Euro News

Bordeaux, France just surpassed Paris in a new ranking of the world's most beautiful cities, with Europe dominating nine out of the top 10 spots. The rankings are based on buildings that adhere to the 'golden ratio' for balanced and harmonious structures. Venice takes the lead as the most beautiful city, followed by Rome and Barcelona in second and third place respectively. Despite iconic landmarks, Paris lands at 12th place. In fifth place is the only non-European city to make the top 10: New York City.

9 Out of 10 of the World’s Most Beautiful Cities Are in Europe, Says New Ranking

GoodGoodGood

In South Africa, thousands of tons of pineapple leaves are tossed out each year as waste. But a team of scientists has discovered a surprising new use for them: cleaning polluted water and helping solve crimes.

Researchers at Nelson Mandela University have developed a way to turn discarded pineapple leaves into nanoparticles — tiny materials that are smaller than the width of a human hair. These particles can soak up toxic copper from wastewater and then be reused to dust for fingerprints in forensic investigations.

It’s the first time that agricultural waste has been turned into a two-in-one solution for both environmental cleanup and crime fighting.

“We found that pineapple-leaf-based nanoparticles coated with zinc oxide form a material that sucks up copper in large quantities,” said Bienvenu Gael Fouda Mbanga, part of the nanochemistry team behind the study.

Copper is a common pollutant in South Africa’s industrial wastewater, especially near mining and manufacturing sites. It can be dangerous to people’s health, affecting the liver, kidneys, and stomach, and is harmful to fish and other aquatic life.

Most methods for cleaning copper out of water are expensive and produce toxic waste of their own. The new approach offers a cheaper, safer alternative — and uses a material that usually ends up in landfills or is burned on farms.

The scientists first converted pineapple leaves into carbon nanoparticles, then coated them with zinc oxide. This combination gave the material a sponge-like texture with a huge surface area — ideal for absorbing heavy metals like copper.

But instead of tossing the copper-filled nanoparticles after cleanup, the team found another use. When turned into a fine powder, they could reveal invisible fingerprints on surfaces — a process normally done with chemical-based powders that come with health risks for investigators.

“Our research shows it’s possible to develop a low-cost material from waste that has real-world uses in two completely different fields,” Fouda Mbanga said.

The team is now calling on universities, forensic labs, water treatment facilities, and policymakers to help scale up and test the technology in real-world settings. With support, this discovery could be used across the country — cutting pollution, reducing waste, and lowering costs for law enforcement.

It’s a promising example of circular economy thinking: turning waste into something valuable, sustainable, and practical.

And all thanks to the humble pineapple leaf.

Pineapple Leaves Could Help Clean Water — and Catch Criminals

ABC News

For years, K-pop has been one of the most dominant forces in global music. But despite massive global fandoms, sold-out stadium tours, and chart-topping success, the genre has never taken home a Grammy. That could change next month.

For the first time, songs by K-pop or K-pop-adjacent artists have landed nominations in the Grammys’ top categories. Rosé, of Blackpink fame, earned a Record of the Year nod for her hit “APT.” with Bruno Mars. It’s the first time a K-pop artist has been nominated in that field. “APT.” is also up for Song of the Year — alongside “Golden” by the fictional girl group HUNTR/X, featured on the Netflix animated film KPop Demon Hunters.

Meanwhile, the internationally assembled girl group Katseye — created by HYBE, the powerhouse behind BTS — has scored a nomination for Best New Artist.

It’s a major moment for K-pop at the Grammys. Or is it?

Depends who you ask.

“K-pop is not considered something niche anymore,” says Mathieu Berbiguier, a Korean Studies professor at Carnegie Mellon. “Now, when we think about pop music in general, we also think of K-pop as part of it.”

But for others, the recognition doesn’t quite feel like K-pop getting its due. Areum Jeong, a professor at Arizona State University and author of K-pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today, argues these nominations reflect a hybrid, globalized version of the genre that’s been shaped for Western audiences.

“Rosé was recruited and trained under the K-pop system, and while ‘APT.’ contains some motifs from the Korean drinking game, the song doesn’t feel like a localized K-pop production,” Jeong says. The same goes for Katseye, whose music and marketing lean heavily toward Western fans. “It seems less K-pop than other K-pop songs that could have been nominated over the years.”

Even “Golden,” performed by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, is sung by a fictional group from a Netflix film — not a group formed within the traditional K-pop training and debut system.

Bernie Cho, a music industry veteran and president of Seoul-based DFSB Kollective, sees it differently. “All the nominees represent a sort of post-idol K-pop… where the ‘K’ is very much there, but some people might argue it’s silent,” he says. “The songs are not necessarily for Korea, by Korea, from Korea — just kind of beyond Korea.”

In other words, K-pop may be shifting into something less defined by geography and more by influence.

That shift is part of a broader trend. These nominated tracks — from Netflix tie-ins to English-language collaborations — reflect how deeply K-pop has embedded itself in global pop culture. And with songs like “APT.” and “Gabriela” primarily in English, it’s easier for the Recording Academy to embrace them.

“The Western world is still so resistant to non-English lyrics,” Jeong says. That’s one reason, she argues, why acts like BTS, Seventeen, and Stray Kids have been snubbed in the past, despite record-breaking success.

Berbiguier agrees. “It’s a reflection of trends in K-pop nowadays — less Korean, more English.”

But it’s not just about language. There’s also timing.

Tamar Herman, a music journalist and author of the Notes on K-pop newsletter, notes that 2025 was seen as a weak year for mainstream U.S. pop. “These recognitions are more a sign of how poorly the music industry in the U.S. did this year — that we’re looking externally,” she says.

“This is all recognition of global storytelling improvement, global taste-making improvement,” she adds. “It’s not that K-pop suddenly got good — K-pop has been really good for a really long time.”

Still, she’s quick to note that the nominated songs are “universally friendly, accessible, good pop songs.” And that’s the point. “It’s very obvious they’re not just performers. They’re artists. They’re singers. They’re songwriters,” says Cho.

So will this finally be the year K-pop wins a Grammy?

“It’s not even a matter of if or when,” says Cho. “It’s going to be who and how many.”

Berbiguier is less certain: “It’s hard to predict. For me, it’s more possible that ‘Golden’ gets one.”

And what if it does? HUNTR/X is a fictional group, part of a Netflix film, performed by U.S.-based artists. Would that Grammy count as a win for K-pop?

“That’s a matter of opinion,” says Herman.

The 68th Grammy Awards will take place February 1 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Whether or not a K-pop artist takes home a trophy, the genre’s growing influence is already clear — even if the definition of what counts as K-pop is more fluid than ever.

K-Pop Artists Make History With First Nominations in Grammy's Big Four Categories

Science Alert

In a new study that sheds light on canine intelligence, researchers have found that some exceptionally clever dogs can learn the names of toys simply by overhearing their owners talk — no direct training required.

Led by cognitive scientist Shany Dror at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, the team studied a group of so-called “Gifted Word Learner” dogs. These rare pups can associate words with objects in much the same way young children do, picking up meaning through passive observation and context.

To test this, the researchers asked owners of ten gifted dogs to casually talk about a new toy in front of their dog — but not to the dog — for two minutes each day over four days. When asked to fetch the toy later from a pile of nine familiar ones, seven of the dogs consistently picked the correct item, well above random chance.

“This kind of learning mimics how toddlers as young as 18 months acquire language — not from direct instruction, but by overhearing and paying attention,” Dror explained.

In a follow-up experiment, researchers made the task even harder. Dogs were shown a new toy, then had it placed in a bucket. Later, with the bucket out of view, the owner referred to the toy by a name and asked the dog if they wanted it. Five of the eight participating dogs correctly picked it out from a pile, showing they could link a spoken word with an object they couldn’t see — a form of abstract learning that’s considered quite advanced.

The dogs also remembered the toy names two weeks later, suggesting the learning was more than just a fluke.

These findings were published in Science, and while they highlight some remarkable canine capabilities, the researchers caution that not all dogs are wired this way. Even among border collies — the breed used in the study and known for their intelligence — most dogs did not show the same skills.

“Our findings show that the socio-cognitive processes enabling word learning from overheard speech are not uniquely human,” said Dror. “Under the right conditions, some dogs present behaviors strikingly similar to those of young children.”

Gifted dogs like Chaser, a border collie once famous for recognizing more than 1,000 toys by name, may be rare — but they continue to challenge what we thought we knew about animal learning and communication.

Some Dogs Can Learn Toy Names Just by Listening In, Study Finds

People

Amanda Seyfried might be a Hollywood star, but when she’s not filming, she’s knee-deep in barn chores at her farm in upstate New York.

The Testament of Ann Lee actress recently opened up to Vogue about her life far from red carpets, where she, husband Thomas Sadoski, and their kids — Nina, 8, and Thomas, 5 — run a fully registered animal rescue on a sprawling rural property in the Catskills.

“When I say it’s a rescue, it’s fully a rescue — it’s my dream,” Seyfried said of the nonprofit farm, home to horses, donkeys, goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, and cats. Many of the animals arrive with health issues or are nearing the end of their lives. “They usually come with problems, or they’re really old, or they’re lame, or whatever,” she explained. “I just hug them, on my own feet.”

Even the cats they care for are often overlooked by others. “One is so old and decrepit that he just has diarrhea all the time, but he still purrs when he eats,” Seyfried said.

She and Sadoski don’t run the place alone — a caretaker lives nearby — but Seyfried is hands-on and frank about the realities of rescue life. “One [duck] got eaten the other night — it was probably a fox,” she shared.

The family’s longtime companion is Finn, their 16-year-old Australian shepherd–border collie. “He’s a big guy and brilliant, brilliant, and he still runs like an a------,” she joked.

While they’ve received chickens from locals — “people just give us chickens,” she laughed — their rescue animals also include horses and ponies, many of them older or retired. Seyfried says she rarely rides. “I just hug them.”

Though she moved upstate before having children, Seyfried told Forbes in 2024 that leaving New York City was the best thing for her. “Staying here was the best decision for privacy, peace and nature,” she said. “It offers a more balanced life than the city does. It was essential for my mental health.”

Farm life isn’t without its challenges. In a 2022 interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Seyfried recalled a night when an ice storm knocked out power and left the family without heat. “We ended up having to walk outside in 5-degree weather to the barn and sleep there because the generator runs for that,” she said. “This is what you give up… you sacrifice these things when nature happens.”

Still, the trade-offs are worth it. Between animal rescues, peaceful surroundings, and a little chaos, Seyfried has carved out a life she calls her dream — just not one that comes without mud, mess, or midnight trips to the barn.

Amanda Seyfried Describes Her Animal Rescue Farm As 'My Dream'

Al Jazeera

When Anita Karim steps into the ring this Saturday for Pakistan’s first-ever professional women’s MMA title fight, she won’t just be chasing a championship — she’ll be fighting for the country’s future in combat sports.

Karim, 29, has been breaking ground ever since she dropped out of university in 2017 to pursue mixed martial arts full-time. Born and raised in the mountain town of Karimabad in northern Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region, she’s the first woman from the country to compete — and win — an international MMA bout. Now, she’s making history again, this time on home soil.

“I just wanted to be my best at something I loved and make my parents proud,” she says. “But when I saw the outpouring of love after my first win, it felt like a transformative moment. Perhaps I had changed the country’s perspective on women in MMA.”

She might be right.

This weekend, she’ll face Parisa Shamsabadi of Iran in Islamabad, a fight that would’ve been unthinkable in Pakistan even a few years ago. MMA wasn’t officially recognized in the country until 2020. Women’s fights didn’t exist.

But Karim pushed ahead anyway — first training with her three older brothers at their grassroots gym, Fight Fortress, then moving to Thailand for five years to train with one of the world’s top Muay Thai camps. At every step, she’s had to claw her way forward. There were no women to spar with, no road map to follow, and no guarantee that fans or sponsors would ever take notice.

What she did have was family.

Her father Nisar, a former security guard, enrolled her in taekwondo when she was seven — partly for self-defense, partly so she could be “strong like her brothers.” Her mother, Nelofar, wasn’t as easily won over. Known as the “military chief” at home, she kept Anita grounded in chores and routine, expecting her to excel in school and eventually go to university.

Anita did just that — until she didn’t.

At 20, she called her parents from Islamabad and told them she was leaving university to fight. There was tension, but also a condition: if she was going to do it, there’d be no turning back.

Soon after, she was training full-time with her brothers in the capital. One day during a trip home, she playfully put her father in a rear-naked choke. He lost consciousness in six seconds. Her mother screamed. Her father was impressed.

By 2018, Karim had made her pro debut in Singapore. She lost that first fight, a painful submission to a veteran fighter, but came back stronger seven months later to beat Indonesia’s Gita Suharsono — and became the first Pakistani woman to win an international MMA match.

The return home was overwhelming.

Crowds mobbed her at Islamabad airport. A parade lined the Karakoram Highway all the way to her home in Hunza. She cried when her mother was invited onstage alongside her at a college celebration.

But if those moments gave her a taste of stardom, what followed was something closer to sacrifice.

She spent the next five years training in Thailand, far from family, friends, and familiarity. She chopped off her hair, fought through injuries, and taped her own knee just to make it through fights. She cooked for herself, learned to recover from defeats, and taught herself to endure.

“I feared losing because it would bring the wrath of the boss,” she said, referring to Fairtex Gym’s notoriously strict founder. “I would sit under a cold shower to drown out the thoughts of giving up.”

Instead, she thrived.

Karim won four of her next five fights and earned a reputation as one of Asia’s top prospects. She returned to Pakistan in 2024, married her longtime fiancé and fellow coach Hassan Gul Basti, and resumed training at Fight Fortress — now one of the country’s leading gyms.

But the financial reality remains tough. Despite being the face of women’s MMA in Pakistan, she doesn’t earn enough from the sport to survive.

Like many fighters, she works side gigs as a personal trainer. Sponsorships are hard to come by. International fights are often stalled by visa issues. Government support is nonexistent. In a country where cricket dominates everything, MMA fighters hustle just to stay afloat.

“It is not cheap to sustain yourself as an MMA fighter,” she says. “You need money for supplements, recovery, diet — and in Pakistan, it’s all on you.”

Still, she keeps going.

She trains three times a day. She studies tape. She runs drills. She stays late after class to work on grappling. And when the training ends, she posts a selfie, puts on music in Burushaski — the language of her people — and lets herself drift back to the mountains of Hunza.

That’s where it all began. And that’s what she’ll be carrying with her into the ring on Saturday.

Not just a record. Not just a title. But a reminder — that a girl from a small town, who carried sacks of apricots through the mountains, who trained with her brothers, who faced down doubters and dislocated arms, can stand at the centre of the cage and show the next generation of fighters what’s possible.

Pakistan’s First Pro Women’s MMA Fight Has a Hometown Hero: Anita Karim

A South London home where David Bowie spent much of his early life will soon be restored and opened to the public as a creative space for young people.

The Heritage of London Trust announced plans to renovate 4 Plaistow Grove in Bromley, where Bowie lived from age 8 until he left home in 1968. The charity has acquired the terraced house and will restore its interior to match the layout from Bowie’s childhood.

“It’s wonderful to have this opportunity to tell his story and inspire a new generation of young people,” said Dr. Nicola Stacey, the Trust’s director. “It’s really important for the heritage of London to preserve this site.”

Born David Robert Jones in Brixton in 1947, Bowie moved to Bromley as a young boy. It was in this modest suburban home that his transformation began. According to Geoffrey Marsh, who co-curated the David Bowie Is exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the home played a key role in shaping the musician’s creative identity.

“It was in this small house, particularly in his tiny bedroom, that Bowie evolved from an ordinary suburban schoolboy to the beginnings of an extraordinary international stardom,” Marsh said. “As he said, ‘I spent so much time in my bedroom. It really was my entire world. I had books up there, my music up there, my record player.’”

The restored space will host arts and skills workshops for youth, with the goal of helping young people build confidence, creativity, and communication skills. The project is expected to be completed in 2027.

Bowie’s widow, Iman, and their daughter Lexi both posted tributes on what would have been his 79th birthday on January 8. The music icon released his final album, Blackstar, on his birthday in 2016 and died just two days later after a private battle with cancer.

To support the project, the Jones Day Foundation has already donated £500,000. “We hope that people everywhere will want to be involved,” Dr. Stacey said.

The announcement comes as fans prepare to mark the 10th anniversary of Bowie’s death. A new documentary, Bowie: The Final Act, is now screening in UK and Irish cinemas, and the BBC has announced another documentary, Bowie in Berlin, set to release later this year.

For Bowie’s fans, the restoration of his childhood home is more than a tribute — it’s a bridge between the past and future, offering young people a chance to create their own stories in the place where his began.

David Bowie’s Childhood Home to Be Restored for Youth Arts Workshops

Scientists at Stanford University say they’ve found a way to regenerate cartilage in aging joints — and the results could someday change how we treat arthritis.

The study, published in Science, focused on a single protein called 15-PGDH. This molecule becomes more abundant as we age and has already been tied to aging-related tissue breakdown. It also blocks the body's ability to reduce inflammation and repair damage.

That raised a question: could 15-PGDH be the reason joints wear down over time?

To find out, researchers gave older mice a drug that blocks 15-PGDH. What they saw next was remarkable. Cartilage that had worn away in the mice’s knees began to grow back. Their gaits became more stable, and they started putting more weight on previously injured limbs — a sign they were in less pain.

In younger mice, the same drug also seemed to protect against arthritis developing after an injury. Even after scientists simulated a torn ACL — a common knee injury — the mice treated with the inhibitor didn’t go on to develop the usual signs of osteoarthritis.

This marks a big shift in thinking, says microbiologist Helen Blau, one of the study’s senior authors. "This is a new way of regenerating adult tissue, and it has significant clinical promise for treating arthritis due to aging or injury," she said. "We were looking for stem cells, but they are clearly not involved. It's very exciting."

The key appears to be chondrocytes — the cells that make and maintain cartilage. When 15-PGDH was blocked, these existing cells began to behave differently, turning into a healthier, more active form.

"The mechanism is quite striking and really shifted our perspective about how tissue regeneration can occur," said Nidhi Bhutani, an orthopaedic scientist at Stanford. "It's clear that a large pool of already existing cells in cartilage are changing their gene expression patterns. And by targeting these cells for regeneration, we may have an opportunity to have a bigger overall impact clinically."

To see if the results might hold true for people, the team tested the same drug on human cartilage samples from knee replacement patients. Again, the tissue showed signs of healing. The cartilage got stiffer and less inflamed, both signs of regeneration.

Right now, treatments for osteoarthritis focus mostly on managing pain. While researchers have experimented with stem cells to try to rebuild cartilage, nothing has yet worked reliably. This study could change that.

A trial using a 15-PGDH blocker to fight muscle weakness has already taken place, and the drug was found to be safe — a promising sign that could fast-track human trials focused on arthritis.

"We are very excited about this potential breakthrough," said Blau. "Imagine regrowing existing cartilage and avoiding joint replacement."

For now, it's still early days. But the research offers a glimpse at a future where age-related joint damage could be reversed — not just endured.

Study in Mice Points to Drug That Could Regrow Cartilage, Prevent Arthritis

Good News Network

At just 18 years old, Ribal Zebian is already taking on one of his city’s biggest challenges — homelessness — with a solution he built himself.

The Western University engineering student from London, Ontario, has developed a modular, fiberglass-based tiny home system aimed at providing insulated, weather-resistant shelter for some of the city’s 1,800 unhoused residents.

Zebian’s journey began with a passion for building. At 17, he crafted a child-sized wooden replica of a Mercedes G-Class and donated it to a museum. Now, he’s turned his focus toward something far more urgent.

“I’m concerned about the people in the future that will end up facing that problem,” he told CTV News, pointing to the rising cost of housing. “House prices are increasing and increasing and increasing.”

The modular shelters are built using precision-molded fiberglass panels with utility cavities and insulated PET plastic cores in the ceilings — designed to withstand Canadian weather year-round. The panels can be scaled up or down to form structures of various sizes, making the system adaptable for different needs.

Starting in May, Zebian plans to live inside one of the units for a full year. It’s part personal challenge, part product test. By experiencing the space himself — in every season, through all weather — he hopes to identify every flaw and improve the design before pushing for broader use.

Affordable housing advocate Gary Brown applauded the effort. “Are tiny homes the entire answer? No, but it’s a part of the solution,” he told CTV. “I’ve seen quite a few going up in other cities, and it’s something London itself is kind of lagging behind a little bit.”

Zebian is hoping to change that. With durability, scalability, and compassion at its core, his project is proof that big ideas can come from young minds — and that practical engineering can be a tool for social change.

Engineering Student Builds Prototype Modular Home To Combat Homelessness

Space

It wasn’t a bird or a plane. It was the Hubble Space Telescope — flying past the face of the sun at 27,000 kilometers per hour.

Astrophotographer Efrain Morales captured the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment on December 15, 2025, from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The video shows Hubble as a crisp, tiny silhouette gliding past the sunspot AR4308, a rare alignment that lasted just 1.01 seconds.

Catching a solar transit like this takes more than luck. The Hubble orbits Earth every 95 minutes at an altitude of roughly 547 kilometers. Predicting when and where it will cross the sun requires pinpoint precision — in this case, the path was only visible within a narrow 7.5-kilometer-wide corridor on Earth. Morales had to be in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time, with no room for error.

Using transit-prediction software to plot Hubble’s trajectory, Morales set up a high-frame-rate solar imaging system. He filmed the transit with a Lunt LS50THa solar telescope mounted on a CGX-L, equipped with an ASI CMOS camera and Cemax 2x Barlows — gear specifically designed for detailed, safe solar imaging.

Compared to the International Space Station, which often appears in solar transits due to its larger size, Hubble is a much tougher target. At just 13 meters long, it's about one-tenth the size of the ISS, making moments like this all the more impressive to capture.

From Earth, the whole thing was over in barely a second. But thanks to careful planning, sharp optics, and split-second timing, Morales preserved a glimpse of one of NASA’s most iconic spacecraft streaking across the sun.

Astrophotographer Captures Hubble Space Telescope Zipping Across The Sun — in Just Over One Second

An extraordinary trove of Iron Age artifacts has been uncovered in West Norfolk, revealing new insights into Britain’s ancient warrior culture — including the rare remains of a Celtic battle trumpet.

The discovery was made during a routine archaeological excavation by Pre-Construct Archaeology, carried out as part of the standard planning process for a residential development. What they found, however, was far from routine.

Among the objects was a nearly complete carnyx — a long, animal-headed bronze trumpet used by Celtic tribes to rally warriors in battle. The team also uncovered parts of a second carnyx, along with a sheet-bronze boar’s head believed to be from a military standard, five shield bosses, and an iron object of unknown origin.

These dramatic instruments, often shaped like boars or dragons, were not just used for sound — they were symbols of power and intimidation, often depicted by the Romans as battlefield trophies. Finds of carnyces are extremely rare in Britain.

“The full research and conservation of these incredibly fragile remains will reshape our view of sound and music in the Iron Age,” said Dr. Fraser Hunter, Iron Age and Roman curator at National Museums Scotland. “The carnyces and the boar-headed standard are styles well known on the continent and remind us that communities in Britain were well-connected to a wider European world at this time.”

To preserve the delicate find, archaeologists lifted the objects in a solid block of soil and used scanning technology to analyze their layout before conservation experts began carefully removing and examining each item.

“This find is a powerful reminder of Norfolk’s Iron Age past, which still retains its capacity to fascinate the British public,” said Dr. Tim Pestell, Senior Curator of Archaeology for Norfolk Museums Service. “The Norfolk Carnyx Hoard will provide archaeologists with an unparalleled opportunity to investigate a number of rare objects and ultimately, to tell the story of how these came to be buried in the county two thousand years ago.”

Because the hoard includes multiple prehistoric metal objects from a single find, it has been reported to the coroner under the UK’s Treasure Act. A decision on its legal status is expected in early 2026, which will determine how and where the items will be preserved or displayed.

Historic England, Norfolk Museums Service, Pre-Construct Archaeology, and the National Museum of Scotland are all working together on conservation and future research. The long-term home of the hoard has not yet been decided.

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