AFP UK

Miners in Angola have unearthed a rare pure pink diamond that is believed to be the largest found in 300 years, the Australian site operator announced Wednesday.

A 170 carat pink diamond — dubbed The Lulo Rose — was discovered at Lulo mine in the country’s diamond-rich northeast and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors.

The “historic” find of the Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones, was welcomed by the Angolan government, which is also a partner in the mine.

“This record and spectacular pink diamond recovered from Lulo continues to showcase Angola as an important player on the world stage,” Angola’s Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo said.

The diamond will be sold at international tender, likely at a dazzling price.

Although The Lulo Rose would have to be cut and polished to realise its true value, in a process that can see a stone lose 50 percent of its weight, similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.

The 59.6 carat Pink Star was sold at a Hong Kong auction in 2017 for 71.2 million US dollars. It remains the most expensive diamond ever sold.

Miners in Angola have unearthed a rare pure pink diamond that is believed to be the largest found in 300 years, the Australian site operator announced Wednesday.

A 170 carat pink diamond — dubbed The Lulo Rose — was discovered at Lulo mine in the country’s diamond-rich northeast and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors.

The “historic” find of the Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones, was welcomed by the Angolan government, which is also a partner in the mine.

“This record and spectacular pink diamond recovered from Lulo continues to showcase Angola as an important player on the world stage,” Angola’s Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo said.

The diamond will be sold at international tender, likely at a dazzling price.

Although The Lulo Rose would have to be cut and polished to realise its true value, in a process that can see a stone lose 50 percent of its weight, similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.

The 59.6 carat Pink Star was sold at a Hong Kong auction in 2017 for 71.2 million US dollars. It remains the most expensive diamond ever sold.

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed at least three people in the northern Philippines Wednesday, toppling buildings, and shaking high-rise towers more than 300 kilometres (185 miles) away in the capital Manila.

The shallow but powerful quake struck the mountainous and lightly populated province of Abra on the main island of Luzon at 8:43 am (0043 GMT), the US Geological Survey said.

Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage than deeper ones. This one left scores of people injured, triggered landslides, damaged churches, and knocked out power.

In Bangued, the provincial capital of Abra, which felt the full force of the quake, a 23-year-old woman was killed after a wall fell on her, police said. At least 62 people were injured in the province.

A 25-year-old construction worker in La Trinidad, the capital of the landlocked province Benguet, died when the three-storey building he was working on collapsed, police said. Seven other workers escaped unharmed.

Another person was killed when he fell off a construction site in the mountains of Kalinga province, where eight people were also injured, police said. 

As buildings shook and walls cracked in the municipality of Dolores in Abra, people ran outside, Police Major Edwin Sergio told AFP.

“The quake was very strong,” Sergio said, adding windows of the local market were broken.

“Vegetables and fruits sold in the market were also disarranged after tables were toppled.”

A video posted on Facebook and verified by AFP showed cracks in the asphalt road and ground in Bangued.

A number of the injured in Bangued were taken to hospital, police chief Major Nazareno Emia told AFP. 

“Some of the buildings here show cracks. Power was cut off and internet as well,” he added.

Congressman Ching Bernos, who represents the lone district of Abra, said the quake “caused damages to many households and establishments”, but did not elaborate.

University student Mira Zapata was in her house in San Juan municipality when she felt “really strong shaking”.

“We started shouting and rushed outside,” she said, as aftershocks continued.

“Our house is ok but houses down the hill were damaged.” 

– Ring of Fire –

The Philippines is regularly rocked by quakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Wednesday’s quake was the strongest recorded in the Philippines in years and was felt across swathes of Luzon island, the most populous in the archipelago.

It was followed by more than 200 aftershocks, the local seismological agency said. Several of the subsequent quakes measured from magnitude 4.7 to 4.9, according to USGS.

Residents and office workers in Manila were evacuated from high-rise buildings.  

“Some of our personnel were pruning branches so they had to climb down immediately after they felt the strong shaking,” said Pangasinan provincial police chief Colonel Richmond Tadina. 

In Vigan City, in the province of Ilocos Sur, centuries-old structures built during the Spanish colonial period were damaged.

Verified video footage posted on Facebook showed the Bantay Bell Tower in the popular tourist destination partially crumbling. 

Two visitors suffered minor injuries from falling debris, an official said.

“We can’t rule out the possibility of another strong earthquake,” said Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, whose family stronghold is in the north, said he would delay visiting the region to avoid causing disruptions.

Military personnel have been deployed to Abra to help with rescue operations.

There were reports of landslides in some areas. National disaster agency spokesman Mark Timbal said road-clearing operations were underway. 

There were no reports of damage to dams in the region, he added.

In October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Bohol Island in the central Philippines, killing over 200 people and triggering landslides.

Old churches in the birthplace of Catholicism in the Philippines were badly damaged. Nearly 400,000 were displaced and tens of thousands of houses were damaged. 

The powerful quake altered the island’s landscape and a “ground rupture” pushed up a stretch of ground by about three meters, creating a wall of rock above the epicentre. 

In 1990, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the northern Philippines created a ground rupture stretching over a hundred kilometres. 

Fatalities were estimated to reach over 1,200 and caused major damage to buildings in Manila.

In the scorching heat, Felipe Elvira inspects the branches of his olive trees, planted as far as the eye can see on a dusty hillside in southern Spain.

“There are no olives on these. Everything is dry,” the 68-year-old said.

He and his son own a 100-hectare (250-acre) olive farm in the southern province of Jaen in sun-drenched Andalusia, a region which produces the bulk of the country’s olive oil.

But a severe drought gripping much of Spain threatens to shrivel their harvest this year.

“We are used to a lack of water, but not to this point,” said Elvira.

The region used to get 800 litres (210 gallons) of rainfall per square metre, but is set to get around half that amount this year, he said. 

“Every year it’s worse,” Elvira said.

Global warming is hitting Spain harder than most European nations. 

The country has suffered three intense heatwaves since May, damaging crops already grappling with an unusually dry winter.

“Olive trees are very resistant to water scarcity,” said Juan Carlos Hervas, an expert with the COAG farmers’ union.

But when droughts become extreme, the trees “activate mechanisms to protect themselves. They don’t die but no longer produce anything,” he added.

– ‘Absolutely dramatic’ –

Hervas predicts the olive harvest from unirrigated land will come in at less than 20 percent of the average of the last five years.

The harvest from irrigated land will be just 50 to 60 percent of this average, he said.

But water reserves are dwindling.

The Guadalquivir river, which provides Andalusia with a large part of its water, is in “an absolutely dramatic situation” due to the lack of rain, said Rosario Jimenez, a hydrology professor at the University of Jaen.

Reservoirs fed by the river are at just 30 percent of their capacity, according to Spain’s ecological transition ministry.

“Some are even at 10 percent capacity — that is practically dried up,” said Jimenez.

Farmers have also noticed changes in recent years.

“Not only does it rain less, but when it falls, it does so torrentially. The water flows without penetrating the earth,” said Hervas.

Parts of Portugal and Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to a study published this month in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The phenomenon is set to increase, jeopardising crops like olives and grapes.

At stake is a key export: Spain supplies nearly half of the world’s olive oil. Its exports of this “green gold” are worth some 3.6 billion euros ($3.7 billion) per year.

– Olive dependence –

Olive oil has been an essential part of the Mediterranean diet for thousands of years and olive trees cover many hillsides in southern Spain, which are often unsuitable for other crops.

“Many villages here depend entirely on olive trees. Without olives, there is no more revenue,” said Hervas.

Seven out of 10 hectares of olive farmland in Spain are not irrigated, according to the COAG farmers’ union.

With the rise in temperatures, 80 percent of Andalusia’s unirrigated olive tree plantations may no longer be suitable to grow olives, or at least some varieties of the crop, it added.

The quality could also decline because farmers will have to pick the fruit early, before it is fully mature, the union said in a recent report.

Some farmers may be tempted to start irrigating their plots, but this would deplete stretched reservoirs even further.

Agriculture already consumes up to four-fifths of Spain’s water resources, said Jimenez.

“Not all land can be irrigated,” she said.

Back at his farm, Elvira is all too aware of the problem.

“We can’t exhaust resources, everyone needs water. Honestly, I don’t know how we are going to manage,” he said.

Local authorities hunting for a gang of monkeys who attacked and wounded nearly 50 people in western Japan have caught and killed one of the marauding primates, an official said Wednesday.

The male simian was seized while roaming the grounds of a high school in Yamaguchi city — but it may not be the end of the furry, twisting tale, with other monkeys feared to be at large.

City officials have been trying for weeks to track down the vicious gang who have made national headlines by assaulting residents with mostly mild scratches and bites.

On Tuesday evening, specially commissioned hunters shot the monkey with a tranquiliser gun and eventually caught it near a lake on the school premises, an official at the local agricultural department told AFP.

After identifying it as the same animal responsible for one of the attacks, the monkey was put down, he said. It had an estimated age of four and was around half a metre tall.

Patrols have been underway in Yamaguchi since the attacks on adults and children began around three weeks ago.

But with 49 people injured as of Tuesday midday and fresh attack reports coming in, the search is still on.

“Eyewitnesses describe monkeys of different sizes, and even after the capture, we’ve been getting reports of new attacks,” said the city official, who declined to be named.

Japanese macaques are seen commonly across large parts of the country, and are a pest in some areas, eating crops and even entering homes.

But the spate of attacks in Yamaguchi is unusual, with some residents telling local media that they are now carrying umbrellas and tree-cutting scissors to defend themselves.

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the northern Philippines Wednesday, authorities said, killing one person, shattering windows at the epicentre and shaking high-rise towers more than 300 kilometres (185 miles) away in the capital Manila. 

The shallow but powerful quake struck the mountainous and lightly populated province of Abra on the main island of Luzon at 8:43 am (0043 GMT), the US Geological Survey said.

Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage than deeper ones.

A 25-year-old construction worker in La Trinidad, the capital of the landlocked province Benguet, died when the three-storey building he was working on collapsed, police said. Seven other workers escaped unharmed.

In the municipality of Dolores in Abra, which felt the full force of the quake, terrified people ran outside their homes and shops, and the local market’s windows were broken, Police Major Edwin Sergio told AFP.

“The quake was very strong,” Sergio said, adding there were small cracks in the police station building.

“Vegetables and fruits sold in the market were also disarranged after tables were toppled.”

A video posted on Facebook and verified by AFP showed cracks in the asphalt road and ground in the nearby provincial capital of Bangued, though there was no visible damage to houses or stores.

But a number of injured people in Bangued were taken to hospital, police chief Major Nazareno Emia told AFP. 

“Some of the buildings here show cracks. Power was cut off and internet as well,” he added.

Congressman Ching Bernos, who represents the lone district of Abra, said the quake “caused damages to many households and establishments”, but did not elaborate.

University student Mira Zapata was in her house in San Juan municipality when she felt “really strong shaking”.

“We started shouting and rushed outside,” she said, as aftershocks continued.

“Our house is ok but houses down the hill were damaged.” 

– Ring of Fire –

The Philippines is regularly rocked by quakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Wednesday’s quake was the strongest recorded in the Philippines in years.

“Some of our personnel were pruning branches so they had to climb down immediately after they felt the strong shaking,” said Pangasinan provincial police chief Colonel Richmond Tadina. 

In Vigan City, in the nearby province of Ilocos Sur, centuries-old structures built during the Spanish colonial period were damaged.

Verified video footage posted on Facebook showed the Bantay Bell Tower in the popular tourist destination partially crumbling. 

“We can’t rule out the possibility of another strong earthquake,” said Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, whose family stronghold is in the north, was expected to visit the affected region as soon as it was safe, his press secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles said.

There were reports of landslides in some areas. National disaster agency spokesman Mark Timbal said road-clearing operations were under way. 

There were no reports of damage to dams in the region, he added.

In October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Bohol Island in the central Philippines, killing over 200 people and triggering landslides.

Old churches in the birthplace of Catholicism in the Philippines were badly damaged. Nearly 400,000 were displaced and tens of thousands of houses were damaged. 

The powerful quake altered the island’s landscape and a “ground rupture” pushed up a stretch of ground by about three meters, creating a wall of rock above the epicentre. 

In 1990, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the northern Philippines created a ground rupture stretching over a hundred kilometres. 

Fatalities were estimated to reach over 1,200 and caused major damage to buildings in Manila.

The nation’s volcanology and seismology institute regularly holds quake drills, simulating scenarios in the nation’s active fault lines.  

A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit the northern Philippines Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said, shattering windows of buildings at the epicentre and shaking high-rise towers more than 300 kilometres (185 miles) away in the capital Manila. 

The shallow but powerful quake struck the mountainous and lightly populated province of Abra on the main island of Luzon at 8:43 am (0043 GMT), the USGS said.

Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage than deeper ones.

In the municipality of Dolores, which felt the full force of the quake, terrified people ran outside their homes and shops, and the local market’s windows were shattered, Police Major Edwin Sergio told AFP.

“The quake was very strong,” Sergio said, adding there were small cracks in the police station building.

“Vegetables and fruits sold in the market were also disarranged after tables were toppled.”

A video posted on Facebook and verified by AFP showed cracks in the asphalt road and ground in the nearby town of Bangued, though there was no visible damage to houses or stores.

But a number of injured people in Bangued were taken to hospital, police chief Major Nazareno Emia told AFP. 

“Some of the buildings here show cracks. Power was cut off and internet as well,” he added.

Congressman Ching Bernos, who represents the Lone District of Abra, said the quake “caused damages to many households and establishments”, but did not elaborate.

University student Mira Zapata was in her house in the town of San Juan when she felt “really strong shaking”.

“We started shouting and rushed outside,” she said, as aftershocks continued.

“Our house is ok but houses down the hill were damaged.” 

– Ring of Fire –

The Philippines is regularly rocked by quakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Wednesday’s quake was the strongest recorded in the Philippines in years.

In Vigan City, in the nearby province of Ilocos Sur, centuries-old structures built during the Spanish colonial period were damaged.

Verified video posted on Facebook showed the Bantay Bell Tower in the popular tourist destination partially crumbling. 

“We can’t rule out the possibility of another strong earthquake,” said Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

In October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Bohol Island in the central Philippines, killing over 200 people and triggering landslides.

Old churches in the birthplace of Catholicism in the Philippines were badly damaged. Nearly 400,000 were displaced and tens of thousands of houses were damaged. 

The powerful quake altered the island’s landscape and a “ground rupture” pushed up a stretch of ground by up to three meters, creating a wall of rock above the epicentre. 

In 1990, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the northern Philippines created a ground rupture stretching over a hundred kilometres. 

Fatalities were estimated to reach over 1,200 and caused major damage to buildings in Manila.

The nation’s volcanology and seismology institute regularly holds quake drills, simulating scenarios in the nation’s active fault lines. 

During major earthquakes, the agency said people would find it difficult to stand on upper floors, trees could shake strongly, heavy objects and furniture may topple and large church bells may ring. 

A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit the northern Philippines Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said, shattering windows of buildings at the epicentre and shaking high-rise towers more than 300 kilometres (185 miles) away in the capital Manila. 

The shallow but powerful quake struck the mountainous and lightly populated province of Abra on the main island of Luzon at 8:43 am (0043 GMT), the USGS said, after initially measuring the quake at 6.8 magnitude.

Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage than deeper ones.

In Dolores, which felt the full force of the quake, terrified people ran outside their buildings and windows of the local market were shattered, Police Major Edwin Sergio told AFP.

“The quake was very strong,” Sergio said, adding there were minor cracks in the police station building.

“Vegetables and fruits sold in the market were also disarranged after tables were toppled.”

A video posted on Facebook and verified by AFP showed cracks in the asphalt road and ground in the nearby town of Bangued, but there was no visible damage to shops or houses.

A number of people were injured in Bangued and taken to hospital for treatment, police chief Major Nazareno Emia told AFP. 

University student Mira Zapata was in her house in San Juan town when she felt “really strong shaking”.

“We started shouting and rushed outside,” she said, as aftershocks continued.

“Our house is ok but houses down the hill were damaged.” 

– Ring of Fire –

The Philippines is regularly rocked by quakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Wednesday’s quake was the strongest recorded in the Philippines in years.  

In October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Bohol Island in the central Philippines, killing over 200 people and triggering landslides.

Old churches in the birthplace of Catholicism in the Philippines were badly damaged. Nearly 400,000 were displaced and tens of thousands of houses were damaged. 

The powerful quake altered the island’s landscape and a “ground rupture” pushed up a stretch of ground by up to three meters, creating a wall of rock above the epicentre. 

In 1990, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the northern Philippines created a ground rupture stretching over a hundred kilometres. 

Fatalities were estimated to reach over 1,200 and caused major damage to buildings in Manila.

The nation’s volcanology and seismology institute regularly holds quake drills, simulating scenarios in the nation’s active fault lines. 

During major earthquakes, the agency said people would find it difficult to stand on upper floors, trees could shake strongly, heavy objects and furniture may topple and large church bells may ring. 

An animal market in China’s Wuhan really was the epicenter of the Covid pandemic, according to a pair of new studies in the journal Science published Tuesday that claimed to have tipped the balance in the debate about the virus’ origins.

Answering the question of whether the disease spilled over naturally from animals to humans, or was the result of a lab accident, is viewed as vital to averting the next pandemic and saving millions of lives.

The first paper analyzed the geographic pattern of Covid cases in the outbreak’s first month, December 2019, showing the first cases were tightly clustered around the Huanan Market. 

The second examined genomic data from the earliest cases to study the virus’ early evolution, concluding it was unlikely the coronavirus circulated widely in humans prior to November 2019.

Both were previously posted as “preprints” but have now been vetted by scientific peer review and appear in a prestigious journal.

Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.

But the findings moved him “to the point where now I also think it’s just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market,” he told reporters on a call about the findings.

Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.

This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was “zoonotic” — that it jumped from animals to people.

The first study’s team used mapping tools to determine the location of most of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.

Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market — and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.

Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus — including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.

– Two introductions to humans –

The study authors also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.

The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.

“This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically,” Worobey said in a statement. “It really originated at that market and spread out from there.”

The second study focused on resolving an apparent discrepancy in the virus’ early evolution.

Two lineages, A and B, marked the early pandemic. 

But while A was closer to the virus found in bats, suggesting the coronavirus in humans came from this source and that A gave rise to B, it was B that was found to be far more present around the market.

The researchers used a technique called “molecular clock analysis,” which relies on the rate at which genetic mutations occur over time to reconstruct a timeline of evolution — and found it unlikely that A gave rise to B.

“Otherwise, lineage A would have had to have been evolving in slow motion compared to the lineage B virus, which just doesn’t make biological sense,” said Worobey.

Instead, the probable scenario was that both jumped from animals at the market to humans on separate occasions, in November and December 2019. The researchers concluded it was unlikely that there was human circulation prior to November 2019.

Under this scenario, there were probably other animal-to-human transmissions at the market that failed to manifest as Covid cases.

“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not. Will we ever be able to know? No,” said co-author Kristian Anderson of The Scripps Research Institute.

“But I think what’s really important here is that there are possible scenarios and they’re plausible scenarios and it’s really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely.”

The jacket worn by US astronaut Buzz Aldrin during his 1969 flight to the Moon aboard Apollo 11 was sold at auction for $2.7 million in New York Tuesday, Sotheby’s announced.

The white jacket, adorned with an American flag, NASA’s initials, a patch for the Apollo 11 mission and the name “E. ALDRIN,” is part of a personal collection of items the 92-year-old astronaut decided to put up for sale. 

“The exceptionally rare garment was chased by multiple bidders for almost ten minutes before selling to a bidder on the phone,” Sotheby’s said in a statement. 

“After deep consideration, the time felt right to share these items with the world, which for many are symbols of a historical moment, but for me have always remained personal mementos of a life dedicated to science and exploration,” Aldrin, the last living member of Apollo 11’s three-member flight crew, said in a statement last week. 

He explained the jacket was separate from the spacesuit he wore while walking on the moon with fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong, but that he wore it while flying to and from the Moon. 

“I wore this Inflight Coverall Jacket… in the Command Module Columbia, on our historic journey to the Moon and back home again during the Apollo 11 mission,” Aldrin said.

The suits worn on the Moon by Aldrin and Armstrong are part of the National Air and Space Museum’s collections in Washington. 

In total, the New York auction garnered $8.2 million for 68 items sold out of the 69 offered, including $819,000 for a flight plan.