Life Style

Sometimes the little guy just stops and does not know where he is any more.At 15 years old, Olli the pug is very old, in need of help and often disoriented. He does not hear or see much, and his back legs hurt.“Olli has had dementia for a few years,” says owner Ute Hausmann. She has adjusted to his needs, caring for, nurturing, looking after and encouraging the “dearly loved” animal who has been with her and her husband in Cologne, Germany, for 11 years.According to Holger Volk, a professor at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover in Germany, dementia is common among dogs and cats of an advanced age.He says about one in three dogs aged 12 to 13 show clinical symptoms of the condition.By the age of 15 to 16, two out of three dogs are affected by “canine cognitive dysfunction syndrom...

Gloved and armed with shears, women weave through thorny brambles, clipping and tossing their harvest into wheelbarrows.“Thank God for the rain,” said rose picker Fatima El Alami. “There are roses elsewhere, but there’s nowhere like here.”She is right. Mild temperatures, steady sunlight and low humidity make the fields around Kalaat M’Gouna a perfect cradle for growing its signature flower: the Damask rose.Abundant precipitation and several desert downpours this year have bestowed Morocco with an exceptional yield of the flower, used for rosewater and rose oil.Harvested roses before they are boiled to produce rose products in Kalaat M’Gouna, Morocco. Photo: APWorkers at a women’s cooperative that produces rose-based products sort harvested roses. Photo: APPink and pungent, the roses are se...

The Borodin Quartet are no strangers to Hong Kong. Previous appearances include concerts in 2005 and 2015 to mark the ensemble’s 60th and 70th birthdays.The Russian string quartet were back this month for their 80th anniversary celebration, this time at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, their earlier concerts having been held at the smaller Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall.The first of their two concerts in Hong Kong opened with the second string quartet by Borodin, after whom the ensemble are named, and the first quartet by Shostakovich – two works that play to their strengths.The Borodin quartet, with its hypnotic “Nocturne” movement, is their signature piece and they have a close association with Shostakovich, who mentored the ensemble’s first generation of players.The Borodin...

A star-studded line-up awaits Hong Kong Philharmonic concertgoers in its 2025-26 season, including pianist Lang Lang, soprano Renée Fleming, composer Tan Dun and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter.Tarmo Peltokoski, who will become the orchestra’s music director in the second half of 26, will conduct three programmes during the season, while the 25-year-old’s fellow Finn Esa-Pekka Salonen will be composer-in-residence.This season’s artistic partner, Italian Daniele Gatti, returns to conduct the Phil, as do British conductor Daniel Harding, music director of Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area, Singaporean Kahchun Wong, principal conductor of Britain’s Hallé Ochestra, and German Anja Bihlmaier.Lang Lang will play Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor with the orchestra on December 11 and 13, when...

Tromso may be remote – located on a small island 344 kilometres (207 miles) north of the Arctic Circle – but during the 19th century, visitors called it the Paris of the North.Finely dressed gentlemen strolled past grand town houses. They owed their prosperity to the port, where merchant ships were loaded with fish, blubber and other wares.Nowadays you are more likely to see people in Tromso wearing waterproof outdoor jackets. Hikers and skiers use the city as a base for exploring the region and climbing the mountains on the nearby island of Senja or in the Lyngen Alps, which reach heights of over 1,800 metres (5,900 feet).Kayakers come to paddle through the Sommaroy archipelago. And during the peak winter season tourists from all over the world, in particular East Asia, come to Tromso to ...

There were hoots of laughter as the artist South Ho Siu-nam performed his new live performance piece during the May 10 opening of his exhibition “Wandering Daily” in Hong Kong.Wearing a pair of plain white, basic trainers laced up with different ends of the same 100-metre-long shoelace, Ho strutted around Blindspot Gallery in Wong Chuk Hang in faux military style, dragging a long trail of white string through the crowded room in his wake.It caused mild mayhem as members of the audience scuttled out of the way or became awkwardly entangled when they refused to budge.Me, My White Sneakers, and Shoelaces was Chaplinesque in its comedy and just as serious. This was an illustration of Hong Kong’s reality since the introduction of National Security Law in 2020: there is still a lot you can do – ...

An actors’ union is suing the makers of the Fortnite video game over the use of AI to create an interactive Darth Vader.Fortnite announced last week it had got permission from the family of James Earl Jones to make a chatty Star Wars villain based on the late actor’s voice work in the smash hit space opera series.Using AI models, developer Epic Games introduced the Emperor’s consigliere into Battle Royale, a player-versus-player version of Fortnite in which squads form to defeat other contestants online.Users were quick to adopt the Sith Lord on their missions, posting clips of their interactions with one of cinema’s most famous bad guys.Many delighted in the character’s apparent wit, laughing as he tells them off for poor technique, or suggests that they are cheating.

Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.Here is what you need to know about the disease.Prostate cancer starts in the prostate, a small gland that produces semen fluid. It is the fourth most common cancer worldwide and the second most common among men, with 1.47 million new cases in 2022, according to the UK-based charity World Cancer Research Fund International.Nations that reported the most cases were the United States, which accounted for 15.7 per cent of the total, followed by China at 9.1 per cent.Prostate cancer is the fourth most common cancer worldwide and the second most common among men. Photo: ShutterstockIn the US, it is the most diagnosed cancer in men after skin cancer, and the second-leading c...

For someone who barely slept a wink the previous night, Juno Mak Chun-lung seems to be in surprisingly high spirits. Then again, how could he not be, having just seen his latest movie making its bow at the most important film festival in the world?The premiere of Sons of the Neon Night at Cannes on May 16 was the culmination of nearly eight years of work, says the 41-year-old Hong Kong musician-filmmaker, and he was relieved to see the film play at the Lumiere Theatre, the main venue of the festival held annually on the French Riviera.Principal shooting for the film had already finished by the time Christian Jeune, director of the festival’s film department, came to Hong Kong in 2018 for a preview, Mak says, but because editing had not begun, Jeune was only shown “dailies” - raw, unedited ...

Legendary Russian ballet dancer and choreographer Yuri Grigorovich has died aged 98.Born in the Soviet city of Leningrad to a ballet family, Grigorovich’s career – as a dancer, then choreographer – spanned 80 years.He was for three decades the lead choreographer at Moscow’s famed Bolshoi Theatre and its artistic powerhouse, running it with an iron fist, it was said.“Yuri Grigorovich, one of the key figures in the world of ballet in the second half of the 20th century, has died,” the Bolshoi said on social media.Russian ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova during a rehearsal at the Bolshoi Theatre in 2008 with her husband, choreographer Yuri Grigorovich, who has died aged 98. Photo: AFP“An entire era has come to an end,” Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, where he started his career, posted on...