Features

In its power and its beauty, “The Breadwinner’ reminds us that animation can be every bit as much of a medium for adults as it is for children.

Set in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul in 2001, the waning days of Taliban rule, “The Breadwinner” does have an 11-year-old girl as its protagonist, but that is the only childish thing about it.

Rather, “The Breadwinners” is unexpectedly tough-minded in its depiction of the harsh excesses of life under the Taliban, detailing the reign of terror that resulted from civil society being under the thumb of arrogant religious police.

Though director Nora Twomey’s name may not be well known, devotees of animation will be more than familiar with her background and her credits.

Along with Tomm Moore and Paul Young, Twomey founded the Kilkenny, Ireland-based Cartoon Saloon, and was a key player in the group’s pair of brilliant, Oscar-nominated features, “The Secret of Kells” and “Song of the Sea”.

Though it’s set in dusty Kabul and not emerald Ireland, “Breadwinner” shares with its predecessors a vivid sense of a very specific culture as well as a gift for strikingly beautiful visuals.

Kabul may not sound like a likely site for luminous images, but Twomey and her team, led by art directors Reza Riahi and Ciaran Duffy, show us a city of captivating sandstone-hued houses where colourful flowers and teeming markets come to bright and convincing life.

Working from the young-adult novel by Deborah Ellis, screenwriter Anita Doron introduces us to intrepid Parvana (voiced by Saara Chaudry), a young girl who does not like to be told what she cannot do.

Parvana is encountered sitting on the ground with her father, Nurullah (Ali Badshah), in front of a small space in the Kabul bazaar where they are selling some of their few remaining possessions so that their family can buy food.

A master storyteller who fills in Parvana (and the audience) on Afghanistan’s troubled past, Nurulluh believes deeply that “stories remain in our hearts when all else is gone”, though Parvana, at least initially, remains sceptical as to their value.

The father and daughter are suddenly confronted by two aggressive members of the Taliban who back off only when Nurullah demonstrates that he is an army veteran who has paid a steep price for his service.

Back home, mother Fattema (Laara Sadiq) and older sister Soraya (Shaista Latif) worry about the fate of the family, which includes a young toddler, but things are about to get worse.

The Taliban track Nurullah down to his house and roughly arrest him for no apparent reason, carting him off to a grim prison at the edge of town. Because of the oppressive, misogynistic nature of Taliban rule, that situation puts the family in a terrible position.

Women are not allowed on the streets without male guardians, and store owners will not sell to unaccompanied females. When Fattema defies this ban and goes out in an attempt to visit her husband and see what his situation is, things get even uglier. She is savagely beaten by a Taliban operative and barely makes it home.

With the family’s very survival at stake, Parvana takes the extreme step of cutting off her hair, donning clothes belonging to a brother who has died, and going out into the world to become the breadwinner of the title.

Collaborating with Shauzia (Soma Chhaya), a friend from school who has done the same thing, the two girls discover that “when you are a boy you can go anywhere you like”. But even with that advantage, with the Taliban in charge life is always precarious.

Intercut with this realistic present-day narrative, “Breadwinner” shows us a story Parvana is telling her toddler brother, a fable, shown in playful, cutout animation, concerning a boy who takes on an evil Elephant King in order to save his village from starvation.

With Parvana’s tale echoing the main narrative, this film is very much about the importance of story for survival.

A work of striking beauty and affecting emotional heft enhanced by an Afghan-themed score by Mychael Danna & Jeff Danna, “The Breadwinner” reminds us yet again that the best of animation takes us anywhere at any time and makes us believe.

LOS ANGELES — Meghan Markle says acting will take a back seat when she marries Prince Harry, following the example of screen icon Grace Kelly who abandoned Hollywood to marry into royalty.

The 36-year-old has starred in legal drama “Suits” since 2011, but is likely to shed many outside interests as she joins the British royal family following the couple’s engagement announcement, according to observers.

Markle confirmed in an interview with the BBC she would be giving up acting and would focus much of her attention on the causes that are important to her.

“I don’t see it as giving anything up. I see it as a change. It’s a new chapter,” she said.

Markle and Harry, 33, will wed in spring next year, 62 years after silver screen icon Kelly abandoned her glittering career to marry Monaco’s Prince Rainier III.

Hollywood branding expert Jeetendr Sehdev pointed out however that Markle is not in the same league as the Oscar-winning star of 1950s Hitchcock thrillers “Dial M for Murder”, “Rear Window” and “To Catch a Thief”.

“Americans who have heard of Meghan will remember her as a working TV actor rather than an celebrity or a Hollywood star,” Sehdev, bestselling author of “The Kim Kardashian Principle”, told AFP.

He added that Britain’s first mixed-race royal could nevertheless inspire the British TV industry to create more leading roles for actors of colour. 

“Meghan Markle is the face of the modern princess and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t keep working in TV after her marriage. The palace will likely have a say in any of her future career choices and roles.”

Reform too far?

But royal writer Catriona Harve-Jenner said in a commentary for British lifestyle magazine Cosmopolitan that Markle had made the right decision in shedding her acting ambitions.

“Being a senior member of the royal family is a full-time job, and it requires those who do it to patron charities, represent the UK on an international scale and generally maintain the traditions of the royal family,” said Harve-Jenner. 

“How would she balance all that with a full-time acting role on ‘Suits?’”

Markle will be the first American welcomed into the royals since Wallis Simpson — famously also a divorcee — but will probably not, in fact, be a princess.

What is far more likely, say experts, is that the couple become a duke and duchess, like William and Kate.

As well as starring as paralegal Rachel Zane on “Suits”, Markle is an entrepreneur, activist, blogger and fashion designer and would probably be expected to drop many of those pursuits too, to focus on royal activities. 

The actress appears to already be winding down her workload, having shut down her lifestyle website, “The Tig”, in recent months. 

Sarika Bose, a lecturer in Victorian literature at the University of British Columbia and a royal expert, said times had changed since Kelly was forced to choose between career and family life.

But she added that having a working actress in the fold may, yet, be a modernising reform too far for the British throne, which dates back to the merger of England and Scotland in the early 18th century. 

‘Very charismatic’

“Although British society and the monarchy have changed greatly over the last few decades, there are still possible assumptions people might impose on Ms Markle which are conflated with her acting roles, her life as a celebrity and her public role as a member of the royal family,” she told AFP. 

Bose said she expected Markle to follow other members of the family in pursuing charitable activities. 

“Well before meeting Prince Harry, Markle already demonstrated a serious interest and commitment to social justice initiatives, as a World Vision global ambassador and an advocate for political participation and leadership for women through the United Nations,” she said.

“These activities provide her with both experience and credibility as a patron of causes when she becomes a member of the royal family.” 

The daughter of an African-American mother and white American father of Dutch and Irish descent, Markle’s parents divorced when she was aged six.

She has half-siblings on her father’s side, and grew up in Los Angeles, attending a girls’ Roman Catholic school there.

After graduating from Northwestern University’s School of Communication in 2003, Markle appeared on more than a dozen TV shows including “CSI: NY” “Knight Rider” and “Fringe”.

She became more high-profile when she began appearing in “Suits” and secured a small role in the movie “Horrible Bosses” (2011).

Clarence Moye, TV editor at Awards Daily, described Markle as a “very charismatic” actress and said he was disappointed that she appeared to be set on conforming to tradition.

“It would be interesting to see a modern woman continuing her career... but it’s not where she seems to be headed,” he said.

Agriculture could go organic worldwide if we slashed food waste and stopped using so much cropland to feed livestock, a new study finds.

The analysis, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that it will take several strategies operating at once to feed the growing human population in a more sustainable way — and some of those strategies may require people to shift their dietary patterns, too.

The world’s population is expected to hit 9.8 billion by 2050, which means an extra 2 billion or so mouths to feed. This will require increasing agricultural output by an additional 50 per cent, the study authors wrote — which is made an even greater challenge as dietary patterns have been changing and the demand for meat has been rising. (Raising livestock leaves a large carbon and water footprint relative to growing plant-based foods.) All of this puts an additional strain on an already taxed environment.

“It is, therefore, crucial to curb the negative environmental impacts of agriculture, while ensuring that the same quantity of food can be delivered,” the study authors wrote.

Experts have thrown out several strategies to deal with the impending food security problem, without coming to a clear agreement on which one would be best. Among the options: improving efficiencies in producing crops and using resources; reducing food waste; cutting down the animal products we eat; or resorting to more organic agriculture.

“Organic agriculture is one concrete, but controversial, suggestion for improving the sustainability of food systems,” the study authors wrote. 

“It refrains from using synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, promotes crop rotations and focuses on soil fertility and closed nutrient cycles.”

Regardless of whether organic fruits, vegetables and other crops are better for you, there’s evidence showing they may be better for the environment. Since organically grown crops can’t use synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, it means that less excess nitrogen acidifies the soil and ends up in waterways, or escapes into the air as a greenhouse gas. It also means no man-made pesticides, meaning fewer chemicals in the local environment and less risk to insect biodiversity — which is important because many insects are crucial players in their local ecosystems.

But those benefits are offset somewhat by what’s known as the yield gap: the idea that organic crops require more land because their yields are lower than the fertiliser-fed, pesticide-protected conventional crops — potentially resulting in some extra deforestation. Still, could organic crops allow future food needs to be met with less environmental impact?

“Because of the yield gap, there are opposing voices that say it’s not possible… [and] there are proponents that say this yield gap is not really important and one could overcome it,” said lead author Adrian Muller, an environmental systems scientist at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland. 

“We just wanted to look at it from a food-systems perspective, because we think only looking at the yield gap is not enough. It is important to really look at production and consumption together and to see what organic agriculture can contribute on such a food-systems level.”

To find out, Muller and colleagues developed models based on data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, looking at the effects that going organic would have under different scenarios, modulating the severity of climate change, the amount of food waste and the share of crops used to feed livestock instead of people, for example.

The researchers found that the human population’s needs could be fully met by all-organic agriculture — but only if food waste was cut in half and the competing feed sources for livestock were eliminated altogether. Since that would seriously scale back the amount of livestock, that might be a hard sell with today’s meat-filled diets.

Muller said a more feasible solution might be one where organic crops make up about 50 per cent of crops, food waste is cut by half, and the competing feed sources are cut by half (allowing for more acreage to grow human food).

“We need to utilise all the potential strategies we have, without supporting one extreme and leaving out other approaches,” he said.

Getting to that point may still be a challenge. Organic crops make up a tiny fraction of agriculture overall, nowhere near that 50 per cent target. But there are some things that can be done now, Muller pointed out, such as putting an extra “nitrogen tax” on producers so that the environmental cost of excess fertiliser becomes an economic one.

“I think we are moving in the right direction,” Muller said, “and as an optimist I think, yeah, somehow, it will work”.

JAMESTOWN — Coin-operated telephone boxes, a capital without a cash machine and a local shop with a wooden floor: St Helena is Britain of yesteryear, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

“I don’t think I would fit in the outside world,” said Ivy Robinson, who runs the Wellington House bed and breakfast, complete with a pale blue Georgian facade, in the village-sized capital Jamestown.

The accommodation, attentively run by the fifty-something proprietor, has no internet connection just like all but one of her competitors.

Robinson makes do with a fixed-line telephone to communicate abroad and with the island’s other 4,500 people.

She has not yet got a mobile phone despite St Helena, which lies roughly halfway between Angola and Brazil, getting a mobile network two years ago.

“As the rest of the world looks chained to their iPads, we continue to watch the horizon for passing ships,” said Jeremy Harris, the local director of the National Trust conservation charity.

The boats that occasionally call at the territory set the pace of life on the island, supplying the islanders’ every need. 

From fuel to food, furniture to medication, clothes to vehicles, the arrival of fresh cargo aboard the territory’s maritime link to the outside world via Cape Town was always much anticipated.

Vow of silence

“When you hear the signal that the Royal Mail Ship is leaving, you think ‘oh my goodness’: I am in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, just thousands of miles from anywhere — what if?” said Lisa Phillips, the island’s governor.

The sense of isolation is compounded by the dearth of information about official matters on the island — all of its elected councillors take a vow of silence to not divulge their discussions in the name of confidentiality.

But times are changing. 

The island now boasts an international airport with a weekly air link to South Africa, and the governor decided in August to relax the councillors’ code of conduct.

Thanks to the new air service, 69-year-old Teddy Fowler was able to return from Britain in time for his mother’s funeral on the island.

But his children, who emigrated to Britain, did not make the journey — the flights were too expensive.

“Even with the plane, it will always be the same for us — the Saints,” he said, using the name for the islanders. “We will still be isolated.”

The airport promises to be a game changer for those who fall ill, permitting aerial medical evacuations for the first time.

Some patients have died aboard the postal ship, which takes six days to reach Cape Town.

The life of a newborn has already been saved thanks to the airport, according to the governor.

But keeping the island supplied with essentials still depends on ocean-bound cargo — as well as patience, planning and a “make do and mend” attitude.

One young “Saint” had to borrow a wedding dress for her big day after the RMS St Helena broke down.

Craig Yon, a diving instructor, waited two-and-a-half months for a spare part for his boat.

‘Embrace the slow pace’

In October, St Helena suffered a shortage of flour — affecting the supply of everyday staples.

“When you want to cook something, and you can’t find all the ingredients, you just have to cook something else,” said Phillips.

Food production on the island, where exposed rockfaces are punctuated by lush forests and meadows, is mainly limited to salad, tomatoes, cucumber, pork and tuna. 

“We embrace the slow place. That’s the key to life on St Helena,” said Michel Dancoisne-Martineau, the curator of the French historical sites on the island where Napoleon was exiled until his death in 1821.

Two centuries on, the defeated emperor is enjoying something of a revival.

Britain’s one-time arch-nemesis has become the island’s foremost draw for history buffs. 

“Whether we like it or not, Napoleon came here, he died here, he is part of our history now. That is a tourist attraction,” said Lawson Henry, a local councillor.

Napoleon’s Longwood home, where he lived behind permanently closed shutters to torment the soldiers assigned to guard him, is now open to visitors.

St Helena is still associated with exile — albeit for the islanders who call it home.

With no industry and underdeveloped agriculture, St Helena’s economy is struggling, with an average annual salary of just £7,280 (8,080 euros).

More than half of the population work abroad at any one time — often with the armed forces on the Falkland Islands or “nearby” Ascension Island — 1,100 kilometres away.

On days when parents feel stressed or depressed, kids are less likely to get homemade food for dinner, a US study suggests. 

Beyond just serving up more fast food and frozen dinners, parents are also more likely to pressure kids to clean their plates on days when they are not in a great mood. 

“One potential explanation for these findings is that parents who have a stressful day at work, school or home or who feel depressed throughout the day may be overwhelmed and not feel like making a family meal, and so they opt for pre-prepared foods and make less homemade foods,” said lead study author Jerica Berge of the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. 

“In addition, if parents feel stressed or depressed, they may also pressure their children to eat more at the meal because they do not want them to waste food, or because they are worried their child is not getting enough food to eat,” Berge said by e-mail. 

For the study, researchers observed 150 children ages 5 to 7 years at home with their families and used several methods to assess how parents’ moods influenced what foods went on the table. 

Among other things, researchers did home visits to observe meal planning and preparation and examined data from food diaries, surveys and interviews. 

Most of the adult participants were mothers (35 years old on average). More than half worked at least part-time, and 61 per cent of them had no more than a high school diploma. 

Approximately half of the mothers were married, and 64 per cent of the households had two parents. 

More than two-thirds of the families had a household income of less than $35,000 a year. 

Overall, stress levels were low and depression was uncommon, the researchers report online November 21 in Paediatrics. 

However, their statistical analysis found that each one-unit increase in stress levels or depression was associated with a small decrease in the proportion of dinners that included homemade foods, the study found. 

With each one-unit increase in stress levels, parents were also 45 per cent more likely to pressure kids to eat. Each one-unit increase in depression, meanwhile, was linked to 42 per cent higher odds that parents would pressure kids to clean their plates. 

The study was small, and it was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how parents’ mood or mental health influences what kids eat. 

Even so, it offers fresh evidence of the connection between stress and eating behaviours, said Nancy Zucker, a psychologist and eating disorders specialist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. 

“It is really tough to make homemade cooking a priority when one is overwhelmed,” Zucker, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

Just knowing that stress or depression might lead to less healthy meals is not enough on its own to help parents change what they put on the table, Zucker added. To change, parents need support, she said. 

“To the extent that families can have a greater sense of community — cooking with each other, getting young children to feel part of the meal process — can help take away some of the demands and the loneliness that may arise from a stressful, depressing day,” Zucker said. 

Planning ahead may also help, said Myles Faith, a psychology researcher at the University at Buffalo in New York who was not involved in the study. 

This might include tuning in to certain times of the day or week when stress levels or depression peak, and then choosing different times to make grocery lists, go shopping and prepare meals, Faith said by e-mail. 

“It may be better to get all meal decisions set up in advance so that healthier feeding routines become more automatic and require less mental energy the moment kids charge to the dinner table,” Faith advised. 

LONDON — People who drink three to four cups of coffee a day are more likely to see health benefits than harm, experiencing lower risks of premature death and heart disease than those who abstain, scientists said on Wednesday. 

The research, which collated evidence from more than 200 previous studies, also found coffee consumption was linked to lower risks of diabetes, liver disease, dementia and some cancers. 

Three or four cups a day confer the greatest benefit, the scientists said, except for women who are pregnant or who have a higher risk of suffering fractures. 

Coffee is one of the most commonly consumed drinks worldwide. To better understand its effects on health, Robin Poole, a public health specialist at Britain’s University of Southampton, led a research team in an “umbrella review” of 201 studies based on observational research and 17 studies based on clinical trials across all countries and all settings. 

“Umbrella reviews” synthesise previous pooled analyses to give a clearer summary of diverse research on a particular topic. 

“Coffee drinking appears safe within usual patterns of consumption,” Pool’s team concluded in their research, published in the BMJ British medical journal late on Wednesday.

Drinking coffee was consistently linked with a lower risk of death from all causes and from heart disease. The largest reduction in relative risk of premature death is seen in people consuming three cups a day, compared with non-coffee drinkers. 

Drinking more than three cups a day was not linked to harm, but the beneficial effects were less pronounced. 

Coffee was also associated with a lower risk of several cancers, including prostate, endometrial, skin and liver cancer, as well as type 2 diabetes, gallstones and gout, the researchers said. The greatest benefit was seen for liver conditions such as cirrhosis of the liver. 

Poole’s team noted that because their review included mainly observational data, no firm conclusions could be drawn about cause and effect. But they said their findings support other recent reviews and studies of coffee intake.