The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful ever sent into orbit, is set Tuesday to unveil breathtaking new views of the Universe with a clarity that's never been seen before.

Distant galaxies, bright nebulae and a faraway giant gas planet are among the observatory's first targets, US space agency NASA said Friday.

But the images themselves have been jealously guarded to build suspense ahead of the big reveal.

"I'm looking very much forward to not having to keep these secrets anymore, that will be a great relief," Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) that oversees Webb, told AFP.

NASA chief Bill Nelson has promised the "deepest image of our Universe that has ever been taken."

Webb's infrared capabilities are what make it uniquely powerful -- allowing it to both pierce through cosmic dust clouds and detect light from the earliest stars, which has been stretched into infrared wavelengths as the Universe expanded.

This lets it peer further back in time than any previous telescope, to the period shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

"When I first saw the images... I suddenly learned three things about the Universe that I didn't know before," Dan Coe, an STSI astronomer and expert on the early Universe, told AFP. "It's totally blown my mind."

First targets

An international committee decided the first wave of images would include the Carina Nebula, an enormous cloud of dust and gas 7,600 light years away.

Webb has also carried out a spectroscopy -- an analysis of light that reveals detailed information -- on a faraway gas giant called WASP-96 b, which was discovered in 2014.

Nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, WASP-96 b is about half the mass of Jupiter and zips around its star in just 3.4 days.

Nestor Espinoza, an STSI astronomer, told AFP that previous exoplanet spectroscopies carried out using existing instruments were very limited compared to what Webb could do.

"It's like being in a room that is very dark and you only have a little pinhole you can look through," he said of the prior technology. Now, with Webb, "You've opened a huge window, you can see all the little details."

Perhaps most enticing of all, Webb has gathered an image using foreground galaxy clusters called SMACS 0723 as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass for the extremely distant and faint objects behind it.

Million miles from Earth

Launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket, Webb is orbiting the Sun at a distance of a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, in a region of space called the second Lagrange point.

A wonder of engineering, the total project cost is estimated at $10 billion, making it one of the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Webb's primary mirror is over 21 feet (6.5 meters) wide and is made up of 18 gold-coated mirror segments. Like a camera held in one's hand, the structure must remain as stable as possible to achieve the best shots.

Charlie Atkinson, chief engineer on the James Webb Space Telescope program at lead contractor Northrop Grumman, told AFP that it wobbles no more than 17 millionths of a millimeter.

Atkinson, who has been working on the program since 1998, said: "We knew it was going to require some of the best talents across the world, but it was doable."

After the first images, astronomers around the globe will get shares of time on the telescope, with projects selected competitively through a process in which applicants and selectors don't know each others' identity, to minimize bias.

Thanks to an efficient launch, NASA estimates Webb has enough propellant for a 20-year life, as it works in concert with the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to answer fundamental questions about the cosmos.

© 2022 AFP

But for Duminil-Copin, who specialises in probability theory, those quiet moments can lead to discoveries that won him the Fields Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics.

He accepted the prize, which is awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40, at a ceremony in Finland's capital Helsinki.

The other winners were Britain's James Maynard of Oxford University, June Huh of Princeton in the United States and Ukraine's Maryna Viazovska, who is only the second ever woman laureate.

Duminil-Copin described with unabashed enthusiasm the happiness he finds in working with others in the search for answers -- whether or not they find one.

"It's the best, especially since it's a collective process, where all the beauty is in interacting with others," he said in an interview a few days before the prize was announced.

A visual mind

Born on August 26, 1985, Duminil-Copin has collected a raft of mathematics awards over the last decade.

At the age of 31, he was appointed professor at France's Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in 2016.

"It's a place that seems made for me, for my creative part," he said of the green campus outside Paris.

It gives the mathematician that most precious resource for deep thinkers: time.

"This slowness in everyday life is very fruitful because I need time for ideas to come, for them to settle quietly, for them to take shape," he said.

At the campus, which is not far from where he grew up, Duminil-Copin uses his "very visual intuition" to take on the most complicated mathematical problems.

"There are very few formulas and many drawings" in his mind when he thinks about such problems, he said.

That "aesthetic vision" allows him to view mathematics with a "certain elegance", he added.

The Paris institute allows researchers to free themselves of all other obligations, including teaching.

But Duminil-Copin teaches anyway, retaining a professorship at the University of Geneva, saying that "in the end it is perhaps the most important aspect of this profession".

He may have inherited this passion from his father, a sports teacher, and mother, a dancer who became a teacher later in life.

When he was younger, Duminil-Copin envisioned becoming a teacher himself -- of maths, of course -- but his talent propelled him towards research.

Collaboration is at the heart of his outlook. If he provides mathematical tools to physicists, their work in turn may allow someone else in the future to find new applications for them.

"It's the whole community that really produces scientific progress," he said.

Mental balance

Duminil-Copin hailed the importance of two university professors to his career, Jean-Francois Le Gall, who also worked on probability theory, and fellow Fields Medal winner Wendelin Werner.

He said he fell in "love at first sight" with percolation theory during a class Werner taught on the subject, which falls under the branch of statistical physics.

It was in that class that Duminil-Copin first encountered Nienhuis's conjecture -- a "beautiful, elegant and completely mysterious" problem, he said.

"I solved it a few years later, almost without doing it on purpose."

As a child, Duminil-Copin preferred astronomy to mathematics.

He said he was "not pushed at all" by his parents to focus solely on his studies -- instead they were keen to "confront him with a variety of things" such as sport, music and friends.

The lesson seems to have stuck.

"When we talk about preparing to become a researcher we think of intelligence, academic training, but there is also a mental balance which is very important," he said.

New ideas can strike him "anytime, in the middle of the night or in the shower", he said.

But they will have to wait until he's back at work.

"My priority is on the personal side, to spend time with my daughter and my wife."

© 2022 AFP

Slimane -- who became hugely influential as the stylist behind bands such as The Libertines and Daft Punk in the 2000s -- has not presented a live show in Paris since February 2020. He had dismissed them as "obsolete", preferring to present collections with videos shot in luxurious French locales.

'A boom'

The past few seasons have often seen men's and women's shows merging into one -- with London Fashion Week doing away with the distinction altogether.

But this week in Paris seemed to reaffirm the divide, with houses wanting to boost their focus on menswear at a time when demand is booming.

US designer Matthew Williams presented his first-ever standalone menswear show for Givenchy this week.

"It's good to give space to men and women, to each and everyone their platform to tell a story," Williams told fashion site WWD. "There's more room for more looks."

"Commercially, menswear is a market that has developed a lot with a particularly strong dynamic in Asia that has created a boom for pret-a-porter men's designers," said Serge Carreira, fashion expert at Sciences Po University.

'More accessible'

Also marking her first menswear show was France's Marine Serre, one of the biggest names to emerge in recent years.

The 30-year-old has made sustainability and inclusivity central to her brand, and that was evident at her sports-themed show in a stadium outside Paris on Saturday.

The models came in all shapes and sizes, from children to older people, alongside celebrities such as ex-footballer Djibril Cisse and Paralympic gold medallist Alexis Hanquinquant, as well as Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon in one of the house's trademark moon-patterned bodysuits.

"Thirty percent of our sales have been for menswear in the last collections -- we're not at 50/50 but we do quite a bit of men's and we have no intention of doing less," Serre told AFP after the show.

"These are shapes that are less complex: it's easier and we can have better prices that mean it is more accessible for everyone to wear upcycled pieces."

Meanwhile, familiar names also made a mark this week.

Dior took inspiration from the childhood Normandy home of the label's founder, with a flower-filled garden runway and some straw hats and chic outdoor loungewear among the outfits.

Hermes was also in a relaxed, pastel-infused mood, which designer Veronique Nichanian told AFP was inspired by "lightness, comfort, fun and colours that pop."

© 2022 AFP

Staged by Rachid Ouramdane, director of the Chaillot National Theatre, the show brought together models, performers and acrobats who not only strutted but danced, leapt and climbed the walls.

The outfits were suitably loose and easy to move in, with fresh and vibrant reds, yellows and greens that matched the mood of rebirth.

The brand had presented all its collections via online videos or installations around Paris over the past two years, and was among the last to return to live shows.

"Now that it's easier to travel the world, we think it's the perfect moment to return with a full catwalk show," a spokesperson told AFP.

Meanwhile, under a blazing sun in the courtyard of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, US designer Rick Owens put on a typically arresting display.

He described it as a metaphor for a world "disturbed by war and constant online stone throwing" in the show notes

As for the clothes, there were the trademark exaggerated shoulders and grungey glamour, but with some lighter touches in the form of transparent and billowing fabrics.

Some of the pieces used new sustainable materials that have become popular with designers as they try to counter the industry's atrocious environmental record.

"(It’s) a skin I use over and over," he said in the notes. "Fished as a food source by indigenous communities in the Amazon forest, the skins are then sold as a waste product generating income for them."

© 2022 AFP

It includes fabrics, dress prototypes, shows, accesseries and jewellery from a career spanning nearly five decades.

"It is a nice finishing touch to our professional careers, a satisfaction, to leave a vestige of our work to future generations," Jose Luis Medina del Corral, 68, who goes by the alias Lucchino, told AFP before the museum's opening.

Lucchino and Jose Victor Rodriguez Caro, 72, who goes by the alias Victorio, met as teenagers in the 1960s and soon became a couple, united by their passion for fashion.

They joined forces in 1975 to create the Victorio y Lucchino brand, and burst onto the international scene a decade later by taking part in the New York International Fair.

Their creations have since appeared on catwalks in Japan, Germany, Italy and the United States, worn by top models such as Claudia Schiffer and Elle McPherson.

The duo's customers have included one of Spain's most famous singers, Rocio Jurado who died in 2016, and Spain's late Duchess of Alba, one of Europe's wealthiest aristocrats.

She wore a salmon-coloured dress with a moss-green sash by Andalusian designers at her 2011 wedding to a civil servant at her palace in Seville.

The designers say they have long drawn inspiration from the culture of Andalusia, Spain's centre for flamenco and bullfighting.

"Every creator lives from the land where he lives," said Victorio who was born in Palma del Rio.

© 2022 AFP

The haircut –- known locally by the English word "boy" –- has become strikingly visible on the streets of the capital, and not just because women are no longer required to wear hijab headscarves under social reforms pushed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler.

As more women join the workforce, a central plank of government efforts to remake the Saudi economy, many describe the "boy" cut as a practical, professional alternative to the longer styles they might have preferred in their pre-working days.

For Safi, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym to preserve her anonymity, the look also serves as a form of protection from unwanted male attention, allowing her to focus on her patients.

"People like to see femininity in a woman's appearance," she said. "This style is like a shield that protects me from people and gives me strength."

A practical time-saver

At one salon in central Riyadh, demand for the "boy" cut has spiked –- with seven or eight customers out of 30 requesting it on any given day, said Lamis, a hairdresser.

"This look has become very popular now," she said. "The demand for it has increased, especially after women entered the labour market. "The fact that many women do not wear the hijab has highlighted its spread" while spurring even more customers to try it out, especially women in their late teens and twenties, she said.

The lifting of the headscarf requirement is just one of many changes that have reordered daily life for Saudi women under Prince Mohammed, who was named as the heir to his 86-year-old father, King Salman, five years ago.

Saudi women are no longer banned from concerts and sports events, and in 2018 they gained the right to drive.

The kingdom has also eased so-called guardianship rules, meaning women can now obtain passports and travel abroad without a male relative's permission.

Such reforms, however, have been accompanied by a crackdown on women's rights activists, part of a broader campaign against dissent.

Getting more women to work is a major component of Prince Mohammed's Vision 2030 reform plan to make Saudi Arabia less dependent on oil.

The plan initially called for women to account for 30 percent of the workforce by the end of the decade, but already that figure has reached 36 percent, assistant tourism minister Princess Haifa Al-Saud told the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.

"We see women today in every single job type," Princess Haifa said, noting that 42 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises are women-owned.

Many working women interviewed by AFP praised the "boy" cut as a tool for navigating their new professional lives.

"I am a practical woman and I don't have time to take care of my hair," said Abeer Mohammed, a 41-year-old mother of two who runs a men's clothing store.

"My hair is curly, and if my hair grows long, I will have to spend time that is not available to me taking care of it in the morning."

'Show of strength'

Saudi Arabia has traditionally outlawed men who "imitate women" or wear women's clothing, and vice versa.

But Rose, a 29-year-old shoe saleswoman at a Riyadh mall, sees her close-cropped hair as a means of asserting her independence from men, not imitating them.

It "gives me strength and self-confidence... I feel different, and able to do what I want without anyone's guardianship", said Rose, who did not want to give her full name.

"At first my family rejected the look, but over time they got used to it," she added.

Such acceptance partly reflects the influence of Arab stars like actress Yasmin Raeis or singer Shirene who have adopted the style, said Egyptian stylist Mai Galal.

"A woman who cuts her hair in this way is a woman whose character is strong because it is not easy for women to dispense with their hair," Galal told AFP.

Nouf, who works in a cosmetics store and preferred not to give her family name, described the message of the "boy" cut this way: "We want to say that we exist, and our role in society does not differ much from that of men."

Short hair, she added, is "a show of women's strength".

© 2022 AFP

"It's gonna be a thrill for me" to play the Juan Jazz Festival on the French Riviera -- Anka told AFP from his home in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the line-up is a gathering of pure jazz royalty, from Herbie Hancock to Diana Krall, Stacey Kent and the genius Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan.

But Anka's roots are pure pop, going straight to the top of the hit parade -- as it was then called -- with his debut smash, "Diana", when he was only 16.

The song ushered in the era of teeny bopper stars, with Anka the first teenager ever to score a number one hit in Britain.

'My Way'

The song told of Anka's unrequited love for an older woman who was "out of my league" -- Diana Ayoub was 19 at the time -- and he used to pine for her after spotting her at his Orthodox church in Ottawa.

The son of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, Anka grew up speaking French, which is how he came to write the English version of one of the 20th century's most sung songs, "My Way".

His take on the standard, which was originally recorded by the French singer Claude Francois as "Comme d'habitude", became Frank Sinatra's signature standard, as well as a hit for Elvis and the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious.

"I have to do some of the original hits that first took me to France when I was a young boy -- 'Diana', 'You Are My Destiny' and 'My Way' of course," he added.

Sorry Trump

Anka was slated to sing "My Way" at Donald Trump's inauguration as US president in 2017 before pulling out, although he avoided saying whether he supported him.

"You've got a better chance of getting a sunrise past a rooster on that one," he said.

While his full-on romantic standards such as "(You're) Having My Baby" may be slightly cheesy to some, his songs and celebrity have endured.

"Put Your Head on My Shoulder" inspired a viral TikTok challenge last year, and "She's a Lady" -- which he also wrote -- is one of Welsh singer Tom Jones's biggest crowd-pleasers.

Anka also popped up on stage next to Lisa in a 1995 episode of "The Simpsons" called "Treehouse of Horror VI" in which he co-starred.

The singer was and is still friends with some of France's musical greats, and hinted that he would pay homage to some of them during his show in Juan-les-Pins.

"You'll see when I do my show... I was connected to all the French singers from (Charles) Aznavour, to Johnny Hallyday ("the French Elvis"), Gilbert Becaud and Mireille Mathieu, whom I wrote an album for.

"One of my favourites was Michel Colombier," a prolific Hollywood film composer who "wrote a couple of albums with me".

Anka said he wanted to "get the sense of the audience" before deciding what to play, although there would be a tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. "I can't be selfish and do what I want for myself.

"I want to be eclectic... I don't know if I will have time to sing anything from the new album, and I don't know if anyone will be interested," quipped the singer, who has just recorded a new television special.

© 2022 AFP

It was the latest in a string of talent and debate programmes organised by media action group Munathara ("debate"), which aims "to spark much-needed conversations about rights, freedoms and social change in the Arab world", according to founder Belabbas Benkredda.

"Public debates even about fundamental rights can be very polarising, especially on social media," the 43-year-old Algerian-German said.

Munathara was born in 2012, the year after the Arab Spring revolts, kicked off by the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, which had sparked high hopes for democracy in a region with an overwhelmingly young population.

But ironically, as Munathara marked its 10th anniversary with the show in Hammamet on Saturday, it was overshadowed by President Kais Saied consolidating a power-grab that has sparked fears for Tunisia's democratic gains.

'Freedoms under attack'

Munathara was founded at "a time of great hope and aspiration -- but the optimism has given way to cynicism, including among youth", Benkredda said.

"The Arab world's Gen Z came of age politically amid increasing despair and social division."

Syrian refugee and stand-up comedian Mohamed al-Kurdi, one of the performers in Saturday's show, said that today, "young people's freedom is restricted, and not just in the Arab world".

Kurdi, whose TikTok account "MidoKrdi" has over 2.3 million followers, said that rather than dealing with politics, he wanted to discuss "the limits we impose on ourselves: fear of failure, fear of success. These things rein in our freedom."

For Saturday's event, he teamed up with fellow comedian and actress Dana Ali Makki, 22, in a comedy act about an overbearing husband and his wife.

Makki, from the southern Lebanese region of Nabatiyeh, said she believed young Arabs had slightly more freedom than a few years ago.

"People can be a bit different from their parents and from the society and culture they grew up in," she said.

"There's more subversion against customs, traditions, religion and society."

Asked how she defined her own freedom, she said: "I'm free when I'm able to say whatever I want, loudly, without being afraid of anyone. Free of all the restrictions society imposes, especially on women."

'Learn to resist!'

The show, the fourth of its kind, also served as a showcase for up-and-coming talent, such as Ahmed al-Qrinawi from Gaza, a Palestinian enclave under Israeli blockade for the past 15 years.

He would sit under a shelter he built on the family's roof in Gaza City, to avoid the disapproving ears of his conservative family.

To learn music theory, he used copies of music books borrowed from friends at a music school he couldn't afford to attend.

Last weekend, three years later, he appeared on stage playing an unusual seven-stringed oud, home-made with the help of a carpenter friend.

He said he had only heard about the competition shortly after the deadline, and composed, recorded and submitted his song in just an hour.

"I will only be free when I have a normal country, where death doesn't keep an eye on me," runs the first line of his song.

"In Gaza there's no freedom," Qrinawi said.

"Freedom's not just about food and drink. You can get a bird and put it in a cage and bring it food, but it's still in captivity."

For Lebanese actress and comedian Makki, who has a tattoo on her forearm reading "resist", the show was a chance to deliver another message.

"You can't stay in your house with your hands tied or stay silent," she said.

"Learn to say no to oppression and repression."

© 2022 AFP