عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Pumpkin Weighing 2,749 Pounds Wins California Contest, Sets World Record 

A Michael Jordan bear doll sits on Travis Gienger's pumpkin dubbed "Michael Jordan" before it is weighed during the 50th annual World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. (San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
A Michael Jordan bear doll sits on Travis Gienger's pumpkin dubbed "Michael Jordan" before it is weighed during the 50th annual World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. (San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
TT
TT

Pumpkin Weighing 2,749 Pounds Wins California Contest, Sets World Record 

A Michael Jordan bear doll sits on Travis Gienger's pumpkin dubbed "Michael Jordan" before it is weighed during the 50th annual World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. (San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
A Michael Jordan bear doll sits on Travis Gienger's pumpkin dubbed "Michael Jordan" before it is weighed during the 50th annual World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. (San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

A Minnesota horticulture teacher set a world record in California on Monday for the heaviest pumpkin after growing a giant jack-o'-lantern gourd weighing 2,749 pounds (1,247 kilograms).

Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota, won the 50th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California, with an enormous, lumpy, orange pumpkin that could produce at least 687 pies.

“I was not expecting that. It was quite the feeling,” said Gienger, 43, who has been growing pumpkins for nearly 30 years and last year set a new US record for growing a giant gourd.

The previous world record for heaviest pumpkin was set by a grower in Italy who produced a 2,702-pound (1,226-kilogram) squash in 2021, according to Guinness World Records.

Gienger grows his gourds in the pumpkin patch in his backyard. He said this year he decided to give his plants extra care, watering them up to 12 times a day and feeding and fertilizing them a bit more than usual.

Gienger, a landscape and horticulture teacher at Anoka Technical College, has been growing pumpkins since he was a teenager, inspired by his father who also grew them. He first competed in Half Moon Bay's annual weigh-off in 2020 and has won three of the city's last four giant pumpkin contests.

“I put in the work so that I can put a smile on people's faces and it’s just so nice coming out here to see everyone in this town," he said.

The pumpkin champ won a $30,000 prize for growing the biggest pumpkin and setting a world record.

The gargantuan pumpkin will be on display in Half Moon Bay along with the three runner-ups through next weekend when visitors to the city's Art and Pumpkin Festival will be able to take photos with Gienger and the enormous gourd.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Thousands of Students Stunned After Their Exam Papers Are Voided for Being Leaked Online

Over 5,000 schools around the world offer Cambridge International Education's AS and A-levels, in 138 countries. (Getty Images)
Over 5,000 schools around the world offer Cambridge International Education's AS and A-levels, in 138 countries. (Getty Images)
TT
TT

Thousands of Students Stunned After Their Exam Papers Are Voided for Being Leaked Online

Over 5,000 schools around the world offer Cambridge International Education's AS and A-levels, in 138 countries. (Getty Images)
Over 5,000 schools around the world offer Cambridge International Education's AS and A-levels, in 138 countries. (Getty Images)

A-level students in several countries, including the UK, have had their exam papers voided after it emerged they had been leaked online, according to BBC.

Cambridge International Education, the exam board affected, said it had “moved quickly to put alternative measures in place for impacted students.”

Some of those students will receive “assessed marks” based on how they did in other parts of the course.

“We know how frustrating and disappointing this incident has been for students taking these particular subjects, and their families and schools,” a spokesperson told BBC.

Physics papers, which were sat last week had to be voided, while some of the same exam board's maths papers were also leaked earlier this month.

It is mostly international students who are affected, the exam board said, but the papers are also sat by some students in independent schools across the UK.

They are different from Cambridge OCR exams taken in UK state schools.

In a statement online, the exam board said its priority was to make sure it was fair to students “who did not cheat, which is the vast majority.”

Affected students' marks for the exam will be disregarded, with a mark instead being calculated for each student based on their performance in other components in the syllabus.

Over 5,000 schools around the world offer Cambridge International Education's AS and A-levels, in 138 countries, according to its website.

Varieties

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon Drops to Lowest Level Since 2019

(FILES) Smoke from illegal fires lit by farmers rises in Manaquiri, Amazonas state, on September 6, 2023. (Photo by MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP)
(FILES) Smoke from illegal fires lit by farmers rises in Manaquiri, Amazonas state, on September 6, 2023. (Photo by MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP)
TT
TT

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon Drops to Lowest Level Since 2019

(FILES) Smoke from illegal fires lit by farmers rises in Manaquiri, Amazonas state, on September 6, 2023. (Photo by MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP)
(FILES) Smoke from illegal fires lit by farmers rises in Manaquiri, Amazonas state, on September 6, 2023. (Photo by MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP)

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a report published Wednesday that will be seen as good news for leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

South America's biggest country lost 985,000 hectares (2.4 million acres) of native vegetation last year, down 20.6 percent from 2024, the MapBiomas monitoring network announced.

The figure is the lowest since the network began keeping records in 2019, AFP reported.

It notably does not include forest lost to fires, but after a record fire season in 2024, the country was relatively spared major infernos last year.

Lula, who is seeking a fourth term in October elections, has made the fight against deforestation a central tenet of his administration.

Preserving forest cover is essential to fighting climate warming as trees act as a natural carbon sink.

After four years of widespread logging under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, Lula has pledged to eradicate illegal deforestation altogether by 2030.

The reduction in deforestation was noted across Brazil's six major ecosystems.

"We are seeing an increase in enforcement actions and sanctions (...) which have a direct correlation with the drop in deforestation in all Brazilian biomes," Marcos Rosa, MapBiomas's technical coordinator, told AFP.

Even so, the rate of destruction remains breathtaking.

In the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, where deforestation slowed by 23.5 percent, five trees are still felled every second.

The hardest-hit biome last year was once again the Cerrado, a vast, biodiverse savanna south of the Amazon.

It alone accounted for more than half of the deforestation.

MapBiomas -- a consortium of universities, NGOs and technology companies -- said agriculture accounted for 99 percent of vegetation loss.

Lula is keen to showcase his environmental achievements ahead of the election.

Last year, he hosted the COP30 climate summit in the Amazonian city of Belem.

He has however been criticized by environmentalists for his support of a massive oil exploration project near the mouth of the Amazon River.

Varieties

Putin Gifts 4 Amur Tigers to Kazakhstan Ahead of Visit

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin meets with graduates of the "Time of Heroes" program, at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 22, 2026. (Photo by Alexey NIKOLSKY / POOL / AFP)
In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin meets with graduates of the "Time of Heroes" program, at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 22, 2026. (Photo by Alexey NIKOLSKY / POOL / AFP)
TT
TT

Putin Gifts 4 Amur Tigers to Kazakhstan Ahead of Visit

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin meets with graduates of the "Time of Heroes" program, at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 22, 2026. (Photo by Alexey NIKOLSKY / POOL / AFP)
In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin meets with graduates of the "Time of Heroes" program, at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 22, 2026. (Photo by Alexey NIKOLSKY / POOL / AFP)

Russia has handed Kazakhstan four Amur tigers, two of them cubs, to help the country restore its numbers of the animals, President Vladimir Putin said in an article issued ahead of his visit to the Central Asian nation this week.

Rich in energy resources and critical minerals, Kazakhstan shares a border with Russia and is a close ally of Moscow in a region where China and the ⁠United States are ⁠also expanding their influence.

The four animals captured in Russia's far eastern region of Khabarovsk were flown to Kazakhstan, Putin said on the Kremlin's website on Tuesday, and are soon to be released into the wild.

Putin ⁠is no stranger to using animals to advance diplomatic efforts.

In 2022, Russia sent 30 grey thoroughbred horses to North Korea, as the nations have boosted ties since Ukraine's invasion that year. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is a keen horseman.

Kazakhstan, which is trying to restore the tiger population in Central Asia, sees the Amur tiger as a ⁠close ⁠relative of the extinct Caspian tiger. The Russian gesture boosts the country's tally of the animals previously sent by the Netherlands, Reuters reported.

On his visit, Putin will oversee the signing of a deal for a nuclear power project in Kazakhstan, which has no nuclear power generation now, and will discuss efforts to boost the transit of Russian oil to China through the country, the Kremlin has said.