The Rise of the Virtual Restaurant

Ricky Lopez owns four restaurants: Top Round Roast Beef in San Francisco and three that exist only within the Uber Eats delivery app.CreditCreditCayce Clifford for The New York Times
Ricky Lopez owns four restaurants: Top Round Roast Beef in San Francisco and three that exist only within the Uber Eats delivery app.CreditCreditCayce Clifford for The New York Times
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The Rise of the Virtual Restaurant

Ricky Lopez owns four restaurants: Top Round Roast Beef in San Francisco and three that exist only within the Uber Eats delivery app.CreditCreditCayce Clifford for The New York Times
Ricky Lopez owns four restaurants: Top Round Roast Beef in San Francisco and three that exist only within the Uber Eats delivery app.CreditCreditCayce Clifford for The New York Times

Food delivery apps are reshaping the restaurant industry — and how we eat — by inspiring digital-only establishments that don’t need a dining room or waiters.

At 9:30 on most weeknights, Ricky Lopez, the head chef and owner of Top Round Roast Beef in San Francisco, stacks up dozens of hot beef sandwiches and sides of curly fries to serve hungry diners.

He also breads chicken cutlets for another of his restaurants, Red Ribbon Fried Chicken. He flips beef patties on the grill for a third, TR Burgers and Wings. And he mixes frozen custard for a dessert shop he runs, Ice Cream Custard.

Of Mr. Lopez’s four operations, three are “virtual restaurants” with no physical storefronts, tables or chairs. They exist only inside a mobile app, Uber Eats, the on-demand meal delivery service owned by Uber.

“Delivery used to be maybe a quarter of my business,” Mr. Lopez, 26, said from behind Top Round’s counter, as his staff assembled roast beef and chicken sandwiches and placed them in white paper bags for Uber Eats drivers to deliver. “Now it’s about 75 percent of it.”

Food delivery apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub are starting to reshape the $863 billion American restaurant industry. As more people order food to eat at home, and as delivery becomes faster and more convenient, the apps are changing the very essence of what it means to operate a restaurant.

No longer must restaurateurs rent space for a dining room. All they need is a kitchen — or even just part of one. Then they can hang a shingle inside a meal-delivery app and market their food to the app’s customers, without the hassle and expense of hiring waiters or paying for furniture and tablecloths. Diners who order from the apps may have no idea that the restaurant doesn’t physically exist.

The shift has popularized two types of digital culinary establishments. One is “virtual restaurants,” which are attached to real-life restaurants like Mr. Lopez’s Top Round but make different cuisines specifically for the delivery apps. The other is “ghost kitchens,” which have no retail presence and essentially serve as a meal preparation hub for delivery orders.

“Online ordering is not a necessary evil. It’s the most exciting opportunity in the restaurant industry today,” said Alex Canter, who runs Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles and a start-up that helps restaurants streamline delivery app orders onto one device. “If you don’t use delivery apps, you don’t exist.”

Many of the delivery-only operations are nascent, but their effect may be far-reaching, potentially accelerating people’s turn toward order-in food over restaurant visits and preparing home-cooked meals.

Uber and other companies are driving the change. Since 2017, the ride-hailing company has helped start 4,000 virtual restaurants with restaurateurs like Mr. Lopez, which are exclusive to its Uber Eats app.

Janelle Sallenave, who leads Uber Eats in North America, said the company analyzes neighborhood sales data to identify unmet demand for particular cuisines. Then it approaches restaurants that use the app and encourages them to create a virtual restaurant to meet that demand.

Other companies are also jumping in. Travis Kalanick, the former Uber chief executive, has formed CloudKitchens, a start-up that incubates ghost kitchens.

Yet even as delivery apps create new kinds of restaurants, they are hurting some traditional establishments, which already contend with high operating expenses and brutal competition. Restaurants that use delivery apps like Uber Eats and Grubhub pay commissions of 15 percent to as much as 30 percent on every order. While digital establishments save on overhead, small independent eateries with narrow profit margins can ill afford those fees.

“There’s a concern that it could be a system where restaurant owners are trapped in an unstable, unsuitable business model,” Mark Gjonaj, the chairman of the New York City Council’s small-business committee, said at a four-hour hearing on third-party food delivery in June.

Delivery apps may also undermine the connection between diner and chef. “A chef can occasionally walk out of the dining room and observe a diner enjoying his or her food,” said Shawn Quaid, a chef who oversaw a ghost kitchen in Chicago. Delivery-only facilities “take away the emotional connection and the creative redemption.”

Uber and other delivery apps maintain that they are helping restaurants, not hurting them.

“We exist for demand generation,” said Ms. Sallenave. “Why would a restaurant be working with us if we weren’t helping them increase their orders?”

Delivery-only establishments in the United States date to at least 2013, when a start-up, the Green Summit Group, began work on a ghost kitchen in New York. With Grubhub’s backing, Green Summit produced food that was marketed online under brand names like Leafage (salads) and Butcher Block (sandwiches).

But Green Summit burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, said Jason Shapiro, a consultant who worked for the company. Two years ago, it shut down when it couldn’t attract new investors, he said.

In Europe, the food-delivery app Deliveroo also started testing ghost kitchens. It erected metal kitchen structures called Rooboxes in some unlikely locations, including a derelict parking lot in East London. Last year, Deliveroo opened a ghost kitchen in a warehouse in Paris, where Uber Eats has also tried delivery-only kitchens.

Ghost kitchens have also emerged in China, where online food delivery apps are widely used in the country’s densely populated megacities. China’s food delivery industry hit $70 billion in orders last year, according to iResearch, an analysis firm. One Chinese ghost kitchen start-up, Panda Selected, recently raised $50 million from investors including Tiger Global Management, according to Crunchbase.

Those experiments have spread. Over the last two years, Family Style, a food start-up in Los Angeles, has opened ghost kitchens in three states. It has created more than half a dozen pizza brands with names like Lorenzo’s of New York, Froman’s Chicago Pizza and Gabriella’s New York Pizza, which can be found on Uber Eats and other apps.

CloudKitchens, which Mr. Kalanick founded after leaving Uber in 2017, has leased kitchen space to several established restaurants in Los Angeles, including the farm-to-table chain Sweetgreen, to try the delivery-only model. The Los Angeles facility is one of several ghost kitchens used by Sweetgreen, whose chief executive, Jonathan Neman, has spoken enthusiastically about them.

And Kitchen United, a ghost-kitchen company in Pasadena, Calif., is working with brick-and-mortar restaurants to set up delivery-only establishments. It aims to establish 400 such “kitchen centers” across the country over the next few years.

When it comes types of food, “consumers don’t appear to be saying they’re looking for additional options,” said Jim Collins, Kitchen United’s chief executive. “They appear to be looking for new modes of consumption.”

For Paul Geffner, the growing popularity of food-delivery apps has hurt. He has run Escape From New York Pizza, a small restaurant chain in the Bay Area, for three decades, relying on delivery orders as a major source of revenue.

After he offered delivery through the apps in 2016, his business teetered. Two of his five pizzerias, which together had generated annual profits of $50,000 to $100,000, lost as much as $40,000 a year as customers who had ordered directly from Escape From New York switched to the apps. That forced Mr. Geffner to pay the commissions.

“We saw a direct correlation between the delivery services and the reduction of our income,” Mr. Geffner said. “It was like death by a thousand cuts.”

In May, he closed the two locations. Later that month, one was replaced with a kitchen that mostly does delivery.

Mr. Lopez opened Top Round, a franchise that originated in Los Angeles, in 2017 in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. For the first eight months, he said, he lost tens of thousands of dollars.

Last year, Uber approached Mr. Lopez and told him there was demand for late-night orders of burgers and ice cream in his area. Uber, which does not provide financial help to virtual restaurants, has claimed that the digital operations increase sales for restaurateurs by an average of more than 50 percent.

Now he uses Top Round’s kitchen to serve hundreds of new customers across San Francisco. Though he wouldn’t disclose financial information, Mr. Lopez said he had hired another employee to handle the influx of delivery orders. Those orders have stabilized the restaurant’s income so that he no longer works 110-hour weeks just to keep the business afloat.

“We used to close at 9 p.m., but demand has pushed us to stay open later — we close at 2 a.m. now,” Mr. Lopez said. “Most of the night, the kitchen is banging.”

The New York Times



A Subset of Alzheimer’s Cases May Be Caused by Two Copies of a Single Gene, New Research Shows

A section of a human brain with Alzheimer's disease is displayed at the Museum of Neuroanatomy at the University at Buffalo, in Buffalo, N.Y., Oct. 7, 2003. (AP)
A section of a human brain with Alzheimer's disease is displayed at the Museum of Neuroanatomy at the University at Buffalo, in Buffalo, N.Y., Oct. 7, 2003. (AP)
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A Subset of Alzheimer’s Cases May Be Caused by Two Copies of a Single Gene, New Research Shows

A section of a human brain with Alzheimer's disease is displayed at the Museum of Neuroanatomy at the University at Buffalo, in Buffalo, N.Y., Oct. 7, 2003. (AP)
A section of a human brain with Alzheimer's disease is displayed at the Museum of Neuroanatomy at the University at Buffalo, in Buffalo, N.Y., Oct. 7, 2003. (AP)

For the first time, researchers have identified a genetic form of late-in-life Alzheimer’s disease — in people who inherit two copies of a worrisome gene.

Scientists have long known a gene called APOE4 is one of many things that can increase people’s risk for Alzheimer's, including simply getting older. The vast majority of Alzheimer’s cases occur after age 65. But research published Monday suggests that for people who carry not one but two copies of the gene, it's more than a risk factor, it's an underlying cause of the mind-robbing disease.

The findings mark a distinction with “profound implications,” said Dr. Juan Fortea, who led the study the Sant Pau Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain.

Among them: Symptoms can begin seven to 10 years sooner than in other older adults who develop Alzheimer’s.

An estimated 15% of Alzheimer’s patients carry two copies of APOE4, meaning those cases “can be tracked back to a cause and the cause is in the genes,” Fortea said. Until now, genetic forms of Alzheimer’s were thought to be only types that strike at much younger ages and account for less than 1% of all cases.

Scientists say the research makes it critical to develop treatments that target the APOE4 gene. Some doctors won’t offer the only drug that has been shown to modestly slow the disease, Leqembi, to people with the gene pair because they’re especially prone to a dangerous side effect, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, a study coauthor at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Sperling hunts ways to prevent or at least delay Alzheimer’s and “this data for me says wow, what an important group to be able to go after before they become symptomatic.”

But the news doesn’t mean people should race for a gene test. “It’s important not to scare everyone who has a family history” of Alzheimer’s because this gene duo isn’t behind most cases, she told The Associated Press.

HOW DO GENETICS AFFECT ALZHEIMER'S? More than 6 million Americans, and millions more worldwide, have Alzheimer’s. A handful of genes are known to cause rare “early-onset” forms, mutations passed through families that trigger symptoms unusually young, by age 50. Some cases also are linked to Down syndrome.

But Alzheimer’s most commonly strikes after 65, especially in the late 70s to 80s, and the APOE gene – which also affects how the body handles fats -- was long known to play some role. There are three main varieties. Most people carry the APOE3 variant that appears to neither increase nor decrease Alzheimer’s risk. Some carry APOE2, which provides some protection against Alzheimer’s.

APOE4 has long been labeled the biggest genetic risk factor for late-in-life Alzheimer’s, with two copies risker than one. About 2% of the global population is estimated to have inherited a copy from each parent.

RESEARCH POINTS TO A CAUSE FOR A SUBSET OF ALZHEIMER'S To better understand the gene’s role, Fortea’s team used data from 3,297 brains donated for research and from over 10,000 people in US and European Alzheimer’s studies. They examined symptoms and early hallmarks of Alzheimer’s such as sticky amyloid in the brain.

People with two APOE4 copies were accumulating more amyloid at age 55 than those with just one copy or the “neutral” APOE3 gene variety, they reported in the journal Nature Medicine. By age 65, brain scans showed significant plaque buildup in nearly three-quarters of those double carriers – who also were more likely to have initial Alzheimer’s symptoms around that age rather than in the 70s or 80s.

Fortea said the disease's underlying biology was remarkably similar to young inherited types.

It appears more like “a familial form of Alzheimer’s,” said Dr. Eliezer Masliah of the National Institute on Aging. “It is not just a risk factor.”

Importantly, not everyone with two APOE4 genes develops Alzheimer’s symptoms and researchers need to learn why, Sperling cautioned.

“It’s not quite destiny,” she said.

HOW THE NEW FINDINGS MAY AFFECT ALZHEIMER'S RESEARCH AND TREATMENT The drug Leqembi works by clearing away some sticky amyloid but Sperling said it’s not clear if carriers of two APOE4 genes benefit because they have such a high risk of a side effect from the drug – dangerous brain swelling and bleeding. One research question is whether they’d do better starting such drugs sooner than other people.

Masliah said other research aims to develop gene therapy or drugs to specifically target APOE4. He said it's also crucial to understand APOE4’s effects in diverse populations since it’s been studied mostly in white people of European ancestry.

As for gene tests, for now they’re typically used only to evaluate if someone’s a candidate for Leqembi or for people enrolling in Alzheimer’s research – especially studies of possible ways to prevent the disease. Sperling said the people most likely to carry two APOE4 genes had parents who both got Alzheimer’s relatively early, in their 60s rather than 80s.


Heavy Rains Ease around Houston but Flooding Remains after Hundreds of Rescues, Evacuations

Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
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Heavy Rains Ease around Houston but Flooding Remains after Hundreds of Rescues, Evacuations

Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Floodwaters closed some Texas schools on Monday after days of heavy rains pummeled the Houston area and led to hundreds of rescues including people who were stranded on rooftops.

A 5-year-old boy died after riding in a car that was swept away in fast waters, authorities said.

Although forecasters expected storms to begin tapering off in southeastern Texas, high waters continued to close some roads and left residents facing lengthy cleanups in neighborhoods where rising river levels led to weekend evacuation orders.

Houston is one of the most flood-prone metro areas in the country. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dumped historic rainfall that flooded thousands of homes and resulted in more than 60,000 rescues.

In one soggy area of Houston, school officials in Channelview canceled classes and said a survey of their employees found many of them had experienced circumstances that would prevent them from coming to work.

"These folks have suffered much, people," Trinity County Sheriff Woody Wallace said Sunday during a Facebook livestream as he rode a boat through a rural flooded neighborhood. Partially submerged cars and street signs peeked above the water around him.

Areas near Lake Livingston, located northeast of Houston, received upwards of 23 inches (58 centimeters) of rain over the past week, National Weather Service meteorologist Jimmy Fowler said.

In Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, a 5-year-old boy died when he was swept away after the vehicle he was riding in became stuck in swift-moving water near the community of Lillian just before 2 a.m. Sunday, an official said.

The child and two adults were trying to reach dry ground when they were swept away. The adults were rescued around 5 a.m. and taken to a hospital, while the child was found dead around 7:20 a.m. in the water, Johnson County Emergency Management Director Jamie Moore wrote in a social media post.

Storms brought 9 inches (23 centimeters) of rain in a span of six to eight hours in some areas from central Texas to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Stalley said.

Since last week, storms have forced numerous high-water rescues in the Houston area, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes.

Greg Moss, 68, stayed put in his recreational vehicle on Sunday after leaving his home in the community of Channelview in eastern Harris County near the San Jacinto River. A day earlier, he had packed up many of his belongings and left before the road to his home flooded.

"I would be stuck for four days," Moss said. "So now at least I can go get something to eat."

Moss moved his belongings and vehicle to a neighbor’s home, where he planned to stay until the waters recede. The floodwaters had already gone down by a couple of feet and he wasn’t worried his home would flood because it’s located on higher ground, Moss said Sunday.


WWII Veteran, 100, Receives College Diploma 60 Years after Graduation

Milton had earned enough credits for his bachelor of arts diploma, and was planning on walking the stage at graduation in 1966.  - Fox News
Milton had earned enough credits for his bachelor of arts diploma, and was planning on walking the stage at graduation in 1966.  - Fox News
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WWII Veteran, 100, Receives College Diploma 60 Years after Graduation

Milton had earned enough credits for his bachelor of arts diploma, and was planning on walking the stage at graduation in 1966.  - Fox News
Milton had earned enough credits for his bachelor of arts diploma, and was planning on walking the stage at graduation in 1966.  - Fox News

A 100-year-old veteran of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War thought he was going to a celebration for his 100th birthday and to honor his contributions to the University of Maryland Global Campus, his alma mater, Fox News reported.

Instead, Jack Milton this week received the surprise of a lifetime: his long-overdue graduation ceremony.

"I’ve had many ceremonies throughout my life, fortunately, to celebrate many occasions, but this has to be the tops," Milton told Fox 5 DC.

"I feel like this is the final of a long journey in education — and again, I keep using the word appreciative, but I can’t think of any other word," he added.

Milton, 100, enrolled at the University of Maryland Global Campus in the 1960s while he was working at the Pentagon. At the time, the school was called University of Maryland, University College.

Jack Milton, front and center, finally had a graduation ceremony from the University of Maryland Global Campus on Tuesday, April 30. He missed his original ceremony in the 1960s because he was called to serve in Vietnam.

Then, and now, the school caters to non-traditional college students, including veterans, and offers both in-person and distance learning.

Milton was a military pilot for 31 years. He amassed more than 12,000 flying hours, said a 2021 article from Achiever, the University of Maryland Global Campus magazine.

Milton had earned enough credits for his bachelor of arts diploma, and was planning on walking the stage at graduation in 1966.

But before that could happen, he was deployed to Vietnam.

It had always irked him that he never formally received his diploma, he said.

In 2010, the Miltons established the John L. and Symantha Milton Scholarship Fund, which supports another University of Maryland Global Campus scholarship fund specifically for volunteer caregivers of injured military servicemembers, said Achiever.


French Bakers Make World's Longest Baguette, Beating Italy

French bakers react after having finished cooking the baguette in an attempt to beat the world record for the longest baguette during the Suresnes Baguette Show in Suresnes near Paris, France, May 5, 2024. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq
French bakers react after having finished cooking the baguette in an attempt to beat the world record for the longest baguette during the Suresnes Baguette Show in Suresnes near Paris, France, May 5, 2024. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq
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French Bakers Make World's Longest Baguette, Beating Italy

French bakers react after having finished cooking the baguette in an attempt to beat the world record for the longest baguette during the Suresnes Baguette Show in Suresnes near Paris, France, May 5, 2024. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq
French bakers react after having finished cooking the baguette in an attempt to beat the world record for the longest baguette during the Suresnes Baguette Show in Suresnes near Paris, France, May 5, 2024. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

French bakers cooked the world's longest baguette on Sunday at 140.53 meters (461 ft), reclaiming a record for one of the nation's best-known emblems taken by Italy for five years.
The baguette, about 235 times longer than the traditional one, was made in Suresnes in the suburbs of Paris during an event for the French confederation of bakers and pastry chefs.
The previous longest baguette of 132.62 meters was baked in the Italian city of Como in June 2019.
To better that, the French bakers began kneading and shaping the dough at 3 a.m. before putting it in a specially-built slow-moving oven on wheels, Reuters reported.
"Everything has been validated, we are all very happy to have beaten this record and that it was done in France," Anthony Arrigault, one of the bakers, said after the baguette was approved by the Guinness World Records judge.
Part of the baguette, which had to be at least 5 cm thick throughout, was cut and shared with the public.
The rest was to be given to homeless people.
The traditional French baguette must be about 60 cm long, be made from wheat flour, water, salt and yeast only, and weigh about 250 grams, according to the official regulation.


Filipino Conjoined Twins Arrive in Riyadh for Potential Separation Procedure

The Filipino Siamese twins arrived in Riyadh on Sunday. SPA
The Filipino Siamese twins arrived in Riyadh on Sunday. SPA
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Filipino Conjoined Twins Arrive in Riyadh for Potential Separation Procedure

The Filipino Siamese twins arrived in Riyadh on Sunday. SPA
The Filipino Siamese twins arrived in Riyadh on Sunday. SPA

Filipino Siamese twins Akhizah and Ayeesha Yosoph arrived on Sunday in Riyadh via a Saudi evacuation plan facilitated by the Ministry of Health.

After arriving at King Khalid International Airport along with their parents, the twins were promptly transferred to the King Abdullah Specialized Children's Hospital (KASCH) under the Ministry of National Guard. At KASCH, a medical team is assessing the twins' condition to determine the feasibility of performing a separation surgery.

This initiative came upon the directives of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, and Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister.

The Advisor at the Royal Court, Supervisor General of King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief), and head of the medical team overseeing the case, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah, expressed his gratitude to the King and the Crown Prince for their unwavering support. He commended their support and care to the Saudi Conjoined Twins Program and humanitarian endeavors at large.

Al Rabeeah highlighted the program's significance on a global scale, serving as a milestone in the field while aligning with the ambitious goals of Saudi Vision 2030 to enhance the Kingdom's healthcare services to a prominent position.

The parents of Akhizah and Ayeesha expressed their heartfelt appreciation to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and the Crown Prince for the warm welcome and generous hospitality extended to them since their arrival in the Kingdom.


Frank Stella, Leading American Artist, Dies at 87

Stella died in his Manhattan home from lymphoma (Photo by The AP)
Stella died in his Manhattan home from lymphoma (Photo by The AP)
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Frank Stella, Leading American Artist, Dies at 87

Stella died in his Manhattan home from lymphoma (Photo by The AP)
Stella died in his Manhattan home from lymphoma (Photo by The AP)

Frank Stella, an American painter who became a dominant figure in postwar American art, notably with early minimalist works, has died at age 87, US media reported on Saturday.

Stella died in his Manhattan home from lymphoma, The New York Times reported.

Stella launched his career making spare paintings, some not intended to offer viewers any visual stimulation and little color, a stark contrast to abstract expressionism of the era.

His early work included a series of "pin stripe" paintings -- large works with precise black lines on blank canvas -- which created a furor in the US art world.

Stella was recognized as a major US artist before he turned 25, and continued his career over six decades, AFP reported.

He objected to critics' demands that he interpret his work with the oft-quoted phrase: "What you see is what you see."

Stella later explored color and form, occasionally making irregular shaped paintings with geometric patterns.

Stella turned increasingly to three-dimensional works in the 1970s and 1980s, incorporating aluminum and fiberglass into his pieces, eventually turning to freestanding sculptures for public spaces.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York offered retrospectives of his work in 1970 and again in 1987.


Film Commission Takes Part in 10th Saudi Film Festival

The 10th edition of the Saudi Film Festival. SPA
The 10th edition of the Saudi Film Festival. SPA
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Film Commission Takes Part in 10th Saudi Film Festival

The 10th edition of the Saudi Film Festival. SPA
The 10th edition of the Saudi Film Festival. SPA

The Film Commission is participating in the 10th edition of the Saudi Film Festival, held at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran from May 2 to 9.

This annual local film event is organized in collaboration with the Saudi Cinema Association, with support from the Film Commission.
The commission's participation aims to advance the film sector and nurture talented individuals. The commission seeks to showcase diverse knowledge and ideas by fostering communication between filmmakers and industry experts.

The commission's festival participation includes a pavilion where it presents its vision, goals, strategies, projects, and initiatives for developing the sector. The pavilion serves as a platform for Saudi companies and talents to network.

In addition to providing financial support to the festival, the commission screens films it has supported, including animated films like "The Menace from Above" and "Saleeq," as well as feature films such as "Within Sand," "Hajjan," and "Salem's Disappearance," which received support through the commission's incentives program.

The 10th Saudi Film Festival features competitions to enhance the quality of screenplays and films. In addition to expanding the range of film screenings to include Arab and international productions, the festival offers an enriching program of workshops, seminars, and networking events for filmmakers.


Rescuers Brave Indonesia Volcano Eruptions to Save Pets

A volunteer carries a wounded dog as they bring back animals from the abandoned area at the foot of Mount Ruang volcano (background) on Tagulandang Island in Sitaro, North Sulawesi, on May 4, 2024. (Photo by Ronny Adolof BUOL / AFP)
A volunteer carries a wounded dog as they bring back animals from the abandoned area at the foot of Mount Ruang volcano (background) on Tagulandang Island in Sitaro, North Sulawesi, on May 4, 2024. (Photo by Ronny Adolof BUOL / AFP)
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Rescuers Brave Indonesia Volcano Eruptions to Save Pets

A volunteer carries a wounded dog as they bring back animals from the abandoned area at the foot of Mount Ruang volcano (background) on Tagulandang Island in Sitaro, North Sulawesi, on May 4, 2024. (Photo by Ronny Adolof BUOL / AFP)
A volunteer carries a wounded dog as they bring back animals from the abandoned area at the foot of Mount Ruang volcano (background) on Tagulandang Island in Sitaro, North Sulawesi, on May 4, 2024. (Photo by Ronny Adolof BUOL / AFP)

An Indonesian volunteer returns from a dangerous rescue mission to a remote island where a volcano recently unleashed huge eruptions, cradling an abandoned, emaciated dog covered in burn blisters.

Mount Ruang in Indonesia's northernmost region has erupted more than half a dozen times since April 16, stirring a spectacular mix of ash, lava and lightning that forced the island's residents to be permanently relocated and thousands more evacuated.

But while locals have fled, a team of volunteers travelled to Ruang by boat on daring rescue missions to save abandoned pets from the foot of the volcano that remains at its highest alert level, Agence France Presse reported.

"We know that they (the animals) are still living there. How come we let them die while we know they are still alive there?" 31-year-old volunteer Laurent Tan told AFP on Saturday.

Laurent, the owner of two animal shelters in North Sulawesi province capital Manado, is one of eight volunteers who have made the six-hour ferry journey several times to Ruang's neighboring Tagulandang island following the eruptions.

On one of their missions to the island's ash-covered homes, they retrieved an unnamed pup, a white cat, and a bright turquoise-and-white tropical bird.

The dog, a female with burns on her face and body, was brought to a makeshift shelter on Tagulandang, where a veterinarian treated her on a wooden desk while a volunteer held up a mobile phone flashlight.

She appeared to have survived the eruptions by taking shelter in a large gutter. The surrounding village above ground had been destroyed, Laurent said.

The group, made of volunteers from animal welfare organizations, deployed for a second time on Friday after some pet owners made desperate social media appeals for them to evacuate their pets, and has since rescued "a lot" of animals, she added.

An AFP journalist at the scene said more than a dozen animals had been rescued since Friday.

Some owners had learned their pets were still alive after seeing them in pictures of Ruang island in the media.

Authorities had told locals to evacuate outside a seven-kilometer (4.3-mile) exclusion zone around the crater, which was lowered to five kilometers on Sunday, with around 11,000 people earmarked for evacuation.

As of Saturday, more than 5,000 people from Tagulandang had been evacuated, the national disaster mitigation agency said Sunday, while all of Ruang's residents -- more than 800 -- had been taken for permanent relocation.

Authorities had warned of potential flying rocks, lava flows and tsunamis due to debris sliding into the sea.

But despite the risk, the volunteers were getting to work.

One climbed over the fence of an abandoned house to rescue several dogs left behind by their owner, before handing them over to vet Hendrikus Hermawan.

Hendrikus said the owner had asked the volunteers for help rescuing the dogs, which included a five-month-old puppy.

Many of the rescued animals appeared hungry and stressed after their owners left them, he told AFP.

"The first treatment we do here is give food and additional vitamins to relieve their stress," he said, adding that the animals could survive as long as they were nourished.

The volunteers aim to rescue all the dogs, cats and birds threatened by the volcano, bring them to Manado and reunite them with any original owners, said Laurent.

While the initial focus of the eruptions was on the human impact, the volunteer said animals should not be forgotten.

"Our main focus is the animals. Many people have already received help, but these animals had no help," she said.

"For me, their lives matter. We consider them part of our family."


Heatwave Hammers Thailand's Stinky but Lucrative Durian Farms

The heat causes the durian to ripen faster so it does not grow to its fullest -- and most valuable -- size. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP
The heat causes the durian to ripen faster so it does not grow to its fullest -- and most valuable -- size. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP
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Heatwave Hammers Thailand's Stinky but Lucrative Durian Farms

The heat causes the durian to ripen faster so it does not grow to its fullest -- and most valuable -- size. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP
The heat causes the durian to ripen faster so it does not grow to its fullest -- and most valuable -- size. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP

Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague's waiting arms some 15 meters (50 feet) below.
Among Thailand's most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent "king of fruits" is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years, AFP said.
But a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry.
"This year is a crisis," durian farmer Busaba Nakpipat told AFP bluntly.
The weather-beaten 54-year-old took over her parents' farm in eastern Chanthaburi province -- Thailand's durian heartland -- three decades ago.
"If the hot weather continues to rise in the future, it'll be over," she said. "Farmers wouldn't be able to produce durian anymore."
Durian season usually lasts from March until June, but the soaring temperatures -- which in her province have hovered around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for weeks -- and subsequent drought have shortened the harvest.
Busaba said the heat causes the durian, which is graduated by weight and size, to ripen faster so it does not grow to its fullest -- and most valuable -- size.
"The quality of the durian won't meet the standard," she said.
And not only is she getting less money for the crop, Busaba's operational costs have risen.
Since March a drought has sucked water from the wells, so to keep her precious durian trees alive Busaba is forced to bring in thousands of liters by truck.
"We have to buy 10 water trucks for 120,000 liters of water for one-time watering the whole 10-rai (1.6 hectares) of our farm," she said, repeating the process every other day, at a cost of thousands of dollars.
"We have prayed for rain," she said. "But there was no rain."
This year, less
Thailand's durian exports are worth billions and are the kingdom's third most valuable agricultural product -- behind rice and rubber.
But in the nearby durian market, anxiety is running high among stall-holders, many of them with family businesses going back generations.
Siriwan Roopkaew, manning her mother's stall, said the lack of water has impacted the size of the fruit, but for now prices remain high thanks to demand from China.
Around 95 percent of Thaliand's durian exports are to China, which shipped nearly $4.6 billion worth of the love-it-or-hate-it fruit from the kingdom in 2023, according to data from Beijing's commerce ministry.
But the weather is threatening Thailand's dominance.
In May Chinese state media reported an almost 50 percent rise in durian imported from Vietnam, citing heat and drought in Thailand.
"Hot weather means there will be less durian. Even this year, there is less durian," Siriwan, 26, said.
"Normally, my stall would be full of durian by now."
While farmers worried about water, she said, sellers like her family were more concerned about the knock-on economics.
"Less durian means our earnings are less," she said, "so it'd be hard for us to live the whole year."
Meanwhile, back at the farm, Busaba sighed as she considered the months ahead.
"The future of durian, it's over if there's no water," she said.


King Charles and UK Royals to Relinquish Dozens of Patronages

Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales lays a wreath during the Royal British Legion's Service of Remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Bayeux for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Normandy, northwestern France, June 6, 2019. (Reuters)
Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales lays a wreath during the Royal British Legion's Service of Remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Bayeux for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Normandy, northwestern France, June 6, 2019. (Reuters)
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King Charles and UK Royals to Relinquish Dozens of Patronages

Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales lays a wreath during the Royal British Legion's Service of Remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Bayeux for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Normandy, northwestern France, June 6, 2019. (Reuters)
Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales lays a wreath during the Royal British Legion's Service of Remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Bayeux for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Normandy, northwestern France, June 6, 2019. (Reuters)

King Charles and other senior British royals are to relinquish patronages of almost 200 charities and organizations after a review of their association with more than 1,000 groups, Buckingham Palace said on Saturday.

The review was launched following the death of Queen Elizabeth to examine all the charities and bodies to which she, Charles and his wife Queen Camilla were connected, either as a president or patron.

Elizabeth was patron of 492 organizations, while Charles was affiliated to 441 and Camilla 100. Following the assessment, just over 830 have been retained by the king and queen, or passed to other members of the royal family.

Organizations are able to apply to have a royal patron who in return can provide publicity for their work and help their achievements to be widely recognized.

Among those that will retain their royal connection include the Royal British Legion, the largest armed forces charity, the Dogs Trust, the Jockey Club and the Wildlife Trusts, a grassroots nature organization.

"His majesty has consistently demonstrated foresight, courage and leadership as he has helped communities, charities and businesses grapple with the challenges and opportunities inherent in living more sustainably and in harmony with nature," said Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of the Wildlife Trusts.

"It is therefore a great honor that His Majesty has agreed to continue with his patronage."

Conclusions of the review will be shared among the relevant organizations this week, which marks the first anniversary of Charles and Camilla's coronation, the palace said.