The hit TV series Chernobyl has attracted a new generation of tourists to the nuclear disaster zone but guides say that many are more interested in taking selfies than learning about the accident.
"They do not need information anymore, they just want to take a selfie," said Yevgen Goncharenko, an official plant guide, at the site of the worst nuclear accident in history.
Tourists now are often on the look out for locations featured in the acclaimed HBO drama and can be surprised to discover that certain sites were fictional, he told AFP.
The hard-hitting mini-series recreates the April 1986 disaster, when one of the reactors at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl plant, in what is now Ukraine, exploded during testing.
The blast spewed radiation over a vast swathe of Europe and a 30-kilometre (19-mile) exclusion zone remains in place around the plant, although a small part of it is open to a growing number of tourists.
The abandoned site had already become a "dark tourism" destination in recent years, even before the eponymous TV show that has picked up 19 Emmy nominations.
But some Ukrainian travel agencies have adapted their tours to take in locations from the Chernobyl series and offer further special trips, such as kayaking in rivers around the exclusion zone.
Oleksandr Syrota, head of the Chernobyl information centre, said that certain tourist companies were offering up the disaster zone as "fast food" — a quick and easy travel experience.
And the trend towards more tourists looks set to continue. In July, new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree that aims to develop the site further as a tourist attraction.
'Mutants'
Louis Carlos, a 27-year-old visiting from Brazil, said he didn't know much about the disaster before watching the TV series but was motivated to travel to Ukraine to find out more.
"If people come here to understand what happened and try to learn, it's a good thing," Carlos said, as a friend took a photograph of him next to the nuclear power station.
"It's history," he added.
Tourist numbers have steadily increased every year, and last year 72,000 people visited Chernobyl.
The tour operators' association working in the region said it expected the number to jump to 100,000 this year.
Zone guide Goncharenko, who accompanies groups of tourists on visits organised by private companies, said he'd experienced such booms before.
One came after the release of the American horror film Chernobyl Diaries in 2012, he said, also mentioning the impact of the site featuring in the Call of Duty computer game series.
"Sometimes people who came after the computer games seriously asked where one can find mutants," he recalled.
Upbeat photos, 'trendy' place
Shortly after the TV show aired this summer, social media users came under fire for sharing "sexy" or upbeat photos from the ghost town of Pripyat, a city of nearly 50,000 people near Chernobyl that was evacuated after the explosion.
Writer and producer of the series Craig Mazin addressed them on his Twitter feed.
"Yes, I've seen the photos going around," he wrote in June.
"If you visit, please remember that a terrible tragedy occurred there. Comport yourselves with respect for all who suffered and sacrificed".
Yaroslav Yemelianenko, head of the Chernobyl tour guide association, admitted the region had become a "trendy" place to visit.
Instead of fixating on the tragic aspect, Yemelianenko said that Kiev should promote the exclusion zone as a place of reflection about what was a terrible accident.
"We need to promote it, talk about it, attract people here," he said.
Some, like Slovenian tourist Jan Mavrin, insisted they had come to pay tribute to those who had lost their lives in the disaster.
"You've got to have some sort of respect towards this kind of place," Mavrin said, taking a photo of the Ferris wheel at Pripyat's abandoned amusement park.
"You should be modest, you shouldn't just walk around picking (up) stuff," he added.
Souvenirs on eBay
Visitors — both those on official tours and so-called "stalkers" who break in illegally — have been known to take objects out of the exclusion zone as souvenirs, according to Syrota, of the Chernobyl information centre.
"Even we, Pripyat natives, do not allow ourselves to pick up our own things from there," he said.
"And then we are surprised when we see them on eBay," he added.
Syrota said that it was "hard to imagine" where the government's plans for more tourism at the site could lead and stressed that space was limited.
"We have no experience of what this can turn into," he says.
Indonesia has sent hundreds of garbage-filled shipping containers back to their countries of origin, according to the customs agency, as the Southeast Asian nation pushes back against becoming a dumping ground for foreign trash.
About 250 containers seized across the archipelago in recent months have already been returned and authorities are inspecting more than 1,000 others, a customs official said.
Among them, 49 containers of waste seized on Batam Island near Singapore have been shipped back to the United States, Germany, France, Hong Kong and Australia, said agency spokesman Deni Surjantoro.
The shipments were loaded with a combination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials in violation of import rules.
"Imports can't be contaminated with toxic or dangerous materials," he said.
Nearly 200 containers have also been shipped out of Surabaya, Indonesia's second-biggest city, to the US, Britain and Germany, according to customs data.
Meanwhile, authorities near Jakarta are gearing up to send back about 150 containers while inspecting more than 1,000 others that could contain banned materials, Surjantoro said.
Indonesia has been tightening its surveillance of foreign trash in response to soaring imports.
Huge quantities of waste have been redirected to Southeast Asian nations after China - which used to receive the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world -- closed its doors to foreign refuse last year in a bid to clean up its environment.
Australia has pledged to stop exporting recyclable waste amid global concerns about plastic polluting the oceans and increasing pushback from Asian nations against accepting trash.
Around 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, according to the conservation organisation WWF, with much of it ending up in landfills or polluting the seas, in what has become a growing international crisis.
A particular environmental concern are microplastics - tiny pieces of degraded waste that absorb harmful chemicals and accumulate inside fish, birds and other animals.
At the age of 73, an Indian woman from Andhra Pradesh gave birth to twins on Thursday.
The woman and her 82-year-old husband wanted children and had been trying to conceive but were unsuccessful – until now – despite numerous visits to multiple doctors.
The girls were born following an IVF treatment and delivered by cesarean section.
“The mother and the babies are doing well,” the doctor said.
“We are incredibly happy,” said the husband but on Friday, he suffered a sudden stroke and was rushed to the hospital where he is undergoing treatment.
“Nothing is in our hands. Whatever should happen will happen. It is all in the hands of God,” said Mr Rajaro when he was asked what would happen to the children because of the couples’ advanced age.
The couple complained about feeling stigmatised in their village for not having any children. “They would call me a childless lady,” said Ms Yaramati.
She called the birth of her baby girls, the happiest time of her life.
An Australian man venturing into the skies for a first flying lesson has been forced to make an "amazing" solo landing after his instructor blacked out mid-flight.
Max Sylvester's wife and three kids watched from the ground as air traffic control talked him through safely landing the Cessna two-seater at Perth's Jandakot airport on Saturday.
The 30-something had issued a panicked mayday call from an altitude of 1,900 metres (6,200 feet), after his instructor slumped onto his shoulder and could not be woken.
"Do you know how to operate the aeroplane," the air traffic controller in Perth asked urgently, according to a recording of their exchange.
"This is my first lesson," Sylvester responded, adding that he had never landed an aircraft before.
Realising the enormity of the task at hand, the tower responded: "The first thing that we are going to do is make sure that the wings stay level."
He was instructed to maintain altitude and to make a pass above the runway to get a sense of the terrain and become more at ease.
"You're doing a really great job," the operator reassures the trainee as someone more familiar with the aircraft was rushed to the tower.
"I know this is really stressful. But you're going to do an amazing job and we're going to help you get down to the ground, OK?"
Some twenty minutes later, the plane made a heart-stoppingly bumpy landing.
"You did it mate!" exclaimed the air traffic controller. "Well done. That's amazing!"
The instructor was taken to hospital in a stable condition and Sylvester received his first solo flight certificate from the instructor's employer, Air Australia International.
"This could have gone way, way bad," Air Australia International owner Chuck McElwee said, according to public broadcaster ABC.
"But everything worked out right, and it worked right, mostly because of the cooperation of the tower."
