Coronavirus: More Japanese to swap urban life for the countryside

Street furnishing, sports facilities and children's playgrounds: in public spaces around Paris, urban planners are trying to reduce gender inequalities by making the areas safer and more welcoming to women.

Ryusei Ouchi looks like your average skateboarder -- the baggy T-shirt, the jeans, the baseball hat. But he also skates with something else: a cane. The 21-year-old, who goes by Jido, has lost 95 percent of his eyesight because of a condition called retinitis pigmentosa.

An energetic squad of cheerleaders whose average age is 70 train in Tokyo for their 25th anniversary performance. Cheerleading is a fun way to stay fit for the "Japan Pom Pom" girls, who get together once a week for a rigorous two-hour practice with almost no break.

New Delhi's Central Vista used to be a favourite spot with residents of the Indian capital. But the large public space, close to the president's house and heritage buildings, is being remodelled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The €2 billion construction caused uproar when it was deemed an "essential service" at a time when Indians were dying by the thousands from Covid-19. The move reopened debate around heritage conservation and public spaces in India’s ancient capital. Our correspondents report.

 

Whether on a rooftop in New York or in the desert in Riyadh, urban planting is on the rise as a response to climate change. AFP looks at cities who have been implementing initiatives in order to invite nature back to the concrete jungle. 70% of greenhouse gases come from urban zones and cities from Paris to New Delhi have been sounding the alarm on the disastrous effects climate change can have.

When Luis Diaz retired, he was unable to feed his family by relying solely on the food parcels provided by the government at subsidized prices, so he and his friends decided to grow their own. Eight years of recession and four years of hyperinflation have decimated Venezuela’s economy that has lost 80 percent of its value since 2014 leading to regular shortages of basic necessities.

North Korea escapee Hiroko Saito says she and 97,000 others were deceived into relocating to the North in the 1960s with promises of "paradise on Earth." Instead, she suffered starvation, repression and loss.

From an image of Hulk who suddenly leaps over your head to a painting that changes its colours, one Berlin street art exhibition offers visitors a chance to experience paintings in 3D. Called "Game Over", the exhibition inspired by video games is housed in a former casino stretching over 2,000 square metres (21,500 square feet) which is due to be torn down.

A boat crew casts a net into the seemingly clean waters off Japan's Izu peninsula, but not to catch fish -- they are scooping up microplastics to learn more about the pollution's impact on marine life.

The main European institutions have been based in Brussels for decades. But despite adding dynamism, they still don't seem to have found their place in the city they call home. The European Quarter is often viewed as a separate area; cold and cut off from the world. Now a handful of residents are fighting to bring the neighbourhood back to life and make the institutions part of a vibrant Brussels that's in touch with its citizens. The rise of teleworking, adapted en masse since the pandemic, could give them a helping hand. The Commission is looking to reduce its office space in the city from the current 780,000 m² to 580,000 m². Our correspondents report.

After Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the US forcibly displaced 120,000 people of Japanese origin into 10 internment camps in the western United States. Eight decades on, our correspondents went to meet survivors, who reflected on their ordeal.