An ancient palace dating back thousands of years has been uncovered in Iraq through a British Museum project.

The 4,500-year-old structure, dubbed the “lost palace,” is located in Tello, southern Iraq, which once hosted the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu.

The scheme, the Girsu Project, is led by the British Museum and funded by the J Paul Getty Museum in the US. It was launched in response to Daesh’s destruction of ancient structures and artifacts across the region.

The palace was discovered during excavations last year that also uncovered more than 200 stone tablets after a 140-year hunt that began following the unearthing of inscriptions that hinted at the building’s existence.

Researchers first used aerial drones to detect the initial remains of the palace last year. But officials said the site had suffered significant damage across the last two centuries.

Administrative records were also uncovered and subsequently taken to Baghdad’s Iraq Museum, along with stone tablets.

Experts believe Girsu may have been inhabited as far back as 5,300 B.C., and could have existed for several thousand years until 200 B.C.

Girsu is one of the “most important heritage sites in the world” yet “little is known about it,” said Sebastian Rey, Girsu Project director.

He added that “over 80 years of fieldwork interruption at the site have taken their toll,” but said the scheme was “a remarkable opportunity to secure this extraordinary site’s long-term conservation.”

There is now less sea-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent than at any time since we began using satellites to measure it in the late 1970s.

It is the southern hemisphere summer, when you’d expect less sea-ice, but this year is exceptional, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Winds and warmer air and water reduced coverage to just 1.91 million square km (737,000 sq miles) on 13 February.

What is more, the melt still has some way to go this summer.

Last year, the previous record-breaking minimum of 1.92 million sq km (741,000 sq miles) wasn’t reached until 25 February.

Three of the last record-breaking years for low sea-ice have happened in the past seven years: 2017, 2022 and now 2023.

A team of 77 search-and-rescue specialists from 14 fire services in the UK travelled to Turkey to help with the rescue effort.

London Fire Brigade’s David O’Neill was the deployment commander for the UK International Search & Rescue team in Turkey.

The disaster in southern Turkey and northern Syria has killed more than 5,000 people.

More than 4,500 people have yet to be contacted after Cyclone Gabrielle hit on Monday, causing significant flooding and landslides across the North Island.

Many cities and towns are also without power or clean drinking water.

A national state of emergency has been declared, only the third in New Zealand’s history.

“This is undoubtedly the biggest natural disaster that we’ve seen probably this century,” Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said.

The storm damaged hundreds of mobile phone masts, and Mr Hipkins said many of the thousands of uncontactable people are likely to be found alive and well. But he warned that people need to “brace themselves” for more fatalities.

Some 10,000 people are also estimated to be displaced.

One of the confirmed deaths was a two-year-old girl, whose family watched her being swept away in flood waters.

Ella Louise Collins, her husband and their two children were trapped in their one-storey home in Hawke’s Bay, one of the hardest hit areas.

“The water was about 10cm (4in) from the ceiling in our house and rose extremely quickly and violently,” she wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday, quoted by the AFP news agency.

They tried to reach a neighbour’s roof for safety, but were stopped by what Ms Collins called “a sudden torrent of water which almost drowned us all”.

The water swept away her daughter Ivy, who drowned.

In other heart-breaking stories, rugby league star Issac Luke lost his father George, who was killed by a landslide on North Island earlier this week.

One woman, Rachel Greene, paid a moving tribute to her mother Marie, whose body was found in the roof cavity of her cottage by her landlord’s son after the cyclone.

It took Rachel four days to find out what had happened, after multiple phone calls to Marie went to voicemail.

“I want everyone to know what an amazing person she was and how loved she was,” Rachel told New Zealand news outlet Stuff.co.nz.

Cyclone Gabrielle is estimated to have affected at least a third of the New Zealand’s population of five million.

The storm’s damage has been most extensive in coastal communities on the far north and east coast of the North Island – with areas like Hawke’s Bay, Coromandel and Northland among the worst hit.

The situation in Hawke’s Bay, a popular tourist destination with some remote towns, has been of particular concern to authorities.

On Friday, some 62,000 homes nationwide were still without power.

Hundreds of Syrians living in Turkey have returned to the war-torn country after last week’s devastating earthquake.

The Turkish government has allowed Syrians with ID cards from the quake-hit Turkish provinces to leave for up to six months.

The rule change has led to hundreds queuing for hours at border crossings.

Almost four million Syrians have settled in Turkey since civil war broke out in their home country 12 years ago.

Some survivors of last week’s earthquake are making the trip to the crossings in an attempt to reunite with family members back in Syria, some of whom they have not seen for years.

Many of those queueing have travelled with their families and large amounts of luggage, waiting for security personnel to allow them forward for processing.

About 1,500 Syrians living in Turkey are thought to have died in the earthquake.

Meanwhile, rescue efforts are continuing in Turkey. On Friday, two more people were pulled alive from the rubble in the city of Antakya some 11 days on from the earthquake.

One of the survivors, Mustafa Acvi, 34, was found alive after being trapped for 261 hours. While being carried on a stretcher, he was put on a video call with his parents who showed him his new-born baby.

Khan Shatyr, formally known as Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center, is a huge purposefully built transparent tent that is located in the capital city of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Astana (Nur-Sultan).

As there are plenty of new structures that rose in the Kazakh capital, the Khan Shatyr is among the most famous ones due to its neo-futurist structure which is a unique one.

This tubular-steel tripod structure is supported by a suspended net of steel radial and circumferential cables, which is covered by a three-layer ethylene tetrafluoroethylene envelope, a fluorine-based plastic, more commonly known as ETFE.

Due to the light, economical, thermally efficient, and transparent ETFE, the center is filled with daylight throughout the day and becomes very vivid with the lightning effects during the night.

That is why it is considered that Khan Shatyr was constructed in a such unique and amazing way that would bring a sigh in the most unimpressionable people.

Designed by British architect Norman Foster, who also designed the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, the entertainment center began being constructed in December 2006, and it was officially opened on 5 July 2010.

The center covers an area of some 100,000 sq m (1,100,000 sq ft), where the highest point, the antenna spire is astounding 150 meters (490 feet) high, while the roof is 90 meters (300 feet) high.

The elliptical base is considered to be 200 m by 195 m (656 ft by 640 ft), and within its premises, there is also an urban-scale park, shopping and entertainment venue with squares and cobbled streets, a boating river, shopping center, mini-golf, and indoor beach resort.

That is why, nowadays Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center is considered to be a major new civic, cultural, and social venue for the people of Astana (Nur-Sultan), bringing together a wide range of activities within a sheltered climatic envelope that provides a comfortable environment all year round.

All in all, a symbol of the future that brings the Kazakh nation forward to the new age of construction, while still keeping some symbolism of the old and traditional-like making of the tent-like structures.