Work among the penguins? France is looking for candidates

In this file photo taken on September 06, 2012 shows the Kerguelen archipelago which forms one of the five districts of the territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). (AFP)
Updated 07 February 2018
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Work among the penguins? France is looking for candidates

BREST, France: Fancy a job at the North or South Pole? A French research institute is looking for you.
The Paul-Emile Victor Polar Institute in northwest France has launched a public appeal to recruit around 40 French-speaking people for a wide variety of jobs at its six bases in the Arctic and Antarctica.
From chemists and carpenters to bakers and pastry chefs, the institute is stepping up its efforts to reach potential candidates for 12- to 14-month stints at its bases with endless summer days and winter nights.
“We get lots of interest from the biology fields but not enough mechanics or tool operators, because these people don’t know about us,” said Laurence Andre Le Marec, hiring director at the institute named for a French polar explorer and pioneer.
It operates at the Spitzberg base in the Arctic and the Dumont d’Urville and Concordia bases in Antarctica, as well as three bases on France’s sub-Antarctic islands of Amsterdam, Crozet and Kerguelen.
Women in particular are being sought in this year’s recruitment drive, which includes six testimonial videos from female alumni.
At the Dumont d’Urville station there are just six women compared to 24 men. “I haven’t been able to get balance” among the sexes, Andre Le Marec admitted.
The 40 successful candidates — 30 of whom are reserved for France’s corps of Civic Service volunteers — will have to pass a medical exam that includes psychological evaluations.
“We make sure they are physically apt for this type of mission, and psychologically ready to live in a small group on an isolated site under conditions that can at times be extreme,” Andre Le Marec said.
The mechanic being sought for the Concordia station, for example, will have to mesh with a group of about 60 people in summer and just 14 in winter — when temperatures can plunge to minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 110 degrees Fahrenheit).
“There’s no going back over winter,” the job posting on the institute’s website warns.
Concordia, which houses a French-Italian team, is one of three permanent bases maintained in the interior of Antarctica, one of the most isolated and inhospitable places on the planet.
“Not all the bases have temperatures this extreme,” Andre Le Marec assured, adding that a biologist sought on the island of Amsterdam, in the southern Indian Ocean, would be able to work “in a T-shirt.”
“It was incredible,” said Claire Le Calvez, who spent a tour at Dumont d’Urville as a chemist and glaciologist in 2003 and eventually joined the roughly 50 permanent employees at the institute.
What one discovers in the natural world of Antarctica is amazing, she added.
“These are memories that last a lifetime.”


Kim Kardashian will testify in the Paris trial about the jewelry heist that upended her life

Updated 54 min 42 sec ago
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Kim Kardashian will testify in the Paris trial about the jewelry heist that upended her life

The last time Kim Kardashian faced the men that police say robbed her, she was bound with zip ties and held at gunpoint, and feared she might die. On Tuesday, nearly a decade later, she returns to Paris to testify against them.
One of the most recognizable figures on the planet is expected to take the stand against the 10 men accused of orchestrating the 2016 robbery that left her locked in a marble bathroom while masked assailants made off with more than $6 million in jewels.
Kardashian is set to speak about the trauma that reshaped her life and redefined the risks of celebrity in the age of social media. Her appearance is expected to be the most emotionally charged moment of a trial that began last month.
Court officials are bracing for a crowd, and security will be tight. A second courtroom has been opened for journalists following via video feed.
Kardashian’s testimony is expected to revisit, in painful detail, how intruders zip-tied her hands, demanded her ring, and left her believing she might never see her children again.
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has died. Another has been excused from proceedings due to serious illness. Most are in their 60s and 70s — dubbed les papys braqueurs, or “the grandpa robbers,” by the French press — but investigators insist they were no harmless retirees. Authorities have described them as a seasoned and coordinated criminal group.
Two of the defendants have admitted being at the scene. The others deny any involvement — some even claim they didn’t know who Kardashian was. But police say the group tracked her movements through her own social media posts, which flaunted her jewelry, pinpointed her location, and exposed her vulnerability.
The heist transformed Kardashian into a cautionary tale of hyper-visibility in the digital age.
In the aftermath, she withdrew from public life. She developed severe anxiety and later described symptoms of agoraphobia. “I hated to go out,” she said in a 2021 interview. “I didn’t want anybody to know where I was … I just had such anxiety.”
Her lawyers confirmed she would appear in court. “She has tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system,” they wrote, adding that she hopes the trial proceeds “in an orderly fashion … and with respect for all parties.”
Once dismissed in parts of the French press as a reality TV spectacle — and lambasted by Karl Lagerfeld for being too flashy — Kardashian now returns as a key witness in a case that has forced a wider reckoning with how celebrity, crime, and perception collide.
Her lawyers say she is “particularly grateful” to French authorities — and ready to confront those who attacked her with dignity.


Samsung launches slimmest smartphone as races against rival Apple

Updated 13 May 2025
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Samsung launches slimmest smartphone as races against rival Apple

  • The S25 Edge has Samsung’s latest built-in AI functions
  • Analysts said the launch was strategically timed to pre-empt Apple, which is expected to launch a thinner iPhone in the second half of this year

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics made public on Tuesday its slimmest flagship model to date, complete with enhanced artificial intelligence features, as it seeks to get ahead of rival Apple on the premium market.
The S25 Edge launch is designed to appeal to increasing demand, especially from consumers in their 20s and 30s, for more portable smartphones.
“The feedback was clear – users wanted something slimmer and easier to carry without sacrificing performance,” said Samsung, which made structural changes to reduce the thickness of internal components, including the printed circuit board and thermal systems.
Analysts said the launch was strategically timed to pre-empt Apple, which is expected to launch a thinner iPhone in the second half of this year.
“By releasing the product a few months ahead, Samsung could inflict some impact on Apple and attract consumers looking for thinner smartphones. It appears to be a calculated decision to capture that segment of demand,” Ryu Young-ho, a senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said.
The S25 Edge will go on sale in South Korea on May 23 and in the United States on May 30, Samsung said, adding it will roll it out to about 30 countries, including China and in Europe.
Starting at $1,099, the model has a 6.7-inch  screen and a 5.8 millimeter-thick body, making it larger than the basic S25 model but only fractionally heavier.
The S25 Edge has Samsung’s latest built-in AI functions, including multimodal AI that allows users to interact with the device in real time through vision and voice, using the camera to ask questions.
Samsung did not disclose the production site for the new model.
It became the world’s leading smartphone vendor in the first quarter of 2025, capturing 20 percent of the global market and narrowly surpassing Apple, which held an 19 percent share, data from Counterpoint Research showed.
Samsung last month, however, said second-quarter shipments could be affected if tariff risks weaken demand.


Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was ‘coercive and criminal,’ jury hears

Updated 13 May 2025
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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was ‘coercive and criminal,’ jury hears

NEW YORK: Sean “Diddy” Combs used violence and threats of reputational ruin to control women he abused for years, New York jurors heard Monday during opening statements of the federal sex trafficking trial that was followed by the case’s intitial graphic testimonies.
The panel of 12 jurors and six alternates responsible for determining Combs’s fate heard of the famed artist’s explosive outbursts and an attempt to preserve his own reputation and power of celebrity through bribery.
But the 55-year-old music mogul’s defense team insisted that while some of his behavior was questionable — and at times constituted domestic abuse — it did not amount to evidence of the racketeering and sex trafficking he’s charged with.
Combs has pleaded not guilty on all counts, including the racketeering charge that the hip-hop pioneer led a sex crime ring that included drug-fueled sex parties by use of force, threats and violence.
Prosecutor Emily Johnson alleged Combs “brutally” beat his former girlfriend, singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, threatening to release videos of her participating in elaborate sexual “freak-offs” if she defied him.
Ventura’s testimony is core to the case, and she is expected to take the witness stand as soon as Tuesday.
Johnson also told jurors Combs had set a man’s car ablaze and dangled a woman from a balcony, and made impossible demands of his lovers and employees alike.
“Let me be clear,” US attorney Johnson said, “this case is not about a celebrity’s private sexual preferences.”
“It’s coercive and criminal.”
But Combs’s defense lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors the “case is about love, jealousy and infidelity and money.”
Combs, appearing aged with his once jet-black hair now gray, dramatically stood up and looked at the jury box when Geragos introduced him, his hands clasped.
Geragos called Combs’s accusers “capable, strong adult women,” and said his situation with Ventura was a “toxic relationship” but “between two people who loved each other.”
“Being a willing participant in your own sex life is not sex trafficking,” she said, adding that the defense would admit there was domestic violence — but that Combs is not charged with such crimes.
Combs was joined at the courthouse by his children, including 18-year-old twin daughters, as well as his mother Janice.
The case’s first witness was Israel Florez, a Los Angeles police officer who “at the time” was a security officer — and who responded to a call of “a woman in distress” on March 5, 2016 at the Los Angeles-area InterContinental Hotel.
Florez’s testimony provided the foundation for the prosecution to introduce evidence of now-infamous security footage — published by CNN last year — of Combs in a towel chasing Ventura throughout the hotel hallways, at times striking her.
The jury was repeatedly shown the video on Monday, including a cell phone-recorded version that Florez filmed himself of the original footage.
Florez detailed his interaction with Combs and Ventura in painstaking detail, including saying that after the officer escorted the rapper back to his room, Combs offered him a wad of cash.
The officer understood this was intended as a bribe: “He was telling me, ‘Don’t tell nobody,’” Florez said.
Florez’s testimony was followed by a male dancer who engaged in a sexual relationship, often in exchange for money, with Combs and Ventura from 2012 to approximately the end of 2013.
In lurid detail, Daniel Phillip described his encounters with the pair, which generally involved sex with Ventura while Combs watched.
But eventually, Phillip said, Combs physically abused Ventura in front of him.
“Why is she doing this, why is she staying with this guy?” Phillip recalled thinking.
“I tried to explain to her that she was in real danger if she stayed with him.”
Day one of testimony in the blockbuster trial saw hoards of journalists, influencers and members of the public descend on the downtown Manhattan courthouse.
If convicted, the one-time rap producer and global superstar, who is often credited for his role in bringing hip-hop into the mainstream, could spend the rest of his life in prison.
The selected jurors will remain anonymous, but not sequestered — meaning they must individually ensure they stay away from media coverage and social media commentary about the high-profile case.
The proceedings are expected to last eight to 10 weeks.


Hollywood studios and unions call on Trump to offer tax breaks

Updated 13 May 2025
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Hollywood studios and unions call on Trump to offer tax breaks

  • The letter thanks Trump “for the support you have shown our industry,” and for drawing attention to production fleeing overseas

LOS ANGELES: Hollywood studios and unions representing movie workers joined forces Monday to urge US President Donald Trump to give tax breaks to US-made films.
The joint letter, which was also signed by Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone — two of Trump’s “ambassadors” to Hollywood — comes days after the Republican president said he wanted to impose 100 percent tariffs on foreign films in a bid to help the domestic industry.
The letter thanks Trump “for the support you have shown our industry,” and for drawing attention to production fleeing overseas.
But it makes no mention of Trump’s tariff plan, a proposal that was met with bafflement across the industry, with observers saying they had no idea how such a tax might work.
“Currently, more than 80 countries offer production tax incentives and as a result, numerous productions that could have been shot in America have instead located elsewhere,” says the letter.
“Returning more production to the United States will require a national approach and broad-based policy solutions, including... longer term initiatives such as implementing a federal film and television tax incentive.”
The idea of a federal tax credit scheme was also suggested last week by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The letter, from the Motion Picture Association — an umbrella grouping for major studios and streamers — and unions representing directors, actors and writers, suggests a number of tax deductions that would make movie-making cheaper.
“A domestic production incentive would make the US market more competitive and able to retain and return high-paying jobs tied to film and television productions — and the use of this deduction has historically promoted significant economic and job growth,” it says.
America’s movie industry has gradually moved away from its traditional home in and around Hollywood as production has shifted to cheaper locations.
The number of shooting days in Los Angeles reached an all-time low last year — lower even than during the Covid-19 pandemic, when filming shut down completely.
Fewer than one in five film or TV series broadcast in the United States was produced in California, according to FilmLA, an organization that tracks the movie industry.
The loss of that production has a significant economic impact.
According to the letter to Trump, each day a film shoots on location it spends more than $670,000, and employs nearly 1,500 people.
On May 4, Trump declared on social media that “the Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death.”
He said he had told the Department of Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative to levy a 100 percent tariff “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
 


Dubai nurse fought cancer while leading hospital teams

Sarah Ilyas was diagnosed with cancer following her son’s 14th birthday. (Supplied)
Updated 12 May 2025
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Dubai nurse fought cancer while leading hospital teams

  • Sarah Ilyas was diagnosed with the disease following her son’s 14th birthday

DUBAI: Even after being diagnosed with breast cancer, nurse and mother Sarah Ilyas did not stop helping others.

Originally from Pakistan and currently a chief nursing officer at Aster Hospitals and clinics in the UAE, Bahrain and Oman she worked her way up the ranks from being an intensive care nurse to nursing supervisor at the Dubai Health Authority.

However, just as her career was really taking off, and during her son’s 14th birthday party in November 2021, Ilyas felt something was wrong.

“I felt this shrill pain in my left breast, then I felt the lump, but since I was so exhausted, tired and burnt out, I just went to sleep,” she recalled.

The next day, Ilyas had the lump examined. A biopsy was carried out at the same hospital in which she worked, and she carried on as normal until she received her results.

It was bad news. The lump was malignant — a stage three metastatic carcinoma.

“It is one of the most difficult cancers and notorious tumors to get over, it’s not simple breast cancer,” she explained.

After working on developing an oncology department at the hospital, Ilyas never expected she would one day be a patient benefiting from her own hard work.

By December, she had started “scary” chemotherapy, and was grateful for a strong support system that meant she could carry on working and being around her family.

“My bosses took care of me so well throughout my treatment plan. I was given so much flexibility, and I could work from home if I could not get myself out of bed,” she said.

Today, Ilyas has a new outlook on life after working throughout her treatment and beating her illness. She also urges others battling cancer to share their own stories to inspire and help others.

“I didn’t even know my daughter’s favorite color or what my son likes to eat. I regret not giving my time to them,” she said.

“Let us not shy away from telling our story, words of encouragement can inspire and give hope to others.”