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Can Giuoc, Vietnam |
Former US first lady Michelle Obama and Hollywood A-lister Julia Roberts toured a high school in rural Vietnam on Monday, urging a classroom of teenage girls to stay focused on their education to transform their lives.
The promotion of girls' schooling has been the cornerstone of Obama's charitable work since her husband Barack Obama left office in 2017 after two terms as US president.
"When you educate a girl you give them power and a voice and an opportunity to improve their lives and the lives of their family and the lives of their community," Obama said at Can Giuoc high school in southern Long An province in the Mekong Delta.
Accompanied by Roberts and Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former US president George W. Bush, Obama encouraged the girls to stay the course of schooling.
"I want you all to stay committed and focused, it will get tough at times -- it already has for some of you -- but it is well worth it," she said, before the women sat and chatted with students.
"Even if your families don't understand that today, trust me they will, when you go off to college or start your businesses," she added.
With its booming youth population and fast-growing economy, Vietnam routinely outperforms its neighbours in education rankings, especially in math and sciences.
School enrolment rates are also high at 91.7 percent, but the quality of schooling often drops off in rural areas, and in the poorest pockets of the country economic pressures can force girls out of school early.
Student Truong Thi Hai Yen said Obama's visit -- and life story -- was a major motivation.
"She kept trying every day to be better and now we can see that she is very successful," the 16-year-old told AFP.
In her best-selling book "Becoming", Harvard-educated Obama details how her own education and good teachers shaped her life and paved her path to becoming a successful lawyer, university administrator and advocate.
The Obamas have dedicated much of their time post-presidency to the non-profit Obama Foundation, which includes the Girls Opportunity Alliance initiative that Michelle promoted in Vietnam on Monday.
The former first lady announced last week a $500,000 donation to the Alliance's work world-wide, money earned from merchandise sales related to her book.
She will travel next to Malaysia with Barack and Roberts to speak at an Obama Foundation Leaders event on Tuesday.
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© Agence France-Presse
The Hague, Netherlands | A Dutch non-profit group committed to ridding the world's waters of plastic, Saturday unveiled their latest invention, a floating garbage-collection barge called "The Interceptor".
It is built by The Ocean Cleanup, who say it will "close the tap" on the greatest source of garbage reaching the oceans: rivers.
The barge, which will be anchored in polluted rivers, is capable of scooping up to 50 tonnes of garbage per day floating downstream, said its inventor, 25-year-old Boyan Slat.
"Under the right conditions we think it could even achieve double that," said Slat, who is the CEO and founder of The Ocean Cleanup.
"The Interceptor" resembles a large houseboat attached to a curved barrier. It is 24 metres (78 feet) long, solar-driven, fully autonomous and able to collect plastic in rivers around the clock, Slat said.
Placed at strategic positions in a river system, its barrier directs plastic to the waiting "mouth" of the barge, from where it rolls up a conveyor belt and is dumped into one of six dumpsters.
The barge has a capacity to carry 50 cubic metres of waste plastic, the equivalent of 271,000 Rubik's cubes, said Slat.
Once full, an onboard computer sends a message to local operators to pull out the dumpsters and empty them "as easily as you would clean your vacuum," Slat said at the unveiling of the machine.
The project will tackle 1,000 of the most polluting rivers in the world "within five years", which contribute to 80 percent of global plastic pollution, he added.
Two of the machines are already up and running: one in Jakarta, Indonesia, and another in Malaysia. A third is being prepared for deployment in Vietnam.
Slat used a fourth Interceptor for the presentation in the port city of Rotterdam's harbour on Saturday. This one will be sent to the Dominican Republic, he said.
Earlier this month, The Ocean Cleanup announced that a special ship designed to clean the world's oceans had harvested its first plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
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© Agence France-Presse
Paris, France |
A British girl who lost both her legs when she was just 18 months old has made her Paris catwalk debut on the Eiffel Tower.
Nine-year-old Daisy-May Demetre from Birmingham walked for a luxury French children's brand in the show high on the Paris landmark Friday and told AFP the experience "makes me feel pretty and special".
Daisy-May was born with fibular hemimelia, where part or all of the bone in the lower leg is missing.
She had to have the double amputation while still a baby and later received prosthetic legs on which she learned to walk.
The Paris show was her third appearance as a model for the label Lulu et Gigi, after New York and London fashion weeks.
Her father Alex Demetre said the disabled community were behind his daughter.
And he said he was not surprised at all the attention.
"I'm not surprised because I know what Daisy is like, she's an exceptional young girl proving that disability doesn't hold you back and she's a great role model for anybody trying to pursue their dreams.
"Any goal she has in her head I think she can achieve, anything she chooses to do. That's a great feeling as a parent," Demetre added.
"Obviously coming back from a situation when she was born, when you see no future, where you see no hope... (now) anything is possible, that's an amazing thing," he told AFP after the show.
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Paris, France |
Spring summer fashion is about the race -- often in vain -- to get a flat tummy.
But that was not the case on the Paris fashion week catwalk, where two pregnant models walked the runways.
The French designer Marine Serre sent her mum-to-be out cradling her tummy in the drizzle at her outdoor show, while the Chinese brand Dawei had another heavily-pregnant model in a vertically striped sweater dress to accentuate her bump.
While Serre's choice was also to add a touch of hope to her apocalyptic-themed show "Black Tide", which warned of the environmental catastrophe, pregnant models are becoming something of a thing these days.
Though the trend is not without its risks.
While model Lily Aldridge batted away the worries about walking at New York fashion week last year, Slick Woods will never forget doing Rihanna's Savage X Fenty lingerie fashion show in the city last September.
She began to go into labour just before the lights went up but she soldiered on.
The 22-year-old model was already 2 cm (0.7 inches) dilated when she tottered offstage.
"My last memory before going into the hospital is of Rihanna spanking me with a whip," she later wrote in an article for Vogue.
Such was the initial rush, that the American songwriter Erykah Badu had to act as her doula over FaceTime.
But in the end her son Saphir was born after an 18-hour labour.
Woods' due date was two days after the show.
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Washington, United States |
President Donald Trump publicly introduced Conan, the dog that became a hero for its role in the US raid that led to the death of Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
"The dog is incredible," Trump said at a brief ceremony as the Belgian Malinois sat beside him with a handler. Also present were First Lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
"So brilliant, so smart. Conan did a fantastic job," Trump added.
In the raid last month, Conan chased al-Baghdadi into a dead-end tunnel in his Syrian hideout, where the cornered IS leader detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and two children, according to the US account.
Conan was injured by the electric cables exposed in the detonation but seems to have made a full recovery.
"Conan was very badly hurt, as you know. They thought maybe he was not going to recover. He recovered actually very quickly and has since gone on very important raids," Trump said.
The dog's identity had been a closely guarded secret until it was declassified by Trump, who retweeted a picture of the pooch after the raid at Baghdadi's lair.
Details about Conan's life, achievements and family background are scant, although he certainly comes from good stock: US Navy SEALs used a Belgian Malinois in the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The head of US Central Command, General Kenneth McKenzie, has said Conan was a "critical member of our forces" and mentioned his impressive record of 50 combat missions in four years of service.
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Yogyakarta, Indonesia | As he scarfed down a traditional Indonesian meal, Adi Karyanov got himself the two-in-one special at a new restaurant offering pedicures by fish.
The tables and chairs at Soto Cokro Kembang in Indonesia's cultural capital Yogyakarta sit in ankle-deep water, home to thousands of little fish that nibble dead skin off the feet of diners.
"I felt the fish biting my feet -- it was ticklish but nice," Karyanov said.
"They make it fun to eat here. It's kind of unique."
Many spas across southeast Asia have for years touted a fishy pedicure as an unproven but novel way of treating various skin conditions.
But restaurant owner Imam Nur, who opened in June, has gone a step further by offering it alongside his traditional Javanese "sole food".
Nur credits his father for coming up with the idea for the open-air restaurant, which has some 7,000 Red Nile Tilapia swimming around its patrons.
"We initially opened this restaurant just for locals living nearby," he said.
"But what's happening now is beyond what we had initially planned. It's become like culinary tourism. Many people are coming here from different cities."
Pressing fish into service to remove dead skin is not without controversy.
Some cities in North America and Europe have banned it over concerns about bacterial outbreaks, while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has warned over both the health risks and possible cruelty to animals.
Still, visitors like Anna Widia were keen to give the fish treatment a whirl.
"I've never seen any place like this," she said.
"And it's big enough to bring the whole family."
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Beijing, China | Private sleuth Sun Jinrong brings heat detectors, tiny surveillance cameras, and a blow dart loaded with a tranquiliser to his search for one desperate client's missing loved one: A cat named Duoduo.
Unlike Jim Carrey's goofy Ace Ventura character, the man dubbed by China's media as the nation's first pet detective is a stoney-faced animal lover who solves cases with the help of high-tech gear worth thousands of dollars.
With dogged determination, Sun has reunited around 1,000 missing pets with their owners since he launched his business seven years ago.
Clients pay 8,000 yuan ($1,130) for the service provided by his company, which has 10 employees and is based in the eastern city of Shanghai.
Sun often gets calls from anguished pet owners in the middle of the night and rushes to cities and towns across the nation to help.
Dog ownership was banned as bourgeois vanity under Chairman Mao Zedong, but Chinese society's views of pets have changed and there are now 91.5 million cats and dogs in the country, according to Pet Fair Asia and pet website Goumin.com.
Sun says pets are sometimes stolen rather than lost, and dogs are occasionally sold for their meat.
"Most pet owners get very flustered," Sun said.
"They don't even own a flashlight. They can only look for cats in the dark by the weak light of their phones," he said.
"We have advanced equipments and accumulated cases over the years to analyse the data. We can think of 10 things to do while the owner can think of one or two."
Around 10 other pet detectives have appeared in the past two years, Sun adds.
- Quake equipment -
Sun boasts a success rate of around 60-70 percent.
But could he find Duoduo?
The owner, Li Hongtao, hired Sun to come to Beijing and find his much-loved cat.
The British shorthair had last been seen in an underground garage two days before the search, reducing the chances of finding him.
"He's family to me," Li explains.
Sun set right to work, unpacking a 50-kilo black suitcase containing three thermal imaging cameras, an endoscope, and a hand-held machine used to detect life under the rubble after earthquakes.
He walks around pointing a heat detector around the garage. He inspects some excrement on the floor, but determines it is not from the animal he's looking for.
"Cats have hair in their faeces. The colour here is not right," Sun concludes.
The eagle-eyed detective then finds a big clue: Paw prints on dusty pipes, leading him to determine Duoduo fled into a nearby grassy area outside.
To lure the cat, a speaker hanging from Sun's suitcase blares the recorded voice of his owner.
Sun and his assistant, Huang Yan, also place Duoduo's favourite cat food inside a grass-coloured cage with a trap door.
When Sun spots an opening in a rock, he pushes the small lens of the endoscope -- a small camera at the top of a long chord -- inside the gap.
Duoduo isn't there.
Sun attaches a camera sensor on a tree and waits for nightfall.
"We have no predecessors in this industry. We are all crossing the river by feeling the stones," he explains, using a famous Chinese saying.
He adapted techniques he learned from hunters.
"You have to be extremely careful when capturing pets. You can't catch small dogs like pomeranians with a net. Their hearts are very small. It could kill them," warns Sun.
- Night watch -
Sun mainly works late at night, when it's less noisy, raising the chance that a lost animal will emerge from hiding.
He stays up, sometimes in a tent, waiting for any sign of the pet.
At around midnight, as he waits for any sign of Duoduo, a figure flashes across the monitor.
Huang and Sun scan the area and see the cat in the bushes.
He opts not to use the blow dart, instead he phones the cat's owner, Li, who can barely contain his excitement when he arrives and sees Duoduo.
Li calls to him but the stressed pet wouldn't budge.
After 10 agonising minutes, Li approaches Duoduo and grabs his cat.
"Let's go home!" Li told Duoduo, stroking the prodigal cat's fur.
Those are some of Sun's favourite words.
"When our case is solved, it's basically a reunion," he muses, adding: "It's a happy moment."
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London, United Kingdom | A midnight blue velvet gown worn by Princess Diana when she danced with actor John Travolta at the White House is being put up for sale, an auction house said Monday.
She wore the Victor Edelstein dress when she and her then husband Prince Charles attended a state dinner hosted by then president Ronald Reagan on November 9, 1985.
It was immortalised when Diana was photographed dancing with Travolta to the song "You Should be Dancing" from his film "Saturday Night Fever".
Estimated at £250,000-£350,000 ($324,000-$454,000), the dress is one of three being sold by Kerry Taylor Auctions on December 9.
They also include a long-sleeved dress from 1986 by Katherine Cusack, also in midnight-blue velvet, and a Catherine Walker navy wool day dress from around 1989.
The Edelstein dress was part of a collection of outfits that Diana herself sold for charity at auction in June 1997, just weeks before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.
Paris, France |They are the defining images of newsmakers down the decades from Princess Diana to Brigitte Bardot to Pope John Paul II.
And now some 130 of the most iconic pictures taken by the French magazine Paris Match are to be auctioned on November 25 in Paris for prices of between 1,500-4,000 euros ($1,660-4,400).
The auction of the celebrated covers and double-spreads will mark the 70th anniversary of a publication whose trend-setting influence has always gone well beyond France.
The pictures include powerful images from nature and conflict zones and also of politicians ranging from the deposed shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to Charles de Gaulle and late French president Jacques Chirac.
But among the most unforgettable are those those of personalities who have shaped the zeitgeist of the last decades.
Perhaps the most famous is the image of Britain's Princess Diana, sitting alone on the diving board of a luxury yacht as a bird flies by, just a week before her death in a Paris road accident in 1997.
"Yes, it is a paparazzi photo, but it's one that has gone down in history. This photo is Diana, it's Lady Di and she only had eight days to live," said Marc Brincourt, former photo editor-in-chief at Paris Match and curator of the exhibition at the Cornette de Saint Cyr auction house in Paris.
"She is alone, on the diving board. And then the seagull going by," he added.
Another image, by photographer Jack Garofalo from 1974, celebrates the 40th birthday of actress Brigitte Bardot, her chest exposed and flowers in her hair.
"In order to pose like that in front of Jack Garofalo, you need to have trust," said Brincourt.
"There is a trust between star and the photographer. Why? Because in that era, the stars were friends with the photographers and the Paris Match reporters," he added.
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