In a small studio littered with empty cigarette packets in Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, Abdelrahman al-Habrouk sits hunched over a sheet of paper making portraits with tobacco. The cigarettes fuel his art; he breaks them in half, painstakingly traces out monochrome images of celebrities or animals with the fine flakes of tobacco, then sprinkles his creations with gunpowder and sets them on fire. The resulting scorch-marks on the white paper form the portrait. Habrouk, now 23, started using unusual materials to make images a couple of years ago, experimenting with …

Beside rows of rusting shipping containers, a decorative wrought iron fence surrounds Taquería Mi Pueblo, one of the first family-run Mexican restaurants in southwest Detroit, Michigan. Its owner, Jalisco-native José de Jesús López, surveys the trees he planted and his ornamental roosters. “Everything was abandoned, a dump over there,” he said, walking down Dix Street. When he first arrived as an undocumented immigrant in 1981, López recalls a drug-addict-infested lot and overrun lawn. “Mexicantown,” as the area is affectionately and marketably called today, is one of Metro Detroit’s most vibrant …

Scientists from U.S. and Britain have found four planets, slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a star visible with a naked eye. Using a technique so sensitive that it can measure tiny changes in the light emitted by stars, scientists at University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Hertfordshire detected the planets orbiting the star Tau Ceti, which is 12 light-years from Earth. Two of the planets orbit in the so-called habitable zone, meaning the surface water could possibly exist. The changes in light are caused by gravitational pull …

Some countries depend heavily on fossil fuels for power, including the Philippines. But now a kind of solar energy “flower” is among the clean power alternatives there. The Smartflower can produce 40 percent more energy than a traditional rooftop solar design. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about it. … From: MeNeedIt

City of Ghosts is a new documentary that follows an underground group of citizen journalists from IS occupied Raqqa, Syria, risking their lives and using social media to expose the atrocities of the militants against civilians. The goal of the group, called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, is to broadcast information online about IS atrocities in Raqqa, Syria.  Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists awarded the group its International Press Freedom Award. In an interview with Voice of America, Abdul Aziz al-Hamza said that Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), was created …