Features

By Zenab Ishtay
Aromatheraptis & Cosmetologist

Happy International Women’s Day! Today, we celebrate the hardworking women who balance multiple roles — whether as professionals, mothers, wives, daughters, or friends. Juggling responsibilities can lead to stress and fatigue, making self-care an essential part of daily life.

One effective and natural way to maintain balance is through essential oils.

Carrying an emergency kit of essential oils can help women navigate everyday challenges with ease and confidence.

Combating Fatigue and Stress

Many women step into the workforce for personal fulfillment, financial necessity, or both.

Regardless of the reason, working women often find themselves overwhelmed with responsibilities, which can lead to both mental and physical fatigue.

In such cases, essential oils such as juniper, basil and rosemary can work wonders. 

These oils stimulate the brain, improve circulation, and act as natural antidepressants and energy boosters.

Managing Guilt and Emotional Well-Being 

Many women experience guilt — whether it’s for missing family time, delaying household tasks, or struggling to maintain a work-life balance.

This emotional burden can lead to stress, anxiety, and self-doubt.

To combat these feelings, consider using ylang ylang, Roman chamomile and neroli. 

These oils help release emotional tension, promote relaxation, and restore inner peace.

Empowering the Self-Aware Woman

Today, more women embrace their careers with confidence, understanding their value in a competitive workforce. 

These women are self-aware, balanced, and empowered, managing their time effectively and outsourcing tasks when necessary. 

For such women, Myrrh essential oil is ideal — it is known as the oil of womanhood, fostering inner strength and resilience.

Boosting Creativity and Focus

For women who need a mental boost at work, certain essential oils can enhance concentration and creativity.

Rosemary, orange, grapefruit and lemon help stimulate mental clarity and focus, making them perfect for highpressure work environments where innovation and efficiency are key.

Improving Workplace Well-Being

Many modern workplaces expose employees to stressors such as poor air circulation, artificial lighting, and electronic pollution.

These factors can negatively impact women’s hormonal balance and overall wellbeing.

Essential oils can help create a healthier work environment.

For instance: To combat airborne viruses and bacteria, use eucalyptus, lavender, cedarwood, bergamot, and clove For reducing office stress, try grapefruit, rosemary, peppermint, and lavender To energize and uplift, blend rosemary with cardamom or lemon.

Custom Aromatherapy Blends for Every Woman

Aromatherapy experts can craft personalized essential oil blends to address individual needs, from nervousness and anxiety to fatigue and migraines.

Carrying a small bottle of your customized blend allows you to discreetly restore balance whenever needed.

By incorporating essential oils into daily routines, women can navigate the demands of work and life with renewed energy, emotional balance, and a sense of well-being.

This International Women’s Day, celebrate yourself by embracing the power of aromatherapy — because self-care isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

LONDON — The 1999 action game "Shenmue" was on Thursday named the most influential video game of all time following a survey organised by BAFTA, the British association that honours films, television and video games.

The series, created by Japanese designer Yu Suzuki, stars a young Ryo Hazuki as he seeks to avenge the death of his father, killed by a mysterious martial arts specialist.

The game is split into three instalments (Shenmue I, II, and III) and was, at the time of the first instalment's release, the most expensive game in history to produce.

While the third instalment was available on PlayStation 4 and PC, the first two defined the brief history of the Dreamcast console, the first so-called sixth-generation console, released by Japanese manufacturer Sega in 1998.

Having become a cult classic among many gamers, "Shenmue" is known as a pioneer in open-world gaming and for popularising the "quick time event," a moment in which the player is asked to perform a specific action within a given time limit.

"Games are an immensely innovative force and it's brilliant to recognise those titles which have truly shaped the course of our medium," said Luke Hebblethwaite, head of the BAFTA video games division.

Yu Suzuki said he was "deeply honoured and grateful" to see "Shenmue" come out on the top in the poll and thanked the "fans around the world who have continued to love and support" the game.

"Doom", the series that helped popularise first-person shooters and enjoyed immense commercial success, came second in the survey of thousands of players.

Developed by id Software for PC and released in 1993, the game puts players in the role of a soldier facing demons in a universe blending science fiction and horror.

In third place was "Super Mario Bros", the famous platform game developed by Nintendo in 1985, in which the red-suited plumber Mario navigates various levels to save Princess Peach.

Unanimously acclaimed upon its release, it remains one of the best-selling games of all time, with over 40 million copies sold worldwide.

Also included in the top 10 are "Half-Life" (1998), "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" (1998), "Minecraft" (2011), "Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2" (2025), and "Super Mario 64" (1996).

The annual Bafta Game Awards will take place at a ceremony in London on April 8.

NEW YORK — American actor Val Kilmer, who was first propelled to fame with "Top Gun" and went on to starring roles as Batman and Jim Morrison, has died at age 65, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Mercedes Kilmer told the Times. She said he had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later recovered.

Originally a stage actor, Kilmer got his start on the big screen with Cold War spoof "Top Secret!" in 1984.

Two years later, he gained fame as the cocky, if mostly silent aviator Iceman in "Top Gun", playing a rival to Tom Cruise's Maverick.

A versatile actor whose career spanned decades, Kilmer got a shot at leading man roles in Oliver Stone's "The Doors" and took a turn as the masked Gotham vigilante in "Batman Forever", playing Bruce Wayne after Michael Keaton and before George Clooney.

Kilmer was the youngest person ever accepted to New York's fabled Juilliard school and longed to make serious films. But he found himself in a series of schlocky blockbusters and expensive flops in the early 2000s.

Chastened by a decade or more of low-budget movies, he was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film, when he was struck by cancer.

"Val", a documentary about his stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood showed him rasping for air, premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2021.

Kilmer recently returned to movie theaters in 2021 with a cameo reprising his role as Iceman in "Top Gun: Maverick", the long-awaited sequel to the 1986 hit.

LONDON — It was a radical idea: give UK artist Grayson Perry, known for his cross-dressing and flamboyant, colourful art, carte blanche to create new works inspired by one of the world's finest collections of decorative arts.

The result, which is going on show at London's Wallace Collection museum, is surprising, as well as full of mischief and fun.

"I gave me permission to sort of play," the eccentric artist told reporters on Tuesday.

"I think that... as an artist, especially as you get older, you've got to give yourself permission to play, mess around, have fun, enjoy making things."

Some 40 totally new works by the artist will be on show from March 28 in the exhibition "Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur" at the Wallace.

The collection normally houses paintings from the 14th to the 19th centuries by artists such as Titian, Velazquez, Rubens and Van Dyck alongside arms and armour, and enamel, glass and bronze artworks.

"I was walking around the museum, and I realised that there was a lot of the work that I liked, but I didn't love," Perry said, with a pink bell-shaped hat clamped on his blond hair, and wearing a patterned pink, red and orange burlesque ensemble.

"I came up with this idea that I needed to invent an artist who loved the Wallace collection beyond measure."

To help him, Perry invented an alter ego: the unknown and fragile artist Shirley Smith, who thinks she is Millicent Wallace, heiress to the collection.

"And so this is a sort of collaboration between me, her and the Wallace collection," added Perry, who was knighted in 2023 for his contribution to the arts.

Perry, 65, a winner of the prestigious Turner Prize, has become a household name thanks to numerous appearances on television including this year's celebrity singing competition "The Masked Singer", in which he was disguised as a kingfisher.

His 40 new creations include sculptures, tapestries, drawings and ceramics inspired by the works in the Wallace -- in the museum's largest ever contemporary exhibition.

'Having fun' 

One new work is based on an 18th-century bronze of a musician, but coloured pearls have been replaced by bits of shells and stones, in a Rococo style.

And since politics is never far from Perry's works, the musician sports a cape adorned with protest badges denouncing austerity policies or supporting various charities.

Less directly provocative than other Perry collections, these new creations still recall the contemporary issues and familiar themes which thread through his works.

In one work, "Fascist Swing", Perry thumbs his nose at artists who claim to be activists and for whom the word "fascist is an easy insult".

"He's having fun creating things. He's... playing with badges and shells and making the pots and making things out of clay," Xavier Bray, director of the Wallace Collection, told AFP.

"At the same time, he's also aware that there are modern techniques such as artificial intelligence, which he uses for his self-portraits.

"And then with that, he starts layering it with meaning, with symbols, with words, with signs, to... bring out the sort of social context."

JERUSALEM — The Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land" was attacked by settlers and arrested by the Israeli army on Monday in the occupied West Bank, according to his co-director Yuval Abraham.

In a post on X, Abraham said a "group of settlers" had set upon Ballal.

"They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since," Abraham wrote.

The incident took place in the southern West Bank village of Susiya, according to the anti-occupation NGO Center for Jewish Nonviolence, whose members said they filmed the events first-hand.

The army said it was verifying the information when questioned by AFP.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. 

"No Other Land", which was directed by Israeli-Palestinian activists, won best documentary at this year's Academy Awards.

Shot in nearby Masafer Yatta, the documentary follows a young Palestinian struggling with forced displacement as the Israeli army tears down his community's homes to make space for a firing zone.

The Israeli army declared Masafer Yatta a restricted military zone in the 1980s.

The West Bank, excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is home to around three million Palestinians as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.

PARIS — French actor Gerard Depardieu went on trial at a Paris court on Monday charged with sexually assaulting two women during a 2021 film shoot, as his lawyer vowed to show all the accusations were "false".

Depardieu, 76, who has acted in more than 200 films and television series, has been accused of improper behaviour by around 20 women but this is the first case to come to trial.

He is the highest-profile figure to face accusations in French cinema's response to the #MeToo movement.

Depardieu, dressed in a dark suit with no tie, sat on a stool facing the court as the trial got underway in the early afternoon.

He slowly made his way to the witness stand, wincing as he walked, to confirm his identity. The two plaintiffs were also present in the courtroom.

The trial relates to charges of sexual assault during the filming in 2021 of "Les Volets Verts" ("The Green Shutters") by director Jean Becker.

Anouk Grinberg, a prominent actor who appeared in the film, has backed the two plaintiffs -- a set dresser, 54, and a 34-year-old assistant director. Both women allege sexual violence.

Grinberg said that Depardieu had constantly made "salacious remarks" during shooting, and told AFP that producers who hired him knew they were "hiring an abuser".

Depardieu's lawyer, Jeremie Assous, told AFP just before the hearing started that he would show "in an impartial, objective and undeniable manner that all the accusations are false".

Feminist activists protested outside the courtroom before the trial started.

The defendant's younger daughter, Roxane Depardieu, and her mother, Depardieu's ex-partner Karine Silla, as well as actor Fanny Ardant were among the film star's supporters inside the courtroom.

Ardant then left the room after the defence team cited her as a witness.

Breaks whenever he 'needs'-

The trial, initially scheduled to take place in October 2024, had been postponed due to the actor's ill health.

Assous said back then that Depardieu had undergone a heart bypass operation and suffered from diabetes that was aggravated by the stress of the forthcoming trial.

According to Assous, Depardieu's court appearances will be limited to six hours a day and he will take breaks whenever he "needs".

One of Depardieu's two accusers, the 54-year-old set dresser called Amelie, reported in February last year that she had suffered sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexist insults during filming in September 2021.

She told French investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu boasted he could "give women an orgasm without touching them" and that an hour later Depardieu "brutally grabbed" her.

The actor pinned her by "closing his legs" around her before groping her waist and her stomach, continuing up to her breasts, she added.

She said Depardieu made "obscene remarks".

She described the actor's bodyguards dragging him away as he shouted: "We'll see each other again, my dear."

'Manhunt'

The second plaintiff, the 34-year-old assistant director, alleges the actor groped her "breasts and bum" in August 2021, according to Mediapart.

Overall, around 20 women have accused Depardieu of improper behaviour, but several cases have been dropped due to the statute of limitations.

French actor Charlotte Arnould was the first woman to file a criminal complaint against Depardieu, in 2018.

Last August, the Paris prosecutor's office requested a trial for rape and sexual assault, accusations the famous actor has consistently denied over the years.

"Never, but never, have I abused a woman," Depardieu wrote in an open letter to the conservative daily Le Figaro.

Weeks later, President Emmanuel Macron shocked feminists by complaining of a "manhunt" targeting Depardieu, whom he called a "towering actor" who "makes France proud".

Depardieu is no stranger to scandal, having made headlines for brawling, drink driving and urinating in the aisle of a plane.

A 2023 French television documentary called "The Fall of the Ogre" showed the actor on a 2018 trip to North Korea repeatedly making explicit sexual comments in front of a female interpreter and appearing to sexualise a small girl riding a horse.

Dr. Silvia Zayadin
Veterinarian

Poisoning can be a serious and life-threatening issue for dogs and cats.
There are many common household items that can pose a great risk to our furry friends.

Since dogs and cats are naturally curious, they may chew on or ingest harmful substances.

Hidden Hazards

As pet owners, we do our best to create a safe and loving environment for our furry companions.

From common foods to cleaning products, some substances can be toxic and lead to serious health issues.

Here are a couple to be aware of:

Rodenticides (rat poison)

Rat poison contains chemicals that can cause internal bleeding, kidney failure, or seizures in pets. Symptoms may not appear immediately but can include weakness, bleeding gums and difficulty

breathing. If a pet consumes rat poison, immediate veterinary attention is required Lilies and other spring flowers Lilies are highly toxic to cats and can cause kidney failure.

Other dangerous flowers include tulips, daffodils and hyacinths, which can lead to vomiting, diarrhea and heart problems.

Chocolate

Chocolate contains theobromine, a substance toxic to both dogs and cats. The darker the chocolate, the more dangerous it is.

Symptoms of chocolate poisoning include vomiting, diarrhea, rapid heartbeat, tremors and seizures. If a pet eats chocolate, it is crucial to seek veterinary help immediately

Cocoa-Based Gardening Mulch

Some types of gardening mulch contain cocoa by products, which can be toxic to dogs due to their theobromine content. If ingested, dogs may experience symptoms such as hyperactivity, tremors and even seizures

Insecticides and herbicides

Springtime brings more bugs and insects, leading to increased insecticide use. These chemicals can be dangerous if pets walk on treated grass or lick their paws afterward.

Human medications

Common medications like ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and antidepressants can be highly toxic to pets.

Symptoms vary depending on the medication but may include vomiting, lethargy, breathing difficulties and even organ failure. Never give your pet any of your

medications, and always store medications safely out of their reach.

Grapes and raisins

Grapes and raisins can cause kidney failure in dogs and cats. Even a small amount can cause serious problems.

Symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy and loss of appetite.

Pets eating grapes or raisins must go to the veterinary clinic immediately for proper medical management.

Onions and garlic

Onions and garlic can cause damage to red blood cells, leading to anemia in pets. Symptoms include weakness, pale gums, rapid breathing and lethargy.

If ingestion occurs, immediate veterinary care is required to prevent serious complications.

Household cleaners

Many cleaning products, including bleach, floor cleaners and disinfectants, contain toxic chemicals. If ingested, they can cause vomiting, drooling, burns in the mouth and difficulty breathing. In case of exposure, the veterinarian should be contacted immediately.

Fertilizers and pesticides

Many lawn and garden treatments contain toxic chemicals. If ingested, these chemicals can cause vomiting, drooling, diarrhea and seizures.

Always store garden products safely and keep your furry friends away from treated areas.

What to do?

First of all, you need to stay calm, as panicking can make it harder to help your pet.

Try to identify the poison; this can be done by looking for any packaging or evidence of what your pet may have eaten.

If you find any evidence, handle it carefully to avoid harming yourself. Keeping it safely stored can be extremely helpful when you arrive at the clinic, as it may help the medical team quickly identify the cause and begin treatment sooner.

Call for help immediately and contact your veterinarian. The veterinary team will advise on the best action to take to help your pet.

Never try to induce vomiting unless advised by a veterinary team member, as some substances can cause more harm if vomited.

Poison prevention and awareness

Preventing poisoning is the best way to keep pets safe. Always store chemicals and medications safely and away from children and pets.

Keep food away from pets. Do not leave chocolate, grapes, or other harmful foods within reach. Use petsafe cleaning products. This way you can minimize the exposure risk.

Be cautious with houseplants, as some are toxic for pets.

When working in the garden and using fertilizers and insecticides, keep your furry friends away in a safe place;

try using animal-friendly products to minimize risk to other animals, including outdoor and stray animals. And as always, educate yourself and family members.

Ensure everyone in the household knows what is dangerous for your pet.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine