Reuters Lifestyle – Spoken Edition

(Reuters) - Michelin has stripped New York restaurant Jean-Georges of its three-star rating in its 2018 guide, leaving the city with five top-rated eateries, two fewer than San Francisco which now has the most three-star establishments in the United States. Celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurant, in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in midtown Manhattan, was decorated with three stars when Michelin started rating the city’s restaurants more than a decade ago.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia’s world-famous Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock, will be closed to climbers from 2019, its management board said on Wednesday, ending a decades-long campaign by Aborigines to protect their sacred monolith in the Northern Territory. A board of eight traditional owners and four government officials voted unanimously to close the rock to climbers, a spokesperson told Reuters.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Fashionable cafes springing up in Libya’s capital are shutting out single men and catering for women looking for a break from the tensions - political and personal - crowding in around them. The cafes with European names and bright decor seem a world away from the city’s traffic-clogged and still violent streets. In a socially conservative society, they also offer privacy and protection from unwanted advances.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - At Kinfe Abera’s garage in Addis Ababa, cranky, 50-year-old Volkswagen Beetles enjoy a kind of life after death; their parts are never discarded but re-used to keep the city’s remaining Beetles on the road. The Beetle was born in the 1930s out of dictator Adolf Hitler’s desire to produce a cheap “people’s car” for the German family.

NEWQUAY, England (Reuters) - The Bloodhound Supersonic Car, effectively a fighter jet on wheels, on Thursday kicked off a bid to roar into the record books by eventually reaching 1,000 mph (1,610 kmh). Before a crowd of spectators, the blue and orange, spacecraft-like vehicle with a high tail and long, rocket-shaped nose made two test runs down a 1.7-mile (2.7 km) track, attaining 200 mph (320 kmh) in about nine seconds.

LONDON (Reuters) - It is 100 years on Wednesday, using Russia’s old calendar, since Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in what is now St Petersburg and took power. Not a lot has changed. Well, not in economic terms, according to research by Renaissance Capital, an investment bank specializing in the region. It says the Russias of 1917 and 2017 have more in common than might be expected. Take, for example, debt.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Strapped for cash in a Tokyo hotel, Albert Einstein wrote his take on life on a note and handed it to the bellboy instead of a tip. The physicist’s formula for happy living fetched $1.3 million on Tuesday, a Jerusalem auction house said. In 1922, Einstein was en route to Japan when the announcement came he would be awarded the 1921 Nobel prize in physics, Winner’s Auctions and Exhibitions said.

HAVANA (Reuters) - At dusk, when the worst of the Caribbean heat has subsided, parks around Cuba fill with families video chatting with loved ones abroad or scrolling through social media, their animated faces lit by telephone and tablet screens. The introduction of Wi-Fi hotspots in Cuban public spaces two years ago has transformed the Communist-run island that had been mostly offline. Nearly half the population of 11 million connected at least once last year.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba unveiled a replica of a New York statue of independence hero Jose Marti on Friday, putting a gift from the hometown of U.S. President Donald Trump on public display at a time of heightened U.S.-Cuba tensions. The equestrian statue depicts Marti moments before his death in a cavalry charge in 1895, during the fight against Spanish colonial rule. The original, sculpted by U.S.

LONDON (Reuters) - A hand-written letter found on the body of a man killed in the sinking of the Titanic is expected to fetch up to £80,000 ($105,000) at auction on Saturday. The letter, written by first-class passenger Alexander Oskar Holverson to his mother on embossed Titanic “on-board” stationary, describes his impressions of the palatial ship, praising the food and music. “If all goes well we will arrive in New York Wednesday A.M.

LONDON (Reuters) - A hand-written letter found on the body of a man killed in the sinking of the Titanic is expected to fetch up to £80,000 ($105,000) at auction on Saturday. The letter, written by first-class passenger Alexander Oskar Holverson to his mother on embossed Titanic “on-board” stationary, describes his impressions of the palatial ship, praising the food and music. “If all goes well we will arrive in New York Wednesday A.M.

A general view from the top terrace of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, October 17, 2017. Picture taken October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi ROME (Reuters) - Visitors to Rome’s Colosseum can now see the structure as poor Romans once did - minus the wild animals, gladiators and Christian martyrs. The top floors of the amphitheatre which housed seats for the plebeian class have opened for the first time in 40 years.

(Reuters) - Washington’s dining scene received some extra sparkle on Tuesday as Michelin bestowed stars to two more restaurants in its second annual guide of the city’s best eateries, which will go on sale Friday. The addition of Komi and Métier, both praised for their inventive, modern American dishes, brought the total number of restaurants with Michelin stars in the U.S. capital to 14 in the latest guide, from 12 a year earlier.

Haruta Saito tries out a prosthetic "blade" during an opening ceremony of a special "library" that lets people borrow and try out prosthetic "blades" for runners, in Tokyo, Japan, October 15, 2017. Picture taken October 15, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - Haruta Saito, a young Japanese amputee who dreams of becoming a Paralympian, remembers strapping on a prosthetic “running blade” for the first time.

A paramilitary police officer patrols the area around Tiananmen Square ahead of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, in Beijing, China October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer BEIJING (Reuters) - No free fruit in hotel rooms, no free hair cuts and no prawns on the menu - delegates at this week’s Communist Party Congress in China can expect austere treatment in keeping with President Xi Jinping’s pledge to crack down on corruption and extravagance.

FILE PHOTO: A man sorts books at a booth during preparations for the upcoming book fair in Frankfurt, the world's largest book fair which runs from October 11 to October 15 and features the literature of France as its guest of honour, in Frankfurt, Germany, October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Humanity no longer needs God but may with the help of artificial intelligence develop a new form of collective consciousness that fulfils the role of religion, U.S.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A 67-year-old Brazilian woman, once bedridden, has pledged to pursue an active lifestyle, including even canoeing, after receiving the heart of the coach of Germany’s slalom canoe team who died following a car crash during the 2016 Olympics. Ivonette Balthazar, a Rio de Janeiro resident, got the heart transplant last year after Stefan Henze, 35, suffered a fatal head injury when his taxi crashed into a concrete barrier.

Belgian priest Jeremie poses with a new beer called Ste Kat' at the Sainte-Catherine church, as they are launching the new beer to raise funds for renovation works on the building in Brussels, Belgium October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Brussels church that was nearly forced to close its doors for lack of parishioners has turned to the Belgian brewing tradition and launched a new beer in order to raise more funds for a now growing congregation. St.

Chinese performance artist Han Bing applies paint to his face before a shoot with German photographer Katharina Hesse at the outskirts of Beijing, China, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter BEIJING (Reuters) - One woman, a performance artist from Taiwan, tied herself up with bras, but left her nipples exposed. Another artist, a Romanian woman in a bathing suit, had someone write the Chinese characters for “control” and “art” across her buttocks.

DANDONG, China (Reuters) - Seated beneath tall windows and dressed simply in singlets and trousers, North Korean painters are hard at work. The artists staple canvases to frames or copy idyllic landscapes from laptop computers. One wears headphones as he brushes a group of running horses onto his canvas. The nine men have come to the Chinese border town of Dandong from Mansudae Art Studio, North Korea’s largest producer of art.