Parents and guardians of Year 6 students in Chung Hwa School Kiudang recently attended a briefing on the Primary School Assessment (PSR) examination 2023.
The briefing, held in the school’s mini hall, was led by Principal Loo Shee Yun and Year 6 teachers.
The briefing’s goal was to share with parents and guardians the target achievement set for each subject, allowing students, teachers and parents to work closely together improve the children’s performance.
Year 6 teachers also shared their strategies to help students achieve their target for PSR. The briefing concluded with a question and answer session.
The briefing in progress. PHOTO: CHUNG HWA SCHOOL KIUDANG
ANN/THE STAR – American electropop duo Drew Taggart and Alex Pall of The Chainsmokers were in Malaysia recently to perform at Resorts World Genting.
An hour before the concert was set to take place, Taggart and Pall sat down with StarLifestyle for an exclusive interview. At that point of time, they had just arrived in Malaysia on the day itself.
“We initially planned on exploring Malaysia, but then we had to take a 16-hour flight from the United States to Singapore and then fly here (Malaysia) afterwards,” Taggart, 32, said.
“We spent the whole day in our hotel room. We haven’t really got a taste of Malaysia yet… but we’re stoked to be back and perform for everyone here.”
The last time they were in Malaysia was in 2015.
Although the two of them ended up unable to explore Malaysia (they flew off to Vietnam the next day for another show), they did collaborate with two local talents – singer-songwriter NYK and trilingual rapper Yunohoo – on stage that night.
The Americans had chosen NYK and Yunohoo to remix one of The Chainsmokers’ songs prior to the event in Genting Highlands.
Drew Taggart and Alex Pall of The Chainsmokers. PHOTO: AP
Pall, 37, shared that it was a pleasant experience working with the Malaysian artistes.
“They are very talented musicians with a very unique approach to their artistic style. We were truly impressed with the way they reworked our songs.
“It’s not easy to reimagine a record, but they did it in such a way that’s interesting and brings out the beauty of South-East Asian music,” he explained.
TAKING A STEP BACK
The Chainsmokers broke into the music scene with its 2014 single, #Selfie.
A string of Grammy-nominated hits followed, including Don’t Let Me Down, Closer and Something Just Like This.
Everything was going swimmingly for the duo. That is, until it hit a creative block in 2019 following its World War Joy tour.
The Chainsmokers’ members recalled feeling burned out after doing back-to-back shows then.
“I was on antidepressants. We were on this massive tour, we had an album that needed to be finished, and I went through this really tough time of waking up and not wanting to do anything,” Taggart told Billboard.
Pall also mentioned that he felt “lost and uninspired” after doing so many shows without rest.
With all the grinding taking a toll on their mental health, Taggart and Pall decided take a step back from the spotlight to recuperate.
After wrapping up its 2019 tour, The Chainsmokers announced on social media that it was taking a hiatus from the music scene.
Retreating to Hawaii, the two of them started work on the fourth album, So Far So Good, without any deadlines hanging over their heads.
Pall told StarLifestyle this was the first time they had the luxury of an unhurried creative process.
“It felt great being able to work on our music without feeling pressured about touring the next day.
“We would relax during the day, go surfing and then work on our music at night. This is the most rest we’ve ever gotten in our lives,” he said.
Meanwhile, Taggart dubbed the hiatus as one of his most euphoric experiences ever.
“I’ve never felt more inspired and connected to music. Heck, I even threw away my antidepressants by the end of the trip,” he shared with StarLifestyle.
With a refreshed mind and stronger love for music, The Chainsmokers kicked off its ‘So Far So Good’ tour in May 2022.
It toured the US, Canada and Europe before arriving in this part of the world. Next destinations include The Bahamas and Japan.
When asked if it was challenging for them to jump straight into touring after the hiatus, Taggart responded: “We feel more excited than pressured.
“Halfway while working on the album, we wanted to get out there, play shows for our fans and feel the energy, but we couldn’t because of the pandemic. It feels good to be back now.”
Although Pall and Taggart looked tired during our chat, they were all smiles on stage and energetic as they entertained concert-goers with The Chainsmokers’ most notable songs.
PROUDEST WORK YET
So Far So Good – released in May – debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. The Chainsmokers dubbed this release as “proudest work yet”, explaining that it is different compared to past albums.
“This is the first album without any collaborations. We initially planned to have features, but as we started writing more songs, the statement became more personal and we decided to keep the project solely about us,” Pall said.
With this album, The Chainsmokers hope to give strength to people during difficult times.
Taggart shared that its latest album is inspired by a quote from the French film, La Haine, which begins with a man falling off a skyscraper.
“As he was falling, he kept repeating to himself, ‘So far so good – how you fall doesn’t matter, it’s how you land’.
“We found optimism in that quote and felt that it summed up the message of our album,” he said.
Pall added that this album “felt the most complete” as they were able to “build a story” with it – something they hadn’t done before.
“We were releasing singles by itself previously. Now there’s a whole body of works coming out, it’s something new for us and we’re always open to trying new things,” he elaborated.
The Ministry of Education (MoE) through the Department of Scholarship Management , announced that the application for the Scholarship Scheme for aircraft maintenance engineer has opened from today until February 18 at 3pm.
The terms and conditions for the scholarship scheme can also be downloaded from the ministry’s official website www.moe.gov.bn.
For enquiries, applicants can contact the Department of Scholarship Management at the MoE at 2380019 from Monday to Thursday and Saturday during working hours from 7.45am to 12.15pm and 1.30pm to 4.30pm or email to scholarship@moe.gov.bn.
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA (AP) – Romanian authorities descended on a compound near Bucharest on Saturday to tow away a fleet of luxury cars and other assets worth an estimated USD3.9 million in the case investigating Andrew Tate, the divisive social media personality who is detained in the country on charges of human trafficking.
Romania’s National Agency for the Administration of Unavailable Assets said in a statement that it removed a total of 15 luxury cars, 14 designer watches and cash in several currencies. The total value of the goods, the agency said, is estimated at USD3.9 million.
About a half-dozen masked law enforcement officers and other officials descended on the compound on Saturday to take away the goods. The fleet of automobiles included a blue Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, a Porsche, a BMW, an Aston Martin and a Mercedes-Benz.
Tate, 36, a British-United States citizen who has 4.5 million followers on Twitter, was arrested on December 29 in Bucharest along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women on charges of being part of an organised crime group, human trafficking and rape.
Romania’s anti-organised crime agency, DIICOT, said it had seized 15 luxury vehicles in the case, and identified more than 10 properties and land owned by companies registered to the Tate brothers. If prosecutors can prove they gained money through illicit activities including human trafficking, the assets could be used to cover the expenses of the investigation and compensation for victims, said Ramona Bolla a DIICOT spokesperson.
A police officer looks on as a luxury vehicle belonging to Andrew Tate is towed away. PHOTO: AP
RENO, NEVADA (AP) – Add Burning Man to the list of plaintiffs challenging one of the growing number of ‘green energy’ projects in the works in Nevada, United States.
Lithium mines aimed at boosting production of electric vehicle batteries and geothermal power plants that tap underground water to produce renewable energy are at various stages of planning and development in the nation’s top gold mining state.
Environmental groups, Native American tribes and ranchers are among those who’ve filed lawsuits over the past two years seeking to block individual projects.
They say that while they support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to help combat climate change, the commercial developments on public land in Nevada were approved illegally and will have their own environmental and cultural consequences.
Now, the group that stages perhaps the most famous counterculture event in the world is among those facing off against the United States government over geothermal exploration in the Nevada desert where 70,000 people known as “Burners” gather every summer.
Participants walk through dust at the annual Burning Man event near Gerlach, Nevada in the United StatesABOVE & BELOW: The ‘Man’ burns on the Black Rock Desert; and an old wooden yacht art car rolls through the playa. PHOTOS: AP
The San Francisco-based Burning Man Project and four co-plaintiffs filed the new lawsuit in federal court in Reno this week accusing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of breaking environmental laws in approving Ormat Nevada Inc’s exploratory drilling in the Black Rock Desert 193 kilometres north of Reno.
Friends of Nevada Wilderness, Friends of Black Rock/High Rock Inc and two local residents of Gerlach joined the suit that says the agency’s environmental review of the exploration project ignored potential harms that could come from a large-scale geothermal project.
“Ormat’s exploration project will lay the foundation for turning a unique, virtually pristine ecosystem of environmental, historical and cultural significance into an industrial zone, and permanently alter the landscape,” the lawsuit says.
Ormat Vice President Paul Thomsen said the lawsuit has no merit.
The Bureau of Land Management has no comment on the lawsuit, agency spokesman Brian Hires said in an email to The Associated Press.
The drilling is planned within the Black Rock National Conservation Area, home to the festival where themed tent villages and avant-garde art exhibits sprout from a barren desert basin that was once the floor of an ancient lake.
Clothing is optional, but participation is required at the celebration of art, music and sometimes anarchy itself as ageing hippies, Silicon Valley executives and other curiosity seekers gather around drum circles and pagan fire rituals.
Or, as the lawsuit says, where attendees “over the course of eight days, camp and participate in a unique experimental community”.
“The ethos and culture of the event are rooted in the 10 principles of Burning Man”, including “radical inclusion”, gifting, self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility and “leaving no trace”, the lawsuit explains.
The lawsuit said Ormat has attempted to evade analysis of the geothermal power plants’ potential negative effects on the environment by segmenting the project, which limits BLM’s review to only the first stage of its plans, exploration.
“However, this first stage merely confirms where the resources are located to inform future industrial scale geothermal energy development,” the suit said.
“Once the exploration project begins, it will be impossible to stop the effects of the entire geothermal production project.”
The exploration project calls for 19 test wells and pads, associated facilities and 4.5 kilometres of improved and new access roads.
The proposed wells would be adjacent to a number of unique hot springs that are relied upon by the local community for tourism.
The springs also are ecologically significant because they’re “interconnected with each other, the ecosystem and the pristine landscape of the region”, the suit said. “After participating in the public process and seeing no movement on our concerns, we filed this lawsuit to help ensure the impacts from the proposed project are minimised, and that Ormat is a good corporate citizen in this environmentally sensitive, economically vulnerable area of northern Nevada,” said Burning Man Project’s general counsel Adam Belsky.
Thomsen said in an email that Ormat “looks forward to prevailing in the lawsuit and continuing its contribution to Nevada’s green energy, zero emissions future, which will offset some of the copious amounts of fossil fuels the Burning Man Project annually emits in the Black Rock Desert”.
CNA – Twitter Inc has secured a ruling allowing the social media company to force several laid-off workers suing over their termination to pursue their claims via individual arbitration than a class-action lawsuit.
United States (US) District Judge James Donato recently ruled that five former Twitter employees pursuing a proposed class action accusing the company of failing to give adequate notice before laying them off after its acquisition by Elon Musk must pursue their claims in private arbitration.
Donato granted Twitter’s request to force the five ex-employees to pursue their claims individually, citing agreements they signed with the company.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
LAS VEGAS (AP) – UFC 285 got a major boost on Saturday when UFC President Dana White announced Jon Jones will fight for the heavyweight title on March 4 against Ciryl Gane at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Jones (26-1) will make his first appearance since February 2020 when he beat Dominick Reyes to defend his light heavyweight championship.
He then vacated the title in hopes of getting a shot at the heavyweight belt.
White said he offered former heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou the richest deal for a heavyweight in UFC history to fight Jones, but he turned it down.
“Jon Jones has been ready, willing and able to fight anybody. He didn’t care who it was.”
THE WASHINGTON POST – Whatever your wellness goals for the new year, one powerful change could go a long way toward your success: Eat more vegetables. The proven benefits of doing so read like an infomercial: Boost gut health! Manage blood sugar! Reduce inflammation! Improve immunity! Keep blood pressure in check! Lower risk of heart disease! Support a healthy weight! But wait, there’s more! In this case, however, the too-good-to-be-true is actually true.
We know why, to a degree. Vegetables brim with health-protective compounds, including essential vitamins and minerals, fibre, and a broad spectrum of antioxidants, which destroy damaging free radicals in the body. Scientists have isolated and studied many of these plant compounds, but they have only scratched the surface. One thing they have discovered is that taking the compounds in pill form doesn’t have the same benefit. It’s the package deal of the vegetable that protects us. As a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine David Katz so cleverly put it, “The active ingredient in broccoli is broccoli.”
Yet roughly 90 per cent of Americans fall short of the recommended vegetable intake (two to three cups a day for women and three to four cups a day for men), and about 62 per cent of the vegetables we do eat come from the same five sources, three of which are white-potato-based, with one of the most common being french fries, according to a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in 2022. Not that there’s anything wrong with potatoes – they are nutrient-rich and delicious. We just need to branch out (and fry less often).
Vegetables have unique nutrient and antioxidant profiles, so more variety is key to a broader spectrum of health-protective benefits. Colour is a helpful cue, since different antioxidants impart different hues to food. Harnessing the full colour wheel of produce (including white) not only works in our favour nutritionally, it also makes our meals so much more alluring.
On top of the nutrients you get from eating more vegetables, there is a beneficial displacement factor. Opt for, say, mushrooms and peppers on your pizza instead of your usual pepperoni, or dip sliced cucumbers rather than pita chips in your hummus, and you not only get more nutrition, you also, by default, typically reduce calories, sodium, refined grains and processed meats. But it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. Even if you get mushrooms, peppers and pepperoni on your pizza, you’re still better off.
(I know, I know, mushrooms are not vegetables, botanically speaking. Neither are tomatoes, cucumbers or zucchini, for that matter, but from a nutritional and culinary point of view they all count as vegetables).
Whether you are a beginner who is ready to venture beyond the occasional baby carrot or a vegetable aficionado who wants to broaden your horizons, here are simple ways to eat more plants.
ADD A VEGETABLE TO WHAT YOU ALREADY EAT
There’s no need to overhaul your life to incorporate more vegetables – simply toss them into what you are already making. Cooking pasta with tomato sauce? Add a handful of prewashed arugula or baby spinach to the warm sauce to gently wilt it, or pile the greens on top of the finished plate to add a burst of fresh colour and flavour. Fresh chopped baby spinach is also nice to add to chicken noodle soup, minestrone or ramen. If you are ready for something more adventurous, try escarole or dandelion greens instead.
Frozen peas, cauliflower or broccoli are ideal add-ins to mac and cheese. Add a handful to the cheese sauce to warm through before you stir in the pasta. (Frozen vegetables are comparable nutritionally to cooked, fresh vegetables; they are also economical, often require no chopping and are easy to keep on hand, so take advantage of them).
When you make a sandwich, venture beyond the usual lettuce and tomato. Pile on thinly sliced radishes or cucumber, grated carrot, or sprouts. A handful of spinach or kale in your morning smoothie is basically undetectable but adds nutrient-rich dark-green leafys.
Beef up meat dishes with extra vegetables to allow for a more sensible-size serving of meat while keeping overall portions bountiful. Mushrooms do the job especially well thanks to their meaty texture and savoury flavour. Saute them first so they are nicely browned and release their water, then add them to just about any meat dish, from burgers and meatloaf to sloppy joes and stroganoff. This allows you to reduce the meat by about a quarter pound per eight ounces of mushrooms used. Add plant power beyond the usual carrots and potatoes to meaty stews, too, with mushrooms, bell peppers, green beans, and root vegetables such as rutabaga, turnips and celery root.
Don’t relegate vegetables to the realm of the side dish – they can do so much more. Cuplike lettuce leaves, such as Bibb or baby gem, make lovely wrappers for all sorts of fillings – think anything you might put in a taco or wrap sandwich. You can also use sturdier collard greens or kale leaves to make bigger, heartier wraps. (I like to blanch those first to tenderise them).
Vegetables also make supreme scoops for dips. Beyond the usual carrots and celery, try scooping with endive, radishes, snap peas, and blanched broccoli, cauliflower and green beans.
Flip the narrative from the passe one, where the protein gets all the culinary love, and dote on the vegetable instead. Preparing vegetables in surprising, enticing ways keeps you wanting more and can turn around vegetable naysayers. It doesn’t have to mean more work, just a shift in focus.
Serve boldly tasty dishes such as braised red cabbage wedges or honey-glazed carrots with carrot-top chimichurri alongside simply seasoned roasted chicken or fish, for example.
Broccoli-haters have been known to gobble up my flatbread pizzas with broccoli pesto, and even those who recoil at the thought of the boiled Brussels sprouts they were forced to eat as a child can’t get enough of the vegetable when it is roasted and crispy, and garnished with apple and sunflower seeds.
I hope these ideas spark you to get more vegetables into your life, and in more varied ways. Start small, choosing a couple of suggestions you feel are doable and build from there. It’s a habit well worth cultivating, in the new year and beyond.
ANN/THE STAR – Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen left Cambodia yesterday for a three-day visit to the Maldives, said a Cambodian official.
“This is the first-ever official visit of the prime minister to the Maldives since both countries established diplomatic relations in 1995,” a minister attached to the prime minister Sry Thamarong, told reporters at the Phnom Penh International Airport.
In the South Asian island country, Hun Sen will hold a bilateral meeting with Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, during which various aspects of bilateral, regional and international cooperation will be discussed, he said.
“After the meeting, the two leaders will preside over the signing ceremony of six documents for bilateral cooperation in the areas of diplomacy, health and tourism,” Thamarong said.
Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen disembarks an airplane. PHOTO: THE STAR
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – R’Bonney Gabriel, a fashion designer, model and sewing instructor from Texas who competition officials said is the first Filipino American to win Miss USA, was crowned Miss Universe on Saturday night.
Gabriel closed her eyes and clasped hands with runner-up Miss Venezuela, Amanda Dudamel, at the moment of the dramatic reveal of the winner, then beamed after her name was announced.
Thumping music rang out, and she was handed a bouquet of flowers, draped in the winner’s sash and crowned with a tiara onstage at the 71st Miss Universe Competition, held in New Orleans.
The second runner-up was Miss Dominican Republic, Andreina Martinez. In the Q&A at the last stage of the competition for the three finalists, Gabriel was asked how she would work to demonstrate Miss Universe is “an empowering and progressive organisation” if she were to win.
“I would use it to be a transformational leader,” she responded, citing her work using recycled materials in her fashion design and teaching sewing to survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence.
Miss USA R’Bonney Gabriel reacts as she is crowned Miss Universe during the final round of the 71st Miss Universe Beauty Pageant. PHOTO: AP
“It is so important to invest in others, invest in our community and use your unique talent to make a difference,” Gabriel continued.
“We all have something special, and when we plant those seeds to other people in our life, we transform them and we use that as a vehicle for change.”
According to Miss Universe, Gabriel is a former high school volleyball player and graduate of the University of North Texas. A short bio posted on the organisation’s website said she is also CEO of her own sustainable clothing line.
Nearly 90 contestants from around the world took part in the competition, organisers said, involving “personal statements, in depth interviews and various categories including evening gown & swimwear”.
Miss Curacao, Gabriela Dos Santos, and Miss Puerto Rico, Ashley Carino, rounded out the top five finalists.
