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.
LHOK SUKON, INDONESIA (AFP) – About 24,000 people have been evacuated and two children killed in floods on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, officials said yesterday, with environmental campaigners blaming deforestation for worsening the disaster.
Torrential rains have hammered the island for days, causing rivers to burst their banks and sending water levels surging in residential areas, the national disaster agency said.
“We experience flooding at least five to eight times a year – but (this) is one of the most severe,” said Muzakkir, from Pirak Timur in hard-hit Aceh province, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
Syarifuddin, from the village of Lhok Sukon in Aceh, said the “floodwaters just kept rising – at my house, they are up to my chest”.
The province is where the evacuations and deaths have occurred, as well as some buildings been destroyed by fast-moving floodwaters and agricultural land damaged.
Jambi province on Sumatra was also hard hit, with many homes flooded.
Environmental NGO Walhi said the flooding was worsened by deforestation to make way for Sumatra’s expansive palm oil plantations.
Trees act as natural defences against floods, slowing the rate at which water runs down hills and into rivers.
Logging on higher ground was having a particularly damaging impact in Aceh, said Ahmad Shalihin from Walhi.
Neighbouring Malaysia has also been hard hit by flooding since last month, and thousands more people have been forced to flee their homes in recent days amid new downpours.
The number of people evacuated to government shelters stood at around 13,000 yesterday, with the states of Johor, Melaka and Sabah the worst affected.
Aceh students wade through floodwaters as they evacuate their dormitories in the Gampong Meunasah area. PHOTO: AFP
With the country recording a low number of new COVID-19 cases daily, it conveys a message that things are going back to normal to some; not new normal but the one where digital payment is a matter of inconvenience.
I was using a delivery service recently and was surprised to learn that they no longer accept bank transfer. Fortunately, I had some cash with me.
What concerns me is the trend backwards, with some companies reverting to the old way of conducting business. I won’t be surprised if delivery service falls out of favour in the near future.
ROME (AP) – Italy’s Lower Chamber of Parliament yesterday set January 24 as the start date to begin voting for a new president, officially kicking off a campaign that is expected to see Premier Mario Draghi and ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi vie for the prestigious job.
The victor, who is chosen by around 1,000 “big electors” among lawmakers and regional representatives, will replace President Sergio Mattarella, whose seven-year term ends on February 3. The voting is expected to last several rounds over several days.
The Italian presidency has limited powers and is largely ceremonial. But the president plays a key role in resolving political impasses, which aren’t uncommon in Italy.
And this election comes before a new season of campaigning before the 2023 parliamentary election.
During Italy’s political crisis last year, Mattarella tapped Draghi to lead a government of national unity to help guide the country through the pandemic and secure European Union (EU) funding for Italy’s recovery plan.
At his end-of-year news conference, Draghi said he had accomplished what he set out to do, indicating his availability to move into the presidential Quirinale Palace and allow political parties to resume the process of governing.
The centre-left Democratic Party, which recently has topped polls with around 20 per cent of voters, has voiced strong support for a Draghi presidency, believing that the internationally respected Draghi would send a signal of continued Italian stability and credibility.
NEW YORK (AP) – Hollywood closed out 2021 with more fireworks at the box office for Spider-Man: No Way Home, which topped all films for the third straight week and already charts among the highest grossing films ever.
The film industry heads into 2022 with plenty of reason for both optimism and concern after a year that saw overall ticket revenue double that of 2020, but still well off the pre-pandemic pace.
Movie theatres began the year mostly shuttered but ended it with a monster smash.
Sony Pictures’ Marvel sequel No Way Home grossed an estimated USD52.7 million over the weekend to bring its three-week total to USD609.9 million. That ranks 10th all-time in North America.
Worldwide, it’s made USD1.37 billion, a total that puts it above Black Panther and makes it the 12th highest grossing film globally.
No Way Home, Tom Holland’s third standalone film as the webslinger, gave a huge lift to the box-office recovery that started in earnest last spring when United States (US) cinemas opened after a year of COVID-19 closures.
A scene from the movie ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. PHOTO: SONY ENTERTAINMENT
Marvel films dominated the turbulent year, accounting for the top four movies of 2021: No Way Home, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Black Widow.
The North American box office in 2021 amounted to USD4.5 billion, according to data firm ComScore. That’s about 60 per cent down from 2019 – back before the days of masked moviegoers, social distancing and virus variants like the currently surging Omicron.
Whether the movies will ever reach those pre-pandemic totals again is uncertain, given that exclusive theatrical windows have since shrunk, studios have experimented with hybrid releases and little besides superhero films are packing theatres.
Partly due to COVID-19 disruptions, the 2022 release schedule is unusually packed with potential blockbusters, including The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World: Dominion, Thor: Love and Thunder and Avatar 2.
Second place over the weekend went to Universal Picture’s animated sequel Sing 2. It took in USD19.6 million in its second weekend to bring its two-week total to USD89.7 million.
That’s a steady result given that family movies and films skewing toward older moviegoers have been the slowest to bounce back during the pandemic.
Sing 2 added another USD54.9 million internationally. It’s trajectory should make it the top animated release of the pandemic.
But after No Way Home and Sing 2, there was little that appealed to moviegoers over the
holiday weekend.
The King’s Man, the third instalment in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman series, grossed a modest USD4.5 million in its second week after a lackluster debut. But that was still good enough for third place. The Disney release, produced by 20th Century Studios, has made USD47.8 million globally.
Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story sold USD2.1 million in tickets in its fourth weekend. While holding well (the film dropped 26 per cent from the week prior), the once-envisioned holiday upswing for the acclaimed musical hasn’t materialised. West Side Story has grossed a disappointing USD29.6 million domestically.
After flopping on its debut last week, Warner Bros’ The Matrix Resurrections dropped a steep 64 per cent in its second weekend with USD3.8 million. The film is simultaneously streaming on HBO Max, a 2021 practice that the studio has pledged to end in 2022. The long-in-coming Matrix reboot was even edged by the second week of the Kurt Warner NFL drama American Underdog, which grossed USD4.1 million for Lionsgate.
One of the only new releases of the week was Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, with Tilda Swinton. Its distributor, Neon, has laid out a novel strategy for the art-house release, playing the film in only one theatre at a time, with no plans for a future streaming or physical release. Memoria started its quixotic, cross-country journey with USD52,656 since opening on December 16 at New York’s IFC Center.
