Team BFFS took home BND500 for winning the Virtual Treasure Hunt Holiday Edition 2021 hosted by Brunei Events on Sunday as part of the Brunei December Festival 2021.
Meanwhile, team Four Foragers netted BND400 as second prize winners while in third place was team Web Warriors, who received BND300.
All three were returning teams from the first Virtual Treasure Hunt hosted in November.
In groups of four, 12 teams were given four hours to solve riddles and challenges, and to submit their answers by noon for the chance to win cash prizes and join a lucky draw.
The event began with a team check-in via Zoom at 7.45am, followed by a short recitation of Doa and briefing before flagging off at 8am.
By 3.30pm, the teams assembled via Zoom for the announcement of the winners.
Prior to the announcement, the event also saw answers for the hunt revealed and over half of the participants winning lucky draw prizes such as Pova mobile phone and a one-night stay at the Radisson Hotel, as well as dining vouchers from RBC, The Brunei Hotel and Mulia Hotel.
The event also saw a goodie bag distribution for the participants held via contactless drive-through.
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – IKEA will hike its prices by an average of nine per cent next year due to ongoing supply and transportation disruptions, the company that operates most of the Swedish furniture giant’s stores said.
Thursday’s announcement comes as pandemic-fuelled shortages and shipping challenges ramp up inflation and pinch economies globally, with consumers increasingly feeling the bite.
“Like many other industries, IKEA continues to face significant transport and raw material constraints driving up costs, with no anticipated break in the foreseeable future,” Ingka Group, the holding company that owns 90 per cent of IKEA’s stores, said in a statement.
These higher costs – which are mostly being felt in North America and Europe – will now have to be passed on to customers, it added.
“The average of the increase in Ingka Group is around nine per cent globally, with variations across Ingka Group countries and the range, reflecting localised inflationary pressures, including commodity and supply chain issues,” Ingka group said.
According to the company, Ikea franchisor Inter Ikea Group absorbed costs amounting to EUR250 million (USD283 million) across 2021 due to these logistical tensions, which were exacerbated by the rebound in demand after the first phase of the pandemic.
LEVITTOWN, UNITED STATES (AFP) – As Joshua Waldorf was running for a third term on the Pennsbury school board in November, one particularly heated debate triggered a flood of vitriolic messages to his inbox – one of them urging him to shoot himself.
In a shift mirrored in cities across America, his local council overseeing schools in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia had unwittingly become a battleground in the politicised culture wars roiling the nation.
The hateful messages aimed at Waldorf were just one example of the flow of anonymous slurs and threats directed at him and fellow members of the nine-seat board in past months – as their once studious meetings turned to angry shouting matches.
“I’ve been pretty consistent in terms of my views,” Waldorf, a 58-year-old businessman, told AFP as the board prepared to meet in an elementary school gym in Fallsington, in a leafy neighbourhood of family homes. “But I’m being vilified for those that I wasn’t 18 months ago.”
In much of the United States (US), locally elected school boards are tasked with governing a community’s public schools – deciding who to hire as superintendent to manage day-to-day operations, which textbooks to buy, and what education policies to enact.
But over the past year, with the country in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic and a historic reckoning over race relations, the boards have had to rule on far more charged issues – prompting intense backlash from parents often bitterly divided along political lines.
ABOVE & BELOW: A Pennsbury School Board meeting in Levittown, Pennsylvania; and students from Walt Disney Elementary School receive a certificates of appreciation. PHOTOS: AFP
The audience during the Pennsbury School Board meeting
For choosing to require students and staff to wear masks, the Pennsbury School Board – all Democrats – were accused of “child abuse”, and seeking to “dehumanise” students.
After hiring a specialist in “equity, diversity, and education” last year, the board came under fire from parents convinced they had “far left radical agenda to indoctrinate students”.
POLARISATION
School boards from coast to coast have had similar experiences, reflecting “a national polarisation now seeping into other levels of government”, according to Dan Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.
“By and large, school board politics in the US tend to be relatively uneventful and relatively free of emotion,” Hopkins told AFP.
But now, he said, “the really contentious questions that occupy national politics are finding their way” into the meetings.
In Pennsbury, things took a turn for the worse after the board appointed Dr Cherrissa Gibson – a local assistant principal – to a newly created role overseeing diversity and equity in the district’s 10 elementary schools, three middle schools, and one high school.
Her first audit in April 2021 found “an underrepresentation of professional staff of colour”, as well as a disproportionate level of discipline targetting Black students.
Situated in the woodsy outer suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsbury has about 10,000 students, of whom 75 per cent are white, seven per cent are Black, eight per cent are Asian, and four per cent are Hispanic, according to the district’s website.
For District Superintendent Thomas Smith, the audit was a way to help “ensure that every student regardless of where they come from, regardless of their gender, or regardless of the colour of their skin are treated equally.”
But opponents, like 54-year-old Simon Campbell, believe such initiatives only sharpen divisions.
“It is all about trying to stereotype people by race, by gender and separate them and then customise education based upon those separations,” said the former school board member and stock trader.
“Basically kids are being taught that if you’re Black… you are impoverished and need help from the government,” he told AFP. “If you’re white, then you are an oppressor.”
Campbell, who no longer has children in the school district, posts videos of his remarks at school board meetings to YouTube, where he now has more than 30,000 subscribers.
Like other disgruntled parents, he has been invited to appear on conservative radio and television programs to discuss so-called “critical race theory”.
The term, which refers to the study of persistent racism in social institutions, has been seized upon by Republicans to broadly attack Democrats’ racial equity policies in what has become a lightning rod for conservatives across the country.
MISINFORMATION
Christine Toy Dragoni, the outgoing Pennsbury school board president, blames a national “campaign of misinformation” for the intensity of the backlash.
“People are being gaslighted,” she told AFP.
The 50-year-old psychotherapist said the deluge of e-mails began after videos of heated board meeting exchanges went viral online.
Most of the e-mails wished bad things “happen” to the board members, versus direct threats, but “when they do it repeatedly, you start to worry”, said Dragoni.
“Are they going to take the next step and, you know, take action on their words?”
The risk of violence is real: many school districts have been forced to ramp up police presence at board meetings, to remove unruly attendees, as well as to escort members to and from their cars.
Two months ago, US Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing the FBI and federal prosecutors to meet with local law enforcement to discuss strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.
Republicans and conservative media seized on the memo, accusing the Biden administration of weaponising law enforcement to intimidate parents.
“People are within silos,” said Waldorf, who won re-election in November, “we’ve lost the ability to compromise.”
I’m seeking clarification from the authorities regarding local students going overseas for further studies, and if they need travel medical insurance with COVID-19 coverage.
According to the website, Brunei citizens and permanent residents, who are currently residing in a foreign country for work or studies, are not required to purchase a travel medical insurance before the travel date if they are to return to the foreign country after entering the Sultanate for a short trip.
My question is: Does a local student, who is currently in Brunei and is set to travel overseas for further studies, need to get a travel medical insurance before departing the Sultanate as his/her travel will not be considered a short trip?
I hope the authorities could respond to our query soon, to clear the air regarding the procedures and necessary documents in these pandemic times.
LONDON (AFP) – Scottish Premiership club Celtic yesterday announced the signing of Japanese trio Yosuke Ideguchi, Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate, with manager Ange Postecoglou saying they would “excite” the fans.
International midfielder Ideguchi, 25, will arrive on a long-term deal from Gamba Osaka and the versatile Hatate, 24, joins from Kawasaki Frontale
Forward Maeda, 24, who is also a Japan international, will join from Yokohama F Marinos, initially on loan until the end of the season but with a compulsory purchase clause included.
Postecoglou was in charge for more than three years at Yokohama F Marinos before he took over at Celtic earlier this year, and he is confident the three players will thrive in Glasgow.
“We are really pleased to bring in these guys to Celtic and I think they are players who will excite our fans,” he said.
“Clearly I am well aware of their attributes and I think in bringing all three to the club we are bringing even more quality, personality and energy to the squad to work with the players who have done so well for us already this season.
“They are all really at the peak of their careers, ambitious to achieve more success and I am sure at this particular time we will be getting their best years.”
AFP – The European Union (EU) called on Thursday for an international arms embargo on Myanmar’s junta and for toughening its own sanctions following last week’s massacre of more than 30 people.
The killings took place on December 24 in eastern Kayah state, where pro-democracy rebels have been fighting the military, which took over the government from the democratically elected administration in February.
The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said “the appalling act of violence perpetrated by the military regime” on civilians and humanitarian workers underlined the “urgent need” to hold the junta accountable.
“In view of the escalating violence in Myanmar, increased international preventive action is required, including an arms embargo,” Borrell said in a statement.
“The EU also stands ready to impose further sanctions against the military regime,” he added. His call for an international arms embargo echoed one Tuesday from the United States (US).
People fleeing due to fighting between the Myanmar military and the Karen National Union (KNU) line up to receive food at a temporary lodging, PHOTO: AFP
Western nations have long restricted weapons to Myanmar’s military, which even during the pre-coup democratic transition faced allegations of crimes against humanity for a bloody campaign against the Rohingya minority.
The United Nations General Assembly voted in June to prevent arms shipments into Myanmar, but the measure was symbolic as it was not taken up by the more powerful Security Council.
China and Russia, which hold veto power on the Security Council – as well as neighbouring India – are the major arms providers to Myanmar.
Myanmar has been in chaos since a military coup in February, with more than 1,300 people killed in a crackdown by security forces, according to a local monitoring group.
Since the coup, the EU has imposed targetted sanctions on the Myanmar military, its leaders and entities.
The bloc also halted EU financial assistance to the government and froze assistance that could be seen as legitimising the military regime.
Borrell said “the targeting of civilians and humanitarian actors is unacceptable and a blatant violation of human rights and international law, including humanitarian law”.
He called for “full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access to” Myanmar’s people while demanding full protection for humanitarian workers and medical personnel.
International charity Save the Children said two of its employees were among those killed in the massacre.
The EU said it will continue providing humanitarian aid to the people.
AFP/PR TIMES – A model displays a creation from fashion brand HxCx by Japanese designer Takashi Kido for the 2022 Spring/Summer collection at Tokyo Fashion.
The theme of the collection is ‘POWER POP’, designed with consideration for destruction and construction. Fashion, as typified by second-hand clothing, deteriorates and destroys new things, but it continues to change by repeating the cycle of being reconstructed with the addition of new essences. Kido expressed the process by mixing the culture of the 80’s and 90’s that he had experienced.
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – South Africa, where the Omicron variant was detected last month, said its latest coronavirus wave has peaked without a surge in deaths or hospitalisations, enabling the country to lift a nightly curfew for the first time in 21 months.
The Omicron variant emerged in November to become pandemic’s dominant variant, driving new cases at a record rate around the world.
“According to experts, Omicron has reached the peak, with clinical manifestations that have not caused any alarm in the hospital situation,” Mondli Gungubele, a minister in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office, said yesterday.
“Based on the experts, the conditions do allow that we lift the curfew,” he told a news conference, spelling out a move that the presidency announced the previous evening.
Calls by the hospitality sector for the midnight to 4am curfew to be lifted had been mounting ahead of the New Year’s Eve celebrations, with restaurant owners launching an online petition to lobby Ramaphosa.
Many countries outside Africa are tightening restrictions to battle a surge in infections.
The minister cautioned “we will monitor the situation on a hour-by-hour basis” and if need be, it would be reinstated, adding “I hope it never comes back”.
Gungubele said the government of Africa’s most advanced but battered economy took the action to try “balance between livelihoods and saving lives”.
“Businesses are suffering,” he said.
The highly contagious Omicron variant, which contains a number of mutations, has fuelled an end-of-year global pandemic resurgence. But mounting evidence in South Africa and elsewhere has fuelled hopes that Omicron, while more contagious than other strains, may also be less severe.
Infections in South Africa dropped by almost 30 per cent last week compared to the preceding seven days, according to the president’s office, and while hospital admissions also declined in eight of the nine provinces.
Even so, the risk of increased infections “remains high”, the presidency warned in its Thursday night statement.
Mask-wearing remains compulsory in public spaces and public gatherings are limited to 1,000 people indoors and 2,000 outdoors.
The government has continued to stress the need for caution and vaccination.
Inoculation rates have also improved – more than 15.6 million people in South Africa have been fully vaccinated, out of a population of 59 million.
During the surge in December, only a marginal increase in Covid-19 deaths was noted, while hospitalisation rates were lower than in previous waves, the presidency statement said.
“This means that the country has a spare capacity for admission of patients even for routine health services.”
Omicron was first identified in South Africa and Botswana in late November.
It quickly became the dominant strain in South Africa, causing an explosion of infections with a peak of about 26,000 daily cases recorded by mid-December, according to official statistics.
The variant is currently present in more than 100 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
As the COVID-19 situation around the world remains volatile, further aggravated by the emergence of the new Omicron variant a few weeks ago, the recent move by the authorities to revoke green lane travel is commendable.
The global travel industry is in a fragile state, and health guidelines across nations seemingly change daily.
Thus, it incurs losses to those who have purchased air tickets and are seeking compensation.
The pandemic is here to stay; the virus will live among us for years to come.
Countries should not be in a hurry to open their borders for non-essential travel.
After all, surging cases in other parts of the world should be lesson for us that it is more challenging to control transmissions once we allow people to move freely across borders.
CNA – Thailand’s overall financial system is stable and the economy is gradually recovering, but rising household debt and an uneven recovery pose risks, the central bank said yesterday.
Household debt continued to rise, while the Omicron variant of the coronavirus casts doubt over the recovery, Bank of Thailand (BOT) senior director Don Nakornthab said.
The economic recovery remained uneven, especially in tourism-related sectors, Don said.
