ANN/THE JAKARTA POST – Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has said the government has not yet settled on the Haj fee for Indonesian pilgrims this year.
“We’re still reviewing some of the options, so there is no final figure yet. We’re still calculating it,” the president said yesterday during a visit to a construction site in Ciliwung, East Jakarta.
Jokowi said the government would need to discuss the new Haj fee with the House of Representatives before making a final decision.
“This is not yet final. Don’t make a fuss over it,” he said, as quoted by Antara.
Indonesia’s quota for pilgrims this year has returned to its pre-pandemic level, the first time in three years.
Some 553 students have registered for 2023/2024 session at the Hassanal Bolkiah Boys Arabic Secondary School for its Arabic pre-university programme yesterday.
Former Raja Isteri Pengiran Anak Hajah Saleha Girls Arabic Religious Secondary School (SUAM RIPAHS), Raja Isteri Pengiran Anak Damit Girls Arabic Religious Secondary School (SUAMP RIPAD), Ma’had Islam Brunei, Institut Tahfiz Al-Quran Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah (ITQSHHB) and private candidates who have passed the Brunei Religious Education Certificate (SPUB) last year were accepted to the institution.
Of the new students, 277 will undertake Syariah course and 276 will enter the Usuluddin programme. The courses will prepare students for university level education.
During the registration, parents, guardians and students were informed about the school and its activities. After registration, an orientation programme and a get-together session for students to adapt to the new school environment were also conducted.
Students during the registration event. PHOTOS: AZLAN OTHMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) – United States (US) health officials want to make COVID-19 vaccinations more like the annual flu shot.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday proposed a simplified approach for future vaccination efforts, allowing most adults and children to get a once-a-year shot to protect against the mutating virus.
This means Americans would no longer have to keep track of how many shots they’ve received or how many months it’s been since their last booster.
The proposal comes as boosters have become a hard sell. While more than 80 per cent of the US population has had at least one vaccine dose, only 16 per cent of those eligible have received the latest boosters authorised in August.
The FDA will ask its panel of outside vaccine experts to weigh in at a meeting tomorrow.
The agency is expected to take their advice into consideration while deciding future vaccine requirements for manufacturers.
A nurse prepares a syringe of a COVID-19 vaccine at an inoculation station in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. PHOTO: AP
In documents posted online, FDA scientists say many Americans now have “sufficient pre-existing immunity” against the coronavirus because of vaccination, infection or a combination of the two.
That baseline of protection should be enough to move to an annual booster against the latest strains in circulation and make COVID-19 vaccinations more like the yearly flu shot, according to the agency. For adults with weakened immune systems and very small children, a two-dose combination may be needed for protection.
FDA scientists and vaccine companies would study vaccination, infection rates and other data to decide who should receive a single shot versus a two-dose series.
FDA will also ask its panel to vote on whether all vaccines should target the same strains.
That step would be needed to make the shots interchangeable, doing away with the current complicated system of primary vaccinations and boosters.
The initial shots from Pfizer and Moderna, called the primary series, target the strain of the virus that first emerged in 2020 and quickly swept across the world.
The updated boosters launched last fall were also tweaked to target Omicron relatives that had been dominant. Under FDA’s proposal, the agency, independent experts and manufacturers would decide annually on which strains to target by the early summer, allowing several months to produce and launch updated shots before the fall.
That’s roughly the same approach long used to select the strains for the annual flu shot.
It’s funny how as the years go by, I can still find something new and fascinating in Brunei that I didn’t know about before.
I have recently come to a new chapter in my life and what comes along with it are new and welcomed responsibilities in my adult life, one of which is sending my wife to work every morning.
It was during one of these daily drives, which I must emphasise was a rushed morning with no time to enjoy breakfast, that I was introduced to a whole new culinary scene, one that I can only describe as a grab-and-go breakfast spot.
When my spouse asked if I wanted to grab some food I was surprised as I didn’t think any shop would be open that early in the morning, apart perhaps from packaged buns and canned coffee from small convenience stores.
En route to her office, she asked me to go to Jalan Durian, which I did with some scepticism. After a quick turn and entering the junction, I could not believe my eyes as I saw a long line of cars in front of me waiting for a parking spot to be free.
Right at the end of the junction was a humble stall swarmed with people standing in line to grab their choice of meals.
ABOVE & BELOW: Some of the food sold at Jalan Durian; and customers browse at the food choice available at the convenience store in Kampong Kapok. PHOTOS: ADIB NOOR
ABOVE & BELOW: Customers wait in line at Jalan Durian foodstall; and a happy customer grabs her breakfast from the Kapok store
Ranging from BND1 to less than BND5, there was a vast variety of pre-packed dishes to choose from which included the popular crispy popiah (spring rolls), homemade spaghetti, nasi lemak, a long list of Malay kuehs and of course the ever-popular local favourite nasi katok.
I spoke to some people who visits this place often,one of whom was nursery teacher Waddaah. She said, “I’ve known about the place for a while now. I used to drop by as early as six in the morning to grab breakfast before checking in at work.
“It’s one of the few places that has everything a person wants for breakfast or someone who wants to find treats to bring to work,” she added.
One is also likely to find familiar faces at the spot as its location is right near government offices and is a go-to area to grab budget-friendly meals to last throughout the day.
“Here at Jalan Durian (as most people fondly refer to) I can stretch out my budget, it’s affordable and you can never be disappointed with the food, it has saved me a couple of times from overspending on food during the working week,” said civil servant Ahmad Faizin.
If you see a person walking away with what you think is too much food for one person, it’s most likely someone’s turn to do a food run before work for their office mates.
Those familiar with Jalan Durian shared that the food stall is open as early as 6am and goes on until the afternoon if there is still food left for sale.
With my eyes now already open to this whole new scene, it turns out there is more than one grab-and-go breakfast spot.
Recently again while on the journey of my morning husband duty, we decided to stop by a small convenience store which is always swarmed with people early in the morning in our village, Kampong Kapok.
Again to my surprise, once I walked inside, a multitude of packed food was arranged on large tables right in front of the stores.
There were even cheesecakes, bottled teh tarik, coconut juice and any food imaginable, even pre-packed sunny-side eggs!
I asked how they acquired this amount of food for sale so early in the morning and the manager who declined to be named shared that sellers from near the area approach shops to sell their food.
The shop then offers space and take a small amount from the sales as payment for rent for space to sell the food at the store.
The convenience spot must be well known, as people from different walks of life come through the doors; parents with kids before heading to schools, truck drivers grabbing food either before the start or the end of their run and your regular blue-collared workers grabbing something for breakfast at the office.
I’m still surprised at what else can be found in my lovely country, finding out about gems such as these which genuinely pique my interest is always welcome.
As embarrassed as I am to only find out about this recently, I wonder if there are other affordable grab-and-go havens out there in the Sultanate.
BANGKOK (AFP) – A group of people from Myanmar have filed a criminal complaint in Germany accusing their country’s military of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, a rights organisation said yesterday.
The case was lodged with Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of certain grave crimes regardless of where they took place, and has been used to try Syrians over atrocities committed during the civil war.
The 16 complainants live in several countries, including Myanmar, and are drawn from a cross-section of the country’s numerous ethnic groups – including Rohingya, the dominant Burman and minority Chin communities.
Their accounts date from 2017, when the country was run by a civilian government, to 2021, after the coup that brought the current junta to power.
“They (the army) don’t think of us as people and treat us like animals,” said Thi Da, a 35-year-old ethnic Chin.
Her husband disappeared in September, following the 2021 army coup.
Protesters run after police shot warning shots and used water cannon to disperse them during a protest in Mandalay, Myanmar in 2021. PHOTO: AP
The 215-page complaint alleges the military “systematically killed, raped, tortured, imprisoned, disappeared, persecuted, and committed other acts that amount to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes”, the campaign group Fortify Rights, which is leading the legal case, said in a statement.
The complaint draws on more than 1,000 interviews conducted by Fortify Rights since 2013, as well as leaked documents and information from the Myanmar army and deserters, said the rights group.
It alleges that senior military officials “knew about their subordinates’ crimes, and failed to take any action to prevent the crimes from happening and to punish the perpetrators”.
The complaint asks the German prosecutor to open an investigation into specific officials and others liable for mass atrocity crimes.
It also addresses the army’s actions during a violent crackdown against the Rohingya in 2017, which forced more than 740,000 to flee.
One Rohingya woman, identified by the initials FK, survived an attack by soldiers and non-Rohingya on her northern Rakhine village in August 2017.
Seven members of her family were killed, and as she was beaten by soldiers, she heard her daughter-in-law being raped in the adjacent room.
“As a Rohingya woman, I want justice for the genocide so that it does not happen again,” FK said.
Cases are currently being heard by the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and another universal jurisdiction case in Argentina for crimes committed during the military crackdown on the Rohingya.
TIANJIN, CHINA (AP) – As technicians in a distant control room watch on display screens, an automated crane at one of China’s busiest ports moves cargo containers from a Korean freighter to self-driving trucks in a scene tech giant Huawei sees as its future after American sanctions crushed its smartphone brand.
The backbone of the “smart terminal” at the Tianjin Port, east of Beijing, is a data network built by Huawei, which is reinventing itself as a supplier for self-driving cars, factories and other industries it hopes will be less vulnerable to Washington’s worsening feud with Beijing over technology and security.
The ruling Communist Party is promoting automation in industries from manufacturing to taxis to keep China’s economy growing as the workforce ages and starts to shrink.
Its managers said the “smart terminal”, part of Tianjin’s 200-square-kilometre port, allows 200 employees to move as much cargo as 800 used to.
“We believe this solution in Tianjin is the world’s most advanced,” said the chief technology officer of Huawei’s business unit for ports Yue Kun. “We believe it can be applied to other ports.” Huawei Technologies Ltd, which makes smartphones and is the biggest global supplier of network gear for phone carriers, struggled after then-president Donald Trump cut off access to American processor chips and other technology in 2019 in a feud with Beijing about security.
A worker uses a computer terminal to monitor remote operations at a container port in Tianjin, China. PHOTO: AP
Huawei, with a workforce of almost 200,000, has held onto its status as the leading maker of network gear based on sales in China and other markets where Washington has had less success at encouraging governments to shun the company. “Huawei is already a key player” in data networks with a “wealth of knowledge”, said an industry analyst Paul Budde.
The company has created 20 teams to focus on factories, mines, hospitals, ports, power plants and other industrial customers.
It said the auto unit has 3,000 people working on autonomous driving and invested USD2 billion in the technology in 2020-21. Huawei was an early developer of “smart city” networks for traffic control and police surveillance.
“The big, black cloud here, however, is geopolitics,” said Budde. “This will hamper its participation in overseas markets,” he said. “The issues are not technology but are purely political.”
Huawei said its new focus already is helping to revive the company’s fortunes.
“In 2020, we successfully pulled ourselves out of crisis mode,” said one of three Huawei executives who take turns as chairman Eric Xu, in a December letter to employees. “US restrictions are now our new normal, and we’re back to business as usual.”
Last year’s revenue was forecast to be little changed from 2021 at CNY636.9 billion, Xu said. That was below Huawei’s double-digit growth of a decade earlier but an improvement over the 5.9 per cent slide in the first half.
He gave no breakdown by business line, but Huawei reported 2021 sales to industrial customers of CNY102.4 billion. Sales of smartphones and other devices fell 25.3 per cent from a year earlier in the first half of 2022 to CNY101.3 billion.
The auto unit, which supplies components and software for navigation, dashboard displays and managing vehicle systems, has played a role in five models released by three Chinese automakers.
The ruling party’s urgency about rolling out automation has risen as the size of China’s working-age population 16 to 59 declined after hitting a peak in 2011.
That group has shrunk by about five per cent. Its share of the population slid from 70 per cent to 62 per cent.
The Tianjin port managers told Huawei they already were having trouble finding and keeping truck drivers, according to Yue.
“This can help to address the ageing population issue,” said Yue.
Yue said Huawei has talked with “people outside China” who might use its port technology, but he gave no details.
The annual market for port-related network technology is modest at USD2 billion, but global sales of gear to link factories and medical equipment, cars and other devices total USD600 billion a year, according to Budde. He said that has the potential to replace Huawei’s lost smartphone and other telecom sales, so long as foreign buyers aren’t put off by security concerns.
The Tianjin port’s fleet of 88 battery-powered autonomous trucks is charged by wind turbines, according to a port spokesman, Peng Pai.
“It’s much safer, and it uses clean energy,” said Peng.
In a third-floor control room with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the port, a dozen operators sit in front of displays with as many as six screens showing video feeds of computer-controlled cranes lifting cargo boxes onto or off ships.
Each can monitor as many as six cranes at once, unlike a traditional operator who serves only one ship.
“People had to work high up in cranes,” said Yang Jiemin, a vice president of Tianjin Port Group. “Now, our operators can sit in an office and monitor equipment remotely.”
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA (AP) – Victoria Azarenka displayed the same confident brand of hard-hitting baseline tennis that carried her to two Australian Open titles and the number one ranking a decade ago, beating Jessica Pegula 6-4, 6-1 yesterday to return to the semi-finals at Melbourne Park.
Azarenka won the 2012 and 2013 championships in Australia, but she had not been back to the final four there since then.
Now 33 and a mother – she walked out into Rod Laver Arena wearing a jersey from her seven-year-old son’s favourite football team, Paris Saint-Germain – Azarenka, who is from Belarus, delivered big shot after big shot, raced to a 3-0 lead in 12 minutes, and never really let the number three-seeded Pegula, a good friend, get into the match.
“Leo doesn’t really care so much that I’m playing here,” Azarenka said with a laugh. “He worries more about his football and when are we going to go play again. Obviously, he is watching some matches, but he definitely wants his mom to be home. So a few more days here, and I’ll be back.”
Might make the trip with a trophy in tow if she keeps playing like this.
Victoria Azarenka. PHOTO: AP
Even when Pegula did grab a game, she needed to work so hard for it, erasing six break points before finally holding serve to get on the board. It was a far cry from the sort of success Pegula had earlier in the tournament: She entered yesterday having dropped zero sets and 18 games across four previous matches.
The number 24-seeded Azarenka’s semi-final opponent will be number 22 Elena Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion, who defeated 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko 6-2, 6-4 yesterday.
That match was delayed for about 20 minutes in the first set while the main stadium’s retractable roof was shut because of rain.
Rybakina hit 11 aces to take her tournament-leading total to 35.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Shaking a traditional rattle, Brazil’s incoming head of Indigenous affairs recently walked through every corner of the agency’s headquarters – even its coffee room – as she invoked help from ancestors during a ritual cleansing.
The ritual carried extra meaning for Joenia Wapichana, Brazil’s first Indigenous woman to command the agency charged with protecting the Amazon rainforest and its people.
Once she is sworn in next month under newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Wapichana promises to clean house at an agency that critics say has allowed the Amazon’s resources to be exploited at the expense of the environment.
As Wapichana performed the ritual, Indigenous people and government officials enthusiastically chanted “Yoohoo! Funai is ours!’’ – a reference to the agency she will lead.
Environmentalists, Indigenous people and voters sympathetic to their causes were important to Lula’s narrow victory over former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Now Lula is seeking to fulfill campaign pledges he made to them on a wide range of issues, from expanding Indigenous territories to halting a surge in illegal deforestation.
To carry out these goals, Lula is appointing well-known environmentalists and Indigenous people to key positions at Funai and other agencies that Bolsonaro had filled with allies of agribusiness and military officers.
ABOVE & BELOW: A logging area in the Transamazonica highway region in the municipality of Humaita, Amazonas state, Brazil; and Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara. PHOTOS: AP
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Marina Silva
In Lula’s previous two terms as president, he had a mixed record on environmental and Indigenous issues. And he is certain to face obstacles from pro-Bolsonaro state governors who still control swaths of the Amazon. But experts say Lula is taking the right first steps.
The federal officials Lula has already named to key posts “have the national and international prestige to reverse all the environmental destruction that we have suffered over these four years of the Bolsonaro government,” said George Porto Ferreira, an analyst at Ibama, Brazil’s environmental law-enforcement agency.
Bolsonaro’s supporters, meanwhile, fear that Lula’s promise of stronger environmental protections will hurt the economy by reducing the amount of land open for development, and punish people for activities that had previously been allowed.
Some supporters with ties to agribusiness have been accused of providing financial and logistical assistance to rioters who earlier this month stormed Brazil’s presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court.
When Bolsonaro was president, he defanged Funai and other agencies responsible for environmental oversight.
This enabled deforestation to soar to its highest level since 2006, as developers and miners who took land from Indigenous people faced few consequences.
Between 2019 and 2022, the number of fines handed out for illegal activities in the Amazon declined by 38 per cent compared with the previous four years, according an analysis of Brazilian government data by the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups.
One of the strongest signs yet of Lula’s intentions to reverse these trends was his decision to return Marina Silva to lead the country’s Environmental Ministry.
Silva formerly held the job between 2003 and 2008, a period when deforestation declined by 53 per cent. A former rubber-tapper from Acre state, Silva resigned after clashing with government and agribusiness leaders over environmental policies she deemed to be too lenient.
Silva strikes a strong contrast with Bolsonaro’s first environment minister, Ricardo Salles, who had never set foot in the Amazon when he took office in 2019 and resigned two years later following allegations that he had facilitated the export of illegally felled timber.
Other measures Lula has taken in support of the Amazon and its people include:
– Signing a decree that would rejuvenate the most significant international effort to preserve the rainforest – the Amazon Fund. The fund, which Bolsonaro had gutted, has received more than USD1.2 billion, mostly from Norway, to help pay for sustainable development of the Amazon.
– Revoking a Bolsonaro decree that allowed mining in Indigenous and environmental protection areas.
– Creating a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, which will oversee everything from land boundaries to education.
This ministry will be led by Sônia Guajajara, the country’s first Indigenous woman in such a high government post.
“It won’t be easy to overcome 504 years in only four years. But we are willing to use this moment to promote a take-back of Brazil’s spiritual force,” Guajajara said during her induction ceremony, which was delayed by the damage pro-Bolsonaro rioters caused to the presidential palace.
The Amazon rainforest, which covers an area twice the size of India, acts as a buffer against climate change by absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide.
But Bolsonaro viewed management of the Amazon as an internal affair, causing Brazil’s global reputation to take a hit. Lula is trying to undo that damage.
During the United Nation’s climate summit in Egypt in last November, Lula pledged to end all deforestation by 2030 and announced his country’s intention to host the COP30 climate conference in 2025. Brazil had been scheduled to host the event in 2019, but Bolsonaro canceled it in 2018 right after he was elected.
While Lula has ambitious environmental goals, the fight to protect the Amazon faces complex hurdles. For example, getting cooperation from local officials won’t be easy.
Six out of nine Amazonian states are run by Bolsonaro allies. Those include Rondonia, where settlers of European descent control local power and have dismantled environmental legislation through the state assembly; and Acre, where a lack of economic opportunities is driving rubber-tappers who had long fought to preserve the rainforest to take up cattle grazing instead.
The Amazon has also been plagued for decades by illegal gold mining, which employs tens of thousands of people in Brazil and other countries, such as Peru and Venezuela. The illegal mining causes mercury contamination of rivers that Indigenous peoples rely upon for fishing and drinking.
“Its main cause is the state’s absence,” said a forensics expert with the Federal Police Gustavo Geiser, who has worked in the Amazon for over 15 years.
One area where Lula has more control is in designating Indigenous territories, which are the best preserved regions in the Amazon.
Lula is under pressure to create 13 new Indigenous territories – a process that had stalled under Bolsonaro, who kept his promise not to grant “one more inch” of land to Indigenous peoples.
A major step will be to expand the size of Uneiuxi, part of one of the most remote and culturally diverse regions of the world that is home to 23 peoples.
The process of expanding the boundaries of Uneiuxi started four decades ago, and the only remaining step is a presidential signature, which will increase its size by 37 per cent to 551,000 hectares.
“Lula already indicated that he would not have any problem doing that,” said Kleber Karipuna, a close aide of Guajajara.
The outreach programme is one of the initiatives to expose training to the public servants outside of the Brunei-Muara District who might not have the opportunity to attend the programme at the Civil Service Institute (IPA). The programme is offered to civil service members in Divisions II, III, IV and V, in the Tutong and Belait districts, said Acting Assistant Director of IPA Hajah Maimunah binti Haji Awang Hussin.
The programme also aims to motivate and increase productivity among the participants, she said.
She made these comments where over 90 public servants from the Belait and Tutong districts convened at the Grand Ballroom at V-Plaza Hotel, Kuala Belait to attend the two-day outreach programme conducted by the institute.
Starting yesterday, the programme represents one of the initiatives led by IPA to approach civil servants across the nation to refresh their knowledge and skills necessary to be implemented into their daily work.
A talk held as part of the outreach programme. PHOTOS: SELABOVE & BELOW: Public servants participating in an activity during the programme
It is also hoped that the participants would be able to achieve an effective workflow that the public can rely on. The programme is slated to continue today, with talks on empowering oneself in the workplace and adapting to the use of digital technologies.
The first day of the outreach programme saw several talks, on strengthening and empowering RAEK (Pillars of Work Ethics) and another talk on empowering communication within the organisation. Public servants also participated in various activities throughout the programme. Hajah Maimunah said, the outreach programme is the second session held for the district, with the first on January 27 and 28, 2021.
“IPA hopes that through this outreach programme, public servants are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to ensure that their work is aligned with the aspiration’s of the nation,” she said.
PARIS (AFP) – Dressed in aprons and brandishing baguettes, hundreds of bakers demonstrated in the streets of Paris on Monday to warn that the country’s beloved bread and croissant makers were under threat from surging electricity and raw material costs.
“We feel like there’s a huge injustice,” said Sylvie Leduc from the rural Dordogne region who had travelled to the capital for the protest. “We know how to run a business, that’s not a problem, but we’re faced with increases that are just impossible to pass on to customers.”
The protest was yet another sign of the anger and incomprehension felt by many French people over the sudden price hikes linked to the war in Ukraine, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic that hit global supply chains. Bakers were already struggling with higher butter and flour costs, while the price of eggs has also spiked because of a national bird flu outbreak that has hit many French farms.
The final straw for many of the country’s 35,000 bakeries has been the annual renewal of their electricity contracts, with suppliers suddenly asking for astronomical monthly payments in 2023.
Leduc’s husband Jean-Philippe said their power bill had increased six-fold in January, meaning they could hang on for only a few more months before being forced to close, unless financial help arrived.
“Thirty years of being a baker and it’s going to finish like this? I could never have imagined it,” he said, shaking his head. “We don’t want hand-outs, we just want to be able to live from our work.”
For the French, their local bakery is about more than simple food shopping, they serve as a symbol of the national way of life, while providing a focal point for many communities.
“The day starts with a baguette!” former presidential candidate Jean Lassalle, an ardent defender of traditional rural French communities, told AFP at the rally.
“These people are the ones who get up the earliest in France and they’ve had enough.”
