PARIS (AFP) – The eurozone is not showing signs of economic stagnation despite the fallout from the war in Ukraine, European Central Bank (ECB) Chief Christine Lagarde said yesterday.
The conflict fuelled increases in already-high energy prices and threatened to worsen a global supply chain crunch, raising concerns that economies could face stagflation – a period of high inflation but weak growth.
“We do not currently see elements of stagnation,” Lagarde said at a conference at the Institut Montaigne think tank in Paris.
“Given the recovery that was underway, we do not see stagnation of the economy in 2022, neither in 2023 nor in 2024,” she said.
The global economy was recovering from the Covid pandemic before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Earlier this month, the ECB cut its eurozone growth outlook as it expects the recovery to be slowed down by the war. It also raised its inflation outlook.
NEW YORK (AP) – Ye will not be performing at the Grammys this year. A report published in The Blast said that the musician was told last Friday that his act had been pulled from the show, which is set to take place on April 3.
A representative for Ye, who changed his name from Kanye West, confirmed the information in The Blast article in an email to the Associated Press (AP). She did not offer additional comment.
Ye had not been confirmed yet as someone set to perform at the show. Ye’s album Donda is nominated for album of the year. Representatives from the Recording Academy have not responded to multiple requests for comment.
According to reports, the decision was made in response to his “concerning online behaviour”.
Trevor Noah, who is hosting the Grammy Awards, called Ye’s treatment of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian “more and more belligerent” on The Daily Show last week.
“What we’re seeing here is one of the most powerful, one of the richest women in the world unable to get her ex to stop texting her, to stop chasing after her, to stop harassing her,” Noah said.
Kanye West performing at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival. PHOTO: AP
DENVER (AP) — Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum each scored 30 points and the sizzling Boston Celtics stymied reigning MVP Nikola Jokic on their way to routing the Denver Nuggets 124-104 yesterday.
The Celtics shot 57.3 per cent from the floor and finished 19 of 40 from beyond the arc. They also hit all 11 of their free throws.
Jokic missed 14 shots in the first half and finished a wildly uncharacteristic eight for 23 from the floor for 23 points.
“Physicality,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka said. “He was comfortable early. He had 12 in the first quarter, four in the second and seven the rest of the way. He was too comfortable early, gave him too much air space. It’s mixing up looks, keep him off balance, switching matchups and giving him different bodies.”
Jokic, who’s having an even better season statistically that he did a year ago, said this loss was on him, not any of his teammates.
“Overall, they had a really good defensive game and I had a really bad offensive game,” said Jokic.
Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum looks to pass the ball to guard Marcus Smart as Denver Nuggets guard Austin Rivers defend. PHOTO: AP
For once, it was Tatum getting serenaded with “MVP” chants instead of Jokic at
Ball Arena.
“It’s a great feeling,” Tatum said. “You expect that, get that at home, but when you travel and you see all the Celtics jerseys and T-shirts and hoodies and hear them chanting for you on the road, that’s an incredible feeling.”
Tatum and Payton Pritchard each hit four three-pointers before the break, sparking the Celtics on a 46-21 run to close out the first half. Boston scored its last 15 points of the second quarter on three-pointers, and Tatum’s half-court heave at the buzzer rimmed out.
Nuggets coach Michael Malone was so disgusted with his team’s effort in its fourth loss in six games that he benched his starters to start the second half.
“To me, it appeared we just kind of gave in and quit. And I didn’t want to reward that behaviour,” Malone said. “I thought the bench unit was at least going out there and competing and fighting.”
More than anything, Malone said it was alarming to see his starters play that way here in the middle of March with the Nuggets jockeying for playoff positioning.
“Tonight I can’t point to one thing we did well,” Malone said.
And he couldn’t point to one thing the Celtics did poorly, either.
The Celtics outshot Denver 64.3 to 30.6 per cent in the first half and pushed their lead to 90-62 late in the third quarter in cruising to their third straight victory.
The Nuggets’ worst loss this season was by 29 points on November 21 when they were run off the court in Phoenix, 126-97.
NEFTA, TUNISIA (AFP) – A remote oasis in Tunisia’s desert was exhausted by decades of wasteful water use for agriculture – but now pioneers around an eco-lodge are reviving the spot with innovative projects.
They hope their back-to-basics approach can keep alive the ancient Saharan caravan stop and its traditions as a sustainable alternative to the region’s high-irrigation date plantations.
“Among the palm trees, everything can grow,” said Mohamed Bougaa, 63, a farmer in the remote Nefta oasis, a seven-hour drive from the coastal capital Tunis.
“There’s everything you need here: vegetables, fruit. We can plant peppers, tomatoes, carrots – everything grows when there’s sun and water.”
The problem has been that the Nefta spring – which once delivered some 700 litres of water per second – has been exhausted to irrigate the region’s famous dates, called “deglet nour”.
“The Nefta springs dried up 20 years ago,” said Bougaa.
As underground water sources have failed and summer temperatures peaked at a scorching 55 degrees Celsius last August, the season’s crop has been disappointing.
ABOVE & BELOW: Kevin Klay, a US citizen who started a business making sugar from dates, poses in front of stocks of dates to be dried in his factory; and the Nefta oasis lies in southwestern Tunisia by the endorheic salt lake of Chott el-Djerid. PHOTOS: AFP
A Tunisian craftswoman weaves a carpet from old clothes’ fabric in the remote Nefta oasisABOVE & BELOW: Employees cultivate the Dar Hi hotel’s vegetable garden amidst palm trees in the remote Nefta oasis; and employees process dates at Dateible, a company founded by Kevin Klay
Patrick Ali El Ouarghi, who runs an eco-tourism lodge in the oasis, said date palm plantations, at the right scale, can be run sustainably.
He called them an ideal demonstration of permaculture, a system for producing food organically by mimicking natural ecosystems.
“The palm trees protect the fruit trees, and the fruit trees protect the vegetable patches, it’s natural in an oasis,” El Ouarghi said.
The French-Tunisian set up his Dar Hi lodge 11 years ago – including the so-called “Palm Lab” where engineers, architects and artists discuss how to conserve the oasis.
The ecology project aims “to make investors and farmers want to reinvest in the oasis, because it’s decaying a bit”, he said.
A key theme is tackling the severe water shortages by experimenting with technology such as drip irrigation.
The current system of flooding orchards with water, pumped from 100 metres below ground, is wasteful, he said.
Not far from Dar Hi, others are trying different ways of creating value in the oasis.
American Kevin Klay, 35, a former resident of Sousse in northern Tunisia, said he fell in love with dates during a visit to the south.
“We realised that many dates, up to 20 to 30 per cent, were thrown out and not used because of a small visual blemish,” he said.
So he bought a few kilos, removed their seeds, dried them and then put them through a coffee grinder.
The result, he said, was a sweetener “with a fifth of the calories of white sugar” that is full of fibre and contains “more potassium than bananas”.
Armed with this knowledge, Klay in 2018 launched “Dateible”, selling his “date sugar” produced from the organic-certified desert fruits for export.
He now employs nine people, seven of them women.
“We’ve seen huge demand, particularly in the US where our main market is,” he said.
The firm is exporting dates in bulk and also starting to sell on online retail site Amazon.
Several firms are producing other date derivatives such as a coffee substitute made of date pips and a form of molasses for use in pastries.
Back at the lodge, the restaurant is reviving traditional desert cuisine.
“It’s very simple and dates from the arrival of nomads,” when Nefta, today regarded as a spiritual home of Sufism, was a key stop on Saharan desert routes, El Ouarghi said.
They brought “unknown flavours and spices that have remained here as a tradition”, he said.
Chef Najah Ameur said residents create their own unique spice mixes.
“It’s not the same as buying them at the market: cleaning the leaves, the smell, the flavour, you have to know exactly how to do it,” the 40-year-old said. She cooks a menu of dishes she learned from her mother and from French celebrity chef Frederick Grasser Herme, the recipes collated in a recently published book on oasis cuisine.
“Many ingredients come from the palm groves: parsley, celery, chard, green beans, peas,” she said.
Some recipes are also adapted to use Moringa, an Indian tree famed for its nutritional and medicinal qualities and its ability to thrive in arid conditions.
The tree species may be new to the oasis, but residents are hoping that a mix of old and new can keep both their community and their ecosystem in good health.
PARIS (AFP) – The Michelin Guide launches its 2022 edition today, vowing to celebrate the diversity of French cooking and the industry’s resilience after two challenging years caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Expected each year with apprehension by chefs and gourmets, the famous red book is being unveiled in Cognac in southwest France, the first time in its 122 years the ceremony has taken place outside Paris.
“The 2022 edition is a very fine vintage which reflects the diversity of cuisines that can be found in France,” the guide’s director Gwendal Poullennec told AFP.
“But it will also make room for a new generation of chefs who have taken the risk of embarking on this journey in spite of the challenging context,” he said.
“Despite the crisis, the profession has shown great resilience. It was an opportunity for professionals to reinvent themselves, to go further, and that’s what we want to support.”
The 2020’s Michelin Red Guide, the oldest European hotels and restaurants reference guide. The 2022 edition of the Michelin Guide France is set to be launched today. PHOTO: AFP
Last year’s ceremony, in the midst of a months-long shutdown caused by the pandemic, was a low-key affair with only one chef – Alexandre Mazzia – promoted to three stars, the highest distinction.
While Poullennec said the judges’ criteria remained the same, there was an increased focus on more minimalist, sustainably sourced restaurants that have come to dominate the food scene.
Controversies have long swirled around the guidebook and the pressure it places on chefs.
In 2020, Michelin shocked foodies by downgrading the Auberge du Pont de Collonges – the oldest three-starred restaurant in the world – following the death of legendary chef, Paul Bocuse.
A year earlier, Marc Veyrat became the first to sue the guidebook, after losing the third star of his Alps restaurant La Maison des Bois just a year after it was awarded.
He lost the case and said he never again wants to see a Michelin inspector in his restaurants.
Poullennec said demotions were vital if the guidebook was to “remain relevant to customers”.
Overall, however, the French food scene is in top form.
After a long period during which French restaurants were accused of growing stale and lazy, the past 15 years have seen an influx of young chefs more open to global influences and new approaches, said Paris-based food writer Lindsey Tramuta.
The Michelin Guide has sometimes struggled to keep up, she added.
“When you have something as structured as Michelin, it is very tricky to incorporate all the things that are happening in the food scene – things that are high-calibre, but maybe aren’t as formal,” she said, adding that female chefs remained poorly represented.
“But Michelin is still very important for chefs and owners. If it motivates their kitchen staff and team, and brings more diners and curiosity, then it has value.”
Created in 1900 by tyre manufacturers Andre and Edouard Michelin as a guide for motorists, it now has editions across Europe, Asia, North and South America.
In March, it announced it was suspending operations in Russia due to the war, just a few months after launching its first guide in Moscow.
LVIV, UKRAINE (AP) – Until the missiles struck within walking distance of the cafes downtown, Ukraine’s cultural capital was a city that could feel distant from the war. The early panic had eased, and the growing response to morning air raid sirens was not to head downstairs but roll over in bed.
But last Friday’s Russian airstrikes at dawn in Lviv, just outside the international airport, made nearby buildings vibrate and shook any sense of comfort as thick black smoke billowed.
Still, the hours after the airstrikes were absent of the scenes in other Ukrainian cities that have horrified the world: shattered buildings and people fleeing under fire. Lviv was already returning to its centuries-old role as an ever-adapting crossroads.
“In the morning it was scary, but we have to go on,” said local restaurant worker Maria Parkhuts. “People are arriving with almost nothing, and from where it’s worse.”
The city has been a refuge since the war began nearly a month ago, the last outpost before Poland and host to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians streaming through or staying on. From the other direction come aid and foreign fighters.
Midstream is a city that, on the surface, carries on amid world heritage coffee kiosks. Food delivery cyclists with backpacks of global brands wobble down the cobblestones. Yellow trams ding through narrow streets lined with the history of one occupation after another, from the Cossacks to the Swedes to the Germans and the Soviet Union.
A cloud of smoke rises after an explosion in Lviv, western Ukraine. PHOTOS: APABOVE & BELOW: People trying to flee Ukraine wait for trains inside the Lviv railway station; and loved ones attend a funeral for four Ukrainian military servicemen who were killed in an airstrike
ABOVE & BELOW: A worker sets up a billboard with the Ukraine flag colours; Ukrainian civilians receive weapons training inside a cinema; and volunteers tear cloth into strips to make camouflage nets
The threat of another occupation by Russia, after so long a fight to break from its influence, and so close to the rest of Europe, is where the new Lviv emerges now.
“It’s war,” said 28-year-old soldier Maxim Tristan, of last Friday’s attack. “It only makes us more motivated to fight.”
On a street corner, young men line up outside a weapons shop, passing around a gun sight.
Anything’s available if you have cash, one man said, prompting grins from the others. On the same block is a range for target practice, with the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the bull’s-eye. Elsewhere in the city, military veterans train civilians how to shoot.
In a popular city park, a bunker from World War II has been re-opened just steps from the playground. Outside an academy for architecture, men are filling sandbags.
In the military section of the main cemetery are more than a dozen graves too new for marble crosses. The earth is piled with frosted flowers. The ground is marked with boot tracks. Behind the graves is open ground ready for several rows more.
Hours after last Friday’s attack in Lviv, activists placed 109 baby strollers in the square at the heart of the city to represent the children killed in the war.
Volunteerism has also seized the city. People are opening their homes, and local news outlets report on residents cutting up old clothing to make camouflage netting for checkpoints.
“War is not just people who fight,” said Volodymyr Pekar.
The 40-year-old local businessman is behind a drive to dot the countryside around the city with yellow-and-blue billboards with slogans including ‘Do not run, defend’.
Pekar has also used crowdfunding to raise money for what he called one of Ukrainian soldiers’ biggest needs: flak jackets.
In the shadow of slogans and bravado are the estimated 200,000 people who have fled to Lviv from harder-hit parts of Ukraine. Embraced by the city’s residents and absorbed into homes and shelters, they look the most nervous of all.
The displaced pick through boxes at aid collection points, scan notices, check their phones.
Their presence has led Lviv to pivot from getaway to refuge: Instead of promoting local confectionaries and romantic places, the city’s official tourism website now shares information on bomb shelter locations and radiation alerts.
Promising ‘warmth for the soul’, locals last Friday launched a distinctly Lviv series of free cultural walks for internally displaced people, with the aim of visiting galleries, the medieval quarter and more.
Just days ago, thousands of newcomers crammed the central train station at the height of the flood of refugees heading west. Now the station’s platforms at times are almost bare, awaiting the millions who continue to roam Ukraine looking for a place of rest or a new purpose.
There was the furniture maker from the bombarded capital, Kyiv, who trained in air defence years ago and was on his way to an army post. Standing alone on the platform with a backpack and sleeping mat, he planned to visit his family in the western Transcarpathia region before heading east again.
Farther down the platform was a young couple, restlessly remaining in Ukraine because the man, 20, is of fighting age and is prohibited from leaving.
“I didn’t travel my country this much. Now I have to,” said the woman, Diana Tkachenko, 21.
Their journey began last month in Kyiv on a crowded train and with no idea where they were going.
Their arrival in Lviv was terrible. Fellow travellers pushed and screamed, Tkachenko said. Some were coming from so far east, from Russian-speaking areas, that they didn’t speak Ukrainian.
Their train had pulled into the most Ukrainian of cities. For Tkachenko, it was her first visit to Lviv.
“I walked a lot,” she said. “I tried to enjoy the place. It’s really beautiful. It feels a lot more safe.”
But there were too many people and no place to live, she said. She and her boyfriend decided to head back east, toward Kyiv.
As their train prepared for departure, yet another was arriving.
No evidence to claims of frozen squid rings were made from a non-halal material were found after a DNA analysis, said the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA) yesterday.
The ministry said that in response to viral social media claims of frozen squid rings sold in supermarkets were made from a non-halal source, where the Scientific Services Department at the Ministry of Health had carried out an investigation and found no evidence to the allegations.
Samples were collected from several supermarkets by the Halal Food Control Division of the Syariah Affairs Department to be analysed.
Based on the results, the ministry found that the non-halal claims made in social media were false. To avoid Muslims from consuming dubious food or non-halal products, the ministry welcomes the public to inform and lodge complaints if they come across such products.
ISTANBUL (AFP) – Turkey’s leading activist Osman Kavala, who at the weekend marked his 1,600th day in prison without conviction, appeared before court yesterday for the first time in months, only to have his case adjourned and his detention extended.
The philanthropist is accused of financing 2013 anti-government protests and playing a role in a coup plot against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The case has strained Turkey’s ties with the West and become a symbol of Turkey’s sweeping crackdown on government opponents.
Kavala has been detained since 2017 in a huge prison complex on the outskirts of Istanbul, in defiance of a European Court of Human Rights ruling to release him.
Last month, the Council of Europe (COE) launched rare disciplinary action against Turkey over the case, which Ankara denounced as interference.
Kavala, who had snubbed court hearings since October, yesterday attended the latest hearing in Istanbul’s main court Caglayan via a video link from his prison in Silivri.
His presence had built up expectations that the three judges overseeing his trial could be poised to deliver a final verdict.
Many Western observers, including diplomats from France and the United States were present in the packed courtroom, an AFP journalist reported.
LONDON (CNA) – The global Financial Stability Board (FSB) is closely scrutinising the use of cryptoassets during the war in Ukraine after concerns they could be used to evade Western sanctions on Russia.
The crypto sector is on the defensive amid warnings from the United States (US) and European lawmakers that digital asset companies are not up to the task of complying with Western financial sanctions imposed on Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Some crypto exchanges have rejected calls to cut off all Russian users, raising concerns that crypto could be used as a way to circumvent sanctions.
Ukraine also raised millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies after posting appeals on social media for donations in bitcoin and other digital tokens.
“We at the FSB are monitoring the situation, the conflict situation relative to cryptos,” a member of the FSB’s secretariat Patrick Armstrong, told a City and Financial conference.
The FSB, which groups financial regulators, central banks and finance ministry officials from the Group of 20 economies, is sharing the information it obtains among its members, Armstrong said.
Britain’s Financial Services Minister John Glen told the same conference that steps already taken by the United Kingdom (UK) to bring cryptoassets under anti-money laundering and terrorist financing curbs will support law enforcement in cryptoassets.
MIAMI (AFP) – Sam Burns sank a dramatic 35-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole yesterday to defeat rookie Davis Riley and capture his second consecutive US PGA Valspar Championship title.
In an intense extra-holes showdown between 25-year-old Americans, Burns and Riley began with pars at the par-4 18th hole at Innisbrook’s Copperhead course in Palm Harbor, Florida.
The playoff moved to the par-4 16th, where Burns found the green and Riley the short rough. Burns saw his putt roll left to right around the back edge of the cup and drop in, the flagstick still in the cup.
When Riley couldn’t match him with a 32-foot chip, Burns had defended his crown.
“Man it was crazy,” Burns said. “Davis played well, especially the way he finished. Hats off to him.” It was the third career PGA title for Burns, who won by three strokes over Keegan Bradley at Innisbrook last year and took last October’s Sanderson Farms Championship.
Burns will jump from 17th to 10th in the world rankings.
Sam Burns celebrates with the trophy. PHOTO: AFP
“Just a lot of hard work,” Burns said. “I’m so happy.”
Burns fired a two-under-par 69 to complete 72 holes on 17-under 267.
“I tried to stay steady. We didn’t make a lot of mistakes,” Burns said. “If you can just plod your way around – make a bunch of pars, throw in a few birdies here and there – a lot of times it works well.”
Riley, ranked 399th, battled back from a triple bogey at the par-5 fifth hole that dropped him out of the lead to shoot 72 and manage his best tour finish, improving on a share of seventh at Bermuda last October.
“I got punched in the mouth pretty early,” Riley said. “Fought back. I knew if just kept staying in it, I would have a chance to win, but unfortunately didn’t have my best stuff and that’s just what happens.
“We just said there’s a lot of golf to play, triple sucks, but I knew I was playing well enough to bounce back from it. Unfortunately that hole just kind of cost me.”
Americans Justin Thomas and Matthew NeSmith shared third on 268 with England’s Matt Fitzpatrick and American Brian Harman sharing fifth on 270.
NeSmith, ranked 279th, matched the course record with a 61 on Friday and managed his best US PGA finish, surpassing a share of sixth in 2020 at Puerto Rico.
In the final round, Riley sank a six-foot birdie putt at the par-3 17th while Burns rescued bogey with a nine-foot putt at 17 – his first bogey after 24 holes – to keep a share of the lead. Both closed with pars, Riley missing a 15-foot birdie putt to win at 18.
