KABUL (AP) – Afghanistan is the unhappiest country in the world – even before the Taleban swept to power last August. That’s according to a so-called World Happiness report released ahead of the United Nations (UN)-designated International Day of Happiness today.
The annual report ranked Afghanistan as last among 149 countries surveyed, with a happiness rate of just 2.5. Lebanon was the world’s second saddest country, with Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe rounding out the bottom five. Finland ranked first for the fourth year running with a 7.8 score, followed by Denmark and Switzerland, with Iceland and the Netherlands also in the top five.
FILE- Internally displaced Afghans from northern provinces, who fled their home due to fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel, take refuge in a public park in Kabul, Afghanistan. AP
Researchers ranked the countries after analysing data over three years. They looked at several categories including gross domestic product per capita, social safety nets, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity of the population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels.
DILI, EAST TIMOR (AFP) – East Timor’s citizens were at the polls yesterday to elect a new president, hoping the most competitive election in the history of Southeast Asia’s youngest country will end a protracted political impasse.
Voters lined up outside polling stations at the crack of dawn to choose between a record 16 candidates led by two revolutionary heroes in incumbent Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres and former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta.
Following temperature checks and hand sanitisation, they were ushered to the polling booths where they dabbed their fingers in ink to show they had voted.
Several mothers carrying babies were among those eager to elect a new president.
“I hope the leader that I have voted for can pay more attention to the education, infrastructure and farming sectors. I am very happy that I’ve voted for a candidate based on my consciousness,” 35-year-old Filomena Tavares Maria told AFP outside the polls.
An official result will be announced sometime next week.
First hammered by the pandemic, East Timor’s economy took another hit last year when Cyclone Seroja struck, killing at least 40 people on its half of the island and transforming communities into wastelands of mud and uprooted trees.
People show their inked fingers after casting their ballots during a presidential election in Dili. PHOTO: AFP
Political tensions between the two largest parties – Guterres’ Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) and the National Congress of the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste (CNRT) – have also risen in the past four years, leading to a political deadlock that has seen the government fail to pass a budget.
Sidalia dos Santos said she hoped the new president could lead an economic recovery.
“I hope the candidate that I voted for can improve our lives, especially in the health and education sector,” the 22-year-old student said.
Outside the polling station, Ramos-Horta said the financial situation would be his main priority: “The most important thing for me is to strengthen the stability and build a better economy”.
Earlier in the week, he said he felt compelled to return to politics because Guterres had “breached the constitution” and overstepped his presidential role.
But Guterres, a 67-year-old former guerilla fighter, said he was confident the elections would bring him a second term.
“I believe I will win this election and people will reconfirm their rights through the election. If I am re-elected, I will keep defending the democratic rights of our country and create sustainable development”.
Around 860,000 were registered to vote at the country’s 1,500 polling stations.
If no one wins an absolute majority, a second round of voting will be held on April 19 and the winner will take office on May 20, East Timor’s 20th anniversary of independence from Indonesia, which occupied the former Portuguese colony for 24 years.
Major political events in East Timor have often been marred by violence and conflicts.
In 2018, more than a dozen people were injured and several cars torched after clashes between main parties Fretilin and CNRT.
AP – For better and worse, Turning Red is like no Pixar film before it.
The film, directed by Domee Shi, who made the lovely Oscar-winning short Bao, is the first Pixar movie directly solely by a woman. Its leadership team, including producers and art departments, is entirely female. And its protagonist, 13-year-old Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), is a Chinese-Canadian eighth-grader in the throes of puberty.
For Pixar, a factory of childhood whimsy designed to make adults cry, Turning Red fills in more than a few blind spots. Not only is the movie deeply rooted in a female and Asian-North American perspective, it wades into a chapter of life unfrequented by Pixar. This is the first film by the studio in which, for example, a sanitary pad is offered. And it’s the first – history take note – to feature twerking.
The best thing about Turning Red is how it broadens the horizons of the 36-year-old animation powerhouse with a refreshing vantage point and some new moves. If some of Pixar’s greatest movies have used high concepts to illustrate existential quandaries, Turning Red is one of the studio’s most specifically drawn films.
Set in Toronto in 2002, Mei is a high-achieving, straight-A student – in an introductory montage, a teacher describes her as “a very enterprising, mildly annoying young lady” – with a solid, supportive group of friends: Miriam (Ava Morse), Abby (Hyein Park) and Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). But possibly the most dominant relationship in Mei’s life is with her mother (Sandra Oh). She’s a domineering but loving parent whose high standards for her daughter have somewhat stifled the anxious Mei. She keeps certain feelings – like the onset of hard-to-control urges, particularly when it comes to a popular boy band named 4-Town – hidden from her mother.
“I do make my own moves,” Mei said. “It’s just that some of my moves are also hers.”
This image released by Disney+ shows characters Abby, voiced by Hyein Park; Miriam, voiced by Ava Morse; Priya, voiced by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan; and Mei Lee, voiced by Rosalie Chiang in a scene from ‘Turning Red’. PHOTO: AP
But it’s getting harder to keep some of those feelings inside for Mei. Her mother finds a notebook under her bed with swooning drawings of 4-Town, and immediately irrationally blames an older teen boy for being a bad influence. Then one morning, Mei awakens to find the transformation that’s been occurring within her has manifested itself: She turns into a big, fluffy red panda – and a walking metaphor for menstruation and other developments of young womanhood.
That Turning Red pivots this way – with Mei, as panda, cowering in the bathroom with her mother knocking outside – is a fairly radical move in the typically sanitised world of studio animation. But Shi, a longtime animator at Pixar, has never been one to shy away from a dramatic plot device. Her Bao conceived a mother-son tale in a dumpling-comes-alive allegory that culminated, surprisingly, with the mom eating her dumpling son in a fit of denial over him growing up and leaving home.
Turning Red shifts its point of view to the child in such a relationship, but it’s likewise about the push-and-pull for the maturing offspring of an overprotective parent. The red panda transformation, which Mei learns she can suppress by moderating her emotions, connects to her heritage, as well.
The Lees live in one of the oldest Chinese temples in Toronto, and that setting is just one way Turning Red plays with balancing cultural assimilation with preservation. Mei soon discovers that panda alter-egos run in the family. Her mother, and their other female relatives, have known the same struggles with expression and repression. (Some similar themes about not holding in your feelings were brought more vividly to life another recent Disney hit, Encanto.)
Where I think Turning Red mainly misses is with the mom. The movie is structured for her to be the primary foil and friend of Mei, but her character isn’t much more than an assortment of Asian tiger mom tropes. That leaves little to propel Turning Red other than the inevitable empowerment of Mei. There are delights along the way: a rooftop skip through Toronto, with a dose of wuxia magic; the rich, lovable design of Mei’s Totoro-sized panda; the close-knit companionship of her friends.
But Turning Red is surprisingly free of humor or the kind of visual wit that has long been a Pixar hallmark. It could be that, if we’re talking about representing hard-to-tame adolescent urges in monster form, Turning Red – bold as it may be – can’t come close to matching the messy comic farce of Big Mouth, the far less family-friendly but much more true-to-life animated series that paired seventh graders with lascivious “hormone monsters”. It isn’t easy – or maybe even possible – to do puberty justice with a PG rating.
But Turning Red does nail one rite of female adolescence with remarkable accuracy: the boy band. With radio-ready pop tunes by Billie Eilish and Finneas (who voices one of the singers), 4-Town is about as pitch perfect as an NSYNC knockoff can be. But just as good is Mei’s mother’s cutting critique of them as “glittery delinquents with their … gyrations”. I seriously doubt I will ever listen to my daughters blast BTS without muttering her line to myself.
KUALA LUMPUR (CNA) – United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (Bernama; pic below) said the party has the power to determine its direction as he called for Parliament to be dissolved.
“When the mood from the grassroots in the by-elections and state elections is in our favour, what are we waiting for?” he said delivering his policy speech at the party’s 2021 annual general meeting on Friday.
The Bagan Datuk MP acknowledged that the decision to dissolve Parliament is one to be made by the Cabinet, before it is presented to the king.
“We will not disturb this matter, but UMNO as a responsible party, we have the power to determine our party’s direction,” he told the delegates.
The UMNO president said the “beat of war drums” for Malaysia’s 15th general election (GE15) has become stronger, and that this general assembly should listen to grassroots voices calling for a new mandate to be obtained through the GE15.
“Do not let there be a lot of thunder and flash, but not one drop of rain falls to the ground.”
“As such, I hope we can return (the mandate) to the people, leave it up to them. Give a new mandate to UMNO,” he said.
UMNO, a main component in the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, has ruled the country since its independence until its shock defeat in the 2018 general election.
The coalition then allied with its rival Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) to regain control of the government following the defection of 11 MPs from Pakatan Harapan in February 2020.
Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who took office on August 30 last year, is the first prime minister from UMNO who is not a party president. He is one of the vice presidents.
There has been talk of an earlier GE15 to capitalise on BN’s victories in the by-elections and state elections in Sabah, Melaka and most recently Johor.
In the Johor polls, BN clinched 40 out of the 56 state seats.
Onn Hafiz Ghazi, a descendant of Malaysia’s third prime minister Hussein Onn, was appointed to the position of chief minister, instead of incumbent Hasni Mohammad as promised by Ahmad Zahid earlier.
This has prompted Johor delegates to announce that they would refrain from participating in the debate during the convention.
JOHANNESBURG (XINHUA) – With 27 per cent of South Africa’s children under five years of age stunted or affected by stunting, the National Department of Health warned it was not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target to reduce stunting by 2025.
“In my view, we are not on target, if you look at the past 20 years, the stunting has not improved, so if we don’t do something drastically, then I don’t think we will meet the target,” Deputy Director at the Department of Health Ann Behr, focussing on child, youth and school health, told Xinhua in an interview via Zoom.
According to the SDGs, by 2025, the internationally agreed reduction targets on stunting and wasting in children under five years of age should be achieved.
A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report released in 2019 said South African children under five years of age face the triple burden of malnutrition – undernutrition, hidden hunger, and being overweight.
According to the report, 27.4 per cent of South Africa’s children under five years of age are stunted, which means they are too short for their height.
Stunting can be attributed to several causes, and a collaborative approach was required to reduce it. Even though an update hasn’t been released, given the impact of the pandemic on poverty, Behr believes stunting has increased in recent years. “I think the stunting rate has increased due to the impact of COVID-19,” she said.
To address stunting and nutrition issues in the country, she said a multi-pronged approach was necessary. She cited high diarrhoea rates, HIV infections, and inadequate maternal care as factors contributing to stunting. “When children start eating complementary foods, only 23 per cent of children meet criteria for a minimum acceptable diet,” she said. “To address stunting, we have to address all these factors.”
UNICEF representative in South Africa Christine Muhigana emphasised the importance of addressing the root causes of stunting to tackle the problem.
“Malnutrition and stunting have many more causes than revenue of a given family or the food children get in school. The mothers’ nutritional status has a very important effect on the survival, growth, and development of a child,” she said.
“The causes of stunting include poor access to essential health services. When a child is ill, he or she needs to be quickly cared for at a healthcare centre.”
THE WASHINGTON POST – I made wraps for my husband and foster son the other day: whole wheat tortillas I rolled around baby spinach, warm hummus with chickpeas and cherry tomatoes, plus some leftover cooked ground turkey for them and a little cauliflower salad for me.
The 13-year-old ate his quickly, then asked me to make him another one – a common occurrence in our household. I noticed that he had a little spinach and tomato still on his plate, so I asked him to finish it before I made him seconds. “I can’t eat that,” he said. “It tastes disgusting.”
“But you just ate it inside your wrap!” I countered.
“It was covered up with other things,” he said.
The exchange made me think of Jessica Seinfeld. She made her name – as a cookbook author, anyhow – as the writer behind Deceptively Delicious, whose point was to sneak vegetables onto your kids’ plates by, say, pureeing cauliflower into mac and cheese. The book generated no small amount of controversy by advocating an idea that some critics pilloried: How can you teach children to love vegetables if they don’t know the vegetables are there?
Ever since we started parenting this teenager who would rather down a pile of chicken wings or a bowl of noodles than anything that resembles a leaf, I’m more sympathetic to her point than I was before. If you can serve your family something that tastes good and that happens to be good for them, do you need to call attention to the vegetables? Maybe not, at least not at first. Baby steps, right?
Seinfeld’s latest book, Vegan, at Times, is built on the idea that eating more plant-based meals can improve your and your family’s health, and in it she displays some of the same savvy about the kinds of foods that will appeal to the eaters and to the busy cook trying to feed them. There’s chocolate banana bread, which she calls “the first vegan item in our house that was unanimously approved,” then writes, “Full disclosure: they did not, still do not, know it is vegan.” And there’s a taco salad that uses a spiced lentil-walnut mixture she names, simply, ‘Meat’, quotation marks included.
I was most drawn to a recipe that combines two of my favorite things: pasta and (surprise, surprise) beans. In Seinfeld’s hands, the latter becomes a creamy sauce for the former, especially once you employ a generous amount of pasta cooking water to help turn it silky. She uses cannellini beans, amping up their flavor with garlic and red pepper flakes and topping the dish with toasted pine nuts and grated lemon zest for a little brightness.
It’s the sort of thing you can turn around in a half-hour, boiling the pasta, mashing canned (or your own precooked) beans by hand, and tossing it all together. If you think it would help you sell the dish to an otherwise-skeptical teenager (or spouse), feel free to call it Creamy Rigatoni, and leave out the words “cannellini bean”. I won’t judge.
Creamy Cannellini Bean Rigatoni. PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST
CREAMY CANNELLINI BEAN RIGATONI
25 minutes
Four to six servings, makes 10 cups
Storage Notes: Refrigerate for up to five days. When reheating, add water as needed to achieve a saucy consistency.
INGREDIENTS
– 1/2 teaspoon fine salt, plus more for the pasta water and to taste
– One pound short pasta, such as rigatoni
– 1/4 cup raw unsalted pine nuts (may substitute with slivered almonds)
– Three tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
– Two cloves garlic, pressed or finely grated
– 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
– One can no-salt-added cannellini beans, drained and rinsed, or one and 1/2 cups cooked cannellini beans
– 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for serving
– Two tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional)
– 12 fresh basil leaves, for serving
– Finely grated zest of one lemon, for serving
DIRECTIONS
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, then add enough salt so it tastes like the sea. Add the pasta and cook according to the package directions. Right before you drain the pasta, reserve two cups of the pasta water.
While the pasta cooks, in a small dry skillet over medium heat, toast the pine nuts, tossing often, until golden brown, three to five minutes. Remove from the heat and transfer the nuts to a small heatproof bowl.
Once you drain the pasta, wipe the pot dry and return it to medium heat. Add the oil, garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until the garlic is fragrant but not browned, about 30 seconds. Add the beans, the 1/2 teaspoon of salt and the black pepper, and stir to coat in the oil.
Add one cup of the reserved pasta water. Using a potato masher or the back of a fork, crush the beans until mostly mashed. Add the pasta and stir well to coat with the beans. Sprinkle in the nutritional yeast, if using, and stir again to combine. If the pasta mixture is a little stiff, stir in some or all of the remaining pasta water to loosen. Taste, and season with more salt, if desired, and remove from the heat.
Divide the pasta among bowls, and top with the basil leaves, pine nuts and a little more oil. Sprinkle with the lemon zest and black pepper, and serve.
CLEVELAND (AP) – Lauri Markkanen made the go-ahead three-pointer with 29 seconds left in overtime and scored a season-high 31 points, leading the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 119-116 victory over Denver early yesterday that snapped the Nuggets’ franchise-record road winning streak at seven.
Reigning MVP Nikola Jokic scored in the paint to cut Cleveland’s lead to 117-116 with 25 seconds remaining, but rookie Evan Mobley dunked over Aaron Gordon to restore the Cavaliers’ three-point advantage. Bones Hyland missed a three-pointer as time expired, completing Cleveland’s comeback from 14 down in the fourth quarter.
Mobley scored nine of his 27 points in OT and had 11 rebounds for the Cavaliers, who moved one game in front of Toronto for sixth place in the East. All-Star Darius Garland had 25 points and 14 assists, and Markkanen added 10 rebounds and four steals.
Jokic had 32 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists, but committed a turnover and missed a shot in the final 1:40 of the extra period. Denver, which has won 12 of its last 16 overall, lost on the road for the first time since February 11 at Boston.
The Nuggets held the largest lead of the night at 92-78 with 10:29 left in the fourth quarter, but Cleveland outscored them 29-15 in the rest of regulation. Jokic’s driving layup with 44 seconds left sent the game to OT tied it at 107.
Rookie Hyland had 17 points and seven assists off the bench, Gordon scored 20 points, and DeMarcus Cousins added 12 points and eight rebounds.
SANTIAGO (XINHUA) – The Chilean economy grew 11.7 per cent in 2021, the highest annual hike since records have been kept, the Central Bank of Chile reported on Friday.
According to Chile’s National Accounts report for the fourth quarter of 2021, the sustained recovery during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic managed to reverse the six per cent contraction recorded in 2020.
The bank noted that the gain “was a reflection of the gradual opening of the economy and of households and businesses adapting better to the health situation and its evolution during the year”.
All economic activities examined, except for mining, were up last year, with the highest figures in commerce and personal services, the report stated.
Consumption in general increased by 18.2 per cent, spurred by restaurant, hotel and health services, as well as clothing and food.
“Domestic demand remained dynamic throughout the year, driven by household consumption. Investment also saw a recovery in 2021,” the central bank said.
Regarding the trade balance, imports registered an increase, while exports fell, which triggered “a loss of net exports”. according to the bank.
The High Court dismissed a convicted thief’s appeal against an 18-months’ jail sentence, citing that it was “not excessive”, and that a three-year sentence should have been imposed instead.
Chief Justice Dato Seri Paduka Steven Chong looked at the application from the turn of events up until its court proceedings.
DPP Raihan Nabilah binti Haji Ahmad Ghazali, who prosecuted the case and acted as respondent in the appeal, revealed that Nurul Furqan Awang Morshidi was convicted after being tried for charges of auto theft and two thefts from a building.
The court heard that on the night of October 8, 2019, Nurul Furqan and an accomplice travelled by car to a shop in Kampong Lumapas. The accomplice entered the shop through a window, from which he later made away with seven dart boards, a power drill, gas cylinder and backpack.
Nurul Furqan, the lookout, assisted in carrying the stolen items into the car.
On the same night, Nurul Furqan went to the garage of a Kampong Pintu Malim home, where he stole a vehicle.
In the early hours of October 11, Nurul Furqan and an accomplice headed to a convenience store in Jalan Subok. The accomplice used a cutter to access the locked storeroom, before both men loaded 17 crates of soft drinks, seven boxes of potatoes and three boxes of Vitamin C into the vehicle.
The Chief Justice saw no merit in giving consideration to the application as Nurul Furqan “has not been deterred by that sentence from committing further offences”, while reflecting his record of 13- month jail sentence for a 2017 theft conviction and that he had re-offended within a year of his release.
The High Court recommended that a more severe sentence should have been handed to Nurul Furqan before dismissing the appeal.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA (AP) – An Ethiopian court has extended the three-month detention without charges of journalist Amir Aman Kiyaro to give police 11 more days to interview witnesses, saying after that the state must formally charge him or release him.
Kiyaro, a freelance journalist accredited to The Associated Press (AP), has been in detention since November.
The next court date for Kiyaro’s case was set for March 29.
“The Associated Press is dismayed by the court’s decision today to continue to detain Amir Aman Kiyaro. He continues to be held without charges,” AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said.
“We urge the Ethiopian government to release Amir immediately and end his unjust detention,” Pace said.
The video journalist was detained on November 28 in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, under the country’s war-related state of emergency powers.
The state of emergency was lifted in February as the government cited changing conditions in the deadly conflict between Ethiopian forces and those of the northern Tigray region.
State media, citing federal police, have said he is accused of “serving the purposes” of what they called a terrorist group by interviewing its officials.
