Nature Hub

  By Ashraf Padanna BBC Reporter, Trivandrum, Kerala, Edited by - Vinuri Randhula Silva, Published IMAGE SOURCE, SK MOHAN Image caption, The Mambally family is known for its Christmas cakes Prakash Mambally has a story to tell about the first Christmas cake made in India. In November 1883, a merchant named Murdock Brown went to the Royal Biscuit Factory in what is now the southern Indian state of Kerala and asked its owner Mambally Bapu if he would bake him a cake for Christmas. The Scot, who ran a massive cinnamon plantation in the Malabar region of the coastal state (then part of a princely state in British-ruled India), had brought a sample cake back from Britain. He explained to Mr Bapu how it was made. Mr Bapu knew how to bake bread and biscuits - a skill he learnt at a biscuit factory in Burma (present-day Myanmar) - but he had never made a cake. But he decided to give it a try with Mr Brown's inputs. The experiment came with some improvisations. Mr Bapu mixed the cake batter

  By Lizo Mzimba , BBC ,   Entertainment correspondent, Edited by Vinuri Randhula Silva,   IMAGE SOURCE, WARNER BROS. Image caption, Margot Robbie in the Barbie movie, directed by Greta Gerwig and set for release in July Films such as  Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World: Dominion and, more recently, Avatar: The Way of Water have seen huge box office figures in 2022. That's the good news for film fans and the cinema industry. The bad news is that this year's audience numbers still aren't close to pre-pandemic levels. Could 2023 be the year when the industry triumphantly declares that things are back to where they were before Covid? Here's a selection of 23 titles coming out in 2023 (in chronological order of release) that could be crucial in dictating how fast cinema recovers. 1. Till IMAGE SOURCE, UNIVERSAL Image caption, Jalyn Hall and Danielle Deadwyler as Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Based on true and shocking events in America's Deep South in the 1950s, Till