China is turning their dessert green to combat deforestation

Cristiano Ronaldo celebrating Portugal's 92nd minute match winner in front of Czechia GK Jindřich Staněk

This dude found a thirsty Arabian Wolf in the desert🥹

Susan Caplin, the voice behind Alexa confuses Alexa

Ghana's National Amputee Football team details the challenges they faced prior to the 2024 African Amputee Football Cup of Nations following recent demands by the Minister of Sports, Mustapha Ussif that the team should render accounts for the donations they've received after securing the 2024 AAFCON title.

Southern French Alps :

Originally founded by the Gauls, the region was then conquered by Romans who started Christian era. It was during this time that the Roman road - the Domitienne Way was built (118 BC) linking Spain, France and Italy. This road wound through the mountains of the Hautes Alpes passing through Sisteron, Gap, Embrun and Briançon and on to Italy.

Barbarians invaded during 400 AD and Saracens ravaged France from 700 AD. During their stay, the Saracens taught the local people about medicine and how to use pine resin and cork-oak bark. The Saracen domination was over in 990 AD . Evidence of these mainly muslim people (Arabs, Berbers, Moors and Turks) can be found in the names of some of the local accommodations for example in the Champsuar Valley there is The Passage of the Saracens.

From 476 AD, the fall of the Roman Empire, to the late 15th century was a key period of development for the region. During this time, many perched villages were created on hilltops, ridges and rocky outcrops on the sides of the mountains. The locations of these villages were selected as they were not easily accessible and overlooked the valleys so any invaders could easily be spotted. The villages were fortified with outer buildings forming a wall against possible attacks. Jarjayes is a beautful perched village near Gap which was built in 10th Century. Larger examples include Embrun which was build on a cliff top plateau, and Briançon, the highest town in Europe. Briançon was a medieval fortress before Vauban arrived in 1692 to prepare the town for canon warefare developing a fortified town.

During this period many chapels were built. The oldest chapel in the region, the Mere Eglise, is found in the Dévoluy and dates back to the 9th century. In 12th Century the Boscodon Abbey was built by hermit monks. With beautiful views of the Serre Ponçon lake the monks lived there until 20th Century. The abbey has been restored to its former glory and is open to the public.

St Bonnet en Champsaur was the birth place of the Duke of Lesdiguière, a Connétable de France (first officer of the crown) who fought for Henry le Bourbon (Henry IV of France) during the Wars of Religion from 1562 -1592. The protestant Henry had to become catholic to claim the throne which he did in 1589 after marrying a catholic. The Duke did the same to support him and in 1585 he captured many towns in the region including Chorges and Embrun. As a result, region submitted to the catholic religion despite having a protestant culture. Ruins of the Duke of Lesdiguière's 16th century chateau can be seen in Glazil in Champsaur.

A 17th Century fortress can be seen in Mont Dauphin which was built under the order of Louis XIV. The fortress is perched on a rocky outcrop and has superb veiws across the valley. Fountains, flour mills, bread ovens and wash houses dating back to 17th-18th Centurys can be found all over the region for example there is a traditional flour mill with its famous vertical wheel that has been restored and opened to the public in Villard Loubière in the Valgaudemar.

Napoléon also left his mark on the Hautes Alps. He passed through the region in 1815 with 1000 men after his escape from the Mediterranean island Elba on route to Paris stopping off in Sisteron, Gap, St Bonnet, Corps and La Mure. Later, in 1930, in homage to the leader a road was built tracing his epic journey - La Route de Napoléon.

At the end of 19th Century there was a population exodus where people migrated towards the towns lower down in the valleys. You can see examples of abandoned villages dotted throughout the area - Méollion in Champoléon and Rabioux in the Dévoluy.

New evidence from the bottom of a lake in the remote North Atlantic Faroe Islands indicates that an unknown band of humans settled there around 500 AD, some 350 years before the Vikings, who up until recently have been thought to have been first human inhabitants. The settlers may have been Celts who crossed rough, unexplored seas from what are now Scotland or Ireland. The findings appear in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Faroes are a small, rugged archipelago about midway between Norway and Iceland, some 200 miles northwest of Scotland. Towering cliffs dominate the coasts; buffeted by strong winds and cloudy weather, the rocky landscape is mostly tundra. There is no evidence that Indigenous people ever lived there, making it one of the planet’s few lands that remained uninhabited until historical times. Past archaeological excavations have indicated that seafaring Vikings first reached them around 850 AD, soon after they developed long-distance sailing technology. The settlement may have formed a stepping stone for the Viking settlement of Iceland in 874, and their short-lived colonization of Greenland, around 980.

New study, led by scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is based on lake sediments containing signs that domestic sheep suddenly appeared around 500, well before the Norse occupation. Previously, the islands did not host any mammals, domestic or otherwise; the sheep could have arrived only with people. The study is not the first to assert that someone else got there first, but the researchers say it clinches the case.

In 1980s, researchers determined that Plantago lanceolata, a weed commonly associated with disturbed areas and pastures and often used as an indicator of early human presence in Europe, showed up in the Faroes around 2200 BC. At the time, this was deemed possible evidence of human arrival. However, seeds could have arrived on the wind, and the plant does not need human presence to establish itself. Likewise, studies of pollen taken from lake beds and bogs show that some time before the Norse period, woody vegetation largely disappeared—possibly due to persistent chewing by sheep, but also possibly due to natural climatic changes.

Some Medieval texts suggest that Irish monks reached the islands by around 500. For one, St. Brendan, a famous and far-traveled early Irish navigator, was said to have set out across the Atlantic with comrades from 512 to 530, and supposedly found a land dubbed the Isle of the Blessed. Later speculations and maps say that this was the Faroes or the far southerly Azores, or the Canary Islands or that Brendan actually reached North America. There is no proof for any of this. Centuries later, in 825, the Irish monk and geographer Dicuil wrote that he had learned that hermits had been living in some unidentified northern islands for at least 100 years. Again, later speculations landed on on the Faroes, but there was never any proof.

The first physical evidence of early occupation came with a 2013 study in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, which documented two patches of burnt peat containing charred barley grains found underneath the floor of a Viking longhouse on the Faroese island of Sandoy. The researchers dated the grains to somewhere between 300-500 years before the Norse; barley was not previously found on the island, so someone must have brought it. For many archaeologists, this constituted firm evidence of pre-Viking habitation. However, others wanted to see some kind of corroboration before declaring the case closed.

Rema’s 'Calm Down' has become the first Afrobeats song in history to earn over one billion on-demand streams in the US.
https://t.co/UKXiWVByxm

Tunisian tennis star Ons Jabeur has said that she would not be participating in the 2024 Paris Olympics due to an injury.

https://bbc.in/4b877hl