LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s King Charles will return to public duties next week after a three-month break to focus on treatment and recovery after being diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer, Buckingham Palace announced on Friday.
While he was photographed and filmed performing some official duties in private, Charles’ only public appearance was last month when he greeted supporters on an impromptu walk after an Easter church service in Windsor, raising hopes that his physical condition was improving.
Taif Mayor P. Eng. Abdullah bin Khamis Al-Zaidi has overseen arrangements for the 2024 Taif Rose Festival, which kicks off on Sunday at Al Raddaf Park.
Al-Zaidi highlighted the progress made for the upcoming festival, which are the main occasions and festivities of the Kingdom.
He also reported through specialists on the ongoing paintings at the festival and the activities that accompany it, such as new designs to create a carpet of roses and flowers, plants and bouquets of flowers and roses that the municipality will distribute to visitors, and efforts to identify an agricultural area. sector. reserve, an arboretum and a style orchard.
U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday bought a Taylor Swift album, as well as an album by classic Chinese rocker Dou Wei, in a detour to a Beijing record store after talks in China aimed at easing tensions between the superpowers.
On his way to the airport after a meeting that included a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Blinken visited the LiPi record store in the Chinese capital’s arts district, where the owner gifted him a Dou Wei album, which he bought with Swift’s 2022 record. “Midnight”.
One of the goals of Blinken’s vacation was to underscore the importance of what the State Decomponent calls “people-to-people ties” as a component of relations efforts.
At a Beijing record store, he described pop megastar Swift, whose hits include “Bad Blood” from her fifth album in 2014, as a successful export to the United States.
Blinken, an avid musician and guitarist, described music as “the connector, regardless of geography” and said he loves vinyl records for the notes.
When asked through the store owner what music he liked, Blinken, 62, said he enjoyed it all, but added, “I’m kind of stuck in the ’70s. “
Herds of endangered hippos, trapped in the dust of dry ponds, are on the verge of death in drought-stricken Botswana, the conservation government told AFP on Friday.
Southern Africa has been hit by a severe drought, triggered by the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has threatened harvests and plunged millions of people into hunger. Several countries in the region have recently declared a state of national disaster.
Near the vast wetlands of the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana, the dry Thamalakane River has forced herds of hippos to scavenge for herbal water reserves near the tourist town of Maun.
“The river formula is drying up and the lives of the animals are compromised,” said Lesego Moseki, a spokesman for the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital.
Botswana is home to one of the largest populations of hippos living in the wild in the world, estimated at between 2,000 and 4,000 according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“Riparian plants are deficient and hippos in Ngamiland (Northwest District) feed on the water that flows through the Okavango Delta systems,” Moseki added. They were still trying to determine how many hippos had died in the ponds, he said.
Hippos have thick but sensitive skin, which means they want to shower to avoid sunburn and regularly live in damp areas.
Without water, they can compete and dominate villages. The local government is calling for hippos to be relocated to reserves to avoid conflicts with humans.
El Niño is a natural weather phenomenon associated with increased heat around the world, leading to droughts in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere.
The first jeepneys gave the impression that on the streets of the Philippines just after World War II they were noisy, smoky vehicles, first and foremost made from the remains of American jeeps that have become a national symbol.
Seven decades later, brightly colored automobiles are threatened by the commission to update them with minibuses.
Easy to repair and affordable to drive, the cars grew in length and durability to become the backbone of the country’s transportation system, transporting passengers, goods, and even visiting potatoes.
But the government’s plan to phase out jeepneys in a bid to modernize the country’s chaotic public transport network has cast doubt on the long life of those iconic vehicles.
“It’s a hard blow,” Leonard Sarao, chief operating officer of jeepney maker Sarao Motors, told AFP.
Sarao Motors was one of the first corporations to produce jeepneys after its founder, Leonardo Sarao Sr. , abandoned horse-drawn carriage driving to become motorized public transportation in the early 1950s.
Production at the family-owned company’s sprawling facility in the capital, Manila, peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, with production of 50 to 60 jeepneys a month.
Demand began to fall over the next few decades as other transportation features became available. In 2014, Sarao Motors generated just 10 jeepneys per month.
But it was the government’s publication of the jeepney phase-out program in 2017 that put the brakes on production.
The now drastically reduced workforce produces a collective taxi every four to six months, said Sarao, Sarao Sr. ‘s grandson.
“We have consumers who have been around since the 1950s, so they buy jeepneys and expand their fleet,” said Sarao, 31.
“With this new program, there have been a lot of doubts or fears: if they buy a Jeepney with the new logo, will they still be using it a few years from now?”
“We can’t afford this price”
Although Sarao Motors can produce modern jeepneys that meet government environmental and protection specifications, they are “three to four times more expensive than a classic jeepney,” Sarao said.
In the seven years since the publication of the phase-out program, its implementation has been delayed due to protests and Covid-19.
Operators now have until April 30 to register with a cooperative and then progressively upgrade their fleet with modern, safer, more comfortable and less polluting vehicles.
Cooperatives will be able to access bank financing and obtain a government subsidy for each vehicle to ease the monetary burden of the transition.
But drivers who oppose the plan say buying a new vehicle will put them in debt and they may not be able to earn enough cash to pay off their loans and make a living.
“It’s hard for us to have a fashionable collective taxi. . . we can’t get it at this price,” said Julio Dimaunahan, 57, who drives a collective taxi in Manila and joined a cooperative.
“Even today, our wallet is suffering because of how little profit we make as operators,” he said, pointing to the biggest festival of shipping services.
Flocerfida Majadas, a 62-year-old jeepney driver, said she worried about the long-term of her drivers if she were to file for bankruptcy.
“Our fear is that we may not be able to pay our debts,” Majadas said, referring to bank loans.
“If we don’t pay, the bank will take back the trendy jeepneys. If the bank recovers them, what will happen to our staff?”
Cheap and easy to repair.
While jeepneys now compete with buses, vans, and motorcycles for passengers, they are still in this archipelago country.
Often painted in bright colors and with an exhaust that resembles a trumpet, jeepneys charge passengers just thirteen pesos (23 cents) and their used diesel engines are easy to repair.
“Once a visitor buys a jeepney from us, any mechanic in the provinces or remote spaces can fix it,” Sarao said.
But the minibuses with which the government would like to update them are more high-tech, with engines that meet European emissions criteria or electric motors, WiFi, video surveillance and air conditioning.
“If it breaks down, where will we get the remedy to fix it?” asked Dimaunahan.
Sarao said the family-owned company could compete with the ability of foreign brands to mass-produce vehicles.
But he added that jeepneys made through Sarao Motors were less expensive than imported, higher-quality minibuses.
“The way we do things here is that everything is done by hand, so at least we’re doing quality control of those assemblies to make sure the panels don’t fall off and the welds are done,” he said.
“When you speed things up, that’s when things can go wrong. “
“The spirit of the jeepney”
Teodoro Caparino, who has driven a jeepney for 35 years, hopes the government will repair existing jeepneys instead of upgrading them with “Chinese-made vehicles. “
“Our families will starve to death if we don’t drive our jeepneys. . . all we know is driving,” Caparino, 60.
Although the jeepney, in its current form, is likely at the end of its useful life, Sarao said he expects the vehicle’s “gasoline” to survive.
“It may look taller, wider and longer, but as long as the essence of its appearance or the spirit of the jeepney is still there, I still think it’s going to be the jeepney. “
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), in collaboration with NEOM, has begun painting the first nursery of the KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative (KCRI), a KAUST agency said on Thursday.
KCRI is funded through KAUST, a world-class graduate study university located in Saudi Arabia, which was recently ranked as the most sensible Arab university by Times Higher Education.
More importantly, this facility serves as a precursor to a more ambitious task: the world’s largest and most complex terrestrial coral nursery. This nursery, on the same site, is a complex coral nursery that will have ten times the capacity to feed 400,000 corals consistently. with year. With the structure progressing rapidly, the task is expected to be completed by December 2025.
Beyond environmental restoration, the project offers benefits and further strengthens its alignment with the broader strategic objectives defined in Vision 2030.
“As a vital end result of KAUST’s new strategy, the university is bringing the most advanced expertise of our faculty, who are using technologies to make this vision a reality. “
NEOM, as a “pioneer in sustainable development”, recognises the importance of reviving coral reefs in partnership with KAUST. Through their long-standing collaboration, they aim to raise awareness of the importance of coral reefs as marine environmental systems and highlight the desire to sustain them for generations to come.