Australian researchers have uncovered the world's oldest biological colour in the Sahara desert, in a find they said today helped explain why complex life forms only recently emerged on earth.
The pink pigments were produced by simple microscopic organisms called cyanobacteria more than 1.1 billion years ago, some 500 million years older than previous colour pigment discoveries.
That makes the samples around "fifteen times older" than the Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur species, according to senior Australian National University researcher Jochen Brocks.
Earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old and researchers said the latest find shed light on why more sophisticated plant and animal life only came into existence 600 million years ago.
Previous research argued that low oxygen levels in the atmosphere held back the evolution of complicated life forms, but the discovery of cyanobacteria at such an early date suggests that the organisms crowded out more plentiful food sources such as ...

Scientists find 'world's oldest' biological colours

PTI Automatic

Five people including one child were killed when a fire tore through an apartment in the southwestern French city of Pau today, firefighters said.
Firemen evacuated nearly 30 residents from the four-storey building after being called at 6.40 am (0440 GMT).
The bodies of five people, whose age and gender were not specified, were found in a home on the first floor.
A member of the emergency services said they were called by a person "who could not open the door of the apartment where the fire occurred and who was concerned because they saw blood running down the edge of one of the apartment's windows".
A couch was on fire when the firefighters arrived, the source added, and the blaze has been brought under control.

Child among five dead in southwest France fire

Rescuers will today extract the remaining five young footballers who have been trapped deep inside a flooded Thai cave for 18 days, the mission chief said, as heavy rains threatened their perilous escape route.
The hoped-for final chapter in an ordeal that has gripped the world comes after elite foreign divers and Thai Navy SEALs escorted eight members of the "Wild Boars" football team out of the claustrophobic network of tunnels on Sunday and Monday.
The boys, aged from 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach, ventured into the Tham Luang cave on June 23 after football practice and got caught deep inside when heavy rains caused flooding that trapped them on a muddy ledge.
With rain again pounding the cave site in a mountainous region in northern Thailand on Tuesday morning, rescuers said they were aiming to bring out the remaining four boys and their coach by the evening.
"(They) will be extracted today," rescue chief Narongsak Osottanakorn told reporters, adding the journey out should 

Final five trapped in Thai cave to be extracted Tuesday: rescue chief

Switzerland has joined a string of countries launching challenges to Washington's new steel and aluminium tariffs at the World Trade Organization, Bern said today.
The Swiss economic affairs ministry said it had formally asked the US for "consultations" over tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium.  Consultations constitute the first step in a full-blown legal challenge before the global trade body.
Switzerland, where the organisation is based, had on Monday "submitted a request for consultations with the US as part of WTO dispute settlement proceedings," the ministry said in a statement.
Several other WTO members, including the European Union, China, India, Mexico, Canada and Russia, are also fighting back against President Donald Trump's controversial trade policies.
Marking a departure from a decades-long US-led drive for free trade, Trump has justified the steep tariffs with claims that massive flows of imports to the United States threaten national ...

Switzerland challenges US tariffs at WTO

A suicide attacker blew himself up near an Afghan security forces vehicle today, killing at least 10 people, mostly civilians, officials said, in the latest deadly violence to rock the country.
The explosion in the eastern city of Jalalabad also left at least four people wounded and set a nearby petrol station alight, provincial governor spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told AFP.

10 killed in suicide attack on Afghan security forces: officials

Rescue workers carried out house-to-house searches today in the increasingly unlikely hope of finding survivors after days of deadly floods and landslides that have claimed 141 lives in one of Japan's worst weather-related disasters for decades.
The record downpours that began last week have stopped and receding flood waters have laid bare the destruction that has cut a swathe through the west of the country.
In the city of Kurashiki, the flooding engulfed entire districts at one point, forcing some people to their rooftops to wait for rescue.
By today morning, rescue workers were going door-to-door, looking for survivors -- or victims -- of the disaster.
"It's what we call a grid operation, where we are checking every single house to see if there are people still trapped inside them," an official with the local Okayama prefecture government told AFP. "We know it's a race against time, we are trying as hard as we can."
Hideto Yamanaka was leading a team of around 60 firefighters ...

Japan rescuers go house to house as flood toll hits 141

A Russian cargo vessel took just three hours and 40 minutes to reach the International Space Station today,  Roscosmos space agency said, smashing the record flight time by two hours.
The "Progress" launched at 2151 GMT on Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and arrived at the space station in the early hours of Tuesday, the agency said.
"The length of the flight, between departure to its docking at the station, was three hours 40 minutes," the agency said in a statement, adding that it was a "first in the history of Progress cargo ships".
The previous record was five hours 39 minutes, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
The shorter flight time of the Progress MS-09, carried on a Soyuz 2.1 rocket, was made possible by a new navigation system.
In February, a Progress MS-07 launch was cancelled at the last minute after another attempt in October 2016.
Today's flight brought ISS residents  more than two tonnes of material -- mainly fuel but also oxygen, water .

Russian cargo ship docks at ISS in record time

Packed inside a barred pick-up truck that looks like a mobile cage, passengers are risking their lives in Venezuela's perilous solution to a public transport crisis.
Far from banning the "kennels", as they are known, due to a spate of fatal accidents, governors and mayors are even launching their own fleets, free of charge.
In the Libertador municipality hometown of President Nicolas Maduro, himself a former bus driver, the words "Loving Caracas" can be read on the transport trucks. But that belies the reality of a situation in which 55 people have died since April using improvised transport methods such as the "kennels".
In May, 16 people died in Merida in one accident. Danger aside, the trucks are uncomfortable to ride in.
"They're as ugly as can be. It's like riding in a livestock cage, you get bumped here, bumped there," Jose Miguel, a 20-year-old bricklayer from the Caracas suburb of Los Valles del Tuy, told AFP.
"It's a joke!" he added. "Damn it, if you're going to provide a bus 

'Kennels': Venezuela's dangerous answer to transport chaos

The youngest daughter of Shoko Asahara, the executed head of the Aum Shinrikyo cult behind a deadly 1995 sarin attack, has agreed to collect his cremated remains, she said today.
Her statement comes after reports of a battle between other members of Ashara's family, including his wife, for his remains. His wife and several other children remain in an Aum successor cult.
His youngest daughter, whose name has not been made public, is the only one of Asahara's children to break with the successor group.
"I was very surprised, but I have decided to accept his will as my father's last message," she said in a statement posted on her lawyer's blog.
She urged her relatives and his followers to accept the decision and called on cult members to "put an end to the Aum and stop hating society".
The announcement comes a day after Japanese authorities cremated 63-year-old Asahara, amid fears that his death could be used to reboot the cult.
Jiji news agency said Asahara's remains would stay at the ..

Daughter of Japan sarin attack cult guru to get his ashes

Across the Mediterranean, from an illegally-built hotel in a Spanish nature park to a holiday complex encroaching on Lebanon's salt flats, a tourism boom is threatening precious coastal ecosystems.
With 46,000 kilometres (29,000 miles) of coastline spread across 21 countries, the Mediterranean hosts over a quarter of global tourism -- but that comes at a cost to the planet.
"The current tourism model is highly unsustainable," says Plan Bleu, a UN-affiliated body for environment and development in the Mediterranean.
It estimates that arrivals have surged from 58 million in 1970 to 324 million in 2015, and could rise to 500 million by 2030. The body has warned that future growth will exacerbate "already critical environmental pressures... in coastal and marine ecosystems".
The region's population is also growing, surging from 32 million in 1970 to 75 million in 2000 on the Mediterranean's southern and eastern shores. While legislation in some countries has improved coastal protection, ..

Concrete weighs heavily on the Mediterranean coast

US President Donald Trump is by far the most followed world leader on Twitter, with the Pope trailing him by some 4.5 million followers, a study showed today.
The number of Trump's followers has "more than doubled since taking office", the study authors said.
With more than 52 million followers, the @realDonaldTrump account also counts nearly 10 million more followers than third-place holder, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to the latest "Twiplomacy" study by communications firm Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW).
In terms of interactions with followers -- in the form of likes and retweets -- Trump's lead is even more impressive, the study showed.
Over the past 12 months, the US president has had nearly 264.5 million interactions with his followers -- more than five times more than runner-up Modi, and 12 times as many as Pope Francis, in third place.
However, in terms of retweets alone, Saudi Arabia's King Salman easily dwarfs Trump. Salman only tweeted 11 times between May ...

Trump doubles up as most followed world leader on Twitter: Study

Schools and offices in Taiwan will close today and flights have been cancelled as Typhoon Maria churns towards Taiwan bringing torrential rains and powerful winds.
Maria was 500 kilometres east of the northeastern coastal town of Yilan with gusts of up to 190 kilometres an hour as of 10 am local time (0200 GMT), the weather bureau said.
Its impact was expected to be the strongest from late Tuesday to early Wednesday, with downpours up to 500 millimetres (19.7 inches) forecast in some areas, the bureau added.
Officials have warned of possible floods and mudslides.
Taiwanese authorities announced that offices and schools would close on
Tuesday afternoon in five cities, including Yilan, where strong waves have started to pound the shore.
Local television footage showed farmers in Yilan rushing to their fields harvest scallions, the county's most famous produce.
Fishermen in coastal Keeling also brought in their catch and secured their boats ahead of the storm, one day after dozens of ...

Taiwan shuts down for Typhoon Maria

A dozen North Korean waitresses involved in a high-profile "defection" case two years ago did not know where they were going, the top UN human rights official on North Korea said today.
The issue has long been controversial, with Pyongyang saying the women were kidnapped from a North Korean state-run restaurant in China while Seoul insists they defected of their own free will.
In a bombshell revelation in May, the manager of the 12 waitresses said that he had lied about their final destination and blackmailed them into following him to the South.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on human rights in the North, told reporters he had interviewed "some" of the 12 waitresses after arriving in Seoul last week.
They told him that "they were taken to the South without knowing they were coming here", he said.
He urged the South Korean government to carry out a "thorough and independent investigation" to establish the truth of the incident as soon as possible and to ...

UN urges probe into N. Korea waitress 'defectors'

For football fans in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it's often a case of ABE (Anyone But England). It's tough for them to change the habit of a lifetime and get behind Gareth Southgate's team in the World Cup.
In a sporting quirk, Britain sends a united team to the Olympics, but it's a different story in football and rugby, where ancient and bitter rivalries run deep.
England is the dominant nation in the United Kingdom, with more resources, more players, and more success at sporting level than its smaller neighbours.  And that grates.
Andy Murray, the Scottish former Wimbledon champion, touched a nerve when he said he would be supporting "anyone but England" at the 2006 World Cup, prompting an angry backlash from English sports fans.
Scotland's political leaders have maintained a jocular tone during England's progression to the semi-finals in Russia.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party tweeted a photo of herself holding a model of the World Cup ...

Anyone but England? The bitter truth about football rivalry in the UK

In a housing estate in the gritty northern Paris suburb of Bondy, Adama Wagui showed off the stack of trophies he has accumulated during his budding football career.
"Best goalkeeper AS Bondy 2016, best goalkeeper Vichy U17 tournament," the tall 16-year-old with the shaved zig-zag footballer haircut said, reading aloud out the inscriptions on the cups that his parents keep on their bedside table.
Wagui's finest hour, however, may have been when he was called on to block shots from local wunderkind, star France striker Kylian Mbappe.
"It was difficult," he says with a shy smile, "but sometimes I succeeded."
As excitement builds at the prospect of Les Bleus taking home the World Cup, 20 years after their win on home soil, their success is a source of pride in the deprived estates or "banlieues" where many of France's players honed their game.
Of the 23 players in the French squad, around two-thirds are of Arab or African descent, drawing comparisons with the mythologised ...

Boys from the hood: French team ignites dreams in gritty suburbs

Kei Nishikori became the first Japanese man in 23 years to reach the Wimbledon quarter-finals and then predicted a "war" with Novak Djokovic to get to the last four.
Nishikori, 28, overcame an arm injury to reach his first All England Club quarter-final with a 4-6, 7-6 (7/5), 7-6 (12/10), 6-1 win over Latvian qualifier Ernests Gulbis.
But having become the first Japanese man to reach the quarter-finals since Shuzo Matsuoka in 1995, Nishikori must now overturn a 13-2 career losing record against three-time champion Djokovic on Wednesday.
"He's always like a big war for me. I always enjoy playing against him. It's always big challenge," said Nishikori.
The Japanese player has already lost twice to the former world number one this year -- on clay in Madrid and Rome.
Although the two have never met on grass, Nishikori is still hamstrung by the knowledge that the last of his two wins against the Serb was in 2014 in a memorable semi-final victory at the US Open.
"Maybe I don't have good ...

Nishikori predicts Wimbledon 'war' with Djokovic

China will provide Arab states with USD 20 billion in loans for economic development, President Xi Jinping told top Arab officials today, as Beijing seeks to build its influence in the Middle East and Africa.
The money will be earmarked for "projects that will produce good employment opportunities and positive social impact in Arab States that have reconstruction needs," said Xi, without providing further details.
It is part of a special Chinese programme for "economic reconstruction" and "industrial revitalisation," Xi told participants at a China-Arab States forum in Beijing's Great Hall of the People.
Beijing is also prepared to provide another one billion yuan to countries in the region to "build capacity for stability maintenance," Xi said, using a term commonly associated with policing and surveillance.
Since taking office, Xi has overseen a concerted effort to expand Chinese influence in the Middle East and Africa, including the construction of the country's first military base 

China pledges USD 20 billion in loans for Arab states

Liu Xia, the widow of Chinese Nobel dissident Liu Xiaobo, has left China and is on a plane out of the country, according to a friend familiar with the situation.
Liu has been held under de facto house arrest -- despite no charges -- since 2010, when her husband received the Nobel Peace Prize, in a move that angered Beijing.
"Today at around 11:00 am, Liu Xia took a Finnair flight and left Beijing," friend Ye Du said.
Liu Xiaobo, a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, died last year while serving an 11-year jail sentence for "subversion", making him the first Nobel laureate to die in custody since the era of Nazi Germany.
Liu faced daily restrictions on movement and surveillance even after her husband's death, although Chinese authorities maintained she was free.
Several Western diplomats tried to visit her at her Beijing apartment in May amid concerns over her psychological health but were refused entry without explanation.
In an emotional phone call with her close friend ...

Widow of Nobel dissident Liu Xiaobo has left China: friend

Rescuers aim to guide out the remaining five members of a football squad from inside a flooded Thai cave, the chief of the painstaking operation to free them told reporters.
"We plan to bring out four boys and coach," rescue chief Narongsak Osottanakorn said, adding "a doctor, and three (Thai Navy) SEALS" who have stayed with the group since they were found more than a week ago will also leave the cave today.

Rescuers to extract final five from Thai cave Tuesday: official

A heatwave in Quebec in eastern Canada has now been blamed for 70 deaths, officials have said.
Thirty-four of the fatalities were recorded in Montreal, the provincial health ministry told AFP.
Previously, the toll was 54 dead.
The heatwave has hit eastern Canada since early July but only Quebec has recorded a rise in deaths linked to the scorching temperatures.
In 2010 around 100 people in the Montreal area died because of stifling heat.

Death toll in Canada heatwave hits 70

More than 80 per cent of a dengue fever-spreading mosquito has been wiped out in an Australian town during a landmark trial scientists said today offered hope for combating the dangerous pest globally.
Researchers from Australia's national science body CSIRO bred millions of non-biting male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in laboratory conditions at James Cook University (JCU) in a project funded by Google parent company Alphabet.
The insects were infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which renders them sterile.
They were then released into the wild at trial sites around the Queensland town of Innisfail where over three months they mated with females who laid eggs that did not hatch, causing the population to plummet.
The Aedes aegypti mosquito is one of the world's most dangerous pests, capable of spreading devastating diseases like dengue, Zika and chikungunya.
It is responsible for infecting millions of people around the world each year and JCU's Kyran Staunton said the successful trial ..

AFP

AFP

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