Quote of the day by Lao Tzu Lao Tzu, or Laozi, was a Chinese philosopher who founded Taoism and authored the Tao Te Ching, a classic Taoist text. He wrote the book when he got disillusioned with his job at the court of the central Chinese Zhou Dynasty, where he used to work as a…
From above, the Great Blue Hole is breathtaking. A near-perfect circle of deep blue sits in the middle of the turquoise waters of the Belize Barrier Reef, attracting divers from around the world with the promise of giant stalactites, reef sharks and one of the planet’s most iconic underwater landscapes. Yet beneath its postcard-perfect surface…
For decades, the Taklamakan Desert has symbolised one of nature’s harshest environments, a vast expanse of shifting sand where strong winds, scarce rainfall and extreme temperatures make vegetation difficult to establish. Today, however, new technology is changing how restoration is carried out. Across parts of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, drones are being deployed to…
Many tourists make the mistake of crossing the border into Canada when visiting Niagara Falls. A recent Reddit post on a person claiming that a friend, a Palestinian refugee, went inside Canada from the US border and then got detained while coming back has triggered a major debate on such claims. This particular incident goes…
Most people get pushed toward picking one lane early on, one career, one identity, one clear answer to give whenever someone asks what they do. Kal Penn, the actor and former White House official, simply never accepted that framing. “Growing up, I always had two interests and two passions,” he said, “one being public service…
In February 2015, British endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh entered the freezing waters of Antarctica’s Ross Sea wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks, completing a series of five short but record breaking swims in temperatures as low as minus 1.7 degrees Celsius. The swims were not simply a personal endurance challenge. Pugh, who serves…
M.C. Davis spent close to 90 million dollars buying up 54,000 acres of heavily logged land in the Florida Panhandle, turning what timber companies had stripped bare into one of the largest private nature preserves in the southeastern United States. Since founding what he called Nokuse Plantation in 2000, Davis and his team have planted…
On a remote island in the Marshall Islands, a concrete dome built more than four decades ago holds roughly 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste left over from the United States’ Cold War-era nuclear testing programme. Known officially as Runit Dome and locally as The Tomb, the structure was built between 1977 and 1980 to…
Iran hands down death penalty indictment against Trump over Khamenei death Iran has issued an indictment against US President Donald Trump over the killing of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian media reported on Tuesday.Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi said indictments had been completed in 140 cases linked to the war, including 74 involving the…
In 1998, a Tucson resident named Brad Lancaster took a saw to the curb outside his home and cut six openings into it, creating small channels to divert rainwater off the street and into the space between the sidewalk and the road. Cutting into a public curb without permission was against city rules, and Lancaster…