The Central African Republic has adopted bitcoin as legal tender, the president's office said becoming the second country in the world to do so after El Salvador.Metadata Information
Lawmakers unanimously adopted a bill that made bitcoin legal tender alongside the CFA franc and legalised the use of cryptocurrencies.
President Faustin Archange Touadera signed the measure into law, his chief of staff Obed Namsio said in a statement.
The CAR "is the first country in Africa to adopt bitcoin as legal tender", Namsio said.
"This move places the Central African Republic on the map of the world's boldest and most visionary countries," he declared.
But a leading opposition figure contested the vote and said that the move aimed at undermining use of the CFA franc.
The CAR is one of the planet's poorest and most troubled nations, locked in a nine-year-old civil conflict and with an economy heavily dependent on mineral extraction, much of which is informal.
The text of the new legislation covers use of cryptocurrencies, and those who use them, in online trade, "smart contracts... by blockchain technology" and "all electronic transactions".
Cryptocurrency exchanges are not liable to tax, it adds.
Martin Ziguele, a former CAR prime minister who is now an opposition MP, complained the bill was approved "by proclamation" and some legislators intend to file suit against it at the Constitutional Court.
"This law is a way of getting out of the CFA franc through a means that guts the common currency," said Ziguele.
"It (the law) isn't a priority for the country," he said. "This move raises the question: who benefits from it?"
The CAR is one of six central African countries that share the CFA franc -- a regional currency that is backed by France and pegged to the euro. Other members are Cameroon, Chad, Republic of Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
Thierry Vircoulon, a specialist on central Africa at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) think tank, wondered if there was a link between the CAR's close ties with Russia.
"The context, given systemic corruption and a Russian partner facing international sanctions, does encourage suspicion," he said.
"Russia's search for ways to get around international sanctions is an invitation to be cautious."
- Worries -
El Salvador became the world's first adopter of the pioneering virtual currency on September 7.
The introduction was heavily criticised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
It warned of "large risks associated with the use of bitcoin on financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection" and with issuing bitcoin-backed bonds.
Many regulators share those concerns, and other critics say that anonymised transfers using crypto are a perfect tool for traffickers and money laundering.
India effectively outlawed crypto transactions in 2018, only for the country's top court to strike down the ban two years later.
China's central bank in September declared all financial transactions involving cryptocurrencies to be illegal.
Huge swings in bitcoin's price make it risky as a store of value and long transaction processing times make it impractical for small purchases.
After a relatively calm 2020, the cryptocurrency has experienced wild swings in 2021, surging from under $33,000 at the start of the year, peaking at over $67,000, before returning to $35,000 in February.
It was down 1.5 percent at 1400 GMT on Wednesday, trading at $39,328.14 (37,293.7 euros).
Despite reservations, there is also acknowledgement of the usefulness of digital currencies as a flexible monetary tool.
Major central banks are looking at the possibility of setting up a virtual currency in a regulated environment.
- Troubled country -
The CAR has experienced few moments of peace since it gained independence from France in 1960, and ranks 188 out of 189 countries in the UN's Human Development Index, a benchmark of prosperity.
In 2013, the country plunged into a civil war that developed largely along sectarian lines.
The conflict eased after France intervened militarily and elections were held that were won by Touadera, although for years armed groups held sway over most of the CAR's territory.
In 2020, a coalition of rebels advanced on the capital Bangui, threatening to overturn Touadera as new elections loomed.
Russia dispatched paramilitaries to help repel the threat and then recover much of the rebel-held territory.
The operatives are described by Bangui as military advisers but by France, the UN and others as mercenaries from the Kremlin-backed Wagner group, which has been accused of abuses.
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Dutch King Willem-Alexander opened the gates to one of Europe's largest gardening fairs, a once-in-a-decade show focusing this year on how to make cities greener.
But critics have denounced the show, which features displays by 200 participants from 25 countries, as a "money pit" that has massively over-run its budget.
The Floriade 2022 exposition, which runs until early October, is expected to draw more than two million enthusiasts to the central city of Almere.
The Floriade 2022 shows "what a green city could be like in the future... what kind of materials could be used for this and what role the horticultural sector could play in it", said its curator, Annemarie Jorritsma, a former mayor of the city.
"On top of that, when the show is finished it will be a fantastic residential area," she told AFP.
Each decade, a different Dutch city gets to host the gardening extravaganza. Almere, the latest, is a city that was itself created by the Dutch by draining part of the former Zuiderzee bay to reclaim land.
As well as being a showcase for Dutch horticulture, each participating country has its own pavilion.
China's is showing "new ways of using bamboo", said Jorritsma. Italy is focusing on permaculture, while France shows how metallic imitations of trees can be used to cool cities.
The German pavilion is decorated with plants including garden plants, trees, food crops and wildflowers to form a "living ecosystem whose appearance would change throughout the exhibition", organisers said.
"The Floriade is the best place to show what countries have to change their cities," Detlef Wintzen, one of the exhibitors at the German pavilion, told AFP.
- Cost controversy -
The event has however been criticised for budget overruns that threatened its very existence.
Dutch media have reported that Almere has significantly over-run its 10-million-euro budget ($10.8 million) for the project.
Financial daily Financieele Dagblad estimated that costs could be as high as 200 million euros -- with losses of up to 100 million -- but said there was a "thick fog" hanging over the official costs.
First held in Rotterdam in 1960, the organisers of the last three Floriades -- 1992, 2002 and 2012 -- have all been criticised for losses totalling millions of euros.
And some media reports have even suggested that this could be the last-ever edition of the show.
Almere -- the country's youngest city -- plans to have a "green residential area by the water" after the end of the Floriade designed by Dutch architect Winy Maas.
Some 660 homes will be built in the "Hortus" district, many of them made from durable materials such as moss and mushrooms.
An imposing colourful building in the middle of the exhibition will eventually serve as social housing, and "floating homes" are also planned.
Members of the public can visit the Floriade from Thursday onwards.
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A sandy-coloured tower glints in the sunlight and dominates the skyline of the Swedish town of Skelleftea as Scandinavia harnesses its wood resources to lead a global trend towards erecting eco-friendly high-rises.
The Sara Cultural Centre is one of the world's tallest timber buildings, made primarily from spruce and towering 75 metres (246 feet) over rows of snow-dusted houses and surrounding forest.
The 20-storey timber structure, which houses a hotel, a library, an exhibition hall and theatre stages, opened at the end of 2021 in the northern town of 35,000 people.
Forests cover much of Sweden's northern regions, most of it spruce, and building timber homes is a longstanding tradition.
Swedish architects now want to spearhead a revolution and steer the industry towards more sustainable construction methods as large wooden buildings sprout up in Sweden and neighbouring Nordic nations thanks to advancing industry techniques.
"The pillars together with the beams, the interaction with the steel and wood, that is what carries the 20 storeys of the hotel," Therese Kreisel, a Skelleftea urban planning official, tells AFP during a tour of the cultural centre.
Even the lift shafts are made entirely of wood. "There is no plaster, no seal, no isolation on the wood," she says, adding that this "is unique when it comes to a 20-storey building".
- Building materials go green -
The main advantage of working with wood is that it is more environmentally friendly, proponents say.
Cement -- used to make concrete -- and steel, two of the most common construction materials, are among the most polluting industries because they emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
But wood emits little CO2 during its production and retains the carbon absorbed by the tree even when it is cut and used in a building structure.
It is also lighter in weight, requiring less of a foundation.
According to the UN's IPCC climate panel, wood as a construction material can be up to 30 times less carbon intensive than concrete, and hundreds or even thousands times less than steel.
Global efforts to cut emissions have sparked an upswing in interest for timber structures, according to Jessica Becker, the coordinator of Trastad (City of Wood), an organisation lobbying for more timber construction.
Skelleftea's tower "showcases that is it possible to build this high and complex in timber", says Robert Schmitz, one of the project's two architects.
"When you have this as a backdrop for discussions, you can always say, 'We did this, so how can you say it's not possible?'."
Only an 85-metre tower recently erected in Brumunddal in neighbouring Norway and an 84-metre structure in Vienna are taller than the Sara Cultural Centre.
A building under construction in the US city of Milwaukee and due to be completed soon is expected to clinch the title of the world's tallest, at a little more than 86 metres.
- 'Stacked like Lego' -
Building the cultural centre in spruce was "much more challenging" but "has also opened doors to really think in new ways", explains Schmitz's co-architect Oskar Norelius.
For example, the hotel rooms were made as pre-fabricated modules that were then "stacked like Lego pieces on site", he says.
The building has won several wood architecture prizes.
Anders Berensson, another Stockholm architect whose material of choice is wood, says timber has many advantages.
"If you missed something in the cutting you just take the knife and the saw and sort of adjust it on site. So it's both high tech and low tech at the same time", he says.
In Stockholm, an apartment complex made of wood, called Cederhusen and featuring distinctive yellow and red cedar shingles on the facade, is in the final stages of completion.
It has already been named the Construction of the Year by Swedish construction industry magazine Byggindustrin.
"I think we can see things shifting in just the past few years actually," says Becker.
"We are seeing a huge change right now, it's kind of the tipping point. And I'm hoping that other countries are going to catch on, we see examples even in England and Canada and other parts of the world."
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"Go pee on the rhubarb!"
Engineer Fabien Esculier has never forgotten his grandmother's unconventional approach to gardening -- in fact, it has inspired his career.
Human urine may seem like a crude way of fertilising plants in the era of industrial agriculture, but as researchers look for ways to reduce reliance on chemicals and cut environmental pollution, some are growing increasingly interested in the potential of pee.
Plants need nutrients -- nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium -- and we ingest these through food, before "excreting them, mostly through urine", said Esculier, who runs the OCAPI research programme in France looking at food systems and human waste management.
This presents an opportunity, scientists think.
Fertilisers using synthetic nitrogen, in use for around a century, have helped drive up yields and boost agricultural production to feed a growing human population.
But when they are used in large quantities, they make their way into river systems and other waterways, causing choking blooms of algae that can kill fish and other aquatic life.
Meanwhile, emissions from this agricultural ammonia can combine with vehicle fumes to create dangerous air pollution, according to the United Nations.
Chemical fertilisers also create emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, contributing to climate change.
But the pollution does not just come directly from the fields.
"Modern-day sanitation practices represent one of the primary sources of nutrient pollution," said Julia Cavicchi, of the United States Rich Earth Institute, adding that urine is responsible for around 80 percent of the nitrogen found in wastewater and more than half of the phosphorus.
To replace chemical fertilisers, you would need many times the weight in treated urine, she said.
But she added: "Since the production of synthetic nitrogen is a significant source of greenhouse gases, and phosphorus is a limited and non-renewable resource, urine diverting systems offer a long-term resilient model for human waste management and agricultural production."
One 2020 study by UN researchers found that global wastewater has the theoretical potential to offset 13 percent of the world's demand for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in agriculture.
But pee diversion is easier said than done.
- 'Very radical' -
In the past, urban excrement was transported to agricultural fields to be used as fertiliser along with animal manure, before chemical alternatives began to displace them.
But now if you want to collect urine at source, you need to rethink toilets and the sewage system itself.
A pilot project to do just that began in Sweden in the early 1990s in a selection of eco-villages.
Now there are projects in Switzerland, Germany, the US, South Africa, Ethiopia, India, Mexico and France.
"It takes a long time to introduce ecological innovations and especially an innovation such as urine separation which is very radical," said Tove Larsen, a researcher at Switzerland's Eawag aquatic research institute.
She said the early urine-diverting toilets were considered unsightly and impractical, or raised concerns about unpleasant odours.
But she hopes a new model -- developed by the Swiss company Laufen and Eawag -- should solve these difficulties, with a design that funnels urine into a separate container.
Once the pee is collected it needs to be processed.
Urine is not normally a major carrier of disease, so the World Health Organization recommends leaving it for a period of time, although it is also possible to pasteurise it.
Then there are various techniques for concentrating or even dehydrating the liquid, reducing its volume and the cost of transporting it to the fields.
- 'Surprise' -
Another challenge is overcoming public squeamishness.
"This subject touches on the intimate," said Ghislain Mercier, of the publicly-owned planning authority Paris et Metropole Amenagement.
It is developing an eco-district in the French capital with shops and 600 housing units, which will use urine collection to fertilise green spaces in the city.
He sees significant potential in large buildings like offices, as well as houses not connected to mains drainage.
Even restaurants. Also in Paris is the 211 restaurant, equipped with waterless toilets that collect urine.
"We have had quite positive feedback," said owner Fabien Gandossi.
"People are a little surprised, but they see little difference compared to a traditional system."
But are people ready to go to the next level and eat urine-fertilised foods?
One study on the subject highlighted found differences from country to country. The acceptance rate is very high in China, France and Uganda for example, but low in Portugal and Jordan.
- Water works -
Prices of synthetic fertilisers are currently soaring because of shortages caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has also spurred countries to consider shoring up their food security.
That could be an opportunity help "make the subject more visible", said Mercier.
Marine Legrand, an anthropologist working with Esculier at the OCAPI network, said that there are still "obstacles to overcome".
But she believes that water shortages and increased awareness of the toll of pollution will help change minds.
"We are beginning to understand how precious water is," she told AFP.
"So it becomes unacceptable to defecate in it."
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Ahead of their first concert since the start of Russia's invasion, members of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra voice hope that their music will heal troubled souls and help boost Ukrainian culture.
Some of the orchestra's musicians fled the country to the sound of Russian bombs, others remained in Ukraine but had to leave their homes and have been playing only to their families or in bomb shelters.
The concert at the Warsaw Philharmonic will start a European tour for the orchestra.
"Our concerts are truly a cultural mission," Oleksii Pshenychnikov, a 22-year-old second violin in the orchestra, told AFP during a break in the rehearsals.
"In Ukraine, we say there is a 'cultural front', meaning it is not escaping from the war, it is another aspect of the war," Pshenychnikov said.
The men in the orchestra have been granted special dispensation from Ukrainian authorities to leave the country as martial law is in place in Ukraine and fighting age men are not normally allowed to leave.
The exemption only lasts until the end of the tour and its Italian conductor Luigi Gaggero said he hoped other venues will come forward to offer to host the orchestra "maybe until the end of the war".
Gaggero, who had himself been due to travel to Ukraine on the day the conflict began, said the process of rehearsing together had been invigorating for musicians forced to spend long weeks apart.
"They do not just feel nostalgia for a job, they feel nostalgia for the very reason of their existence, which is music. It is like the air they breathe and they can finally breathe again," he said.
Several of the musicians are travelling with their whole families and loved ones left behind are on everyone's minds as the conflict intensifies in southern and eastern parts of the country.
- 'Transmitting our pain' -
The rehearsals are accompanied by therapy sessions.
Participants were sceptical about the idea at first, but organisers said more and more are taking part.
"Music, particularly being able to practise my violin, has helped me to get away from the terrible reality," said Elizaveta Zaitseva, 25.
"Now I can live again in my own world, the one I am used to, the world of music," said Zaitseva, who studies in Nuremberg in Germany.
Thursday's concert will include the works of Ukrainian composers Maxim Berezovsky, Myroslav Skoryk and Boris Lyatoshynsky as well as a piece by Polish composer Henryk Wieniawski.
"It is unfortunately because of the war but our culture has a big opportunity" to make lesser-known composers known in the West, Zaitseva said.
"Europe will become much richer if it discovers the richness of Ukrainian culture."
Speaking at the Warsaw Philharmonic, where the walls are decorated with stark images of the ruins of post-war Warsaw, Zaitseva said she hoped that the music she plays could "access people's souls".
"Through music and art we are speaking to the soul, we are transmitting our pain and our wishes, our hopes into people's hearts through music," she said.
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Canadian film-maker David Cronenberg has been shocking audiences for decades with his graphic "body horror" movies but he has now gone further by creating art from his own insides.
The director is auctioning an image of his recently removed kidney stones just in time for the release of his latest movie "Crimes of the Future", in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes next month.
"My doctor said: 'You know, I would like to have your kidney stones so that we can do a chemical analysis and see if there's something in your diet that has caused your body to create this,'" the director told an online forum of his fans.
He said he refused because the analysis would destroy the objects.
"I think they're too beautiful to be destroyed," he said, adding that he felt a "closeness" to them.
"After all, this is pretty intimate, it comes from the inside of my body."
The image, called "Inner Beauty", is being sold as a digital token (NFT) with a starting bid of the equivalent of roughly $30,000 needed to kickstart a 24-hour auction.
Nobody has yet agreed to pay that price.
- 'Best kidney' prize -
The 79-year-old auteur has pushed the boundaries of taste and tested the patience of censors throughout a five-decade career that has fixated on the idea of humans as guinea pigs, transformed by technology and their environment.
The director won plaudits for classic horrors like "Scanners" (1981) and "The Fly" (1986).
But he told fans in a forum organised by NFT marketplace SuperRare that inspiration for his kidney stones project came from his 1988 movie "Dead Ringers", in which Jeremy Irons played twins, both gynaecologists.
"At one point one of the twins says to the other: 'I don't understand why there are not beauty contests for the insides of bodies. Most beautiful spleen, best kidney,'" he said.
The work is also, he said, a reference to his new film, which stars Viggo Mortensen as a performance artist who carries out surgery on himself.
- No physical product -
Cronenberg has dabbled in NFTs in the past, selling a one-minute film titled "The Death of David Cronenberg" for more than $75,000 in today's prices.
Burgeoning communities of artists are trying to exploit the tokens as a medium to spread their art, and some have sold for many millions of dollars.
Hollywood has proved particularly susceptible to a market estimated to be worth around $25 billion last year, with Cronenberg's fellow creator of outre films David Lynch making an NFT with rock band Interpol last year.
NFTs do not grant ownership of an artwork.
Rather, they are a unique entry into a blockchain, the vast computer system that underpins NFTs and cryptocurrencies.
Critics point out that NFTs are essentially worthless, getting value only from the hype around them.
The point was illustrated this month when an NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet could not even raise $10,000 at auction -- a year after it was bought for $2.9 million.
SuperRare told AFP that creators of NFTs often supply a physical product to the buyer like a print of the photo.
But the marketplace said Cronenberg "did not indicate anything about sending the physical copy" of his work, which has now been on sale for several weeks.
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Behind an unmarked gate, on a residential street in South Africa's Soweto township, Thami Mazibuko makes his way down a corridor and up a stairwell, all lined with books.
Here in his childhood home, the 36-year-old has turned the upper level into a bookstore and library, seeded with 30 of his own books, now overflowing with hundreds of donations.
The slender man's face lights up as he rummages through the stacks to find some of the most popular reads -- currently Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and Sol Plaatje's "Mhudi", the first novel in English by a black South African.
"Books, they put you in other people's shoes," Mazibuko told AFP. "I want people to visit here, and be transported into other communities."
As a child, he can't remember having any books in his home.
After he finished school, he left Soweto and moved into the formerly white suburbs of Johannesburg, staying with relatives who were artists, with a home full of books.
He developed an insatiable appetite for reading, even bring books into the reggae club where he liked to listen to music.
When he decided to move back home, he brought his growing personal collection with him.
"Readers who do not have access to books, your old aunties, they are like 'you have books! Can I borrow one?'" he recalled. "And I am like, okay aunty it's fine."
So began the Soweto Book Cafe, officially founded in 2018.
Now, he sells books to those with enough money to buy them. And he offers a membership fee of 50 rand ($3.50) a year for people who want to borrow books -- though in reality, he loans them to almost anyone who asks.
"That's one of the reasons I started this place, to advance literacy and to provide the community with access to books and information, which is a basic human right," he said.
- 'Reading Is Super Cool' -
The Book Cafe also hosts a youth group, called Reading Is Super Cool, with 50 regular members from ages four to 16. Older kids read to younger ones, and Mazibuko teaches them board games like chess and go.
Sindisiwe Zulu, 27, started the book club to help her niece get through school.
"She was failing dismally and I asked her," why.
The reply was that she didn't know how to read: 'I don't understand a thing that is why I am failing.'
"I have a lot of books at home, and I initially started with her and a few friends, and started the book club," Zulu said.
Neighbourhood start-ups like the Book Cafe took on even greater importance during South Africa's stringent Covid lockdown, when public libraries were closed for more than a year.
Small bookshops such as this one proliferate across Johannesburg, usually offering second-hand books, but also a sense of community.
The last major survey of Johannesburg's books scene was completed a decade ago, as part of the World Cities Culture Report, which found the city has 1,020 bookshops -- just five less than Paris, and about 250 more than New York.
Mazibuko likes to focus on African literature, and has hosted book launches and readings on his unassuming residential street.
More importantly, he provides a quiet, safe space for his neighbourhood.
"I come to do my assignments, read and de-stress," said 14-year-old Anele Ndlovu, one of the Soweto Book Cafe's regulars.
"It's where I like to think about what I want in my life."
Her dream is to go into finance, and become a forex trader. So while she's enjoying a Michael Connelly's thriller at the moment, she knows what she'd like to read next: "Books that can teach us how life is, and how markets work."
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Brazilian businesswoman Luiza Trajano has made it onto a lot of lists: TIME's most influential people, Forbes' billionaires, the biggest fortunes in Brazil...
But although she has been touted as a potential contender in Brazil's presidential elections this year, there is one list she says she is determined to stay off: the ballot.
With the country deeply polarized ahead of October's polls, "I want to unite Brazil," not divide it further, says the 73-year-old entrepreneur, who made her fortune building her family store, Magazine Luiza, into one of Latin America's biggest online retailers.
Not that Trajano, a household name in Brazil, is shying from the spotlight as the race heats up between far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his nemesis, leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Known for her trailblazing work promoting women's equality, fighting racial discrimination and pushing to speed up Brazil's vaccination campaign against Covid-19, Trajano says she remains engaged as ever in this clutch election year.
"I want to take Brazil where I think it should be, where I think it deserves to be," she told AFP in an interview.
"I want to end these deep divisions that are causing the country a lot of harm," said the elegantly dressed businesswoman, a forceful speaker with an imposing personality offset by her contagious laugh and bright red lipstick.
- 'Different' odyssey -
Plenty of Brazilians would like to see Trajano get into politics.
With the business sector and political middle desperately seeking centrist alternatives to Lula and Bolsonaro, her name was floated as a potential "third-way" candidate.
There was also talk Lula could ask her to be his running mate.
"I've been invited plenty of times (to run), including for president," Trajano said.
But she added she doesn't want labels, beyond the ones she already has: chair of the board at Magalu, as her company is popularly known, and president of Women of Brazil, her 100,000-member empowerment initiative.
"I'm nonpartisan, but political," she said.
That has not stopped Bolsonaro from attacking her as a "socialist businesswoman."
Lula has meanwhile sung her praises.
When TIME named Trajano to its list of 100 most influential people last year, the ex-president (2003-2010) wrote the magazine's blurb on her.
"In a world where billionaires burn their fortunes on space adventures and yachts, Luiza is dedicated to a different kind of odyssey... building a commercial giant while constructing a better Brazil," waxed the Workers' Party (PT) founder.
But Trajano wants to be clear: The PT has "never" asked her to run for office, she said.
- Salesgirl to chairwoman -
Trajano grew up the only child of a modest family in the city of Franca, in southeastern Brazil.
She started working at 12 during school vacation, helping out at the household goods store founded in 1957 by her aunt, also named Luiza.
"I had the fortune to come from a family of women entrepreneurs, who believed in the power of women at a time when most women didn't work outside the home," said Trajano.
She took the helm in 1991, and soon turned the business into one of the biggest retail chains in Brazil, with nearly 1,500 stores, and an e-commerce pioneer.
"I've broken a lot of beliefs that limited me," said Trajano.
"I love doing that."
- No slowing down -
Trajano rejects Bolsonaro's label of "socialist." But paradoxically, the fifth-richest woman in Brazil, whose fortune is estimated at $1.4 billion, says she is no fan of capitalism either, calling it "savage."
She prefers to focus on ways to better society.
When Covid-19 hit Brazil hard and Bolsonaro flouted expert advice on containing it, Trajano mobilized a campaign called "United for the Vaccine" that rallied private-sector support for the public-health system.
Seeking to fight structural racism in Brazil, she launched a trainee program at Magazine Luiza in 2020 to recruit promising black employees -- drawing both applause and criticism.
Now she is setting her sights on including more women in politics.
Women currently hold just 15 percent of seats in Brazil's Congress. Trajano wants them to hold half.
She won't run herself -- but she's not slowing down, either.
"I change cycles, but I'll never retire," she said.
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When Japanese sumo wrestler Takuya Saito retired from the sport at 32 and began jobhunting, he had no professional experience and didn't even know how to use a computer.
Athletes in many sports can struggle to reinvent themselves after retirement, but the challenge is particularly acute for those in the ancient world of sumo.
Wrestlers are often recruited early, sometimes as young as 15, and their formal education ends when they move into the communal stables where they live and train.
That can leave them in for a rude awakening when their topknots are shorn in the ritual that marks their retirement.
When Saito left sumo, he considered becoming a baker, inspired by one of his favourite cartoons.
"But when I tried it out, they told me I was too big" for the kitchen space, said the 40-year-old, who weighed in at 165 kilogrammes (26 stone) during his career.
"I had several job interviews, but I didn't have any experience... They rejected me everywhere," he told AFP.
Professional sumo wrestlers or "rikishi" who rise to the top of the sport can open their own stables, but that's not an option for most.
Last year, of 89 professional wrestlers who retired, just seven remained in the sumo world.
For the others, the restaurant industry sometimes appeals, offering a chance to use the experience gained cooking large meals for their stablemates.
Others become masseurs after years of dealing with aching muscles, or leverage their heft to become security guards.
- 'Inferiority complex' -
But trying to start over when non-sumo peers can be a decade or more into a career track is often demoralising.
Saito said he developed an "inferiority complex" and found the experience of jobhunting far harsher than the tough discipline of his life as a rikishi.
"In sumo, the stable master was always there to protect us," he said, adding that his former stable master offered him a place to stay, meals and clothes until his found his feet.
Many wrestlers leave the sport with little or no savings, because salaries are only paid to the 10 percent of rikishi in the sport's two top divisions. Lower-ranking wrestlers get nothing but room, board and tournament expenses.
Saito wanted to be his own boss and decided to become an administrative scrivener, a legal professional who can prepare official document and provide legal advice.
The qualifying exam is notoriously tough, and when Saito passed he opted to specialise in procedures related to restaurants, hoping to help other former wrestlers.
His first client was Tomohiko Yamaguchi, a friend in the restaurant industry with an amateur sumo background.
"The sumo world is very unique and I think that outsiders can't understand it," Yamaguchi told AFP, suggesting society can sometimes prejudge rikishi.
Wrestlers who go from being stopped for photos and showered with gifts can also struggle with fading into obscurity.
A rare few may end up with television gigs that keep them in the public eye, but for most, the limelight moves on.
- 'Very strong, very reassuring' -
Keisuke Kamikawa joined the sumo world at 15, "before even graduating high school, without any experience of adult life in the outside world," he told AFP.
Today, the 44-year-old heads SumoPro, a talent agency for former wrestlers that helps with casting and other appearances, but also runs two day centres for the elderly, staffed in part by retired rikishi.
"It's a completely different world from sumo, but rikishi are used to being considerate and caring" because lower-ranked wrestlers serve those in the upper echelons, explained Kamikawa.
Shuji Nakaita, a former wrestler now working at one of Kamikawa's care centres, spent years helping famed sumo champion Terunofuji.
"I prepared his meals, I scrubbed his back in the bath... there are similarities with care of the elderly," he said after a game of cards with two visitors to the centre.
And while the sight of hulking former rikishi around diminutive elderly men and women might appear incongruous, the retired wrestlers are popular.
"They are very strong, very reassuring and gentle," smiled Mitsutoshi Ito, a 70-year-old who says he enjoys the chance to chat about sumo with former wrestlers.
Kamikawa has also set up a group that provides advice on post-sumo careers to wrestlers and families worried their sons are not planning for their future.
"Sumo is a world where you have to be ready to put your life in danger to win a fight," said Hideo Ito, an acupuncturist who has worked with rikishi for over two decades.
"For these wrestlers who are giving it their all, thinking about the future can seem like a weakness in their armour."
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© Agence France-Presse
In a country where a Muay Thai right hook is more familiar than a batter's hook shot, Thailand's pioneering women cricketers are winning hearts with smiles, dance moves -- and skill.
In contrast to Asian powerhouses India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where the game has deep historical roots going back to British imperial rule, cricket remains in its infancy in Thailand and is still virtually unknown.
Thailand qualified for the 2020 Women's T20 World Cup in Australia, where the hosts beat India in the final, but further progress is being hampered by minimal exposure on TV and lack of access to equipment.
They have suffered heartbreak too.
Thailand were on course to reach the 50-over World Cup in New Zealand in March-April, but saw their dream shattered when the qualifying tournament was abandoned because of the pandemic.
None of it helps when trying to raise awareness of cricket in Thailand.
All-rounder Chanida Sutthiruang played in the T20 World Cup, where Thailand failed to win in four games and bowed out in the group stage, and says that even her own family struggle to grasp the sport.
"Most people in Thailand associate cricket with hockey. My parents don't understand what cricket is," the 28-year-old farmer's daughter told AFP.
- Making their mark -
At early morning training on the outskirts of Bangkok, Natthakan Chantam is all smiles as a bowling machine spits 100kph (60mph) deliveries at her.
"I love the celebrations when you score a run or get someone out... there are celebrations in every moment of the game," the 26-year-old opener, Thailand's top run-scorer at the T20 World Cup, told AFP.
"I think that's the charm of cricket."
Thailand made their international debut in 2007 but have drastically improved in the past three years, said their Indian head coach Harshal Pathak.
"We like to play cricket with an aggressive brand... there's an intent in everything -- the way we bat, the way we field, the way we bowl. There's a businesslike attitude," he told AFP.
"The girls want to make a mark for themselves."
He praised the team's spin attack and said fielding was another strength, with batting slowly developing.
"We're at a stage where we are mastering how to complete games and how to build innings," he said.
The country's cricket association started offering full- and part-time contracts about 10 years ago, which stopped a talent drain caused by women from poorer rural backgrounds being unable to afford to play.
- 'We felt empty' -
But their biggest recent setback was the failure to reach the 50-over Women's Cricket World Cup in New Zealand, the jewel in the sport's international calendar.
Thailand won three out of four matches but the November-December qualifying series in Zimbabwe was abandoned because of the Omicron variant emerging in southern Africa.
The three remaining World Cup places were handed out based on one-day international rankings, meaning Bangladesh, Pakistan and the West Indies qualified instead.
"We felt so empty," Sutthiruang said.
"One minute we were celebrating a win and then a minute later we were told we were disqualified and we had to rush to the airport to get back to Thailand because of Omicron."
The team also missed out on a place in the latest ICC Women's Championship, denying them a chance to test themselves regularly against top sides.
"It sets them back by three years," women's cricket historian Raf Nicholson, from Bournemouth University in England, told AFP.
She said the Thai team needed to play against top-10 nations to take their game to the next level, rather than beating lower-tier teams.
The team could become a model for other nations which have little cricketing history but are keen to develop the game, she said.
"Thailand is an example to any country without a long history of cricket that if you invest enough and are committed enough, good things will happen," she said.
- 'How cool is this?' -
The team now have their sights set on qualifying for the next T20 World Cup in South Africa in February next year.
Whatever happens, former Australian captain turned commentator Lisa Sthalekar said they will continue to win hearts with their captivating smiles, on-field dancing and traditional bowing.
"They played in a spirit... reminded you of when you first started playing the game," Sthalekar said.
"It wasn't: 'I'm in a T20 World Cup, it's do or die, we have to win.'
"It's like: 'How cool is this?'"
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