UNESCO on Wednesday added the historic centre of Ukraine's port city of Odessa, often described as "the pearl of the Black Sea", to its World Heritage List despite opposition from Russia.. The site was also added to the List of World Heritage in Danger, which UNESCO says "gives it access to reinforced technical and financial international assistance" to protect or, if necessary, rehabilitate it.
As rising waters fuel fears that Venice may one day be entirely submerged, local children are being educated on how to protect the lagoon, a fragile ecosystem threatened by climate change.. "We want the children to learn to observe nature and the lagoon, to learn to understand it, to love it and learn how better protect it," said programme coordinator Francesca Santoro.
A chatbot powered by reams of data from the internet has passed exams at a US law school after writing essays on topics ranging from constitutional law to taxation and torts.. But the bot "often struggled to spot issues when given an open-ended prompt, a core skill on law school exams".
Pioneering modernist architect Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi, India's only winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize and a staunch advocate of low-cost housing for the poor, has died at the age of 95.. - 'Glimpses of greatnesss' - The Aranya Low Cost Housing project, one of his best known projects, accommodates 80,000 people with houses and courtyards linked by a maze of pathways in the city of Indore.
Hundreds of dolphins are washing up on France's Atlantic coast and thousands more are believed killed in fishermen's nets each year, as environmentalists and Brussels pressure the government to protect the marine mammals.. The Pelagis ocean observatory has spotted a surge in dolphin deaths on the Atlantic coast, with 127 common dolphins washed up in January alone -- up from 73 in the same month last year.
Tourists revelled in wintry scenes across Japan on Wednesday, as much of the country was blanketed by snow in a cold snap that has killed at least one person and disrupted travel.. Top government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said one person had died in the cold snap, while meteorologists warned of blizzards, high waves and traffic snarl-ups due to icy roads.
Vaccine skeptics blocking transfusions for life-saving surgeries, Facebook groups inciting violence against doctors and a global search for unvaccinated donors -- Covid-19 misinformation has bred a so-called "pure blood" movement.. Taking the hysteria to the next level was the recent high-profile case of a New Zealand couple, who sought to block life-saving heart surgery of their infant on the grounds that any blood transfused could have come from a vaccinated donor.
What mysterious forces are at work at the Dallas zoo?. "Losing him is devastating not only to our Zoo family but also to the conservation efforts of this species," the zoo said on Twitter on Tuesday.
French bank BNP Paribas said Tuesday it plans to cut its financing of oil extraction and production by 80 percent by 2030.. BNP Paribas said it plans to have more than 80 percent of its energy production financing activities geared towards the production of low-carbon energies.
NASA is partnering with a Pentagon research agency to develop a nuclear-powered rocket engine in preparation for sending astronauts to Mars.. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday that the US space agency will team up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to "develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027."
