Category: Life & Style

Teenage cyclist Liam Garner, over the course of nearly one and a half years, rode through 14 countries, covering more than 32,000 km in the journey of a lifetime.

Hailing from Long Beach, California, Garner believes he is the youngest person to have completed the feat of cycling through the Americas from Alaska to Argentina. “I always felt pretty much my entire life that I wanted to do or needed to do some big adventure,” he said in an interview.

Garner set off on his journey on August 1, 2021, from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States accessible by road. His final destination was Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost point of South America. He had just his mountain bike, a tent, a sleeping bag, around a day’s worth of food and water, some portable batteries, a medical kit, and extra parts for his bike.

Surviving on a budget of about $430 ($573) a month, Garner’s journey was self-supported. He was also able to seek accommodation in hostels, was invited into people’s homes along the way, and camped in tents when such options were not available. On his way, he also survived robberies – at least five times – and had his passport stolen, illness, and bad injuries. On Jan 17, 2023, after passing through Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, he finally reached his destination.

“After 527 days, 20,000 miles and 14 countries, I, Liam Garner, am now the youngest person to have ever biked from Alaska to Argentina,” he declared in a video.

Vienna’s Leopold Museum, under an initiative called A Few Degrees More has tilted 15 paintings by the number of degrees unchecked climate change could affect the landscapes depicted. Developed together with the research network Climate Change Center Austria, the action runs until late June.

The initiative comes after climate activists poured black liquid over a glass screen protecting a Klimt piece at the museum. “We want to contribute to raise awareness of the dramatic consequences of the climate crisis,” said Leopold Museum Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger.

Paintings by Klimt, Schiele and Richard Gerstl are among those chosen for the initiative. Gustav Klimt’s well-known Attersee lake painting has been tilted by two degrees, while Egon Schiele’s painting of a tree in late autumn is being rotated by five degrees.

The tilted paintings drew varied reactions from visitors. Some of the guests were sad being reminded of what’s going to be lost with the tilted paintings, while others were less impressed, suggesting that the representation “trivializes climate change” and was too easy to get used to the tilted works.

The Leopold Museum, with its 6,000 artworks, houses one of the world’s most important collections of Austrian art, focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century and subsequent Modernism.

The Director of Aviation in the United Kingdom’s department of transport has lauded India on the number of female pilots and the implementation of Digi Yatra.

Rannia Leontaridi, the Director of Aviation and Director General of Civil Aviation (UK), was sharing her views on March 22 on ‘designing a future-proof aviation & airports system’ at the CAPA India Aviation Summit 2023 in New Delhi.

Digi Yatra app links a traveller’s boarding pass to a facial recognition system that confirms their identification. It was developed by the Digi Yatra Foundation and the Ministry of Civil Aviation to support contactless passenger identification at airports.

Leontaridi said the Digi Yatra is a phenomenal step by the government. She also said, “I am jealous of the number of female pilots in India. We are a little behind.”

Suggesting ways on how the UK and Indian governments can collaborate to accomplish goals, she said, “Regulation and policy should be about consumers more because aviation is for customers… Customer charter to inform pax about rights was the first thing that came out of COVID in the UK. Other critical things were Digitisation, innovation, and decarbonization. We realised we have a difficult future ahead of us.”

Customer-centric plans, digitisation of services such as innovation and technology, and decarbonisation are other key learnings during the pandemic and recovery path for the aviation industry, Leontaridi said.

A geologist of Federal University of Parana, Fernanda Avelar Santos and her team have discovered rocks made from plastic debris on Brazil’s Trindade island. Melted plastic has become intertwined with rocks on the island. “This is new and terrifying at the same time, because pollution has reached geology,” Santos said.

Trindade Island, a remote volcanic outcrop a three to four-day boat trip off the coast of Brazil, is best known as a nesting site for green turtles. On the island, the researchers have discovered a new kind of igneous rock, plastistone, formed almost completely from plastic.

Plastic rocks have been previously found in various parts of the world. Researchers documented plastiglomerates – rock, sand and other debris fused together by melted plastic – in Hawaii in 2014, and pyroplastics, rock-like pebbles formed out of burnt plastic, on the southwest coast of England in 2019.

Santos first found the plastic rocks in 2019, during her travel to Trindade Island to research a doctoral thesis on landslides, erosion and other “geological risks.” She was intrigued by the peculiar-looking blue-green rocks and took some back to her lab. On analysis, she and her team identified the specimens as the new kind of geological formation, merging the materials and processes the Earth has used to form rocks for billions of years with plastic trash. “It fits in with the idea of the Anthropocene, which scientists are talking about a lot these days: the geological era of human beings influencing the planet’s natural processes,” she said.

Hyderabad’s L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) has been ranked 8th globally in the area of Ophthalmology (Health category) for 2023 by Scimago agency, a Spanish global ranking organisation. The ranking is based on research, technology innovation and social impact of the research output.

The institute has been listed with reputed institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Harvard University, Moorfields of London in the top 10 list. The LVPEI is the first Indian medical institute to find a place in the top rankings in the field of research productivity.

Scimago Agency analysed data for the past five years of the best medical institutions to arrive at the 2023 rankings. The list is headed by Moorfields Eye Hospitals NHS Trust (UK), Johns Hopkins Medicine (US), Singapore National Eye Centre, University of Miami Health System (US), Singapore Eye Research Institute, UCLA Health System, (US) and National Institutes of Health (US) and LVPEI (India). The next two are the US Department of Health & Human Services and Institute National de la Santé et de la Recherche Medicare (France).

LVPEI has served approximately 34.14 million patients so far. Of them 16 million were served free of cost. It has trained about 56,759 personnel and its scientists or researchers have 4,099 publications. It also has to its credit 57 PhDs, 5 Bhatnagar Award winners, and 3 Padma Shri awardees.

To expand its reach, the LVPEI has set up a few satellite centres, and has been able to reach 12,193 villages. It has so far performed 1.93 million surgeries, 2029 stem cell based procedures, reached 4.92 million children, and established a Cornea Bank with 1.19 lakh corneas of which 69, 964 transplants have been done, says the institute.

Participants of an international donor conference in Brussels raised €7 billion ($7.5 billion) for the victims of the earthquakes on February 6 in Turkey and Syria. The massive earthquakes killed more than 57,300 people.

The “Together for the people of Turkey and Syria” conference was hosted by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Prime Minister of Sweden Ulf Kristersson on March 20. Over 60 delegations met in Brussels to mobilise support for the people affected by the massive earthquakes. A total of 6.05 billion euros will be provided in the form of grants and loans for Turkey, and 950 million euros in grants for Syria, the European Commission said.

More than 50 per cent of the grants (3.6 billion euros) will come from the European Commission and European Union Member States, as well as the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

“Today is a very good day for international solidarity,” von der Leyen said after the event. “We have shown to the people in Turkey and Syria that we are supporting those in need. Together we have exceeded expectations with pledges worth 7 billion euros. We will continue to work together to support those affected by the earthquakes… We now need to support the survivors to rebuild their lives. I invite all nations to contribute,” she added.

New York remains the most expensive business trip destination in the world in 2022, as a post-pandemic surge in business travel and tourism increased the cost by 8% from the previous year. The city cost business travellers $796 per day, says the consulting firm ECA International, which considered four-star hotels, meals, taxis, drinks and incidentals as part of its survey.

The US dominated the overall ranking of the most expensive cities for business travel globally, with Washington DC and San Francisco both making the top five. Switzerland is home to the two most expensive business hubs of Europe: Geneva, which came in second ($700), and Zurich, which ranked fourth ($641). London and Paris also made it into the top 10, with daily expenses of $583 and $557, respectively.

Rising inflation rates were a major factor in the increase in travel costs, while a pandemic-led drop in demand led to more affordable rates in places like China. Hong Kong was the most expensive destination in Asia, with average daily costs of $520 — only $5 more than financial hub rival Singapore. London and Paris retained their top ten positions and Angola’s Luanda was the priciest place in Africa.

Marking the beginning of the new tourist season in the Kashmir Valley, Asia’s largest tulip garden overlooking the world-famous Dal Lake has opened for tourists, with around 1.6 million tulips of 68 varieties set to enthrall visitors this year.

The Indira Gandhi Tulip Garden is located between Dal Lake and the Zabarwan hills in Srinagar. It has over 15 lakh tulips of various colours and hues. Besides tulips, the garden has other spring flowers, such as hyacinths, daffodils, muscari and cyclamens, on display.  The Floriculture Department of the garden plants the tulip bulbs in a phased manner so that the flowers remain in the garden longer than a month.

At the opening ceremony, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said that the garden witnessed 3.60 lakh visitors last year, which is the highest since it was opened. Hoping the footfalls to cross last year’s numbers, Mr Sinha said a new tulip garden will be opened in April in the Sanasar, Jammu, where 2.75 lakh tulips of 25 varieties will bloom. 

The Indira Gandhi Tulip Garden, also known as Siraj Bagh, has been meticulously maintained to create an idyllic and serene atmosphere for visitors. In addition to well-maintained flora, the garden has public amenities such as potable drinking water and shelters to shield visitors from rain.

For the first time since the pandemic, people in Japan can have picnics under cherry blossom trees. Japan’s cherry blossom season draws huge crowds of residents and tourists. The peak season of the blossom is from late March to early April.

In 2020, the Tokyo government asked people to refrain from eating and drinking alcohol in metropolitan parks due to concerns that this could add to COVID-19 infections. Now, city parks such as Ueno Park and Inokashira Park are open to welcome visitors to enjoy the full floral glory of the sakura (cherry blossom) after four years.

Since March, the COVID-19 situation in the country has calmed, but local governments will continue taking measures to avoid crowding to prevent the spread of the virus. Curbs are still in place at famous cherry blossom spots like Ueno Park’s Sakura-dori street, which has been kept a one-way thoroughfare to avoid crowding during the sakura season.

The cherry blossom season could help boost Japan’s bid to recover from the pandemic. A JTB Corp travel trend forecast says that the country will see a 450 percent year-on-year increase in inbound tourism in 2023. Since October 2022, when the Japanese government eased COVID-19 border control measures, visitor numbers in the country have climbed rapidly and about 21.1 million tourists – 66 percent of 2019 levels – are expected in 2023.

Centuries-old cultural artifacts of Cambodia that had been unlawfully smuggled out from the country returned home on March 18. The artifacts were welcomed at a celebration led by Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Sen, who appealed for further efforts to retrieve other stolen treasures.

The returned items included important Hindu and Buddhist statues, apart from ancient jewelry from the empire of Angkor. Most of the returned items had been looted during periods of war and instability, including in the 1970s when Cambodia was under the rule of the communist Khmer Rouge. The artifacts, through corrupt art dealers, made their way into the hands of private collectors and museums around the world.

The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, in a statement, credited the items’ return to “tremendous cooperation and support” from public and private institutions, national and international experts, and close relations with other countries through bilateral, multilateral and international institutions, such as UNESCO. The ministry especially thanked the cooperation from the US government, as many of the items returned so far have come from the United States.

Hun Sen appealed for the return of Cambodian sculptures in the spirit of goodwill. He said his government is determined to use all means at its disposal to secure those stolen artifacts, including negotiations and legal action.