Hi Allhere are some pictures of Oman. It took me a while to find a fast enough internet connection to upload them. I will write a bit more when I have a bit more time. Everything is good so far and I'm enjoying the sushine. Sometimes it's a little too

i have decided to add a few countries to my itinerary. since i was only able to find a guide for turkey before my departure i am now travelling with less. somewhere along the way in turkey i had drawn a map adding romania serbia bosniaherzegovinia mon

kind of had a bad couple days in turkey. i wanted to try and paraglide. so i decided at 11am to arrange it with my hotelier in fetihye. he made a call and i was told to be ready for pick up at 1200. OK so good i'll stay here another night and go for the

The weekend was very full as I had my allday program beginning at 11 a.m. and finishing around 9 p.m. In that course of time we practiced breathing techniques sang an old Rogers and Hart song to be prepared for next class engaged in all sorts of mo

This is a frightening thought but I may be the most photographed person in all of China In my first few days here I kept catching people taking pictures of me on the sly and when I looked at them I noticed them waving but thought they wanted me to

Towards the end of an eight hour bus ride to Huaraz I opened my eyes from a fitful sleep and glanced out the window. Light was only just skimming the edges of the sky but I didn't need much light to see their bulk towering out of the night. I was back in

Onboard Queen VictoriaYou know that feeling you get when you are in your bedroom laying down after just waking up where you have this moment of intense thinking and all you can imagine is how small you are compared to everything else in exi

THE BASICS We're still amid Utah's gorgeous national parks. We have progressed from Zion to Bryce to Capitol Reef and now are in Moab to enjoy Arches and Canyonlands.THE FLUFFAt the end of my last blog I commented on the women I had seen wearing

Hallo zusammenIch und Stephanie von Canada ich habe Sie in Arequipa getroffen haben uns entschlossen einen Jungeltrip zu machen. Da der Nationalpark Manu so teuer war habe ich nach anderen Alternativen ausschau gehalten und den Nationalpark Tambop

I had not had a real vacation since April 2009 and I was going crazy for warm weather. Jason knew how badly I wanted to get away and gave me one of the best Christmas presents a girl could ask for a CRUISE I'm apologizing now for the lack of detail

Hello everyone hope you're all okOur first night of hostel living was interesting quite a noisy and interrupted night so didn't get a lot of sleep no chance of getting over the jet lag there I really don't understand people who have showers at 4am

Facebook's emotion study reveals it is hopelessly disconnected from emotional reality: that people get upset when people they care about are unhappy

• Alex Hern: The final straw for Facebook?

This weekend we learned that Facebook had deliberately manipulated the emotional content of 689,003 users' news feeds as part of an experiment to see what kind of psychological impact it would have. For one week in January 2012, some users saw chiefly positive stories (kitten videos, brownie recipes and assorted LOLs), while others were force-fed despair (breakups, health woes and seal-clubbing holiday snaps). And guess what happened?

"The results show emotional contagion," decided the scientists.

Ukip has made thousands from merchandise on its online store. What could the other parties learn from it?

It can't be easy trying to fund a political movement in the current climate, when politicians are about as popular as a wasp in a submarine. You'd have more luck organising a whip-round for President Assad. That's why politicians are forced to suck up to billionaire donors, who expect them to tailor their policies accordingly, thereby further widening the gulf between parties and the public.

But wait. Not all parties are alike. The Daily Telegraph has revealed that, last year, Ukip made a whopping £80,000 from flogging branded merchandise to the public from its online store.

Products I’ve made up for the sheer giddy thrill of it include Total Farage Plus, which skilfully Photoshops the Ukip leader into whatever you’re looking at

This week it’s the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an annual opportunity for tech companies to unveil their latest gizmos during January’s traditional slow news week, thereby picking up precious coverage that might otherwise be spent detailing something – anything – more important than an egg whisk with a USB port in the side.

At the time of writing, the show is yet to kick off, although some of the offerings have already been unveiled – such as “Belty”, the world’s first “smart belt”, which monitors your waistline and tells you when it’s time to lose weight, just like a mirror or a close friend might. More excitingly, it adjusts to your girth (again, like a close friend might), and will tighten or loosen itself according to your current level of blubber. No word yet on whether it’s possible to pop a Belty round your neck and order it to squeeze you into the afterlife, but there’s no reason they can’t incorporate that feature in Belty 2.0, except maybe on basic ethical, moral and humanitarian grounds.

The Black Mirror creator invents exciting products to transform your life – from the workout that makes you feel like a saint to the world’s cleverest toilet

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but happiness is in sharp decline. Many people blame technology for our woes, and it’s not hard to see why. The internet is nothing but deranged screeching and fascist memes sitting atop a plateau of moldering desperation masquerading as ironic meaninglessness. No one has smiled in real life since 2011. But wait! Silicon Valley is waking up to the negative effect its products can have on us, and like the good Samaritans they are, they’re unveiling a whole new range of products aimed at making us feel good about ourselves. Here is an exclusive look at just a few of the cool gizmos and rad gadgets due to be unveiled at next year’s CES Consumer Electronics Show and featured in news reports, and then in shops, and then in your house before you even know it.

Viele Bluetooth-Kopfhörer liefern gute Klangqualität, sagt Peter Knaak von der Stiftung Warentest. Worauf Sie beim Kauf achten sollten.

Er gehörte zu den einflussreichsten Musikern in der Frühphase des Rock 'n' Roll, inspirierte die Beatles und Elvis Presley. Nun ist der US-Sänger Little Richard mit 87 Jahren gestorben.

An animated reality check of the man who claims to be the greatest U.S. president ever.

Christine Simon-Noll is active helping refugees in Hamburg's HafenCity neighborhood. She says it is getting much tougher to find volunteers. In an interview, she outlines what needs to happen in order to ensure successful integration.

Joint activities, joint projects and improved cooperation: SPIEGEL ONLINE and SPIEGEL WISSEN are looking for the best ideas for creating a vibrant neighborhood. Send us your proposal by August 31!

Astronomer Avi Loeb believes that the interstellar object dubbed 'Oumuamua could actually be a probe sent by alien beings. Given the evidence that has so far been gathered, he says, it is a possible conclusion to draw.

New forms of living, new ideas for cohabitation, new architecture: For the Social Design Award, we are looking for the best projects and ideas for neighborhood-oriented living models. The winner will receive 2,500 euros.

The London-based company Sidefloor was part of the tax-evasion structure for which Lionel Messi and his father Jorge were convicted. Now it has been revealed that FC Barcelona spent years paying agent fees to this letterbox company, payments apparently destined for Jorge Messi.

Maria Sharapova effortlessly managed to combine her life as a tennis player with that of a superstar. With the announcement of her retirement, we take a look back at her career.

Helge Braun, 47, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, speaks with DER SPIEGEL about the rapidly rising number of coronavirus infections and about whether more stringent measures will have to be implemented.

We study the impact of non-pharmaceutical policy interventions (NPIs) like “stay-at-home” orders on the spread of infectious disease. NPIs are associated with slower growth of Covid-19 cases. NPIs “spillover” into other jurisdictions. NPIs are not associated with significantly worse economic outcomes measured by job losses. Job losses have been no higher in US states that implemented “stay-at-home” during the Covid-19 pandemic than in states that did not have “stay-at-home”. All of these results demonstrate that the Covid-19 pandemic is a common economic and public health shock. The tradeoff between the economy and public health today depends strongly on what is happening elsewhere. This underscores the importance of coordinated economic and public health responses.

Ambient pollution is a byproduct of economic activity. It has been widely reported that COVID-19 and associated lockdowns have generated large improvements in air quality worldwide, including to China's notoriously-poor air quality. We analyze China's official pollution monitor data and account for the large, recurrent improvement in air quality following Lunar New Year (LNY), which essentially coincided with lockdowns in 2020. With the important exception of NO2, China's air quality improvements in 2020 are smaller than we should expect near the pandemic's epicenter: Hubei province. Compared with LNY improvements experienced in 2018 and 2019 in Hubei, we see smaller improvements in SO2 while ozone concentrations increased in both relative and absolute terms (roughly doubling). Similar patterns are found for the six provinces neighboring Hubei. We conclude that whether COVID-19 actually decreased pollution in China depends on the pollutant and reference period considered.

We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents between late March and early April 2020 to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens’ and governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents reacted strongly to the crisis: they report engaging in social distancing and hygiene behaviors, and believe that strong policy measures, such as shop closures and curfews, are necessary. They also believe that their government and their country’s citizens are not doing enough and underestimate the degree to which others in their country support strong behavioral and policy responses to the pandemic. The perception of a weak government and public response is associated with higher levels of worries and depression. Using both cross-country panel data and an event-study, we additionally show that strong government reactions correct misperceptions, and reduce worries and depression. Our findings highlight that policy-makers not only need to consider how their decisions affect the spread of COVID-19, but also how such choices influence the mental health of their population.

We explored two measures of inequality that described the full income distribution in cities. One measure is an income gini based on family incomes in 1929 for 33 cities and in 1933 for up to 48 cities in 1933 were spread throughout the country. We also estimated gini coefficients that made use of contract rents for renters and implicit rents for home owners for up to 955 cities throughout the country. We were able to expand to all counties when looking at a top-end inequality measure, the number of taxpayers per family. All three measures varied substantially across the country. We show the correlations between the various measures and also estimate the relationship between the measures and various relief programs developed by governments at all levels during the period.

One EU country after the other is moving to restrict public life. The Dutch government has opted for less drastic measures, hoping for herd immunity and relying on the common sense of its people. But the country has still had to make adjustments to its policies.

In the fight against COVID-19, doctors and health workers are testing drugs and treatments whose efficacy has been proven against other illnesses. We take a look at the most prominent ones and the early findings.

Greed, envy, poor leadership and a poisonous internal culture: New York Times journalist David Enrich has written a book about Deutsche Bank that also sheds light on the financial institution's relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Glenn, a former boxer and owner of popular Times Square bar Jimmy's Corner, died of coronavirus early Thursday morning at 89.

Audio recordings of two 911 calls placed moments before Ahmaud Arbery was killed confirm that at least two people were concerned that a black man was running in their Georgia neighborhood.

The semen of men infected with coronavirus revealed that the disease lingered in only a few patients, suggesting there is a small chance COVID-19 can be transmitted sexually, researchers said.

Their doors may be closed, but Limerick businesses are receiving support from their customers who are generating cashflow by buying vouchers online.

Lufthansa is negotiating a €9 billion bailout with Germany's economic stabilisation fund to ensure its future, the airline said, confirming an earlier Reuters report.

Over half a billion euro of prize bonds were sold last year, according to the latest report from the Prize Bond Company.