Israel has launched its first tourist marine nature reserve in the Mediterranean Sea off the country’s northern coast, Israel Nature and Parks Authority has said. Rosh Hanikra-Akhziv Marine Reserve spans approximately 7 km of coastline, and encompasses bays from the Lebanese border to Nahariya. It extends 15 km westward into the sea and covers over 100 square km. The protected site is the second tourist marine reserve in Israel, after the Eilat Coral Beach Nature Reserve in the Red Sea, and the largest of the nine marine reserves in the country with an area of more than 100 square km.
New York has overtaken Hong Kong to become the world’s 20 most expensive cities to live in as an expatriate due to rising inflation and accommodation costs, said the ECA International's Cost of Living Rankings for 2023. Hong Kong, Geneva and London stand at the second, third and fourth places. Singapore climbed from 13th place last year to enter the top five for the first time, breaking the general trend among Asian cities of coming down the rankings, partially due to lower rates of inflation compared to other regions. The biggest mover of the year was Istanbul, which climbed 95 sp
Singapore has decided to end its famous sport of horse racing – practised for more than 180 years – 2024 when the city-state’s only racecourse will close and be redeveloped for housing. The Singapore Turf Club (STC) in Kranji will hold its last race meeting, the 100th Grand Singapore Gold Cup, on October 5, 2024 and end operations in March 2027, handing over the 120-hectare site to the government. Located at Farrer Park in central Singapore, the STC was established by Scottish merchant William Henry Macleod Read in 1842. It moved to a larger venue, Bukit Timah in the western part
Senior officials from about 12 of the world’s major intelligence agencies held a secret meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore on 2–4 June, said media reports. Organised by the Singapore government, these meetings have been discreetly held at a separate venue alongside the security summit for several years, they said. The meetings were not previously reported. Director of National Intelligence, US, Avril Haines represented her country’s intelligence community. China was among the other countries present. Samant Goel, the head of India's o
Indian nationals top the tally of skilled worker and student visas issued by the United Kingdom over the past year, according to the data shared by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in London in May. The ONS data collated by the UK Home Office shows that Indian nationals were the top nationality for cross-sector skilled work, including specifically targeted healthcare visas aimed at filling staff shortages in the National Health Service (NHS). The nationality also made up the largest group of students granted visas under the new Graduate post-study work route with 41 percent of gran
Scientists have identified the oldest known Homo sapiens footprints in South Africa. The newly discovered tracks have been dated to over 150,000 years ago. A wealth of fossil evidence suggests that Homo sapiens first diverged from earlier species about 300,000 years ago. The international team of scientists has identified the oldest known set of fossil footprints from a member of our species. The team calculated the dates of seven “ichnosites” (locations containing ancient human traces) along South Africa’s Cape south coast. It was found that they ranged between 71,000 and 153,000 ye
In a first, France has decided to ban short domestic flights for journeys possible in less than two-and-a-half hours by train, with the objective to reduce carbon emissions from aircraft. Accordingly, flights will not operate between Paris and regional hubs such as Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux. The government has also specified that the train services on these routes would be frequent and well-connected. With the move, city hopping within the European nation is grounded. Travellers looking to fly within France will no longer be able to take a short domestic flight when there is alternative hi
Luxury car maker Bugatti has revealed the designs for its 42-storey skyscraper in Dubai. The building – the company’s first foray into residential real estate – will have two garage-to-penthouse car lifts. Bugatti is one of the luxury car brands that have moved into residential property. Bentley is building a 61-storey skyscraper in Miami Beach, while Aston Martin has designed an angular black home in New York as part of its Automotive Galleries and Lairs service. Bugatti’s new construction will be built in the Business Bay area of Dubai. The skyscraper will have a sinuous form
Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, has become the first Bulgarian novel to win the International Booker Prize. The novel is about “a ‘clinic for the past’ [that] offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time. But soon the past begins to invade the present,” said the International Booker Prize website. Full of irony and melancholy, the novel deals with a contemporary question: what happens to us when our memories disappear? “Georgi Gospodinov succeeds mar
Brazil’s environmental authority declined to issue a licence for a contentious offshore oil drilling project at the mouth of the Amazon River on May 17. The decision to reject the state-run oil company Petrobras’ request to drill the FZA-M-59 block was taken “as a function of a group of technical inconsistencies,” said the agency’s head, underlining environmental concerns. Eighty civil society and environmental bodies, including WWF Brasil and Greenpeace, had called for the license to be rejected. The biodiverse area is home to little-studied patches of mangroves and a c