Berlin chooses change in rerun election with clear lead for conservatives
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2023
Germany’s conservative CDU party was on the way to a clear victory in a repeat election in the city-state of Berlin, in a blow to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats who have governed the city-state for 22 years.
An exit poll by the broadcaster ZDF on Sunday put the Christian Democrats (CDU) on 27.8% of the vote, 9.8 percentage points more than in the 2021 election, in which a court ruled invalid due to irregularities.
The Social Democrats, who have been ruling the German capital in a coalition with the environmentalist Greens and hard-left Die Linke, scored 18%. The Greens and Die Linke were on 18% and 13% of the vote respectively.
“Berlin chose change”, CDU top candidate Kai Wegner said of the results, adding that there was a clear mandate for his party to form a state government.
The vote could turf left-wing mayor Franziska Giffey out of office well before the end of her term and complicate life for the Federal Chancellor, her party ally, by depriving his coalition of more votes in the upper house of parliament.
Giffey acknowledged the election defeat but said the CDU would still need a stable majority to govern the German capital.
“We must see it very clear that this result shows first that Berliners are not satisfied with what’s there. They wish things will be different,” Giffey said.
The repeat vote, ordered after the September 2021 election was marred by irregularities including long queues and voters receiving incorrect ballot cards, is one more item on the charge sheet for those who see the capital as a sclerotic mess that belies Germany’s reputation for efficiency.
The CDU will be hoping this message and the victory in Berlin put wind in their sails ahead of October’s vote in Hesse, home to Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt, where a conservative premier risks losing office to another Scholz ally.
Bag manufacturer fashions backpacks from old fishing nets
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2023
Old fishing nets have been reworked into nylon randoseru schoolbags by a bag manufacturer in Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture. The manufacturer has donated some of the randoseru to Akkeshi, Hokkaido, where the used fishing nets were collected.
The town of Akkeshi will present the donated bags to 13 children who will enter elementary school in April this year, and hopes that the children will take an interest in marine environmental protection together with their parents.
The schoolbags, branded “school backpack UMI,” are being manufactured by bag maker Yuri in Toyooka, a city famous for its bag production. They have been on sale nationwide since November last year.
The product is part of a project by Tokyo-based general incorporated association “Alliance for the Blue,” which promotes the creation of products that contribute to the protection of the marine environment. About 65% of the bags are made of nylon fabric created from pelletized fishing nets, which are collected from fishermen on the east coast of Hokkaido by a fishing net manufacturer and retailer in Akkeshi. In addition to being environmentally friendly, the bags are said to be stronger, more water-resistant and lighter than ordinary schoolbags.
At a gifting ceremony held at Akkeshi’s town hall on Dec. 16, Yuri President Shozaburo Yuri said: “After being processed by a number of different businesses, waste fishing nets collected in Akkeshi were turned into schoolbags. We thought that the children of Akkeshi should be the first to use them.” The deputy mayor of the town said, “I hope that this will be an opportunity for the children and adults of Akkeshi to face environmental issues with newfound enthusiasm.”
BOJ Chief Nominee Ueda Known as Outspoken Economist who can Integrate Theory, Practice
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2023
The nominee to be the next Bank of Japan governor, Kazuo Ueda, 71, is widely known as an economist who can integrate theory and practice, with a background in academia specializing in international economics.
Japan experienced a turbulent time in the seven years from 1998 when Ueda served as a member of the Bank of Japan’s Policy Board.
In those days, Ueda often sparked controversy in discussions at the bank’s meetings to set monetary policy.
In August 2000, while the Japanese economy was recovering from the financial crisis that had caused the collapse of the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, Ueda was in the minority at a monetary policy meeting when he voted against ending the central bank’s zero interest rate policy.
He argued that there was a risk of a recurrence of deflationary fears in response to moves by then Bank of Japan Gov. Masaru Hayami and other executive members to tighten monetary policy.
Yet he was also cautious about quantitative easing, which was introduced in 2001 to supply massive amounts of money to the market following the economic downturn, saying, “It is difficult to find a positive meaning in it.”
Since retiring as a member of the bank’s Policy Board, Ueda, who speaks fluent English, has chaired discussions at international symposiums sponsored by the Bank of Japan that invited prominent scholars and former heads of central banks worldwide.
He remains a special advisor to the Bank of Japan’s Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies and is highly trusted by the bank’s officials and other experts in Japan and abroad.
“He is a leading outspoken debater at monetary policy meetings who can integrate theory and practice,” said Totan Research Co. chief economist Izuru Kato, who has known Ueda well since the days when the nominee was involved in monetary policy.
Many view him as a person who strikes the proper balance, in contrast to incumbent BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda, who has been aggressive in implementing bold monetary easing with the goal of overcoming deflation, which had caused prices to fall continuously.
Commenting on the central bank’s current policy of continuing its massive monetary easing, he said in a media interview on Friday, “Given the current state of the economy and prices, the policy currently taken by the Bank of Japan is appropriate. For the time being, I think it is necessary to continue monetary easing.”
Under Kuroda’s leadership, the central bank supplied unprecedented amounts of money to the market.
Speaking about the Bank of Japan’s exit strategy to normalize its monetary policy, Ueda said: “It will be quite difficult if we are really going to take the exit strategy. And I fully understand that.”
Ueda specializes in international economics. After serving as a professor at the University of Tokyo, he was appointed as the first member of the Bank of Japan’s Policy Board under the new Bank of Japan Law that came into force in April 1998.
Ueda also served as chairman of the Investment Advisory Committee of the Government Pension Investment Fund and was an outside director at the Development Bank of Japan.
Free coffee for donors to Turkey quake victims at Skopje cafe
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2023
In North Macedonia’s capital Skopje, the owner of the cafe Bife Tafdalidze is using his business to raise funds for the victims of the recent earthquake in Turkey.
Sasho Shotarevski, came up with the idea to offer free coffee to customers who call a donation number for the Macedonian Red Cross.
Shotarevski checks each customer’s phone for proof of the donation before serving them their coffee.
“It’s very nice to donate and you also get a coffee for free,” said Martin Naumcevski, a customer and donor. “It’s not so much about the coffee, as it is about the donation, a humane gesture,” he added.
His phone showed a 100 denari ($1,74) donation to the Macedonian Red Cross,
Shotarevski said that the idea was inspired by his daughter and their shared stories about the 1963 earthquake in Skopje.
“The idea was to do something about it,” he said. “As soon as the (telephone) number (for donations) was released, I immediately started. If you’re free, come by, have a coffee, and call the number.”
“You can give as much as you can,” Shotarevski added. “The deal was simple: give up one coffee, and in exchange, you get to drink a coffee,” he said.
US fighter jet shoots down UFO over Canada, Trudeau says
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2023
A US F-22 fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Canada on Saturday, the second such shootdown in as many days, as North America appeared on heightened alert following a week-long Chinese spying balloon saga that drew the global spotlight.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the shootdown on Twitter and said it took place over the Yukon territory in the country’s north. He said Canadian forces would recover and analyze the wreckage from the object.
Trudeau also said he had spoken with US President Joe Biden about the incident, a day after Biden ordered a shootdown of an unidentified flying object over sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska. The US military on Saturday was still tight-lipped about what, if anything, it had learned as recovery efforts were underway.
The Pentagon on Friday (February 10) offered only a few details, including that the object was the size of a small car, it was flying at about 40,000 feet and could not manoeuvre and appeared to be unmanned. US pilots and intelligence officials have been trying to learn about the object since it was first spotted on Thursday.
“We have no further details at this time about the object, including its capabilities, purpose, or origin,” Northern Command said on Saturday.
It noted difficult arctic weather conditions that hinder search and recovery efforts, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight.
“Personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” Northern Command said.
On Feb. 4, a US F-22 fighter jet brought down what the US government called a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina following its week-long journey across the United States and portions of Canada. China’s government has said it was a civilian research vessel.
Some US lawmakers criticized Biden for not shooting down the Chinese balloon sooner. The US military had recommended waiting until it was over the ocean out of fear of injuries from falling debris.
Seven-month-old baby found alive after 139 hours under rubble in Turkey
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2023
A seven-month-old baby was pulled alive by rescuers on Saturday from the wreckage of a deadly earthquake, after 139 hours trapped under the rubble, a handout video from Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality showed.
Faint cries could be heard from beneath the debris, as rescue teams persevered with their search for remaining survivors.
Rescuers applauded as the baby was lifted from the rubble, before wrapping him in a blue jacket and placing him on a stretcher.
Exhausted rescuers pulled dwindling numbers of survivors from earthquake rubble in Turkey and Syria on Saturday, five days on from one of the region’s worst natural disasters whose death toll neared 26,000 and looked set to rise far higher.
Some rescue operations were halted after reports of looting.
Monday’s 7.8 magnitude quake, with several powerful aftershocks across Turkey and Syria, ranks as the world’s seventh deadliest natural disaster this century, approaching the 31,000 killed by a quake in neighbouring Iran in 2003.
With a death toll so far of 22,327 inside Turkey, it is the country’s deadliest earthquake since 1939. More than 3,500 have died in Syria, where tolls have not been updated since Friday.
Two hearts united against breast cancer | The Nation
Make this Valentine’s Day memorable and meaningful by giving your loved ones the true gift of love, caring and good health. Here we learn firsthand what true love means from a couple that has been together for 30 years and is still going strong. We meet Khunying Finola Chatamra, honorary adviser to the Queen Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer (QSCBC) Foundation, and the foundation’s director, her husband Dr. Kris Chatamra MD. They have dedicated their lives to raising awareness and helping underprivileged patients in Thailand. The couple have worked closely and shared their vision, passion, love and care not just for themselves, but also others through the ups and downs of three decades together.
Smart cooker lends amateurs star-chef touch to an app
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2023
Cooking has long required a dash of skill and a knack for interpreting recipes. One needs the experience and intuition of a professional chef to get the heat and seasoning just right. But now, even this age-old art is being transformed by digitization.
Step by step Tomomi Misawa, 43, a part-time employee in Tokyo, finds herself using, again and again, the Hestan Cue smart cooker she got in January last year after an acquaintance recommended the device. This made-in-the-US system works by pairing a special cooktop with an app via Bluetooth.
The app contains 450 recipes, ranging from home-style dishes such as sukiyaki and kakiage tempura, to those crafted by famous chefs around the world.
Users select a recipe and follow the steps shown in a video on their smartphone, making it easy to attempt new recipes. When you put in the ingredients listed, the cooktop reads the relevant program, adjusts the time and the temperature of the heat by as finely as 1 C and starts cooking. It’s just like automated driving.
“For many years, I didn’t really know how long I had to cook certain dishes such as stew before they were done. But with this cooktop, a beef and vegetable stew is done in about 10 minutes,” Misawa said. “I can prepare it in the optimum cooking time, which saves time and makes things convenient.”
Even her husband, a novice cook, now makes such complicated dishes as kakuni braised pork belly, she said.
According to Tokyo-based Felicidad, a distributor for the cooker, the Hestan Cue system was developed in 2015 from a desire “to provide a cooking experience free of glitches to everyone,” and it is currently being distributed in 20 countries. The price for a cooktop and pan set is rather steep at ¥88,000, but the product has nonetheless proved popular, especially among men and women in their 50s. Hestan Cue also sells a frying pan for the system.
Blending seasonings Anyone intimidated by seasonings might find relief in Luna Robotics Inc.’s Colony, a seasoning printer. This boxy 30-square-centimetre machine stores up to 19 liquid seasonings, including soy sauce, sake, sesame oil and salt water, kept in printer-like cartridges, and outputs the appropriate amount of each.
Users connect the printer to a dedicated app and select a recipe, which causes the printer to automatically blend the necessary seasonings. All you have to do to make a tasty dish is simmer or bake the ingredients with the prepared seasoning.
The printer’s blending abilities cover several hundred recipes, including nikujaga meat and potato stew and ohitashi steeped vegetables, and new recipes are added regularly. Luna Robotics, based in Shizuoka Prefecture, will soon begin renting Colony printers to the food service industry and plans to sell them for household use in a few years.
Behind the demand for sophisticated kitchen appliances seems to be a change in family norms. According to the Cabinet Office, the number of two-worker households has been on the rise and reached 11.77 million in 2021. There are now twice as many such households as there are those composed of a working husband and a homemaker wife.
“There is a strong demand for simplified cooking, especially among two-worker households,” said Takahisa Ikegami, general manager of Sharp’s Kitchen Appliance Business Unit.
In 2015, Sharp released Hotcook, an automated cooking pot. Simply add the necessary ingredients and seasonings to the rice cooker-like pot, and sit back as it prepares such dishes as curry and chikuzen-ni simmered vegetables. Consumers have taken to the convenience, buying up some 500,000 of the devices.
“We hope to make people’s lives easy, and reduce their time spent on housework,” Ikegami said.
Cooking robots The food service industry has struggled with Japan’s labour shortage and tried to cope by introducing robots.
E Vino Spaghetti, a restaurant that opened in Tokyo last June, employs one such machine. It juggles up to four frying pans at once, mixes sauces and loads plates into the dishwasher. Meals can be served in as little as 45 seconds.
“Our strength is that the taste is always the same,” said a spokesperson for Pronto Corp., the company that runs E Vino Spaghetti. “Many of our customers eat their food without realizing it was made by a robot.”
TechMagic, Inc., a Tokyo-based company that jointly developed the robot with Pronto, hopes to create cooking robots for home use in the future.
Wayo Women’s University Prof. Kyoko Oishi, who specializes in cooking science, said that despite the variety of recipes offered by such machines, some people may not be satisfied with dishes cooked in a one-size-fits-all way.
“The cooking process, in which you adjust seasonings according to your mood or who you’re eating with, is where the true pleasure of food lies,” she said. “I understand the convenience of cooking appliances, but their spread will be limited, I think.”
More than 21,000 people died in Turkey-Syria earthquakes
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2023
Cold, hunger and despair gripped hundreds of thousands of people left homeless after the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria three days ago as the death toll passed 21,000 on Thursday.
The death toll across both countries has now surpassed the more than 17,000 killed in 1999 when a similarly powerful quake hit northwest Turkey.
Hundreds of thousands of people across both countries have been left homeless in the middle of winter. Many have camped out in makeshift shelters in supermarket car parks, mosques, roadsides or amid the ruins, often desperate for food, water and heat.
Authorities say some 6,500 buildings in Turkey collapsed and countless more were damaged.
The death toll in Turkey rose to 17,674, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said. In Syria, already devastated by nearly 12 years of civil war, more than 3,370 people have died, according to the government and rescue service in the rebel-held northwest.
At least 78,124 people were injured across both countries, according to authorities.
In the Turkish town of Iskenderun, streets were flooded as a result of the tremors, as tractors were deployed to help clear the streets from thick residues of mud.
Ukrainian rescue teams searched through the debris of residential buildings in Hatay with the aid of sniffer dogs. Kyiv has sent 88 people to Turkey to help with the disaster. The team includes specialists in search and rescue operations, doctors, dog handlers and firefighters.
The German army unloaded relief goods for Turkish earthquake victims at Incirlik Air Base after being rerouted from Gaziantep.
According to the German army, three Airbus A400M transport planes carried tents, cots and electric heaters.
Incirlik air base, which hosts US nuclear warheads, is located some 220 km (136 miles) by road west of Gaziantep.
Greece sent thousands of tents, beds and blankets on Thursday to help those left homeless by the quake, in an act of solidarity with a neighbour that is a Nato ally but also a historic foe.
Many in Turkey have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped – sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.
After facing criticism over the initial response, Erdogan said on a visit to the area on Wednesday that operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless.
Zelenskiy hopes for EU jets, gets standing ovation in Brussels
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that several European Union leaders were ready to provide Kyiv with aircraft to help it fight against Russia’s invasion.
Speaking during his first in-person meeting with all the 27 national leaders of a union Ukraine wants to join, Zelenskiy did not say who could provide jets, adding that some deals were still in the works, while others could not be made public.
EU countries have supplied large amounts of arms to Ukraine over the past year and have become increasingly comfortable with sending heavy weaponry such as battle tanks.
But they have yet to commit – publicly at least – to sending fighter jets and longer-range rockets, citing worries about a potential escalation of the conflict onto Russian territory.
“Europe will be with us until our victory. I’ve heard it from a number of European leaders… about the readiness to give us the necessary weapons and support, including the aircraft,” Zelenskiy told a news conference in Brussels.
He did not elaborate, but said more would be decided in bilateral meetings with some of the leaders later in the day.
With the EU preparing a 10th package of sanctions against Russia for the February 24th anniversary of the start of the war, Zelenskiy asked it to curb Russian tech exports and reduce Moscow’s ability to produce missiles for the war.
Ukraine, which wants to join the EU, is pushing for membership talks to start this year.
But while some EU countries are keen to give Ukraine the morale boost that would come with starting talks to join the bloc, others are much more cautious. They have stressed would-be members need to meet a range of criteria – such as cracking down on corruption – before they can even start negotiations.
Zelenskiy told EU leaders his country was “upgrading” its institutions.
“We are moving closer to the European Union. Ukraine will be a member of the European Union. Ukraine that is winning will be a member of the European Union that is winning,” he said.
The European Commission is set to say in October if Ukraine meets the criteria to start accession talks, and then it requires member states to unanimously agree on it.
Earlier in the day, in an address to the European Parliament, Zelenskiy expressed gratitude for the support of both politicians and ordinary citizens in the EU.
“Europe will always remain free until we are together and until we take care of our Europe, take care of the European way of life. I thank all of you…Glory to Ukraine,” he said, receiving a long-standing ovation from EU lawmakers, cheering and applauding, some of them wearing the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag.
SootinClaimon.Com 