Features

TOKYO — Celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki won his second Oscar on Sunday with “The Boy and the Heron” — the Studio Ghibli co-founder’s first film in a decade, and potentially his last.

The film, about a boy who moves to the countryside during World War II, won best animated feature, the same award scooped in 2003 by Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”.

It bested top rival “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”, Disney’s “Elemental”, Netflix’s “Nimona” and the dialogue-free “Robot Dreams”.

The director was not present in Los Angeles to accept the award, and also did not attend a Ghibli press conference in Tokyo where producer Toshio Suzuki spoke instead.

Suzuki said he was “really happy, from the bottom of my heart”, but described Miyazaki’s less enthusiastic response as “normal, saying the win was good”.

Like other Ghibli titles, “The Boy and the Heron” is a visual feast in which mysterious creatures and strange characters cavort through a fantastical world.

After his mother dies in the haunting fire-bombing of Tokyo during World War II, the boy, Mahito, struggles to accept his new life with his father and pregnant stepmother, who goes missing.

Everything changes when Mahito meets a talking heron and embarks on a journey to an alternate universe shared by the living and the dead.

The film’s rural setting was “created mostly from my memory”, Miyazaki said in a Japanese pamphlet for “The Boy and the Heron”, whose original title translates as “How Do You Live?”

Miyazaki, 83, also lived in a big country house during the war.

He has said he did not set out to make an autobiography, but the film’s father character “is very much like my own father”.

The animator co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, building a cult following with his highly imaginative depictions of nature and machines.

Ghibli characters, like cuddly forest spirit Totoro and princess warrior Nausicaa, are now beloved by children and adults worldwide.

“Spirited Away” is about a girl who gets lost in a mystical world where her parents, who she tries to save, are turned into pigs.

Final film? 

In 2013, Miyazaki said he would no longer make feature-length films, because he could not maintain the hectic intensity of his perfectionist work ethic.

However, in an about-turn four years later, his production company said he was coming out of retirement to make what would be “his final film, considering his age”.

That was “The Boy and The Heron”, which was released in Japan last July without trailers or other advertising, meaning cinema audiences had little idea of what to expect.

The movie was nonetheless a box office success in Japan and reached number one in North America, where it was promoted as usual.

In Tokyo, Ghibli producer Suzuki said Miyazaki still appeared “energetic” despite the octogenerian’s claims.

“He says his eyesight has gone bad and his arms don’t work. If you ask me, he’s exaggerating,” Suzuki laughed.

“It’s not going to be easy to make another feature film. Miyazaki has made animation shorts in the past, so I’m now telling him I’d like him to do something like that.”

A star-studded cast voiced the film’s English dub, featuring Robert Pattinson as the heron alongside Willem Dafoe, Florence Pugh, Christian Bale and Mark Hamill.

In a documentary aired by Japanese public broadcaster NHK in December, Miyazaki was visibly affected by the 2018 death of his Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata.

The animation master said he had based the character of the granduncle in “The Boy and the Heron” on Takahata, with whom he shared a “love-hate relationship”.

“The truth about life isn’t shiny, or righteous. It contains everything, including the grotesque,” Miyazaki said.

“It’s time to create a work by pulling up things hidden deep within myself.”

WASHINGTON — Four astronauts left the International Space Station on Monday and were bound for Earth following a more than six month mission.

Led by American astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, NASA’s Crew-7 arrived at the research platform last August aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

The same spacecraft undocked on Monday morning, with Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, Satoshi Furukawa of Japan, and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov also on board.

Moghbeli, who was making her first spaceflight, paid tribute to the post-Cold War international partnership that paved the way for the construction of the ISS in the 1990s.

“It’s an indication of what we can do when we work together,” she said during a farewell ceremony on Sunday.

“To think back to when this was just a dream itself, and the people that had the vision, the grit and the courage to pursue this orbiting laboratory in low Earth orbit, I’m really proud to be a part of this.”

NASA and SpaceX are targeting as soon as 5:35 am Tuesday (09:35 GMT) for a splashdown off the Florida coast.

Space remains a rare area of cooperation between the United States and Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to reshape the global balance of power. Americans also continue to fly aboard Russian Soyuz rockets that launch from Kazakhstan.

The members of Crew-7 carried out science experiments including collecting samples during a spacewalk to determine whether the station releases microorganisms through life support system vents. Another assessed how microgravity, which accelerates ageing, affects liver regeneration.

Crew-7 is the seventh routine NASA mission to the orbital platform for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with the first coming in 2020. The latest, Crew-8, launched on March 4.

NASA pays SpaceX for the taxi service as part of a US programme put in place to reduce dependency on Russian rockets following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.

Boeing is the other contracted private partner, but its programme has fallen behind, and now plans to fly its first crew in May.

The first segment of the ISS was launched in 1998, and it has been continuously inhabited by an international crew since 2001.

Its operations are set to continue until at least 2030, after which it will be decommissioned and crash into the ocean. Several private companies are working on commercial space stations to replace it, while China has already established its own orbital lab.

Dr Reham Ma’ani,
Dental & Oral Surgeon

Imagine talking to someone and all you can think of is how bad their breath smells! Do you continue talking to them? Or do you make your excuses and run?

Oral hygiene and your love life

If you can’t stand talking to them, you are not going to want to kiss them! When we think about having a relationship with someone, we have certain standards that we set.

Let me walk you through ways bad oral hygiene can affect your relationship, so that you can imagine situations, and what you would do.

A smile

This is one of our strongest features when it comes to attracting a partner. They say that the eyes are the gateway to our souls. So is our smile a key to our hearts. This can be a big deal maker or breaker with relationships.

Imagine looking across the room and seeing this beautiful smile. As you go over and start a conversation, you are hit with this overwhelming smell.

Are you going to continue the conversation and try to ignore the smell?

Bad breath

Bad breath can be caused by many factors.

The food and drinks we consume can have a huge impact on the smell of our mouth.

The bacteria in our mouths can be passed from person to person via many things. Are you going to want someone’s saliva in your mouth if they have bad breath?

The smell and the taste will be forever embedded in your brain!

A very affectionate part of intimacy is kissing. Imagine you wake up with your partner and you both have bad morning breath. You get up, do your daily routine, which includes brushing your teeth, and then carry on with your day.

Now, imagine that smell every day due to bad oral hygiene.

Are you going to choose to ignore it and hope it goes away? Or would you want to solve the problem? Are you worried that your children will grow up not understanding the seriousness of good oral hygiene?

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

PATAUDI, India — Once a housewife in rural India, Sharmila Yadav always wanted to be a pilot and is now living her dream remotely, flying a heavy-duty drone across the skies to cultivate the country’s picturesque farmlands.

Yadav, 35, is among hundreds of women trained to fly fertiliser-spraying aircraft under the government-backed “Drone Sister” programme.

The scheme aims to help modernise Indian farming by reducing labour costs, as well as saving time and water in an industry hamstrung by its reliance on outdated technology and growing climate change challenges.

It is also a portent of rural India’s changing attitudes towards working women, who have traditionally found few opportunities to join the labour force and are often stigmatised for doing so.

“Earlier, it was difficult for women to step out of the house. They were supposed to do only household chores and look after the children,” mother-of-two Yadav told AFP, after a day’s work crisscrossing a drone through the clear blue sky above a lush green field of young wheat stalks.

“Women who went out for work were looked down upon. They were taunted for neglecting their motherly duties. But now mindsets are changing gradually.”

Yadav was a homemaker for 16 years after marrying her farmer husband, with few job opportunities for women in her small rural hamlet near the town of Pataudi, a few hours’ drive from the capital New Delhi.

She will pocket 50,000 rupees ($600) after spraying 60 hectares of farmland twice over five weeks, a little over double the average monthly income in her native Haryana state.

But she said her new occupation was not just a “source of income” for her.”I feel very proud when someone calls me a pilot. I have never sat in a plane, but I feel like I am flying one now,” she said.

Patriarchal attitudes

Yadav is among the first batch of 300 women trained by the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), the largest manufacturer of chemical fertilisers in the country.

The women trained as pilots are given the 30-kilogramme drones for free, along with battery-run vehicles to transport them.

Other fertiliser companies have also joined the programme, which aims to train 15,000 “drone sisters” across the country.

“This scheme is not just about employment but also empowerment and rural entrepreneurship,” Yogendra Kumar, the marketing director of IFFCO, told AFP.

“Women, who earlier could not step out of their houses owing to deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes and lack of opportunities, are coming forward with enthusiasm to take part,” he told AFP.

“They are now able to meet the household expenses on their own without depending on others.”

Kumar said that spraying fertiliser by drone was cost-effective, used less water and took a fraction of the time of manual spraying.

“One acre can be sprayed in just five to six minutes,” he said.

A little over 41 per cent of rural Indian women are in the formal workforce compared to 80 per cent of rural men, according to a government survey last year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has championed the scheme and mentioned it in his annual Independence Day address last August, said he was pleased to see women at the forefront of a revolutionary new farming practice.

“Who would have thought until a few years ago that in our country women living in villages too would fly drones? But today this is becoming possible,” he said in a radio programme last month.

‘My own two feet’

Women have to pass an interview before they are enrolled in the programme.

They then sit a written test after a weeklong theory course before another week of practical training.

In one of the classrooms welcoming a fresh batch of pilots, 23-year-old Rifat Ara said she was initially apprehensive about enrolling.

But once she learned the ropes, she said there was no looking back.

“I feel I can now earn something and also teach other women how to fly,” she told AFP.

“It’s a great feeling to be able to stand on my own two feet and be called a drone pilot.”

Nisha Bharti, an instructor for training school Drone Destination, said she had been heartened by watching the transformation of her pupils as they mastered their craft.

“When they first come here from the villages, they are so nervous. But by the time they finish the course, they become super confident,” she said. “It is as if they grow wings and want to fly higher and higher.”

LOS ANGELES — When “Barbie”, a neon-pink pop culture phenomenon like no other, was nominated for eight Academy Awards including best picture, the team organising this year’s Oscars gala knew exactly who they needed to approach.

“The fact that Ryan Gosling will be performing ‘I’m Just Ken’ for the very first time, I think, will be a moment that everybody will want to watch,” Oscars showrunner Raj Kapoor told AFP.

Gosling “was rightfully a little hesitant at the beginning”, but quickly agreed because “he is a total professional”, explained Executive Producer Molly McNearney.

It is traditional for each of the year’s five best song nominees to be performed live on the Oscars telecast. But it is rare that two of those tunes both come from the year’s top-grossing film.

“What Was I Made For?” will be performed at Sunday’s ceremony by Billie Eilish, one of the world’s biggest music stars who has already won two Grammys for the tune.

And the other, a six-minute power ballad to the fragile male ego, will be sung by the Oscar-nominated Gosling, who plays Barbie’s boyfriend-turned-foe Ken in the surreal feminist comedy.

The former Disney child star turned A-lister, who performed at weddings and fronted an indie rock band in his teens, has been deep in rehearsals since agreeing to perform, meeting producers multiple times at the venue.

“He’s going to leave no one disappointed with that performance,” said McNearney.

The emphasis on “Barbie” is unsurprising. It grossed $1.4 billion, and movies that do well at the box office tend to attract more viewers to the Oscars when nominated.

Last year, producers heavily emphasised “Top Gun: Maverick”.

A promotional skit for Sunday’s Oscars saw returning host Jimmy Kimmel visit the film’s pink “Barbieland”, alongside its stars including Gosling and America Ferrera, also a nominee.

The producers also can showcase “Oppenheimer”, which is the favourite for best picture, itself earned nearly $1 billion, and was the other half of last summer’s “Barbenheimer” viral phenomenon.

“It just feels like that energy has carried on through the year,” said Executive Producer Katy Mullan.

“We’re giving ‘Barbie’ plenty of love in the show. But we’re giving every movie that’s been nominated lots of love,” added McNearney.

Another highlight will be Osage musicians performing a song from Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”, on a night that could see its star Lily Gladstone become the first Native American actor to win an Oscar.

“For everybody in that room and everybody at home, to have a little insight into the musical nuances of a historical tradition within that tribe, and it to be celebrated on our show? There’s been a lot of time and thought into how we honor that correctly,” said Kapoor.

Celebrate 

After a pandemic low of barely 10 million viewers led some to question the Oscars telecast’s relevance in the era of TikTok, audiences bounced back strongly last year, to 18.7 million.

Part of that was attributed to the successful return of late-night funnyman Kimmel as host, and he is back again on Sunday for a fourth stint.

Could he be planning to go for Bob Hope’s remarkable record of hosting 19 times?

“I hope not — I don’t think he could survive that!” joked McNearney, who is married to Kimmel.

“I think it’s really important to remind someone of all the obstacles before taking on such a big and truthfully thankless job. So I always try to talk him out of it!

“If he still wants to do it, then I know he’s truly committed,” she said.

Kimmel was partly inspired to return by a desire to celebrate the end of last year’s massive Hollywood strikes, which he plans to mention in his opening monologue, said McNearney.

The host’s first Oscars ended with the infamous envelope mix-up in which “La La Land” was mistakenly announced as best picture winner, before the prize was awarded to “Moonlight”.

Kimmel recently said he hopes Sunday night will again take some unexpected, spontaneous twists.

“That is where Jimmy completely shines. He is the most comfortable in discomfort,” agreed McNearney.

Mullan — who oversaw the London Olympics opening ceremony — has a more cautious approach.

“I love that Jimmy says he hopes that something goes wrong,” she said. “I really hope that nothing goes wrong.”

PARIS — The last day of Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday saw Chanel take a trip back to its seaside origins, while Louis Vuitton looked to a space-age future that also included a luxury take on the “pussyhat”.

Chanel’s show was dedicated to the northern French seaside town of Deauville where its founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel opened her first boutique in 1912.

It began with a short film starring Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz — a tribute to classic 1960s French classic “A Man and a Woman” — set in Deauville.

On the catwalk, the stars of the show were, fittingly, some huge-brimmed beach hats.

The collection had a palette of bright pastel tones across a range designed for winter walks on the beach, including pea coats, tweed suits, 1920s-style pant suits and turtlenecks.

Creative director Virginie Viard, who took over from Karl Lagerfeld when he died in 2019, has occasionally faced criticism for a lack of daring.

But that has “the merit of not losing people along the way”, said actress and model Arielle Dombasle, a regular muse for Lagerfeld, speaking on the sidelines of the show.

“It’s not gratuitously spectacular, it’s graceful and always successful,” she told AFP.

The ninth and final day of Paris Fashion Week’s women’s ready-to-wear shows also included big names such as Miu Miu and Lacoste.

Lacoste, known for its ties to tennis, finally held a catwalk show at the sport’s French home of Rolland Garros.

The brand is seeking to expand into a broader luxury sportswear market, and offered new takes on its familiar preppy vibe with more hip-hop-inspired items such as big puffer jackets.

The final show was Louis Vuitton, whose creative director Nicolas Ghesquieres marked 10 years at the helm by having a giant Death Star-like globe of lights and wires suspended over the Louvre courtyard.

There were extravagant space-age costumes that have been his marker.

Padded white jackets with big furry gloves, dresses that looked like they were made out of the brand’s well-known luggage, and sculpted female suits that looked like the uniform of some inter-planetary stewardess.

The collection also included a number of bejewelled gold, silver and midnight blue jackets — no “quiet luxury” here — as well as coats with huge fur shoulders.

These were topped with luxury versions of the “pussyhat” — the makeshift headwear that became a symbol of women-led protests against Donald Trump and the anti-abortion movement in the United States a few years ago.

Though that marked the end of the official line-up, Saint Laurent was set to hold a surprise last-minute menswear show later in the evening.

AMMAN — HRH Prince Ali, chair of the Royal Film Commission (RFC), on Monday evening attended an award ceremony for the fourth edition of the “Youth Empowerment Film and Song Competitions” at the King Hussein Business Park theatre.

The event, titled “The Power of Resilience”, and organised by the Mentor Arabia Foundation in collaboration with the RFC, celebrated 20 talented young individuals between the ages of 18 and 30 from various Arab countries who excelled in categories like fiction short films, documentaries, entertainment films and songs.

HRH Princess Rym Ali, HRH Prince Abdullah Bin Ali and Minister of Youth Muhammad Nabulsi attended the ceremony, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Four special prizes were also granted to young Palestinian talents under the theme “Mental Health of Youth”.

On the sidelines of the ceremony, a symposium titled “Mental Health, Youth, Drama and Songs”, was organised by the foundation in partnership with Zain Jordan.

PARIS — In H&M’s flagship Paris store it is hard to find clothes that do not claim to be made from “recycled materials”.

Last year, 79 per cent of the polyester in its collections came from recycled materials, and next year it wants it all to be recycled.

The Swedish fast fashion giant told AFP that recycled material allows the “industry to reduce its dependence on virgin polyester made from fossil fuels”. The problem is that “93 per cent of all recycled textiles today comes from plastic bottles, not from old clothes”, said Urska Trunk of campaign group Changing Markets.

In other words, from fossil fuels. And while a plastic bottle can be recycled five or six times, a T-shirt in recycled polyester “can never be recycled again”, said Trunk.

Almost all recycled polyester is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) from plastic bottles, according to the non-profit Textile Exchange.

In Europe, most textile waste is either dumped or burned. Only 22 per cent is recycled or reused -- and most of that is turned into insulation, mattress stuffing or cleaning cloths.

“Less than one percent of fabric used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing,” the European Commission told AFP.

Recycling textiles is “much more complex than recycling other materials, such as glass or paper”, according to Lenzing, an Austrian manufacturer famous for its wood-based fibres.

Unrecyclable 

For a start, clothes made from more than two fibres are for now regarded as unrecyclable.

Those clothes that can be recycled must be sorted by colour, and then have zips, buttons, studs and other material removed.

It is often costly and labour intensive, say experts, though pilot projects are beginning to appear in Europe, said Greenpeace’s Lisa Panhuber. However, the technology is “in its infancy”, according to Trunk. Reusing cotton may seem like the obvious answer. But when cotton is recycled, the quality drops so much that it often has to be woven with other materials, experts say, bringing us slap back to the problem of mixed fabrics. To square the recycling circle, fashion brands have instead been using recycled plastic — to the anger and frustration of the food industry, which pays for the collection of the used PET bottles.

“Let’s be clear: this is not circularity,” the beverage industry wrote in a withering open letter to the European Parliament last year, denouncing the “worrying trend” of the fashion industry making “green claims related to the use of recycled material”. Recycling polyester is another dead end, according to Lauriane Veillard, of the Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) network. It is often impure and mixed with other materials like elastane or Lycra, which “prevents any recycling”, she insisted. Jean-Baptiste Sultan, of the French NGO Carbone 4, is equally damning of polyester. “From its manufacture to its recycling, [polyester] pollutes water, air and the soil.” In fact, environmental groups have been demanding that the textile industry stops making polyester entirely — despite it accounting for more than half of their output, according to Textile Exchange.

Carbon footprint 

So where do all those mountains of unrecyclable polyester and mixed fabrics end up after Western consumers dutifully bring them to recycling bins? Nearly half of textile waste collected in Europe ends up in African secondhand markets — most controversially in Ghana — or more often it is tipped into “open landfills”, according to European Environment Agency (EEA) figures from 2019. Another 41 per cent of the bloc’s textile waste goes to Asia, it added, mostly “to dedicated economic zones where they are sorted and processed”.

“The used textiles are mostly downcycled into industrial rags or filling, or re-exported for recycling in other Asian countries or for reuse in Africa,” the agency said.

A new EU rule adopted in November aims to ensure waste exports are recycled rather than dumped. But the EEA admitted that there was “a lack of consistent data on the quantities and fate of used textiles and textile waste in Europe”.

Indeed, NGOs told AFP much of Europe’s waste clothes sent to Asia go to “Export Processing Zones”, which Paul Roeland of the Clean Clothes Campaign said were “notorious for providing ‘lawless’ exclaves, where even the low labour standards of Pakistan and India are not observed”. Exporting “clothes to countries with low labour costs for sorting is also a horror in terms of carbon footprint”, said Marc Minassian of Pellenc ST, which makes optical sorting machines used in recycling.

Recycling ‘myth’ 

The terrible truth is that “recycling is a myth for clothing”, Greenpeace’s consumer expert Panhuber insisted. Others, however, are turning towards new vegetable fibres, with German brand Hugo Boss using Pinatex made from pineapple leaves for some of its sneakers. But some experts warn that we could be falling into another trap. Thomas Ebele of the SloWeAre label questioned the way these non-woven fibres are held together “in the majority of cases” with thermoplastic polyester or PLA. It means that while the clothing can be “sometimes broken down” it is not recyclable, he said. “Biodegradable does not mean compostable,” he warned, saying that some of these fibres have to be broken down industrially. But beyond all that, “the biggest problem is the amount of clothes being made”, said Celeste Grillet of Carbone 4. For Panhuber and Greenpeace, the solution is simple: buy fewer clothes.

“We have to decrease consumption,” she said -- repair, “reuse and upcycle”.

By Tara Ensour,
Nutritionist

As social media and the world around us is now saturated with strict views on eating, it is

understandable if you find it challenging to have a healthy relationship with food.

Intuitive eating involves listening to your body’s needs and growing a connection to it physically, mentally and emotionally. It embodies rational thought and instinct.

The diet culture

Rules around food are now increasing more than ever and it can be difficult to know who and what to listen to. With so many of our feelings around food influenced by diet culture, it can be easy to forget which foods we like or dislike.

Rather than stopping yourself from eating a cookie  because you’d feel like it would prevent you from obtaining the “ideal” body image, intuitive eating allows you to enjoy the cookie and move on with your day.

It helps you face your fear of foods. It teaches you how to trust your body and hunger cues and eat guilt-free while still meeting your body’s nutritional needs.

Finding your food freedom

Studies indicate that dieting never works. The cycle of restricting and calorie counting almost always leads to deeper problems. Diets always fail and often bring disordered eating to life.

A brain so obsessed with food will constantly be thinking about things like calories, workouts and how to obtain the next healthy meal. 

With intuitive eating, you give yourself more time to focus on things like family, work, relationships and the opportunity to connect with your hobbies and  passions again.

This framework helps you find your food freedom. 

A few tips for intuitive eating: 

1. Remember that food is not the enemy Make peace with your food. A food is neither “bad” nor “good”. Instead of restricting entire food groups, have all the food you like in moderation.

2. Eat when hungry, stop when full A lot of us fight our hunger and fullness cues. Instead, practice being in tune with what your body is telling you and honour any cravings.

3. Don’t stop moving Move because it makes you feel good, not because you must. Rather than focussing on how many calories your workout burns, or whether you reached 10,000 steps today, move your body because you like how you feel afterwards.

4. Change your goals Instead of having goals that focus on weight loss and body image, rephrase your goals to focus on things like feeling comfortable in your own skin, at any size.

5. Ditch diet culture To eat intuitively, you’ll need to try and fight everything your mind tells you about food rules and dieting. 

While this is easier said than done, it is still attainable with practice Intuitive eating can be a viable approach to achieving a healthy relationship with food. It promotes selfcompassion, encourages nourishing your body and helps you stay away from restrictive and often harmful diets.

If this concept sounds appealing to you, I recommend you consider incorporating its principles in your daily life and work closely with a nutritionist to reach a more fulfilling and balanced approach to food.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine