Thanks to an unhurried ‘life’s a beach’ attitude, Brazilians – especially those from Rio de Janeiro – have learned neither to expect nor appreciate punctuality. I still cringe when I remember the evening I arrived on time to a house party in Rio de Janeiro.Three months after I moved to Rio from Manchester, I was invited to a Saturday night churrasco – an informal barbecue – by a casual acquaintance with whom I’d crossed paths socially enough times that a friendship had begun to develop. But when I turned up on her doorstep a couple of minutes after the time…

Divers on Friday recovered the last bodies from the wreckage of a "duck boat" that sank on Thursday during a storm on a Missouri lake, killing 17 people, including nine members of the same family. The World War Two-style amphibious vehicle was carrying 31 passengers including children when a storm hit Table Rock Lake outside Branson, raising waves that caused it to capsize in one of the deadliest U.S. tourist tragedies in years. More than three dozen people have died in incidents involving duck boats on land and water in the United States over the past two decades. Tia Coleman…

Charred remains of a flatbread baked about 14,500 years ago in a stone fireplace at a site in northeastern Jordan have given researchers a delectable surprise: people began making bread, a vital staple food, millennia before they developed agriculture. No matter how you slice it, the discovery detailed on Monday shows that hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Mediterranean achieved the cultural milestone of bread-making far earlier than previously known, more than 4,000 years before plant cultivation took root. The flatbread, likely unleavened and somewhat resembling pita bread, was fashioned from wild cereals such as barley, einkorn or oats, as well as…

Fire has burnt down a three-bedroomed bungalow at Ezioha Okporo in Orlu Local Government Area of Imo State, leaving only a Holy Bible in its parlour unaffected. Although there was no casualty, many found it curious that the Bible was not burnt. It was, however, gathered that the landlord’s original company certificates, vehicles documents, his educational certificates, those belonging to his wife, and household items were all razed to ashes by the inferno. Some of the wife’s burnt certificates mentioned were First School Leaving Certificate, Senior Secondary School Certificate, National Examination Council Certificate, National Certificate of Education and Bachelors degree…