FEAST OR FAMINE

. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

If you are waiting for 2016 to end you’ll have to wait a second longer because international time experts are delaying the onset of 2017. The extra second added to 2016 is to compensate for a slowdown in the Earth’s rotation. So as you count down to midnight on 31 December, count down from 11. Peter Whibberley, a senior research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, said: "Leap seconds are needed to prevent civil time drifting away from Earth time. Although the drift is small - taking around 1,000 years to accumulate a one-hour time difference - if not corrected it would eventually result in clocks showing midday before sunrise." The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Paris decides when leap seconds are needed, and they are always announced about six months in advance. That is because the extra second can be a nightmare for communication networks, financial systems, and other applications that rely on...

The Afghanistan Times presented a long article about the country’s challenges, mentioning in it five Afghan proverbs. One of them is to ‘extend your legs to the length of your carpet.’ It is the equivalent of the saying ‘ cut your coat according to your cloth’ meaning that you should live within your means. The proverb ‘ cut your coat according to your cloth’ advises people to cut and sew a coat according to the cloth available so that no cloth is wasted. It also warns that the size of the coat should not exceed the piece of the cloth that a person has at hand, otherwise the coat will be unfit to wear. Part of making the coat with the cloth given is the necessity to make a proper plan before cutting the cloth. So this proverb instructs a person to live within their means and resources – within their budget. The Afghan carpet saying is just as apt. For the size of the carpet, a person can spread their legs only so far, otherwise their legs will be on the dusty g...

Carrie Fisher, the Princess Leia of Star Wars, dies at the age of 60 of cardiac arrest. She died on Tuesday 27 December 2016 after a heart attack during a flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday 23 December. She was hospitalized and didn’t recover. Acting from the age of 12, she first appeared in the movie Shampoo (1975) with Warren Beaty. But Fisher rose to fame at 19 years of age as Princess Leia in the science fiction movie, Star Wars (1977), opposite Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Mark Hamill as her brother Luke Skywalker. She also starred in the movie sequels – The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) as General Leia Organa, as well as a surprise role in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). Filming was completed in July 2016 on Fisher’s next appearance as Leia in Star Wars: Episode VIII, which will be in cinemas in December 2017. Her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, is still living, although her fat...