AFP

Paris will start switching off the ornamental lights that grace city monuments hours earlier than usual, plunging the Eiffel Tower and other landmarks in the dark to cope with surging electricity costs, officials said Tuesday.

Most monuments operated by the city will now go unlit from 10:00 pm, (2000 GMT), a potential disappointment for the tens of millions of tourists to the romantic City of Lights.

The Eiffel Tower, usually bathed in a warm glow until 1:00 am, and which comes ablaze with dazzling white lights every hour, will now go dark after the last visitor leaves, at 11:45 pm.

But streets lights will remain on for security, as will the illuminations of the city’s ornate bridges over the Seine river, Mayor Anne Hidalgo said at a press conference.

The “energy sobriety” plan aims to cut energy use by 10 percent, said Hidalgo, which could help soften the blow of rising costs by some 10 million euros ($10.2 million).

Hidalgo, a Socialist who played up her efforts to green Paris during a failed presidential run earlier this year, said she would also push the government to do the same for national monuments in the city, such as the Pantheon or the Arc de Triomphe.

In August, President Emmanuel Macron warned that high energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine could signal “the end of abundance,” widely interpreted as preparing public opinion for a difficult winter ahead.

Eight cheetahs will be sent to India where they will be personally welcomed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday, officials said Tuesday, in an ambitious project to reintroduce the speedy big cats to the country.

India in the past was home to Asiatic cheetahs but the species was declared extinct domestically by 1952. A prince is believed to have killed the last three specimens.

However, New Delhi has since 2020 been working to reintroduce the animals after the Supreme Court announced that African cheetahs, a different subspecies, could be settled in a “carefully chosen location” on an experimental basis.

The five males and three females will arrive from Namibia on Saturday and will initially be kept in a quarantine enclosure at the Kuno National Park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

India is also planning to ship in more cheetahs from South Africa at a later date.

“The prime minister himself will be releasing the animals into the quarantine enclosures,” an environment ministry official told AFP.

The cats will then be moved to larger spaces and once they acclimatise will be released into open forest in the park.

Local media reports said the cheetahs will touch down in the western city of Jaipur after a 10-hour journey and will then travel by helicopter to the Kuno park.

Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said the project was part of global efforts to conserve the animal.

Modi’s presence for the launch “will give enthusiasm and energy to all of us”, he added. 

– Leopard conflict –

The Kuno park was selected as a home because of its abundant prey and grasslands.

But critics have warned that the cheetahs may struggle to adapt to the habitat and may clash with the significant number of leopards already present.

Adrian Tordiffe, a veterinary wildlife professor at the University of Pretoria who is involved in the project, said South Africa had pressed India to use additional parks to help separate the two species.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a big problem for the adults… they are very familiar with coexisting with other predators,” Tordiffe told AFP.

“But we might have a situation where we have a problem with cubs’ survival.”

Cheetahs became extinct in India primarily because of habitat loss and hunting for their distinctive spotted pelts. 

An Indian prince, the Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, is widely believed to have killed the last three recorded cheetahs in India in the late 1940s.

The incoming animals have been prepped for the journey with health check-ups, vaccinations and radio collaring, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Considered vulnerable under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, there are fewer than 7,000 cheetahs left around the world — primarily in the African savannas.

Elizabeth is majestic, hardy and “very fashionable”, said a top Singapore flower curator — referring not to the late monarch, but to an orchid named after the queen when she visited the former British colony.

After Queen Elizabeth II’s death last week, the city-state’s Botanic Gardens loaned a towering sprig of Dendrobium Elizabeth to the British high commissioner’s residence, to be displayed alongside pictures of the monarch.

The orchid hybrid, with twisted Dresden-yellow petals and a uranium-green lip, was named in honour of the queen when she visited Singapore in 1972, said Whang Lay Keng, curator at Singapore’s National Orchid Garden.

“Dendrobium Elizabeth is a majestic, robust and resilient plant,” she told AFP.

“It’s kind of like how Queen Elizabeth carried herself.”

Flowering just twice a year, the Dendrobium Elizabeth was bred from orchids originating from Singapore and Papua New Guinea, and carries just about 40 blooms per plant. 

Orchid-mad Singapore boasts the delicate, colourful blooms as their national flower, and the city-state often christens new hybrids after visiting dignitaries as part of its diplomatic charm offensive. 

The tradition took root in 1957 during British colonial rule — which spanned more than 140 years — when an orchid variety was named after the wife of London’s high commissioner to Singapore at the time. 

Queen Elizabeth first made a state visit to Singapore in 1972, followed by two more trips in 1989 and 2006.

“During the 1970s, the colour yellow-green was very popular, so naturally we wanted to select something that was fashionable and very interesting,” Whang said, adding that “yellow is a colour of royalty”.

But the tropical lowland orchid also has very distinct Southeast Asian traits.

It is a “sun-loving plant that thrives in a moist and humid climate, where sunlight and warmth are important for its growth”, the orchid curator said. 

Among the more than 200 orchid hybrids named after visiting leaders and celebrities — displayed in the VIP section of the city’s sprawling Botanic Gardens — there is also the Dendrobium Memoria Princess Diana. The pastel-white bloom was so dubbed after the death of the princess of Wales.

Hong Kong has broken two heat records for September in a little over a week, the city’s weather observatory said Tuesday, as the crowded financial hub swelters through one of its hottest summers.

The Hong Kong Observatory said a temperature of 35.4 degrees Celsius (95.7 Fahrenheit) was recorded on Tuesday afternoon, “once again breaking the record for highest temperature in September” since the city started keeping records in 1884.

The previous high of 35.3C was set just last Monday, toppling a record that had stood since 1963.

“Due to dry air from mainland (China), we expect the weather to be sunny and hot from this week to early next week,” the observatory added.

Southern China last month recorded its longest continuous period of high temperatures since records began more than 60 years ago, sparking power cuts and droughts that have hit the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

Experts have said the intensity, scope and duration of the heatwave could make it one of the most severe recorded in global history, with temperatures routinely hitting up to 40C in many provinces last month.

Those temperatures in mainland China have since come down.

Intensely humid Hong Kong has experienced less searing heat than the mainland but has still sizzled through an intense summer.

July was the city’s hottest month on record while the average temperature from June to August was 29.2C, making it the fourth hottest summer so far.

The high temperatures have been especially punishing for the 220,000 poorest residents who live in cramped rooftop huts or tiny subdivided apartments and “cage homes” that often have limited or no air conditioning.

Mounds of waste scattered along roads and vast landfills are a Nigerian eyesore.

In Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country, collecting, sorting and recycling trash is despairingly rare.

But there is also good news. Some entrepreneurs are working hard to tackle the rubbish mountain, despite the many challenges.

Romco Metals started recycling aluminium at its factory outside Lagos in 2015, drawn by global demand for the light, strong, flexible metal.

Buoyed by good results, it built a second facility outside Ghana’s capital Accra and now plans to open at least three new plants across Africa and triple production by 2025.

Aluminium is the world’s second most-used metal after steel and used widely in construction, medicine and car-making.

“Electric vehicles require more durable lighter material such as aluminium, and that’s where our materials end up,” said the company’s youthful founder, 32-year-old Raymond Onovwigun.

– Job creation –

A British-registered company, Romco melts down and recycles around 1,500 tonnes of discarded aluminium per month, out of a capacity of 3,000 tonnes.

It says it has created 450 direct jobs — 5,000 in total, in this labour-intensive sector — and plans to double that number within a year.

“Before… there was no work,” community leader Bankole Gbenga known as Chief Abore told AFP during a recent visit to the Lagos facility. 

Chief Abore says more than a hundred young people from his community alone now work for Romco in some capacity.

“Some are doing carpentry, some are welders… some of the youth are doing security,” said the 40-year-old.

Among those who have most benefited from Romco’s business are material suppliers like Mohammed Ashiru Madugu, who delivers several truckloads of metal scrap each week.

Madugu has a warehouse in northwestern Katsina, where suppliers from across the state and even neighbouring states bring him discarded metal.

He loads the goods onto trucks and sends them -– with escorts because of frequent ambushes by criminal gangs on the road –- all the way to Lagos, more than a thousand kilometres (600 miles) away.

For one truck, he can get paid up to 26 million naira (about $60,000 dollars) although the price fluctuates.

– Vast problem –

Only a tiny fraction of waste is recycled in Nigeria, a country of some 210 million consumers.

Plastic, metal and glass that in advanced economies are routinely picked up and processed are mostly tossed out.

Each year, Nigeria disgorges 200,000 tonnes of plastic into the Atlantic, the UN Industrial Development Organisation reported last year.

In Lagos alone, a city of more than 20 million people, less than 10 percent total recyclables are currently collected, Ibrahim Adejuwon Odumboni, managing director of the Lagos State Management Agency told AFP.

By comparison, in the UK, more than 41 percent of waste picked up by local authorities was recycled last year, according to British statistics.

For Odumboni, recycling initiatives are to be commended but more should be done by the companies making aluminium beverage cans and other products.

“We need the manufacturers to invest in the collection system. In many parts of the world, a portion of what producers sell is going into the recovery of products. We currently don’t have that in Nigeria,” he said.

If companies selling aluminium products “are not held responsible (for collecting waste) then it doesn’t make any sense — we’re just going round and round in circle.”

He blames poor legislation but says an improved law on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is currently being discussed in the state house of assembly.

EPR is an environmental policy in place in many countries that gives producers incentives to take responsibility for their products after they are used.

Another challenge for recyclers is carbon emissions from the energy they use to crush, shred or melt old materials.

Romco, for instance, uses compressed natural gas to turn the aluminium into ingots.

“(It) is still a fossil fuel but the best, most efficient fossil fuel. It doesn’t contain lead or sulphur,” said Onovwigun.

The company says, however, that it wants to be independent of fossil fuels and is “exploring the potential of using solar, green hydrogen, and biofuels.”