USA

Picture this: You live in Provincetown, one of America’s most desirable residential areas, and watch a condo in your neighbourhood sell for a record $3.9 million. You joined the celebrations, shook hands with the new neighbour. But then, nearly two weeks later, the condo next door sells for an even more staggering $5 million, making…

Philip Fearnside’s research has calculated the costs of losing the Amazon on account of deforestation, dams and highways The Amazon rainforest has been described in terms of its enormous size, biodiversity and importance to the global climate. But for Philip Fearnside, understanding the forest has also meant asking a more practical question: what does it…

Casa Eleda was designed around 1928 by Swiss-born architect Maurice Fatio (Photos: Daily Mail) A couple who bought Palm Beach’s famous ‘Ham And Cheese House’ for $15.975 million in 2013 has seen the historic oceanfront estate listed for $105 million after a multi-year restoration. The property, officially known as Casa Eleda, is one of the…

Priscilla Chan was in sixth grade when the death of her grandfather from cancer changed the direction of her life. One morning, he dropped her off at her sixth-grade classroom, but by the time she returned home, he had died. Chan was left trying to understand how someone who had taken her to school that…

Cliser, flanked by Sheriff E L Lucas (left) and Deputy Claude Shaver (Photos: clisereviction/blogspot) In 1935, Melanchton Cliser and his family were forced out of their 46-acre property in Virginia as the state pushed ahead with plans for what would become Shenandoah National Park. Cliser owned the land along US 211 and also operated a…

Deep in the Caxiuanã National Forest in northern Brazil, a patch of rainforest the size of a football pitch tells the story of what a drier Amazon might look like. Since 2002, scientists have suspended nearly 6,000 transparent plastic panels above one hectare of pristine forest, diverting roughly half the rainfall away from the soil…

Representative Image (AI-generated) A tiny concentration of a synthetic hormone was enough to trigger a dramatic ecological change in a remote Ontario lake. In 2001, scientists began adding the synthetic estrogen 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) to Lake 260 in northwestern Ontario, maintaining concentrations of about 5 to 6 nanograms per litre. The experiment continued for seven years,…

A former California mayor has been sentenced to four years and four months in prison after admitting to sexually abusing a 17-year-old foreign exchange student who had been staying at his home.Robert Brian Bassett, 58, was sentenced on Wednesday after pleading no contest to three felony child-sex-abuse charges, The New York Times reported.The teenager had…

Imagine finishing a meal at an Italian restaurant and leaving with the plate on which your food was served. It sounds unusual, but for more than six decades, a group of Italian restaurants has turned this simple piece of tableware into a lasting souvenir. Known as the Piatti del Buon Ricordo, or “Plates of Good…

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov announced Moscow’s retaliatory move (File photo) All German cultural centres across Russia will be shut, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov announced on Thursday, a day after Berlin closed two Russian cultural centres in Germany.Berlin’s move came after it accused Moscow of involvement an attempted drone attack on a German airport last…