MILAN (AFP) – More than 1,300 staff at Italian carrier Air Italy, which went bust in 2020, on Monday began receiving letters terminating their employment, trade unions said.
Pilots and cabin crew had been protected by a furlough scheme since the February 2020 bankruptcy of the airline, which had been held 51 per cent by the Aga Khan and 49 per cent by Qatar Airways.
However, this has not been extended.
The transport divisions of the Cgil and Cisl unions, in a joint statement with Uiltrasporti and Ugl Trasporto Aereo, called for “urgent government action to stop the process and avert this real social tragedy”.
By contrast, around 8,000 employees of Alitalia, which ceased operating in October, have seen their furlough scheme extended into 2022.
The successor of Alitalia, ITA Airways, had in December taken on 2,141 staff, less than the 2,800 initially announced for 2021, but has promised to hire at least 1,000 more this year.
Launched with great fanfare in February 2018, Air Italy – formerly called Meridiana – had hoped to benefit from ongoing problems at Alitalia, but ended up losing hundreds of millions of euros.
Based in Sardinia, but with a hub in Milan, it operated mainly domestic flights in Italy but also routes to the United States (US) , Canada and Africa.
Air Italy in 2018 recorded loses of EUR164 million, which rose to around EUR200 million the following year.
An ITA Airways’ Airbus A320 passenger airplane, bearing the Alitalia livery, taking off from Rome’s Fiumicimo airport. PHOTO: AFP
MEXICO CITY (AP) – There once was a small fish called ‘tequila splitfin’ or ‘zoogoneticus tequila’ that swam in a river in western Mexico, but disappeared in the 1990s. Scientists and residents, however, have achieved the return of a species extinct in nature – but conserved in captivity – to its native habitat.
Its success is now intertwined with the community’s identity and being touted internationally.
It began more than two decades ago in Teuchitlán, a town near the Tequila volcano. A half-dozen students, among them Omar Domínguez, began to worry about the little fish that fit in the palm of a hand and had only ever been seen in the Teuchitlán river. It had vanished from local waters, apparently due to pollution, human activities and the introduction of non-native species.
Domínguez, now a 47-year-old researcher at the University of Michoacán, said that then only the elderly remembered the fish called ‘gallito’ or ‘little rooster’ because of its orange tail.
In 1998, conservationists from the Chester Zoo in England and other European institutions arrived to help set up a laboratory for conserving Mexican fish. They brought several pairs of tequila splitfin fish from the aquariums of collectors, Domínguez said.
The fish began reproducing in aquariums and within a few years Domínguez and his colleagues gambled on reintroducing them to the Teuchitlán river. “They told us it was impossible, (that) when we returned them they were going to die.”
Two ‘tequila splitfin’ fish in an aquarium at the Chester Zoo in Chester, England. PHOTO: AP
So they looked for options. They built an artificial pond for a semi-captivity stage and in 2012 they put 40 pairs there.
Two years later, there were some 10,000 fish. The result guaranteed funding, not only from the Chester Zoo but also a dozen organisations from Europe, the United States (US) and the United Arab Emirates, to move the experiment to the river.
There they studied parasites, micro-organisms in the water, the interaction with predators, competition with other fish, and then introduced the fish in floating cages.
The goal was to re-establish the fragile equilibrium. For that part, the key was not so much the scientists as the local residents.
“When I started the environmental education programme I thought they were going to turn a deaf ear to us… and at first that happened,” Domínguez said.
But the conservationists succeeded with patience and years of puppet shows, games and explanations about the ecological and health value of “zoogoneticus tequila” – the fish help control mosquitos that spread dengue.
Some residents made up a nickname for the little fish: “Zoogy.” They made caricatures and formed the ‘River Guardians’, a group mostly of children. They collect garbage, clean the river and remove invasive plants.
Domínguez said it is difficult to say if water quality is better because there is no previous data to compare, but the entire ecosystem has improved. The river is cleaner, there are fewer non-native species and cattle are no longer permitted to drink in some areas.
The fish rapidly multiplied inside their floating cages. Then they were marked so they could be followed and set free. It was late 2017 and in six months the population increased 55 per cent. Last month, the fish had expanded to another part of the river.
The reintroduction into nature of species that were extinct in the wild is complex and time-consuming. Przewalski’s horse and the Arabian oryx are among successful examples. The Chester Zoo said on December 29 that the tequila splitfin had joined that small group.
ANN/THE DAILY STAR – It’s a cold morning, your toes are freezing. You’ve stayed up late to finish an assignment. There’s an entire construction site inside your skull. Tiny construction workers are drilling, banging, hammering away like their paycheque depends on it. What do you do?
Most people would reach out for a paracetamol tablet, maybe two, and wash it down with water. Sometimes the pain goes away for a while, sometimes it doesn’t.
Like salt on our tables, paracetamol is a staple in everyone’s medicine stash. It’s affordable, does the job and it’s always stocked up in your local pharmacy. From sinus infections to migraines, from fevers to back pain, paracetamols are the ultimate salvation. The panacea of the 21st Century.
This is why it’s not surprising that people often swallow paracetamols like candy. Even though paracetamol is considered harmless enough to be used as an over-the-counter painkiller, it was not invented to be used every day, especially at dosages we often consume.
As a child, I’d get sick at the turn of every season. My fevers would often soar high. Yet, I was only allowed one tablet in 24 hours and only if I truly needed it. Back then, I’d wonder why I needed to suffer through so much when most of my other friends would take two or even three pills to ward away minor headaches.
Consuming large amounts of paracetamol chips away at your tolerance to pain. For someone who experiences chronic pain, it can be a very slippery slope. Once you are down there it’s hard to find your way back up.
Why should you tolerate the pain, especially when you have an important meeting or exams right around the corner? Why should you give up on relief when it’s one pill away?
I am not saying that you should give up on paracetamol entirely. Even though it was not as revolutionary as antibiotics, paracetamols have made trips to the doctor’s office less frequent. Sometimes paracetamol is all you need to weather through a really bad migraine or a seasonal cold.
However, all drugs need to be used in moderation. Paracetamol is harmless if it is used occasionally. Taking more than two tablets daily for an extended period puts excess pressure on other organs.
Taking paracetamol as a reflex and not out of necessity reinforces a habit. This habit renders the drug less effective over time. Which leads to the consumption of higher dosages. It is an endless loop that is difficult to get out of.
Paracetamol can temporarily provide pain relief, but it is just a band-aid over a deep cut. To deal with chronic pains you need to get to the bottom of it. Consult your doctor. Keep yourself warm if your sinuses get inflamed often. Know what triggers your migraine. Get to the heart of your problems. Paracetamol is not a cure. Don’t treat it like one.
Unless you are a skilled driver, a car enthusiast or a heavy vehicle operator, manual transmission is limited to learners. And once these learners pass the test and get their driving licence, most will switch to automatic transmission right away.
So why has it remained important to learn to drive a stick in the country? Quite a number of countries allow learners to choose between learning manual or automatic. As a matter of fact, a recent news article reported how automatic car is increasingly used during driving tests, and manual transmission is slowly phasing out due to the plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles in favour of automatic electric cars by 2035 to reduce carbon emissions.
The authorities ought to take into account the change in preferences and innovations in the car industry, and respond to these changes accordingly.
Given how many people immediately forgo the use of manual transmission upon passing their driving test goes to show the persistence in teaching the “old way” of driving is counterintuitive.
FRANKFURT (AFP) – Germany’s joblessness rate fell slightly in December despite the return of health restrictions to tackle a new wave of coronavirus cases, official figures published yesterday showed.
The seasonally adjusted rate dropped to 5.2 per cent from 5.3 per cent the previous month, the BA Federal Labour Agency said, the equivalent of 23,000 fewer unemployed people.
“The recovery seen in recent months continued in December,” Agency Head Detlef Scheele said in a statement.
In raw figures, the number of unemployed sat just under 2,330,000, down around 378,000 since December 2020.
Unemployment in Europe’s top economy climbed as high as six per cent in the months following the rapid spread of the coronavirus through Europe in the first half of 2020.
People walking through a pedestrian area in Cologne, western Germany. PHOTO: AFP
Germany has relied heavily on subsidised short-term work schemes to help businesses and workers whether the pandemic storm, with nearly six million Germans placed on reduced hours at the peak of the crisis in April 2020.
The scheme was still supporting some 710,000 people according to the latest available figures from October, the BA said.
An uptick in applications made for the short-term work scheme at the end of the year showed the “uncertainty” caused by rising numbers of coronavirus cases and the emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the BA said.
Around 286,000 people were signed up to the programme in December, up from 104,000 the month before.
The overall improvement in the job market over 12 months was “encouraging” but “the new virus variant will be a difficult test for the German economy”, said Chief Economist at public lender KfW Fritzi Koehler-Geib.
NEW DELHI (AP) – Police in India have arrested a man alleged to be behind the offering for sale of prominent Muslim women through a fake online auction, according to government officials, in a case that has sparked anger and outrage across the country.
Technology Minister for the Maharashtra state Satej Patil, said late on Monday that the cyber unit of the Mumbai Police has detained a 21-year-old engineering student from the southern city of Bengaluru in the neighbouring Karnataka state and registered a case against him. Police did not reveal the identity of the suspect, and it wasn’t clear whether the man had made the auction website.
Photographs of more than 100 prominent Indian Muslim women, including journalists, activists, film stars and artists, were displayed last weekend without their permission on a website and put up for fake auction.
The women listed on the website also included a 65-year-old mother of a disappeared Indian student and Pakistani Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.
Though there was no real sale involved, the Muslim women listed on the website said the auction was intended to humiliate them, many of whom have been vocal about rising Hindu nationalism in India and some of the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
KIGALI (AFP) – Congolese chef Dieuveil Malonga learned his craft in Europe’s top restaurants, but said he owes his success to grandmothers across Africa, who passed on the gastronomic secrets that underpin his celebrated Afro-fusion cuisine.
“I travel (to) different countries… to learn from the grandmothers. Then I get these old recipes and I bring it to my laboratory here and we try with my chefs to give it something of a modern touch,” he said.
The 30-year-old from Congo-Brazzaville has visited 38 of Africa’s 54 countries, bringing back fermentation and other techniques, as well as ingredients that add texture and flavour to the dishes served at his restaurant in Rwanda’s capital Kigali.
The treasures sourced during his trips are everywhere in Meza Malonga (Malonga’s Table in Kiswahili).
Bins holding tiny chilli peppers from the Ivory Coast, pebe nuts from Cameroon and dried mbinzo caterpillars from the Congo fill an entire wall of the establishment.
Congolese chef Dieuveil Malonga cooks with some of his workers at his restaurant Meza Malonga in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. PHOTO: AFP
Food experts have largely ignored the continent’s culinary heritage, with not a single Michelin-starred restaurant to be found on the continent.
But that may soon change, thanks to the efforts of chefs like Malonga, who co-founded Chefs in Africa – a website devoted to promoting the region’s rising stars.
“Something… is happening in Africa, and people are getting interested in knowing more about African cuisine,” he said in an interview with AFP at his restaurant, minutes before the dinner rush kicked off.
He stressed the diversity of African food, citing the example of Nigeria, where one can choose from more than 20 dishes on any given day.
Malonga was born near Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, where, despite losing his parents at a young age, he enjoyed “a very happy childhood” within a tight-knit community, according to his website.
At 13, he moved to Germany and lived with a family, later joining a renowned cooking school in Muenster.
It was a perfect fit.
“I like to eat, I eat all the time,” he said, bursting into laughter.
“I (come) from a family that likes and celebrates food.”
After graduating, he trained at some of Germany’s top restaurants, including the triple Michelin-starred Aqua in Wolfsburg, before moving to France to work at the InterContinental hotel in Marseille.
Despite his success, he said he could not shake off the feeling that something was “missing”.
So he headed back to Africa and embarked on a two-year odyssey across the continent.
There he found “the key” to his new life, he said. After falling in love with Rwanda – a fertile, hilly country with a gentle climate – he opened Meza Malonga in 2020.
Here, he said he revels in foraging for ingredients and meeting the people who grow the aromatic herbs and edible flowers used in his dishes.
The restaurant is not cheap – an average meal including drinks costs around USD150 per person – but his customers are happy to pay for an experience that marries traditional African ingredients with modern techniques.
On the day AFP visited, the 10-course menu included sweet potato-marinated tuna, shrimp with powdered cassava and, for dessert, a coffee foam dusted with crushed peanuts.
His clientele includes locals, expatriates and tourists, who line up for a meal that looks as good as it tastes – with chefs using tweezers to meticulously arrange each dish.
Diner Laura Tomini said the experience made her feel like she was “in business class”.
Although Africa-born chefs like Pierre Thiam have made a splash on the global food scene, popularising Afro-fusion in the West, Malonga wants to raise the continent’s own gastronomic profile.
By 2023, he hopes to “create something big” by opening a new restaurant in the rural northern region of Musanze, at the foot of the Virunga mountain range and its famous gorillas.
He wants the second incarnation of Meza Malonga to serve as a training ground for the next generation of Africa’s top chefs.
In Kigali, the soft-spoken Malonga works with 10 young cooks, mainly Rwandan but also Burundian, Ugandan and Tanzanian, who praise his openness to their ideas and his willingness to let them shine.
In Musanze, he said he plans to recruit and train many more chefs – with the goal of transforming the continent’s gastronomic reputation.
CNA – Reading, writing and maths are often thought of as subjects that children learn in school.
But as a psychologist who researches how families can help support learning at home, I have found that children can also learn those skills through everyday tasks and chores.
One of these chores is preparing a meal – everything from grocery shopping and cooking to setting the table and enjoying the meal.
Our research shows this is especially true for Latino families living in the United States (US), many of whom are new to school systems in the US but for whom family dinners are a central part of the day.
Our study included 248 Latino parents with kids in kindergarten. Some parents were given a set of tips – described below – on how to support children’s language, literacy and maths at home while selecting, preparing and eating food.
Parents were asked to use these tips for at least a month. Other parents were not given these tips.
Our study found that the children whose parents were given these tips had larger vocabularies and more motivation to learn both one month after using the tips and even five months later.
These children were also better storytellers and were better able to control their behaviour and pay better attention compared with children whose parents were not given these tips.
Busy parents in particular loved these tips because they were easy to follow and to fit into their regular schedules and did not require extra work or special materials.
1. MAKE GROCERY LISTS
Parents can ask their children to write out the grocery list before they go food shopping.
While older children can use letters and numbers – for example, “two cereal boxes, 10 bananas”, younger children might be encouraged to draw pictures of the items their parents want to buy or to use a combination of letters, numbers and pictures.
A 2017 study found that the more parents let their children try out writing and reading letters and numbers on their own while making grocery lists, the better the children’s reading and maths skills are later.
Once back from the store, parents can ask children to use their grocery list to check whether the parents bought everything on the list. This is a great way for children to practise writing, reading and maths.
2. COOKING AND SETTING THE TABLE
Gathering and mixing the ingredients for cooking or setting the table are opportunities for kids to practice maths in a playful and familiar way.
We found that practising maths with children during these household chores can also increase kids’ motivation to learn maths.
Ask your child questions such as: Can you get five apples from the fridge? I added four cups of milk plus one more – how many are there in total? How many plates and forks do we need today?
3. TELL STORIES AT MEALTIME
Parents can use family dinner and other meals to encourage children to tell stories about their day. Telling stories about past or future events is a great way to build skills like vocabulary and story comprehension that are needed to read. To get children to talk, parents should use lots of questions that require children to come up with their own answer rather than simply responding with a “yes” or a “no”.
For example: Who came with you to the party? Where did you go with Grandma? Why were you scared?
Talking about topics that the child cares about can also help parents get children to talk.
To keep the child engaged in the conversation, parents can ask follow-up questions like “And then what happened?” They can also repeat back what the child said.
For example, if the child said “We went to the park”, the parent might respond “That’s right, we went to the park!” and use phrases such as “Uh-huh”, “Oh”, “I didn’t know that” and “Really?” to keep the conversation going.
4. USE THE LANGUAGE THAT’S MOST COMFORTABLE
Parents should feel free to talk in the language they know best. Many parents might feel pressured to speak in one language – such as English – at home because this is the language used in school.
However, when parents speak in the language they are most familiar with, they are better able to express their thoughts and feelings while also preserving their culture.
Speaking a native language at home is not detrimental to children’s learning.
When children have strong foundations in one language – such as Spanish – they can use that knowledge as a building block for learning a second language – such as English.
Our research is based primarily on Latino families, who place particular value on family meals.
Latino families tend to eat together more often than families from other ethnicities. They are also more likely to cook at home and involve children in kitchen chores.
However, these tips apply to all families who regularly cook, eat and shop for food together. And they can help busy parents support their young children’s learning without much added burden or spending.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA (AP) – Naomi Osaka is back in a place where she’s won two of her four Grand Slam singles titles and the former number one-ranked player is feeling good vibes after her time off trying to rediscover her love for the game.
The Australian Open champion opened her 2022 season with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win over Alize Cornet yesterday in one of the Summer Set of tournaments in Melbourne.
Osaka returned to Rod Laver Arena for the first time since winning the Australian Open title in February. It was also her first tour-level match since a third-round loss to Leylah Fernandez at the US Open in September.
After that loss, Osaka said: “I honestly don’t know when I’m going to play my next tennis match.”
She took time off earlier last year, a mental health break that began when she withdrew from the French Open before her second-round match.
She also sat out Wimbledon, then returned for the Tokyo Olympics, where she lit the cauldron during the opening ceremony.
Naomi Osaka of Japan plays a forehand during her singles match. PHOTO: AP
Osaka said she set herself one major goal for this year, and that was to enjoy the game.
“I’m the type of person that cared a little bit too much about the results and the rankings and I need to find a way to enjoy the game again because that’s the reason I played the game in the first place,” she said.
After taking time to hang out with friends and family, she said slowly started to regain the feeling of love for the game.
“It’s not like it ever completely went away but it got overshadowed by a lot of emotions that I was feeling just by constantly playing year after year,” Osaka said.
Osaka was up a set and a break before Cornet went on a five-game roll to force the match into a third set. The former number one-ranked Osaka got just over 38 per cent of her first serves into play, had eight double-faults and 57 unforced errors, but countered that with 51 winners. She faced only three break points.
“I feel like I made a lot of unforced errors today,” the top-seeded Osaka said, “but I expected that because it is the first match and I was really nervous.”
Travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic mean there’s a crammed schedule of events Down Under before the Australian Open starts on January 17.
There are three events being played this week in Melbourne as part of Tennis Australia’s Summer Set of tournaments – two WTA tournaments and one ATP. In Adelaide, there is a joint ATP and WTA tournament this week.
The ATP Cup is being played in Sydney. Jessica Pegula, the top seed in the other women’s Summer Set tournament in Melbourne, lost to Irina-Camelia Begu 7-6 (6), 6-3 in the first round.
Pegula, who reached the quarterfinals at last year’s Australian Open, led 5-3 and had set points before Begu rallied for victory.
In the men’s tournament in Melbourne, Facundo Bagnis beat former number one Andy Murray 6-3, 5-7, 6-3, saving 11 of 13 break points. He will next play third-seeded Grigor Dimitrov.
Murray, a five-time finalist at the Australian Open, received a wild-card entry to play at the season’s opening major.
In Adelaide, 2020 French Open champion Iga Swiatek opened her Adelaide International title defence with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Daria Saville, who was known as Daria Gavrilova before her recent marriage.
In earlier matches, American teenager Coco Gauff beat Ulrikke Eikeri of Norway 6-2, 6-1 to set up a second-round match against top-ranked Ash Barty, 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin beat Lucia Bronzetti 7-5, 7-5, and Anastasia Gasanova beat eighth-seeded Elina Svitolina 5-7, 6-4, 6-3.
Three individuals including a child who got lost during a hike in Bukit Shahbandar Recreational Park were rescued on Saturday afternoon.
Firefighters from the Jerudong Fire Station, led by Acting ASO Shambra bin Haji Md Som, with support from the Special Squad Unit responded to the incident after receiving a call at 3.02pm.
After receiving information regarding the victims’ whereabouts, the rescue team headed to the Agro Park to begin the search. The victims were found safe at 4.15pm.
The Fire and Rescue Department (FRD) urged the public to always be accompanied by an experience guide when entering the forest, and to stay updated on the weather condition prior to a hike.
The department also advised against hiking after 6pm.
The FRD also reiterated the importance of informing family members on the planned hike, and to bring a whistle, torchlight, mobile phone and sufficient drinking water.
For emergency, contact the FRD operation centre at 995.
