Cannes hotels hire hawks to scare off seagulls

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

A guide to Cannes, the luxurious city on the French Riviera

Explore everything Cannes has to offer with this travel guide aimed at tourists interested in bucking the typical traps. Includes recommendations for traveling to Sainte-Marguerite, taking in the city's murals, and booking a beach club reservation.

Venice’s famous statues gave the Cannes Lions festival its name

Despite its current name, Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity began in Venice and was named after the winged lions found in the city’s St. Mark’s Square.

Some tourist hotspots are shunning tourists

Locals in Barcelona sprayed tourists with water guns while protestors in Mexico City demanded politicians work against gentrification. Despite the economic boost tourism provides, protestors believe tourism has contributed to housing shortages and rising costs.

Watch live cams of wild birds feeding

If you're curious to see what albatross, red-tailed hawks, and hummingbirds are up to this very minute, explore different live cams of them feeding. Occasionally, you'll catch a squirrel joining in on the meal.

'Birds Aren't Real' parodies the way memes traffic conspiracy theories

Peter McIndoe claims the US government killed 12 billion birds only to replace them with drones. These statements have powered protests—and McIndoe's fictional campaign that highlights how conspiracies and their theorists are treated.

In 2013, a lone bandit stole $136M in jewels from a luxury hotel in just 30 seconds

The robbery took place in broad daylight. Without any armed security guards present, the thief quickly stuffed a duffel bag with 72 precious items. They remain at large. The heist drew particular attention for its location—the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel in Cannes, which was prominently featured as a setting in Hitchcock's 1955 film "To Catch a Thief" about a reformed cat burglar.

The scarecrow isn't an effective tool for farms, but it is a potent symbol in horror

Scarecrows are no longer the best way for farmers to prevent birds from messing with their crops, but the humanlike figures are still found in horror movies. Folklorists say that's because they recall an agrarian past that makes modern viewers uneasy.

Window collisions and cats kill more birds than wind turbine farms

Researchers are developing solutions to reduce bird fatalities due to wind turbine farms, including radar systems integrating AI to detect birds and shut down systems. Painting blades with various patterns is also being tested, which may reduce bird strikes by 70%.

One NHL team tosses salmon to its fans

Detroit Red Wings fans have thrown octopuses on the ice since 1952, and fans of other teams have tried their own hand at tossing things in the rink ever since. It's now become a calling card for the Seattle Kraken, whose fans nod to the city's Pike Place Market by tossing salmon onto the ice.

Farm animals help maintain the grounds at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport

Since 2013, a herd of goats, sheep, and a donkey have grazed on the scrub vegetation at the airport. In the process, they also help keep out animals that can be dangerous for pilots, like coyotes.

A Canadian tourism campaign turns every whale sighting—including ones from decades ago—into a live, crowdsourced migration biography

Humpback flukes (or tails) are as individually distinct as fingerprints, which means a single photo is enough to match a whale to its full sighting history. Every upload adds a chapter (the database goes back to the 1970s) and the site uses AI to render that data as narrative, not just data.

Why so many movies are filmed in Vancouver

Vancouver, a major city in British Columbia, is a hugely popular filming location. The Canadian metropolis hosts film sets for movies based in New York City, Seattle, Kansas, and even India. Filmmakers seek out Vancouver for a number of reasons, mainly boiling down to tax breaks and the area’s diverse array of landscapes and city settings. Watch this Vox video for an in-depth breakdown of the rising interest in using Canada as a film backdrop.

Synthetic pheromones may protect coral reefs by attracting their predators

Researchers in Australia and Japan have developed these nontoxic chemicals to attract crown-of-thorns starfish, which consume corals that make up the Great Barrier Reef. As of 2026, synthetic pheromones have been shown to be effective in lab trials, and future field trials will attempt to lure starfish into areas for mass removal.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

See hilarious photos from the Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025

Napping frog princes, annoying lion husbands, and kung fu sea eagles are just some of the charming shots you'll find among the finalists for the award.

London pet detectives set out to prove a spate of cat killings is the work of a serial killer

With dozens of felines turning up dead around London, a pair of pet detectives set out to prove it was the work of a serial killer.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

California condors have been vaccinated against West Nile to protect their limited population

The condors became endangered in the 20th century primarily due to lead poisoning from consuming animals shot with lead bullet fragments inside them, so condors in captivity and in the wild are vaccinated against diseases including highly pathogenic avian flu and West Nile.

After swallowing 23 pieces of plastic, seabirds experience a 90% death rate

Researchers found that this threshold is also met when marine mammals ingest 29 pieces and when sea turtles consume approximately 405 pieces. Almost half of the sea turtles, a third of the seabirds, and one in ten of the marine mammals studied had eaten plastic.

Michelin judges act as anonymous restaurant inspectors

Go behind the scenes with Gwendal Poullennec, international director of The Michelin Guide and the man who oversees all those anonymous inspectors. This short video dives into who the inspectors are, the training process, and what they look for in a meal.

How ‘vulture’ hedge funds make money

Some hedge funds specialize in snapping up distressed assets, like failing newspaper chains, and further stripping down their operational expenses in a bid to make a profit from the initial capital outlay. Delve into how one secretive firm known for the practice operates—and what’s at stake for the broader economy.

Davos becomes extremely heavily secured during the WEF

During the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, the city effectively turns into a fortress, guarded by thousands of Swiss army, police, and civil security personnel, with restricted airspace, drone surveillance, snipers, checkpoints, and round-the-clock patrols protecting global leaders.

The floating homes of Holland

Floating communities like Schoonschip in Amsterdam are offering a novel approach to combat climate change-induced flooding. With sea levels rising and storms becoming more intense, these floating neighborhoods are providing a sustainable flood defense solution. Learn how they work here.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Alfred Hitchcock influenced the way Spielberg shot 'Jaws'

Steven Spielberg realized the key to unlocking the terror of the shark in "Jaws" would be by obscuring it, remembering an important lesson from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” Spielberg recalled, “It’s what we don’t see that is truly frightening."

The ghost-hunting industry helps maintain historical buildings

There’s no shortage of spirit-obsessed customers in America, with an estimate that ghost-themed tours generate about $300M annually in the country.

Famous Catalan dishes

Catalan cuisine is defined by its bold and unexpected flavor combinations, which are largely a reflection of Catalonia’s diverse geography. Meat and seafood are often combined into a single dish, an ode to the region’s fertile soil and coastline. Meatballs with cuttlefish and peas is a common meal enjoyed alongside fresh bread. Salivate over 15 more dishes in this listicle that’s frontloaded with a bit of history.

How Guinness World Records has pivoted to a publicity business

Now that Guinness World Records gets paid to host record-breaking events, is there a conflict of interest? Here's a look at the worldwide record keeping business's pivot toward publicity.

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by more than 1.5 million Muslims each year.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.