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MALTATODAY 3 January 2021

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13 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 JANUARY 2021 depressed incomes. The outlook will remain bleak throughout the first half but likely to improve after June. 6. Haley Bugeja To football aficionados, this 16-year-old footballer's stature, ball control and passion are reminiscent of Diego Maradona. She started off on a promising international career with Italian side Sassuolo last September and left her mark with some brilliant goals. With commendable performances with the women's national team, Bugeja's prowess will have scouts watching her. She may want to bide her time at Sassuolo, a modest but very professional outfit, but in 2021 Bugeja is very likely to be tempted by other big clubs in the world of female football. 7. Cardinal number 2 After former Gozo bishop Mario Grech was made cardinal last November, Pope Francis may just be tempted to give Malta its second cardinal. Archbishop Charles Scicluna was appointed as Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Holy See in 2018. The body is responsible to promote and safeguard the doctrine on faith and morals in the Church. Scicluna's moral proximity to Pope Francis may put him on the road to cardinal in 2021. 8. Euro 2020, again UEFA postponed the Euro 2020 tournament because of the pandemic. The month-long football feast will be played between 11 June and 11 July. It will still be called Euro 2020 and the original format has been retained. Games will be played in 12 host cities around Europe with the final at Wembley Stadium. Football fans will have something to look forward to and hopefully help relaunch a good season for bars. What will be missed though is the colourful fans in the stadiums. 9. Joe Biden's US Joe Biden will become president of the US later this month. Europeans will probably see the return of an America that is a reliable partner on the world stage. Biden has already signalled a return to the Paris climate change accord. But many will wait for big foreign policy decisions on the US-China trade war and the Middle East, none of which will be rushed. 10. Caruana Galizia public inquiry The three judges have slated a session for final submissions at the end of January. This, and other decisions, such as whether former PN leader Adrian Delia should testify, are likely to see the information-gathering part end sometime in February. The board will then have to draw up its report. The conclusions are likely to find the current administration at fault for not doing enough to prevent a climate of impunity that made Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder all the easier to commit. The board may also suggest compensation for the family. Marie Briguglio THE COVID-19 pandemic dis- rupted ordinary routine but it also helped people discover that remote working is possible across many sectors and de- mographics, economist Marie Briguglio said. And this had its benefits on the environment and work-life balance, she added. "Remote working helped us reduce the time spent commut- ing and contributed to less car emissions. It also helped us dis- cover new challenges and op- portunities to balancing work and life," she said. As the world slowly returns to a new normal, Briguglio be- lieves that the "sweet spot" for productivity and wellbeing lies in a balance between working remotely and face-to-face. "I would therefore keep a healthy dose of remote working going forward," she said. But the pandemic also forced us to change the social dynamic as a result of mitigation meas- ures to prevent the spread of the virus. "In the social sphere, we dis- covered new avenues to en- hance our wellbeing given the limitations which came with social distancing," Briguglio said. She noted that people engaged in home-based recreational ac- tivities like cooking, exercise and art, or by being in nature, either for picnics or walks. "These too can be taken for- ward in 2021 offering alter- natives to the erstwhile heavy reliance of the Maltese on res- taurants for recreation," she said. In the social sphere, we discovered new avenues to enhance our wellbeing given the limitations which came with social distancing

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