Category: Life & Style

The Booker Prize for 2022 will be awarded to Shehan Karunatilaka. The Sri Lankan novelist Maali Almeida received the award from Queen Consort Camilla at the Roundhouse in London on Monday night for his work, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

“The English Patient” was Michael Ondaatje’s first novel, and “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” was his second. The current novel examines life after death in a civil war-torn Sri Lanka following the murder of a war photographer in the 1990s.

During his speech, Karunatilaka said it was an honour and privilege to be included on the shortlist. Also, he joked about receiving cryptocurrencies in exchange for £50,000.

The Booker Prize judges described the work as a race against time, filled with ghosts, humour, and profound humanism. Neil MacGregor, chairman of the judging panel, described “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” as an afterlife noir that blurs the lines between body and spirit, life and death, east and west.

According to him, readers will learn about sensitivity and beauty, love and loyalty, and the pursuit of an ideal that justifies all human existence.

India and France get re-elected as President and Co-President of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) at the fifth general assembly of the body.

Union Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister R K Singh will be the President of ISA while Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, France’s Minister of State for Development, Francophonie and International Partnerships, will be co-president of the International Solar Alliance, ISA Director General Ajay Mathur told reporters on Tuesday.

Mathur said there was an application for the post of President and Co-President from India and France, respectively.

R. K. Singh mentioned that the ISA has quickly expanded and now has 110 counties. “We have to bring electricity to 700 million people in the world who are without access (to power) through clean sources.”

Chrysoula said, “We are facing an energy crisis due to the Ukraine war. We are the most affected. Our objective is to accelerate deployment of renewable energy.”

The International Solar Alliance works with governments to improve energy access and security worldwide and promote solar power as a sustainable way to move on to a carbon-neutral future.

ISA aims to unlock USD 1 trillion of investments in solar by 2030 while lowering the cost of technology and its financing. It promotes the use of solar energy in the Agriculture, Health, Transport, and Power Generation sectors.

MacKenzie Scott, a billionaire philanthropist, and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated $15 million to the social organization VisionSpring. According to reports, her donation to the enterprise is the highest single private donation, which will help provide glasses to millions of farmers and artisans in developing countries like Bangladesh, India, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda to solve their uncorrected vision problems.

Reportedly, VisionSpring works to provide eyeglasses to low-income tea, coffee, and cocoa farmers and artisan workers in the above-mentioned list of countries. “The gift from Ms. Scott is an incredible acknowledgment of the power of a simple pair of eyeglasses to unlock earning, learning, safety, and well-being for people vulnerable to poverty,” said VisionSpring’s chief executive Ella Gudwin.

The announcement was made on World Sight Day, and VisionSpring’s $70 million Livelihoods in Focus campaign is roughly calculated to help create more than $1 billion of new income among the farmers and artisans by providing them with a clear vision. According to Gudwin, the campaign is a “multi-year journey” and focuses on addressing the “massive vision care gap”.

Wearing glasses provides instant benefits such as improving productivity, income, mental health, and well-being, said VisionSpring.

In 2019, Scott received probably one of the biggest divorce settlements in the world, $38 billion, and has since then donated at least $12 billion to charitable causes.

In Saudi Arabia, women pilgrims are no longer required to have a male guardian or mahram during the Hajj or Umrah. Tawfiq bin Fawzan Al-Rabiah, the Saudi Arabian Minister for Hajj and Umrah, announced the change.

Saudi Arabian news outlet Arab News reported that women can now make pilgrimages to the Gulf nation without a mahram. The announcement was made at a press conference held at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Having a mahram with a woman going on pilgrimage ends the contention surrounding the requirement.

Furthermore, the minister said there was no ceiling or quota on Umrah visas for Muslims around the world. According to him, pilgrims from around the world with any visa will be permitted to perform Umrah in the Kingdom.

Additionally, he spoke about the recently expanded Great Mosque in Mecca, which is by far the biggest and most expensive expansion in history, costing nearly 200 billion Saudi Riyals or $53 billion.

The former advisor to the minister Ibrahim Hussein said, “There are many women who come to the kingdom to work without a mahram, and there are no significant incidents, thanks to the security we live in. There is no fear for women to come without a mahram because the reason for that no longer exists.”

Hong Kong said on Wednesday it had approved a form of the BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for babies and children under five years old, in a bid to expand measures to increase vaccination uptake in the financial hub.

The government said talks were being held with the vaccine manufacturer on the timeframe for when it would be available in the Chinese special administrative region. The government announced that each shot contains one-tenth of the adult dosage, lowering the chance of side effects.

The government agreed to the use of China’s Sinovac shots for children 6 months and older in August. Sinovac and BioNTech are the two vaccines available for the residents of Hong Kong.

Nearly 7% of infants younger than two have been injected with a COVID vaccine, a rate that is far from good, authorities have said.

About 86% of children aged 3-11 have received at least one vaccine dose, a higher percentage than that of people above 70.

The government has identified the city’s elderly and infants as being the most vulnerable to COVID-19 and said there have been many acute COVID cases in children who required intensive care.

The elderly vaccination rate remains slow, with only about 58% of people 80 and older receiving three vaccine shots.

Thousands of Benin Bronzes are found in several museums worldwide after being robbed by Britain in the late 19th century.

A bronze sculpture of a king belonging to West Africa called the Head of a King, or Oba that was kept in a Rhode Island museum for more than 70 years is among 31 culturally valuable objects that have been returned to the Nigerian government during a ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC on Tuesday.

The Benin Bronzes were stolen in 1897 when British colonial forces plundered and looted the kingdom of Benin, which is now in present-day Nigeria.

“In 1897 the ‘Head of an Oba’ was stolen from the Royal Palace of Oba Ovonranwmen,” RISD Museum Interim Director Sarah Ganz Blythe said in a statement. He added, “The RISD Museum has worked with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments to repatriate this sculpture to the people of Nigeria where it belongs.”

The sculptures that were stolen in the late 19th century included 29 that the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents voted in June to hand it back to Nigeria and one object from the National Gallery of Art, officials said.

“Today, we address a historic injustice by returning the Benin Bronzes, magnificent examples of Benin’s culture and history,” Lonnie Bunch III, founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, stated.

The repatriation is part of a global movement by cultural institutions to return artifacts robbed during colonial wars.

After two-and-a-half years of stringent Covid-19 restrictions, Japan reopened its doors to tourists on Tuesday, with officials hoping a large inflow of travelers lured by a weak yen will boost the economy.

By mid-morning, tourists from Israel, France, and Britain were already arriving in the country.

Japan shut its borders in the early stage of the pandemic, at one point even blocking foreign residents from returning, and has only lately begun reopening in a guarded manner.

In June, it started allowing tourists to visit in groups accompanied by guides.

From Tuesday, it resumed visa-free entry for travelers from 68 countries and territories.

Japan is also lifting a restriction on the number of arrivals and terminating the package tour requirement.

However, tourists are required to submit either proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test taken three days before departure. Masks are prevalent, and though not mandated by law, Parliament is set to pass a law allowing hotels to refuse service to customers who refuse to wear a mask or observe other protocols.

Before Covid-19, Japan’s government was progressing toward achieving a target of 40 million visitors by 2020, the year Tokyo was supposed to host the Summer Olympics.

African children under age five will soon receive Africa’s first malaria vaccine, according to Malawi’s health ministry. Over 30 years were spent developing the RTS,S vaccine, which has been tested in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi.

There are more than 400,000 people who die annually from mosquito-borne diseases, most of whom are African children, because of the vaccine, despite its relatively low level of effectiveness. As soon as the pilot phase of the vaccine is complete, the vaccine will be rolled out next month. In Malawi, Ghana and Kenya, the World Health Organization vaccinates 360,000 children per year, one-third of them in Malawi.

In November and December, Malawi’s health minister said the rainy season is the prime time for malaria outbreaks among children. It was decided on the vaccine after Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera met with PATH representatives at the United Nations meeting.

In the fight against malaria, the WHO endorsed the vaccine years ago stating it as a breakthrough point. According to statistics, malaria is Malawi’s most deadly disease. Three-quarters of all hospital outpatients and 15% of all hospital admissions are related to this disease.

Although the vaccine has a relatively low effectiveness rate, some scientists believe it will be a major impact on malaria in Africa.

The Nobel Prize in economic sciences has been awarded to the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and two economists based in the US, Douglas W Diamond and Philip H Dybvig, who have been awarded the Nobel prize for research on financial crises and banks. A Nobel panel announced the award in Stockholm on Monday.

The Nobel committee said their research had shown “the importance of preventing bank collapses.” The prize comes with a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000).

Unlike the other prizes, the economics award was created by the Swedish central bank in Alfred Nobel’s memory, not in his will in 1895. 1969 was the year when the first winner was selected.

Last year, David Card received half of the award for his research on the impact of the minimum wage, immigration, and education on the labour market. In addition, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens shared half of the prize for their proposals on how to study topics that aren’t easily studied through traditional scientific methods.

Svante Paabo received the Nobel Prize in medicine on October 3 for unlocking Neanderthal DNA secrets that provided key insights into the immune system. A group of scientists shared the physics prize on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday declared Modhera village in Gujarat as the country’s first 24×7 solar-powered village.

Modhera, located 25 km from the Mehsana district of Gujarat, and about 100 km from the state capital of Gandhinagar, is well-known for a centuries-old Sun temple built during the Chalukya.

While addressing a rally, Modi said, “We shall no longer pay for electricity, but will instead sell it and earn from it. Earlier, the government supplied power to residents; now, with the installation of solar panels, citizens will now produce their own electricity.”

“A new energy of growth has been infused in Modhera, Mehsana, and the whole region of north Gujarat. From electricity and water to road and rail. Many projects related to dairy, skill development, and healthcare have been inaugurated and foundation stones have been laid today,” Modi added.

The village has a ground-mounted solar power plant, and more than 1,300 rooftop solar systems with 1kW capacity have been installed on houses to produce electricity.

The central and state governments together have invested more than 80 crores in this solar-development project in two phases, with the state giving out 12 hectares of area for the project. The Gujarat government had said village people can save 60 percent to 100 percent on their electricity bills with this progress.