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New Zealand Airport Sets Three-minute Limit on Hugs

A handout photo taken on October 22, 2024 and received by the Dunedin Airport New Zealand on October 24, shows a new signage installed as New Zealand airport has imposed a three-minute limit on farewell hugs, sparking a worldwide debate over how long to cling on for a cuddle. (Photo by Sarah SOPER / DUNEDIN AIRPORT NEW ZEALAND / AFP)
A handout photo taken on October 22, 2024 and received by the Dunedin Airport New Zealand on October 24, shows a new signage installed as New Zealand airport has imposed a three-minute limit on farewell hugs, sparking a worldwide debate over how long to cling on for a cuddle. (Photo by Sarah SOPER / DUNEDIN AIRPORT NEW ZEALAND / AFP)
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New Zealand Airport Sets Three-minute Limit on Hugs

A handout photo taken on October 22, 2024 and received by the Dunedin Airport New Zealand on October 24, shows a new signage installed as New Zealand airport has imposed a three-minute limit on farewell hugs, sparking a worldwide debate over how long to cling on for a cuddle. (Photo by Sarah SOPER / DUNEDIN AIRPORT NEW ZEALAND / AFP)
A handout photo taken on October 22, 2024 and received by the Dunedin Airport New Zealand on October 24, shows a new signage installed as New Zealand airport has imposed a three-minute limit on farewell hugs, sparking a worldwide debate over how long to cling on for a cuddle. (Photo by Sarah SOPER / DUNEDIN AIRPORT NEW ZEALAND / AFP)

A New Zealand airport has imposed a three-minute limit on farewell hugs, sparking a worldwide debate over how long to cling on for a cuddle.

Bosses at the international airport in the southern city of Dunedin say they were surprised by the viral response to their new rule in the car drop-off zone.

"To keep things moving smoothly, we've installed new signage, including the 'Max hug time 3 minutes' sign," said airport chief executive Daniel De Bono.

"It's our way of being a little quirky and reminding people that the drop-off zone is for quick farewells," AFP quoted him as saying.

"And don't worry - just a 20-second hug is enough to release oxytocin and serotonin, the happy hormones that boost well-being, so three minutes is plenty of time to say goodbye and get your dose of happiness."

People who want a longer hug can use the car park, where the first 15 minutes are free, he said.

The hug restriction made headlines worldwide and prompted a divided online response.

"I'm just glad there's no minimum hug time. A 'see ya soon' suffices," one woman commented on the airport's Facebook page.

"Hug Police!? This is just weird! Hugs are proven to have many benefits not to mention mental health," said another poster.

The airport said it started the hug limit in September with little initial reaction.

"We have just been surprised how much global interest there has been," said the airport's marketing and communications executive, Sarah Soper.

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Varieties

In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.