Wellington, New Zealand—Airport authorities in the Cook Islands warned thrillseekers to stay away from their runway's jet blast zone after three tourists were injured when a plane was taking off.
The main road in the tiny Pacific nation passes by the bottom of the runway and daring plane-spotters often stand in the wash of jet engines, clinging to the airport's fence as aircraft hit maximum thrust for ascent.
"If you don't hang onto anything, you'll be knocked over," Cook Islands Airport Authority chief executive Joe Ngamata told AFP.
"You get the young people and tourists looking for thrills going down there."
Ngamata said three tourists were blown over by the power of the jet blast last Thursday and were lucky to only receive cuts and bruises.
"It can be dangerous," he said, adding that the area was clearly marked with red danger signs to deter the practice.
"We might need to look at extra barriers or fences to keep people away."
However, stopping it may be difficult, with the national tourism authority including the jet blast in a recent marketing video showing "the top 10 reasons to come to the Cook Islands".
This picture shows models in bikini (C) posing with dishs for a photo as they serve them to customers in their newly opened congee restaurant to celebrate the openning of the restaurant in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning province. The restaurant has models in bikini and swimming trunks to serve dishes for their customers on their openning day to boost their business, local media reported.
San Francisco, United States—Google said that its self-driving prototype cars have taken to streets in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View where it has its headquarters.
The move comes after Google's internal testing of the bubble-shaped vehicle over the past year and more extensive experience with technology adapted for existing cars.
"We want to understand what it really means to have self-driving vehicles in the world -- both how people in the community perceive and interact with them, and what the practical realities are for us in operating and maintaining them," Google said in a released statement.
Prototype cars built from the ground up to get around safely without human drivers join Google's fleet of Lexus vehicles augmented with sensors and other computing gadgetry to manage autonomously on roads.
The prototypes will have "safety drivers" who can take over using manual controls if needed, according to Google.
"We've had 20-plus Lexus vehicles driving on Mountain View city streets for the last few years, but the arrival of our new self-driving vehicle prototypes marks the start of a new phase of our project," Google said.
The Google car uses the same technology as its fleet of Lexus SUVs which has logged some 1.6 million kilometers (one million miles).
In Google's home town of Mountain View, speeds will be limited to 40 kilometers (25 miles) per hour "and during this next phase of our project we'll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving if needed," according to the head of the project.
Google has defended the safety record of its self-driving cars, saying that they were not at fault in any of the dozen or so accidents they have been involved in. Most of the collisions involved self-driving cars being hit in the rear by vehicles driven by people, according to the Internet titan.
London, United Kingdom—Offshore wind farms have helped generate record profits for Britain's Crown Estate, which administers a vast land and property portfolio nominally owned by Queen Elizabeth II but controlled by the state.
The Crown Estate owns Regent Street and much of the luxurious St James's area in central London, as well as the entire seabed around Britain which means that the growing number of offshore wind farms have to pay rent.
The Crown Estate reported that its profits rose to £285 million (401 million euros, $449 million), a 6.7 percent increase from a year earlier.
A sum equivalent to 15 percent of those profits will be handed to the royal family next year for its expenses, as per the funding arrangement between the government and the monarchy.
The offshore wind portfolio generated £19.1 million, according to results from the estate, which operates independently from the monarchy and state under law.
The value of the estate's assets also reached a record high of £11.5 billion -- an increase of 16.1 percent from last year. Around half of that portfolio is made up of real estate in London.
"Our two real star performers this year have been our portfolio here in London... and our offshore wind," Alison Nimmo, the Crown Estate's chief executive, told BBC radio.
Chairman Stuart Hampson said the estate, which also owns shopping centres and resorts, "remains an outstanding UK success story".
Washington, United States—Human feces contains gold and other precious metals that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, experts say.
Now the trick is how to retrieve them -- a potential windfall that could also help save the planet.
"The gold we found was at the level of a minimal mineral deposit," said Kathleen Smith, of the US Geological Survey, after her team discovered metals such as platinum, silver and gold in treated waste.
A recent study by another group of experts in the field found that waste from one million Americans could contain as much as $13 million worth of metals.
Finding a way to extract the metals could help the environment by cutting down on the need for mining and reducing unwanted release of metals into the environment.
"If you can get rid of some of the nuisance metals that currently limit how much of these biosolids we can use on fields and forests, and at the same time recover valuable metals and other elements, that's a win-win," said Smith.
"There are metals everywhere -- in your hair care products, detergents, even nanoparticles that are put in socks to prevent bad odors."
More than seven million tons of biosolids come out of US wastewater facilities each year: about half is used as fertilizer on fields and in forests and the other half is incinerated or sent to landfills.
Smith and her team are on a mission to find out exactly what is in our waste.
"We have a two-pronged approach," said Smith. "In one part of the study, we are looking at removing some regulated metals from the biosolids that limit their use for land application.
"In the other part of the project, we're interested in collecting valuable metals that could be sold, including some of the more technologically important metals, such as vanadium and copper that are in cell phones, computers and alloys."
The findings were presented at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, taking place in Denver through Thursday.
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© 1994-2015 Agence France-Presse
Maputo, Mozambique—Mozambique marked 40 years of independence from Portugal with military parades and displays in extravagant ceremonies that were shunned by the opposition.
Some 40,000 people attended the festivities in the seaside capital Maputo. Several heads of state also attended, including Zimbabwe's President and African Union Chair Robert Mugabe.
"It is in this stadium, with emotionally charged words, that (independence leader) Samora Machel proclaimed national independence," President Filipe Nyusi declared.
"As we did 40 years ago, today we cry loudly 'down with divisions'," he added.
Sporting brand-new uniforms for the occasion, the military staged a parade, with paratroopers making a spectacular landing, and fighter jets flying above the Machava Stadium in Maputo's outskirts.
The main event was the arrival of the "flame of unity", a torch symbolising togetherness that has been carried across the southern African country since April 7.
But conspicuously absent from the celebrations was former rebel commander and now opposition Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, who claims the October elections that brought the ruling Frelimo party back to power were rigged.
Renamo waged a 16-year war against Frelimo before signing a peace deal in 1992, and ended a renewed low-level insurgency just weeks ahead of last October's election.
Mozambique has recently become a prime investment destination following the recent discovery of huge natural gas and coal deposits.
Tokyo, Japan—Japanese consumers are used to paying through the nose for fruit, and now the summer's here there's another way for them to empty their wallets: cube and heart-shaped watermelons.
But this pricey produce is not intended to tempt your taste buds -- it's more ornament than the perfect picnic food.
Over at the Shibuya Nishimura luxury fruit shop in downtown Tokyo, a cube-shaped watermelon, about the size of a baby's head, sells for 12,960 yen ($105).
Not to your liking? Well, how about a heart- or pyramid-shaped melon to sit on that chic coffee table in your living room.
"This fruit is meant to be a feast for your eyes, but they don't taste very good," admitted the shop's senior managing director Mototaka Nishimura.
"They should be displayed as ornaments, maybe mixed with flowers."
Farmers plant young watermelons inside acrylic containers to get the desired shape.
While the price may sound high, it's actually something of a bargain in Japan where people traditionally exchange gifts, including expensive fruit, with clients and relatives a couple of times a year.
A deep-pocketed Japanese department store in April shelled out an eye-watering 300,000 yen for a pair of mangoes, a record price for the second year in a row.
This year's must-have luxury fruit is a particular brand of strawberry, with a single berry currently selling for around $415.
However, all pale in comparison with the tear-inducing $25,000 price tag for a pair of cantaloupe melons auctioned in 2008.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—Bad day for a pair of drug traffickers in Brazil: their truck loaded with marijuana and a car escorting it plunged off a mountain road near Rio de Janeiro, spilling a load of 1.3 tons of pot.
The driver of the truck, which crashed on Saturday apparently because due to high speed, fled before police could arrive, police said.
When they did get to the scene, the driver of the escort car, who was slightly injured, was arrested, hospitalized and charged with drug trafficking.
Police said he "can't remember a thing."
London, United Kingdom—London's Natural History Museum is trialling a quirky system using female moth pheromones to confuse males into homosexual activity in its battle to stop the damaging cloth-eating insects from breeding.
British agricultural technology company Exosect impregnates wax tablets with minute levels of the pheromones, which rub off on amorous male moths, who in turn go on to attract other males.
"The powder overwhelms their senses and they aren't able to detect regular females anymore," Exosect spokeswoman Georgina Donovan told AFP on Wednesday.
"If an untreated male comes into contact with a treated male, he will start to show mating behaviours, such as wing fanning," she said.
The company says tricking the moths into trying to mate with other males is a more effective and environmentally friendly way of tackling the menace than traditional pesticides such as those contained in mothballs.
The Natural History Museum, which uses the system along with Hampton Court Palace, the Houses of Parliament and the Royal Opera House, said moth numbers had fallen by half during trials.
The system breaks the mating cycle, reducing the number of larvae that feed on natural fibres.
The problem of moth infestation has become more acute as home insulation and heating have improved, creating ideal conditions for the insects, the company said.
A preference for natural-fibre clothing and furniture among many shoppers, and the popularity of vintage clothing also mean moths have become more of a menace, Exosect said.
The company said its technology was available in different countries in Europe and a similar product is used for a different type of moth in food factories globally including in Japan and the United States.
© 1994-2015 Agence France-Presse
