Entertainment

Having pets not kids robs us of ‘humanity’: Pope Francis

Pope Francis risked the ire of the world’s childless dog and cat owners Wednesday, suggesting people who substitute pets for kids exhibit “a certain selfishness.”

Speaking on parenthood during a general audience at the Vatican, Francis lamented that pets “sometimes take the place of children” in society.

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“Today… we see a form of selfishness,” said the pope. “We see that some people do not want to have a child.

“Sometimes they have one, and that’s it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children. This may make people laugh but it is a reality.”

The practice, said the head of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, “is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity.”

Thus, “civilization grows old without humanity because we lose the richness of fatherhood and motherhood, and it is the country that suffers,” the pontiff said at the Paul VI Hall.

Francis has been photographed petting dogs, allowed a baby lamb to be draped over his shoulders during Epiphany in 2014 and even petted a tiger and a baby panther.

But while his predecessor, Benedict XVI, was a cat lover, Francis is not known to have a pet at his Vatican residence.

In 2014, Francis told Il Messaggero daily that having pets instead of children was “another phenomenon of cultural degradation,” and that emotional relationships with pets was “easier” than the “complex” relationship between parents and children.

On Wednesday, while inviting couples who are unable to have children for biological reasons to consider adoption, he urged potential parents “not to be afraid” in embarking on parenthood.

“Having a child is always a risk, but there is more risk in not having a child, in denying paternity,” he said.

The Argentine pontiff has in the past denounced the “demographic winter,” or falling birth rates in the developed world.

Earlier this year, he criticized modern society, in which career and money-making trumps building a family for many, calling such mentality “gangrene for society.”

Three key words for a marriage from Pope Francis: ‘Please, thanks, sorry’

Entertainment

Nestle gets a third of sales from foods considered unhealthy, as per firm’s rating

Nestle SA said a third of its sales missed an independent definition of healthy as it applied a nutritional rating test across its port-folio.

The finding shows that Nestle has room to improve as it aims to be the top health and wellness food company. Nestle said Tuesday that according to the Health Star Rating system, 30 percent of the Swiss company’s portfolio is considered healthy and 35 percent unhealthy.

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The remainder comes from petfood, infant formula and medical nutrition products, which were not included as they’re designed to meet specific goals like helping kidney function.

With obesity a global health crisis in much of the developing world and on the rise in emerging market, food companies have been
under pressure to make their portfolios healthier and increase transparency. Investors have called on them report in accordance with independent government-approved measures of how nutritious their portfolios are, rather than their own internal met-rics, even though the industry has not settled on a single scale.

Big food companies like Kraft Heinz or Kellogg have so far resist-ed calls to report on independent nutrition metrics.

Nestle decided to use the HSR system, widely used in Australia and New Zealand, which rates products on a sale from half a star to five stars. A score of 3.5 stars or above is considered healthy.

More transparency

ShareAction, an investor campaign group which has been push-ing Nestle for more transparency, welcomed the new reporting, though urged the company to improve its ranking.

“As one of the biggest food and drink companies in the world, Nestle has an outsized influence on what people eat and drink,” said Holly Gabriel, a ShareAction campaigner. “What this disclosure worryingly shows is the company is still far too reliant on the sale of less healthy food and drink products.”

The ratings are based on the product’s energy, saturated fat, total sugars, sodium, protein, dietary fiber and fruit, vegetable, nut and legume content. Products like confectionery or salty sauces score lower on the scale, while low fat, low salt and sugar items includ-ing plain coffee and waters score higher.

The increased transparency helps investors understand how ex-posed companies are to efforts to curb obesity, for example through advertising bans. It also amplifies the pressure on companies to reformulate products to make them healthier.

While Nestle has room to improve, the majority of Nestle’s sales wouldn’t be in the cross-hairs of anti-junk food legislation because they are pet food or products like infant formula, or considered relatively healthy.

Rivals Danone and Unilever already report on their portfolios in accordance to the HSR. Unlike Nestle, Unilever has also set a tar-get that 85 percent of its nutrition and ice cream servings meet its own nutrition criteria by 2028.

Danone said that in 2021 about 90 percent of its products by sales volume got an HSR rating of 3.5 stars or above. Only 17 percent of Unilever’s nutrition and ice cream portfolio reached that stand-ard the same year.

Nestle has been reformulating products like Nesquik to contain less sugar in some markets, but Chief Executive Officer Mark Schneider told analysts earlier this year that reporting on nutrition does not mean the group would turn away from products like Kit-Kats and Smarties.

“We’re not interested in a target on how the healthier parts of the portfolio would outperform the other parts of the portfolio,” he said. “We want to succeed in both.”

Nestle said the study covered 97 percent of its revenue, excluding some products that aren’t foods or beverages as well as some recent acquisitions.

Entertainment

‘Winnie the Pooh’ film pulled from Hong Kong cinemas, sparks censorship concerns

Public screenings of a slasher film that features Winnie the Pooh were scrapped abruptly in Hong Kong on Tuesday, sparking discussions over increasing censorship in the city.

Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment announced on Facebook that the release of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” on Thursday had been canceled with “great regret” in Hong Kong and neighboring Macao.

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In an email reply to The Associated Press, the distributor said it was notified by cinemas that they could not show the film as scheduled, but it didn’t know why. The cinema chains involved did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

For many residents, the Winnie the Pooh character is a playful taunt of China’s President Xi Jinping and Chinese censors in the past had briefly banned social media searches for the bear in the country. In 2018, the film “Christopher Robin,” also featuring Winnie the Pooh, was reportedly denied a release in China.

The film being pulled in Hong Kong has prompted concern on social media over the territory’s shrinking freedoms.

The movie was initially set to be shown in about 30 cinemas in Hong Kong, VII Pillars Entertainment wrote last week.

The Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration said it had approved the film and arrangements by local cinemas to screen approved films “are the commercial decisions of the cinemas concerned.” It refused to comment on such arrangements.

A screening initially scheduled for Tuesday night in one cinema was canceled due to “technical reasons,” the organizer said on Instagram.

Kenny Ng, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s academy of film, refused to speculate on the reason behind the cancellation, but suggested the mechanism of silencing criticism appeared to be resorting to commercial decisions.

Hong Kong is a former British colony that returned to China’s rule in 1997, promising to retain its Western-style freedoms. But China imposed a national security law following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, silencing or jailing many dissidents.

In 2021, the government tightened guidelines and authorized censors to ban films believed to have breached the sweeping law.

Ng said the city saw more cases of censorship over the last two years, mostly targeting non-commercial movies, such as independent short films.

“When there is a red line, then there are more taboos,” he said.

Hong Kong rights activist Albert Ho arrested by national security police

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Europe’s hopes for busy post-COVID summer dim as Chinese tourists stay away

Entertainment

Asian art fair in Hong Kong aims to bounce back after COVID-19 years

The organizers of Art Basel Hong Kong, one of Asia’s leading contemporary art fairs, said on Tuesday they are bullish on art market prospects in the region, with China and Hong Kong now having lifted all COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.
The annual fair, which also has iterations in Basel, Paris, and Miami Beach, runs from March 23-25 in Hong Kong.

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The number of galleries has increased to 177 this year from 130 in 2022, with 32 countries and territories across Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa participating.
“Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the Asian art market has also remained resilient, with Greater China accounting for 20 percent of worldwide sales by value and ranking second as the second largest regional art market in the latest edition of the Art Basel,” Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz told reporters.
Hong Kong attracted 56 million visitors in pre-pandemic 2019 but shops now sit vacant and Chinese visitors, who once propelled the city’s art market, have yet to return in droves.
Leading international galleries at Art Basel this year include Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Lehmann Maupin, Victoria Miro, Pace, Perrotin, White Cube and David Zwirner.
In a mall near the glitzy halls of Hong Kong’s harborfront convention center where Art Basel, the show has installed a 10-meter-tall inflatable sculpture of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun titled ‘Gravity’ by Los Angeles-based artist Awol Erizku.
Hong Kong’s government has welcomed the art fair as it strives to reinvigorate Hong Kong’s economy after a nearly three-year slump from factors including tough COVID-19 lockdowns, a closed border with China, and a security crackdown.
Hundreds of thousands of people have left the territory since June 2020, when a sweeping national security law was passed that has been used to curb freedoms and arrest scores of opposition democrats and shutter liberal media outlets.
Some Western governments have criticized the law as a tool of repression, but China asserts it brought stability after pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Art Basel said it had respected creative expression.
“We don’t have any censorship process in the show. We haven’t really changed the process of the show since 2013,” said Angelle Siyang-Le, the director Art Basel Hong Kong.