For as long as women have gone to the beach to try to enjoy themselves, it seems, people have followed them there to pester them about their clothes.
Buddhist philosophy calls for inner peace and distance from worldly desires, not so much vanity and self-promotion. But in Tokyo yesterday (Aug. 22) three Buddhist monks took the stage in a competition to be crowned fairest of them all—on the inside.
Kimia Alizadeh Zenoorin made history yesterday, Aug. 18, as the first Iranian woman to ever win an Olympic medal. She took the bronze for Iran in taekwondo, beating Sweden’s Nikita Glasnovic.
During the Cold War, nations used the Olympics to compare rival political models. In democratic societies, athletic talent tends to bubble up through grassroots sports schools or clubs, while in centrally-planned states, young athletes were hand-picked from their homes at a tender age to train full-time in state-led sports programs and boarding schools.
The spring equinox of Mars this year is a particularly auspicious time for scientists who study the red planet’s surface.
She said YES to the big decision in her life—not marriage, but a long-sought job offer.
Lakes and coastlines usually wear the tint of sapphire, but sometimes these waters turn into huge bowls of muddy pea soup, when harmful algae invade. Thanks to climate change, it’s happening more often than ever before, all over the world: from Greenland to the Rio Olympic diving pool just yesterday.
The 2016 Olympic Games got off to a spectacular start on Friday, Aug. 5. Despite earlier reports that the city was still a huge construction site, Rio’s Olympics public relations group tells Quartz in an email that all stadium constructions are now ”100% done,” excepting a few serious glitches at the Olympic village.
A new study shows that male researchers are far more likely to namecheck themselves in academic papers than women—a tendency that may improve their chances of career advancement.
The key to a perfect photo of the stars? Salt at your feet.
Photographer Carol M. Highsmith didn’t know Getty Images had been making money selling the 18,755 photos she donated to the US Library of Congress until December 2015, when she received an email from a company called License Compliances Services (LCS). The letter accused her of copyright infringement for using one of her photos on her own website, and came with a takedown request plus a $120 fine to compensate stock photo distributor Alamy.
The rhetorical rift between this week’s Democratic National Convention and last week’s Republican convention could not be greater.
Megacities, even more than national borders, increasingly define the way we live today. And iconic architecture defines the way we experience these cities, letting us measure our lives against them: When I’m driving in Paris and see the Arc de Triumph, I know I will be stuck at the huge roundabout for at least 20 minutes. When I zoom past the imposing blue disc next to the highway in Abu Dhabi, I know I am getting close to the airport.
It’s been a difficult summer in the United States, marred by a string of heartbreaking and inexplicable killings. After the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of law enforcement officers earlier this month, there were the retaliatory killings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Last week, on July 20, another unarmed black civilian was shot while trying to assist an autistic man.
In just a few days, a wildfire has transformed large swaths of California’s Santa Clarita Valley into an inferno. The blaze began Friday afternoon (July 22) and fanned across 33,000 acres by Sunday evening (July 25), reports the Los Angeles Times. A combination of factors, including temperatures as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius), low humidity, winds at over 40 mph (64.3 kph) and years of drought, caused the blaze’s rapid spread, according to the Los Angeles county fire department.
While a heat wave is plaguing the US, Britain, and Iraq in the Northern Hemisphere, a cold snap in Peru is killing alpacas en masse.
It’s been just half a year since five Hong Kong booksellers mysteriously disappeared, fueling concern about China’s crackdown on intellectual and press freedom in the autonomous region. Now, Hong Kong publishers are making a quiet show of defiance against mainland censorship.
