rocket leaves the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan, on Feb 17, 2024. Japan's space agency halted an engine combustion test of its Epsilon S rocket on Nov 26, 2024, after a fire broke out at the test site. (File photo: JIJI Press via AFP
TOKYO (AFP) – A major fire erupted Tuesday at a Japan space agency site as it tested a solid-fuel Epsilon S rocket, television footage showed.
There were no reports of any injuries in the incident in the remote Kagoshima region of southern Japan.
Towering balls of fire and white fumes rose from the Tanegashima Space Center, according to the footage from national broadcaster NHK.
“There was an abnormality during today’s combustion test. We are trying to assess what happened,” the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) told AFP in a statement.
“No injuries have been reported at this point. The cause is also under investigation.”
A rocket leaves the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan, on Feb 17, 2024. PHOTO: AFP
NHK says the fire happened during a combustion test that began at around 8:30 am (2330 GMT), with media stationed around 600 metres (yards) away.
About 30 seconds later, a large explosion was heard, and what appeared to be something on fire flew toward the sea, NHK said.
The Sankei Shimbun reported that orange flames burst out from the rocket engine placed on a horizontal platform before the explosion.
Tuesday’s fire is not the first time JAXA has experienced setbacks in its rocket programmes.
In July 2023 one engine of an Epsilon S exploded during a test around 50 seconds after ignition.
That was one in a string of failures for the country’s space agency JAXA, including launch attempts for its next-generation H3 rocket.
JAXA managed a successful blast-off in February this year for the H3, its new flagship rocket that has been mooted as a rival to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
That followed Japan successfully landing in January an unmanned probe on the Moon — albeit at a crooked angle — making it just the fifth country to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface.
In March a rocket made by a private Japanese company exploded seconds after launch.
Tokyo-based Space One’s 18-metre (60-foot) Kairos rocket blasted off in the coastal Wakayama region of western Japan, carrying a small government test satellite.
But around five seconds later, the solid-fuel rocket erupted in fire, sending white smoke billowing around the remote mountainous area as orange flames raged on the ground, live footage showed.
Burning debris fell onto the surrounding slopes as sprinklers began spraying water, in dramatic scenes watched by hundreds of spectators gathered at public viewing areas including a nearby waterfront.
Space One said at the time that it had taken the decision to “abort the flight” and details were being investigated.
(AP) – Bath & Body Works fiscal third-quarter performance topped analysts’ estimates thanks to strong sales, and the retailer boosted its full-year outlook.
The owner of Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works and other chain stores earned USD106 million, or 49 cents per share, for the period.
A year earlier the Columbus, Ohio-based company earned USD119 million, or 52 cents per share. The prior-year period’s results were helped by a USD12 million pretax gain related to the early payment of debt.
A Bath & Body Works store front. PHOTO: AP
The performance beat the 46 cents per share that analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research predicted.
Revenue totaled USD1.61 billion, up 3 per cent from USD1.56 billion a year earlier. The results topped Wall Street’s forecast of USD1.58 billion.
“We are capitalising on our agile business model and predominantly US-based supply chain, and we believe we are well-positioned to navigate a volatile retail environment and shorter holiday calendar,” CEO Gina Boswell said in a statement. “As we enter the critical holiday period, I am pleased with our strong execution and the momentum we are building, as we drive towards sustainable, long-term profitable growth.”
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, was pleased that Bath & Body Works saw increased sales both in stores and online during the quarter.
“One of the areas where Bath & Body Works has excelled is in trying to reinvigorate its core product categories,” Saunders said. “There has been a significant amount of innovation around scents, product design, and in-store displays to capture consumer imaginations and drive volume. This includes selective collaborations with franchises like Stranger Things to create limited-time collections which drive both interest and urgency when it comes to consumer purchases.”
Going forward, Bath & Body Works now anticipates fiscal 2024 adjusted earnings in a range of USD3.15 to USD3.28 per share and revenue between a decline of 2.5 per cent to a decline of 1.7 per cent, relative to USD7.43 billion in fiscal 2023. The company previously forecast adjusted earnings between USD3.06 and USD3.26 per share and revenue to range between a decline of 4 per cent to a decline of 2 per cent.
Analysts polled by FactSet expect full-year earnings of USD3.20 per share.
Shares jumped more than 19 per cent before the market open on Monday.
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte talks to reporters while a hearing she is attending is suspended at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday described a public threat by the vice president to have him killed by an assassin as a criminal plot and vowed to fight it, in a looming showdown between the country’s two top leaders.
Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday in an online news conference that she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives if she herself is killed, in a threat she warned was not a joke.
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte talks to reporters while a hearing she is attending is suspended at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. PHOTO: AP
The national police and military immediately boosted the security of the president, and the justice department said it would summon the vice president for an investigation. The National Security Council said it considered the threat a national security concern.
The vice president, a lawyer, later tried to walk back her remarks by saying it was not an actual threat but an expression of concern about her own safety over an unspecified threat.
“Why would I kill him if not for revenge from the grave? There is no reason for me to kill him. What’s the benefit for me?” Duterte told journalists.
“That criminal plot should not be allowed to pass,” Marcos said in a televised statement, without mentioning Duterte by name. “I’ll fight it.”
“As a democratic country, we need to uphold the rule of law,” Marcos said.
Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in May 2022 elections and both won landslide victories on a campaign call of national unity. In the Philippines, the two positions are elected separately.
The two leaders and their camps, however, soon had a bitter falling out over key differences, including in their approaches to China’s aggressive territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos Cabinet in June as education secretary and head of an anti-insurgency body.
On Monday, Justice Undersecretary Jesse Andres said in a news conference that Duterte would be subpoenaed to face an investigation.
Andres called the vice president the “self-confessed mastermind” of a “premeditated plot to assassinate the president.” All government resources and law enforcement agencies would be mobilized to identify the alleged assassin and determine criminal accountability, he said.
“We have to maintain order in a civilised society by adherence to the rule of law and we will apply the full strength and force of the law on this,” Andres said.
Under Philippine law, such public remarks may constitute a crime of threatening to inflict a wrong on a person or their family and are punishable by a jail term and fine.
The Philippine Constitution says that if a president dies, sustains a permanent disability, is removed from office or resigns, the vice president takes over and serves the rest of the term.
Duterte said she was ready to face investigators or an impeachment complaint in Congress, but added she would also demand answers to her allegations against Marcos and his allies.
“I will also not allow what they did to me to pass,” she told reporters.
The vice president is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose police-enforced anti-drug crackdown when he was a city mayor and later president left thousands of mostly petty drug suspects dead in killings that the International Criminal Court has been investigating as a possible crime against humanity.
Like her equally outspoken father, the vice president became a vocal critic of Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin, accusing them of corruption, incompetence and politically persecuting the Duterte family and its supporters.
Last month, the vice president told reporters her relationship with Marcos had “gone so toxic” that she has imagined “cutting his head.
Romualdez told the House of Representatives that the vice president was trying to distract attention from her alleged misuse of public funds, which Congress is investigating. Several legislators reaffirmed their trust in the House speaker and condemned Duterte’s remarks.
Her latest tirade was set off by the decision by House members allied with Romualdez and Marcos to detain Duterte’s chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, who was accused of hampering a congressional inquiry into the possible misuse of Duterte’s budget as vice president and education secretary. Lopez has been detained in a hospital after being traumatised by a plan by legislators to temporarily detain her in prison.
In a pre-dawn online news conference on Saturday, an angry Duterte accused Marcos of incompetence as president and of being a liar along with his wife and the House speaker, in expletive-laden remarks.
When concerns over her security were raised, Duterte, 46, suggested there was an unspecified plot to kill her. “Don’t worry about my security because I’ve talked with somebody. I said ‘if I’m killed, you’ll kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez. No joke, no joke,'” the vice president said, without elaborating and using the initials that many use to refer to the president.
“I’ve given my order, ‘If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them.’ And he said, ‘yes,'” the vice president said.
Bulldozers remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
BEIRUT (Xinhua) – At least 36 people were killed and 17 others injured on Monday in Israeli airstrikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, according to the official National News Agency (NNA).
Israeli airstrikes on the eastern Lebanese governorate of Baalbek-Hermel killed 11 people, including eight in a residential apartment in the village of Nabi Chit and three others in Hermel, the NNA reported.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon killed 25 people, including nine in the village of Maarakeh, three in the village of Ain Baal, two in the town of Ghazieh, 10 in the Tyre district, and one in the village of Yohmor, the NNA reported, adding that the airstrikes also injured 17 people in Tyre. Also on Monday, Hezbollah targeted Shraga Base, the administrative headquarters of the Golani Brigade Command, north of the occupied city of Acre, with a barrage of rockets, the NNA reported.
Bulldozers remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. PHOTO: AP
Hezbollah also hit Israeli forces in two moshavim in northern Israel, and in the Malkiyeh settlement, the report said, adding that Hezbollah targeted an Israeli force sheltering in a house in Al-Bayada during its withdrawal, destroying the structure and inflicting multiple casualties among the force.
On Monday, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on social media platform X condemned constant strikes on the Lebanese Armed Forces as “a flagrant violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and international humanitarian law, which limits the use of violence against those not participating in hostilities.” UNIFIL also urged all parties involved in the conflict to address their differences through negotiations instead of violence.
The Lebanese army said the Israeli military has been repeatedly targeting its soldiers recently. In the latest attack on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike targeted a Lebanese army post in the Ameriya axis on the Qlaileh-Tyre road in southwestern Lebanon, killing one soldier and injuring 18 others.
Since Sept. 23, the Israeli army has intensified its air attack on Lebanon in an escalation of conflict with Hezbollah. Israel further initiated a ground operation across its northern border into Lebanon in early October.
FILE - This April 12, 2016 file photo shows the Microsoft logo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of Microsoft 365 customers worldwide reported having issues with services like Outlook and Teams on Monday.
In social media posts and comments on platforms like outage tracker Downdetector, some impacted said that they were having trouble seeing their emails, loading calendars or opening other Microsoft 365 applications such as Powerpoint.
Microsoft acknowledged “an issue impacting users attempting to access Exchange Online or functionality within Microsoft Teams calendar” earlier in the day. In updates posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the company’s status page said it identified a “recent change” that it believed to be behind the problem — and was working to revert it.
FILE – This April 12, 2016 file photo shows the Microsoft logo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris. PHOTO: AP
Microsoft shared that it was deploying a fix — which, as of shortly before noon E.T., it said had reached about 98 per cent of “affected environments.”
Still, the company’s status page later added, targeted restarts were “progressing slower than anticipated for the majority of affected users.”
As of midday Monday, Downdetector showed thousands of outage reports from users of Microsoft 365, particularly Outlook.
File photo shows the lander-ascender combination of Chang'e-6 probe taken by a mini rover after it landed on the moon surface. PHOTO: AP
AP – Volcanoes were erupting on the mysterious far side of the moon billions of years ago just like on the side that we can see, new research confirms.
Researchers analysed lunar soil brought back by China’s Chang’e-6, the first spacecraft to return with a haul of rocks and dirt from the little-explored far side.
Two separate teams found fragments of volcanic rock that were about 2.8 billion years old. One piece was even more ancient, dating back to 4.2 billion years.
“To obtain a sample from this area is really important because it’s an area that otherwise we have no data for,” said planetary volcano expert at the University of Arizona Christopher Hamilton, who was not involved with the research.
Scientists know there were active volcanoes on the near side, the part of the moon seen from Earth, dating back to a similar time frame. Previous studies, including data from National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, suggested the far side might also have a volcanic past. The first samples from that region facing away from Earth confirm an active history.
The results were published on Friday in the journals Nature and Science.
China has launched several spacecraft to the moon. In 2020, the Chang’e-5 spacecraft returned moon rocks from the near side, the first since those collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts and Soviet Union spacecraft in the 1970s. The Chang’e-4 spacecraft became the first to visit the moon’s far side in 2019.
The moon’s far side is pockmarked by craters and has fewer of the near side’s flat, dark plains carved by lava flows. Why the two halves are so different remains a mystery, said study co-author Qiu-Li Li from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Li said the new findings reveal over one billion years of volcanic eruptions on the lunar far side. Future research will determine how the activity lasted so long.
File photo shows the lander-ascender combination of Chang’e-6 probe taken by a mini rover after it landed on the moon surface. PHOTO: AP
ABOVE & BELOW: CEO of Rotor Technologies Hector Xu; and a Rotor Technologies unmanned semi-autonomous helicopter flies away from a van containing a ground control pilot/operator during a test flight. PHOTO: AP
NEW HAMPSHIRE (AP) – When Hector Xu was learning to fly a helicopter in college, he recalled having a few “nasty experiences” while trying to navigate at night.
The heart-stopping flights led to his research of unmanned aircraft systems while getting his doctorate degree in aerospace engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Then, he formed Rotor Technologies in 2021 to develop unmanned helicopters.
Rotor has built two autonomous Sprayhawks and aims to have as many as 20 ready for market next year. The company is also developing helicopters that would carry cargo in disaster zones and to offshore oil rigs. The helicopter could also be used to fight wildfires.
For now, Rotor is focused on the agriculture sector, which has embraced automation with drones but sees unmanned helicopters as a better way to spray larger areas with pesticides and fertilisers.
Rotor plans to conduct a public flight test with its Sprayhawk at an agriculture aviation trade show in Texas, United States (US).
“People would call us up and say, ‘hey, I want to use this for crop dusting, can I?’ We’d say, OK maybe,” Xu said, adding that they got enough calls to realise it was a huge untapped market. The Associated Press reporters were the first people outside the company to witness a test flight of the Sprayhawk. It hovered, flew forward and sprayed the tarmac before landing.
ABOVE & BELOW: CEO of Rotor Technologies Hector Xu; and a Rotor Technologies unmanned semi-autonomous helicopter flies away from a van containing a ground control pilot/operator during a test flight. PHOTO: APPHOTO: APChief Flight Officer of Rotor Technologies Joao Magioni flies a simulated unmanned semi-autonomous helicopter remotely. PHOTO: APA technician installs components into the cockpit of an unmanned semi-autonomous helicopter. PHOTO: APA Rotor Technologies semi-autonomous helicopter during a test flight. PHOTO: AP
Rotor’s nearly USD1 million Sprayhawk helicopter is a Robinson R44, but the four seats have been replaced with flight computers and communications systems allowing it be operated remotely. It has five cameras as well as laser-sensing technology and a radar altimeter that make terrain reading more accurate along with GPS and motion sensers.
At the company’s hangar in Nashua, New Hampshire, Xu said this technology means there is better visibility of terrain at night.
One of the big draws of automation in agriculture aviation is safety.
Because crop dusters fly at around 150 miles an hour and only about 10 feet off the ground, there are dozens of accidents each year when planes collide with powerlines, cell towers and other planes. Older, poorly maintained planes and pilot fatigue contribute to accidents.
A 2014 report from the National Transportation Safety Board found there were more than 800 agriculture operation accidents between 2001 and 2010 including 81 that were fatal. A separate report from the National Agriculture Aviation Association found nearly 640 accidents from 2014 until this month with 109 fatalities.
“It is a very, very dangerous, profession and there are multiple fatalities every year,” said a research engineer with the US Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service Dan Martin. “They make all their money in those short few months so sometimes it may mean that they fly 10 to 12 hours a day or more.”
Job hazards also include exposure to chemicals.
In recent years, safety concerns and the cheaper cost has led to a proliferation of drones flying above farmers’ fields, Martin said, adding that some 10,000 will likely be sold this year alone.
But the size of the drones and their limited battery power means they only can cover a fraction of the area of a plane and helicopters. That is providing an opening for companies building bigger unmanned aircraft like Rotor and another company Pyka.
The California-based Pyka announced in August that it had sold its first autonomous electric aircraft for crop protection to a customer in the US. Pyka’s Pelican Spray, a fixed-wing aircraft, received FAA approval last year to fly commercially for crop protection. The company also sold its Pelican Spray to Dole for use in Honduras and to the Brazilian company, SLC Agrícola.
Chief technology officer at Heinen Brothers Agra Services Lukas Koch has called unmanned aircraft part of a coming “revolution”, that will save farmers money and improve safety.
The Kansas-based company operates out of airports from Texas to Illinois. Koch doesn’t envision the unmanned aircraft replacing all the company’s dozens of pilots but rather taking over the riskiest jobs.
“The biggest draw is taking the pilot out of the aircraft inside of those most dangerous situations,” Koch said. “There’s still fields that are surrounded by trees on all borders, or you’ve got big, large power lines or other just dangers, wind turbines, things like that. It can be tough to fly around.”
But Koch acknowledges autonomous aviation systems could introduce new dangers to an already chaotic airspace – though that is less of a concern in rural areas with plenty of open space and fewer people.
“Putting more systems into the air that don’t have a pilot inside could introduce new dangers to our current existing pilots and make their life even more dangerous,” he said.
“If you’ve got this full size helicopter flying beyond the line of sight, how is it going to react when it sees you? What is it going to do? That’s a giant question mark, one that we take very seriously.”
Companies like Rotor have incorporated built-in in contingencies should something go wrong – its helicopter features a half-dozen communications systems and, for now, a remote pilot in control.
If the ground team loses contact with the helicopter, Rotor has a system which Xu referred to as a big, red button that ensures the engine can be shut off and the helicopter perform a controlled landing. “That means that we’ll never have an aircraft fly away event,” he said.
The safety measures will go a long way to helping the company receive what it expects will be FAA regulatory approval to fly its helicopters commercially. – Michael Casey
Rescuers search for missing people in Karo, North Sumatra, Indonesia. PHOTO: AP
KARO (AP) – Rescuers in Indonesia recovered 16 bodies under tonnes of mud and rocks or that were swept away in flash floods that hit mountainside villages on Sumatra Island, officials said yesterday.
Six people are still missing, officials said.
Mud, rocks and trees tumbled down a mountain after torrential rains over the weekend and rivers burst their banks, tearing through four hilly districts in North Sumatra province, washing away houses and destroying farms.
Police, soldiers and rescue workers used excavators, farm equipment and their bare hands to sift through the rubble looking for the dead and missing in Semangat Gunung, a resort area in Karo district, said Juspri M Nadeak, who heads the local disaster management agency. Rescuers recovered six bodies after a landslide hit two houses and a cottage late Sunday, he said. Nine injured people managed to escape, he said. Rescuers yesterday were still searching for four missing people, including two children.
Rescuers on Sunday pulled two bodies from a river after flash floods swept away at least 10 houses and damaged about 150 houses and buildings in villages in South Tapanuli district, said Puput Mashuri, who heads the local disaster management agency.
Dozens of people were injured by the flash floods, which also destroyed more than 321 acres of agricultural land and plantations.
Flash floods on Sunday left four people dead in Deli Serdang district and rescue workers yesterday were searching for two people who were swept away by flash floods and are still missing.
Rescuers search for missing people in Karo, North Sumatra, Indonesia. PHOTO: AP
Bukit Aman Director of Narcotics Criminal Investigation Department Datuk Seri Khaw Kok Chin shows confiscated illegal substances.
PHOTO: BERNAMA
BERNAMA – Malaysian police arrested a man and a foreign woman suspected of colluding with an international drug trafficking syndicate and seized drugs worth MYR3.3 million during a raid on a boarding house in Sekinchan, Sabak Bernam, last week.
Bukit Aman Director of Narcotics Criminal Investigation Department (JSJN) Datuk Seri Khaw Kok Chin said during the 5pm raid, the couple were arrested along with three plastic packs of syabu weighing 83.15 grammes.
He said the suspects then led police to a house in Sungai Air Tawar where 91 plastic packages of syabu weighing 94.96 kilogrammes were found in the boot of a car.
“Police believe the couple, acting as transporters and ‘storekeeper’, obtained the drug supplies from the north of the country before sending it to Indonesia by sea with a payment of MYR140,000 per shipment.
“The couple, believed to have been active for the past three months, also tested positive for methamphetamine,” he said at a press conference yesterday.
Khaw said the male suspect, who is married and worked as a mechanic, has two criminal records and five drug offences.
He said the two suspects were remanded for six days under Section 117 from November 22 to 27 with the case being investigated under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952.
At the same time, he said JSJN will work closely with the Indonesian police in exchange of information to fight drug-related issues and crime.
“We always cooperate with the Indonesian police, whether in this case or other cases,” he said, adding that police will meet up with the country’s authorities to discuss related matters from tomorrow to November 30.
Bukit Aman Director of Narcotics Criminal Investigation Department Datuk Seri Khaw Kok Chin shows confiscated illegal substances. PHOTO: BERNAMA
ABOVE & BELOW: Photos show Invisible Cities guide Sonny Murray leading a walking tour with student Arthur Lyhne-Gold in Cannongate Kirk, Edinburgh. PHOTO: AFP
EDINBURGH (AFP) – Edinburgh, one the most visited cities in Europe, is offering tourists the chance to see it from a different angle – through the eyes of tour guides who have slept on its streets.
“When you’re homeless, people don’t look at you. They look through you,” the founder of the Invisible Cities initiative, Zakia Moulaoui Guery, told AFP.
Sonny Murray, 45, knows this only too well. He came to Invisible Cities after a spell being constantly in and out of prison.
“It was brutal, to be honest. Because I was addicted to drugs and stuff,” he said.
“I was shoplifting… when I wasn’t in prison, I was coming back out and I was homeless on the streets, just like a revolving door,” he said.
Now as Invisible Cities’ lead tour guide he trains others, helping them to turn their life around just as he did.
All the tours are unique and devised by the guide themselves, he said.
Murray’s tour, which starts at the site of a former gallows, focuses on crime and punishment.
ABOVE & BELOW: Photos show Invisible Cities guide Sonny Murray leading a walking tour with student Arthur Lyhne-Gold in Cannongate Kirk, Edinburgh. PHOTO: AFPPHOTO: AFPPHOTO: AFPPHOTO: AFPPHOTO: AFP
One of the highlights of his itinerary, however, is the Edinburgh Support Hub run by Scotland’s leading homeless charity, The Simon Community.
When he was homeless, it was “literally the only place in Edinburgh where homeless people could come and have a shower or wash their clothes and stuff,” he said.
“It’s a horrible feeling going about and not being able to have a shower and wash your clothes and that after a couple of days. So I used to come here all the time,” he added.
Homelessness is on the rise in Scotland, with an eight per cent rise this year in those either assessed as homeless, who were in temporary accommodation or had made homelessness applications.
French-born Moulaoui Guery said she hoped Invisible Cities’ work was helping to tackle the sense of being unseen experienced by homeless people.
“All of a sudden, to empower people to be visible and the centre of attention and lead a tour, I think that’s really, really important,” she said.
There are currently 18 guides helping visitors discover aspects of the city they would not normally encounter.
Similar tours are also run in a number of other United Kingdom (UK) cities, including Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and Liverpool.
Moulaoui Guery, who set up the initiative in 2016, said it was good for tourists to get a chance to scratch beneath the city’s picture-postcard surface.
“You can talk about the castle and Victoria Street and Harry Potter and all the different things that make it magical, but you can also talk about real topics,” she said.
With a lack of support networks and relationship breakdown among the leading causes of homelessness, Invisible Cities tries to “recreate community and a positive environment”, she said.
“It’s about training more people and having the current guides move on so we can create more opportunities for others to become guides,” she added.
So far, around 130 people have undergone the training which aims to act as a stepping stone to other training or employment opportunities.
But Murray said the benefits were not a one-way street.
Tourists benefit from a broader view of the place they were visiting, he said.
Not only that, he added, it also offered them the satisfaction that they were helping the city’s “homeless down the line”.
