Four violations of Operasi Peralihan, the movement restriction period from 10pm to 4am, were recorded on Saturday. The violators were issued a BND500 fine each for breaching the stay-at home directive.
According to a Ministry of Health statement yesterday, the violators were locals Mas Rizduan bin Haji Pungut, Pengiran Noor Amli bin Pengiran Haji Md Samli, Md Firdaus bin Abdullah and Pea Chong Hing.
Two violations were found in Brunei-Muara District and two in Temburong District, according to the Royal Brunei Police Force.
ABOVE & BELOW: Mas Rizduan bin Haji Pungut; and Pengiran Noor Amli bin Pengiran Haji Md Samli. PHOTOS: RBPF
ABOVE & BELOW: Md Firdaus bin Abdullah; and Pea Chong Hing
WASHINGTON (AP) – DeMar DeRozan hit a three-pointer at the buzzer for the second straight game to give the Chicago Bulls a 120-119 win over the Washington Wizards yesterday.
Kyle Kuzma’s three-pointer with 3.3 seconds to play gave Washington a 119-117 lead, until DeRozan beat the Wizards in the same way he beat Indiana on Friday night.
DeRozan finished with 28 points and Zach LaVine had 35 points to help the Bulls to their seventh straight win, which is their longest streak since December 18-29, 2014.
According to BasketballReference.com, DeRozan became the first player in NBA history to hit buzzer-beaters on consecutive days.
“It’s amazing, especially doing it on the road,” DeRozan said. “I don’t know if I’m dreaming or if it’s real right now.
“You work your butt off and you understand that if you’re in those positions, try to capitalise on them the best way you can because you’re going to have games where you miss some.”
The Wizards led nearly the whole game, outscoring Chicago 72-30 in points in the paint.
Chicago Bulls’ DeMar DeRozan shoots against Washington Wizards’ Deni Avdija. PHOTO: AP
“He was defended pretty well,” Washington coach Wes Unseld Jr said. “It’s just tough. It’s tough to lose a game like that.”
Kuzma scored 29 points and had 12 rebounds, while Bradley Beal had 27 points and a career-high 16 assists in his first start at point guard. Beal also passed the 14,000 point mark.
Midway through the second quarter, the Wizards were called for a technical full for too many players. Alize Johnson, one of five players on 10-day contracts, was the sixth player on the court.
TIP-INS
Bulls: F Tyler Cook suffered a sprained left ankle early in the second quarter and did not return. F Javonte Green was out with a right adductor strain. Interim coach Chris Fleming said that he hopes G Lonzo Ball and F Alonzo McKinnie, who were in health and safety protocols, could return to action early next week. Coach Billy Donovan addressed the team over Zoom on Saturday and told them how proud he was with Friday night’s win. Donovan could return from health and safety protocols today.
Wizards: Signed G Tremont Waters to a 10-day contract. G Brad Wanamaker, who started on Thursday, entered the health and safety protocols. Rotation players G Spencer Dinwiddie, F Rui Hachimura, F Montrezl Harrell, G Aaron Holiday and G Raul Neto are still in COVID-19 protocols
DEROZAN’S BIG SHOT:
DeRozan said he concentrated on the fundamentals before he shot the game-winner.
“I wanted to make sure my feet were behind the line,” he said. “I wanted to give it a chance to go in.
“My shots all night were short. It’s tough to play on back-to-backs. I kind of felt it throughout the game.”
LaVine shook his head when asked to describe DeRozan.
“The dude’s incredible,” LaVine said. “You can’t say much more than that. Good thing we’ve got DeMar DeRozan on our team.”
BEAL IMPRESSED WITH DEROZAN: Throughout Beal’s NBA career, he has marveled at DeRozan. “That’s what he does,” Beal said. “He takes tough shots and he makes tough shots.”
Beal believes the short-handed Wizards simply came up short against a marvelous opponent.
“We did everything we possibly could to win, but DeRo just made a crazy shot at the end of the game,” he said. “In a way, the shot is demoralising and takes the energy out of you, but to know that we competed and played hard, we set ourselves up to win, and you feel great about that.”
COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Denmark’s government has set an ambitious target of making all Danish domestic flights green by 2030, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Saturday.
“Will it be difficult? Yes. Can it be done? Yes, I think so. We’re already on it. Talented researchers and businesses are working on solutions,” Frederiksen said in her New Year’s Day address to the nation.
“If we succeed, it will be a green breakthrough. Not just for Denmark, but the whole world. If there’s anything we have learned in recent years when it comes to handling big crises, it’s that we must never hesitate,” she said.
Frederiksen provided no details about how the lofty goal would be accomplished, but did say her government was open to the introduction of a tax on carbon dioxide gas emissions, after having previously been opposed.
The aviation industry is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, and airlines are developing new and cleaner technologies, including those that reduce fuel use and emissions.
AP – The winter grassland fire that blew up along Colorado’s Front Range was rare, experts said, but similar events will be more common in the coming years as climate change warms the planet – sucking the moisture out of plants – suburbs grow in fire-prone areas and people continue to spark destructive blazes.
“These fires are different from most of the fires we’ve been seeing across the West, in the sense that they’re grass fires and they’re occurring in the winter,” said professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan Jonathan Overpeck.
“Ultimately, things are going to continue to get worse unless we stop climate change.”
Flames swept over drought-stricken grassy fields and neighbourhoods northwest of Denver on Thursday with alarming speed, propelled by guests up to 105 miles per hour. Tens of thousands were ordered to flee with little notice.
“I came out of Whole Foods, which is about a half mile from ground zero, and felt like I had to jump in my car and make a dash for my life as the smoke and wind and nearby flams were
engulfing the area,” Susie Pringle of Lafayette said in an email. “It was scary!”
Three people were missing as of Saturday, and at least seven were injured but no deaths were reported. Officials estimated nearly 1,000 homes and other buildings were destroyed.
A house burns as wildfires rip through a development in Superior, Colorado. PHOTOS: APThe remains of a Tesla factory
Photos show what’s left of the Element by Westin hotel
Many whose homes were spared remained without power while temperatures dropped to the single digits. The blaze burned at least 9.4 square miles.
The cause of the blaze is still under investigation, but experts say its clear what allowed it to spread so fast.
“With any snow on the ground, this absolutely would not have happened in the way that it did,” said snow hydrologist in Boulder Keith Musselman. “It was really the grass and the dry landscape that allowed this fire to jump long distances in a short period of time.”
Three ingredients were needed to start this fire – fuels, a warm climate and an ignition source, said fire scientist with the University of Colorado, Boulder Jennifer Balch. “And then you add a fourth ingredient, wind, and that’s when it became a disaster.”
Temperatures in Colorado between June and December were the warmest on record, Balch said. The grasses grew thick because they had a wet spring, but saw no moisture until snow flurries arrived on Friday night.
“All of Colorado is flammable, our grasses are flammable, our shrubs are flammable, our trees are flammable,” Balch said. “This is a dry landscape that is flammable for good chunks of the year, and those chunks of time are getting longer with climate change.”
The lesson learned throughout this event is that the “wildland-urban interface is way bigger than we thought it was”, Balch said. That means a wider area is under threat of wildfire.
That border area – where structures built by people meet undeveloped wildland prone to fire – has always been the foothills, she said. Firefighters in Boulder consider the interface west of Broadway – a busy road that passes through the center of town. But Thursday’s fire sparked east of that line, next to thousands of houses that have sprouted up on the east side of the Rockies since the 90s, Balch said.
“There were stretches between Denver and Fort Collins that had no development, but now it’s just like one long continuous development track,” Balch said. “And those homes are built with materials that are very flammable – wood siding, asphalt roofing.
“We need to completely rethink how we’re building homes.”
The other important change is understanding how these fires start in the first place, she said.
“There’s no natural source of ignition at this time of year. There’s no lightning,” she said. “It’s either going to be infrastructure-related or it’s going to be human caused.”
“The way we live in the landscape and our daily activities make us vulnerable,” she said.
Over the last two decades, 97 per cent of wildfires were started by people, according to a recent study by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Causes have ranged from accidents at construction sites, to a car with a hot tailpipe, to tossed cigarettes.
“I like to say, we need Smokey Bear in the suburbs,” she said. “We need to be thinking about how our daily activities can contribute ignitions or sparks that start wildfires.”
Unless people stop climate change by cutting back on fossil fuels, wildfires will threaten communities, Overpeck said.
“There’s little doubt in my mind that the conditions conducive to really bad wildfire, whether it’s grass or forest, are only going to get worse,” he said.
As more people move to areas where wildfires occur, the threat goes up.
“We’re building towns and cities and infrastructure and so it’s just a matter of time before we have whole towns burning down like we had in California and events like this in Colorado.”
Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD)announced that its campus will return to physical learning this month. With this, student and staff volunteers at UBD Vaccination Centre will return to the classroom and work commitment.
The university said the UBD Vaccination Centre has been put on hold since December 31, 2021. UBD thanked the public for their support and feedback and hopes to serve the Sultanate and the people again.
BEIJING (AFP) – Twenty-two people were injured when a shallow earthquake hit southwestern China yesterday afternoon and shook the popular tourist city of Lijiang, local authorities said.
The quake struck near the border between Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which put the magnitude at 5.4 and depth at 38 kilometres.
The Yunnan Seismological Bureau said 22 people had been injured in the quake, two severely, in Ninglang county.
THE WASHINGTON POST – Assuming the role of a peripatetic tour guide, Henry Gee in A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth takes the reader on an exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function. En route we encounter some of the oddities and peculiarities that this process – guided by a blend of chance and evolutionary election – has thrown up.
We also learn how physical constraints have limited possibility. Bugs, for example, are small for a reason. Beyond a certain size, an insect, lacking an internal skeleton, would be crushed by its own unsupported weight. While mammals originally laid eggs, live-bearing limits the size they can achieve on land. Gee, a prolific natural-history author and a senior editor at the journal Nature, shows us how evolution’s strategy has largely been based on the repurposing of form through biological reconfiguration, rather than on reinvention.
The extinct lycopod forests of the late Carboniferous period that originated around 300 million years ago, which Gee describes as looking like the “desolate landscape of the First World War Western Front,” are illustrative of the alien terrains and vistas that were once commonplace on Earth. We also encounter playful variations on the theme of dimensions, with insects the size of crows, giant scorpions reminiscent of large dogs, and pterosaurs “as large as small airplanes” whose wings – allowing them to soar on thermals – were so expansive that they were incapable of flapping. The bizarre menagerie that originated in the Cambrian period, some 541 million years ago, provides a glimpse into the limitless world of potential variations on animal form.
In this whirlwind perusal of life’s eclectic embellishments, it rapidly becomes apparent that the mandates of survival, while conjuring up an impressive bestiary with a magic box of evolutionary tricks, have nevertheless sampled just a minute fraction of life’s audacious potential. Most disconcerting, perhaps, is the “chilling inhumanity” of the failed experiments in human existence, including the extinct species Homo erectus, which, although resembling us superficially, appeared to lack our elaborate mental capacity. In life’s narrative skip across the DNA sequence, it is clear that individual species are ephemeral and irrelevant participants in this enigmatic pageant. Earth is haunted by the ghosts of countless creatures that have been consigned to oblivion.
Core to Gee’s narrative is the way in which life’s history is a tale of continuous change and transformation, driven and underpinned by the Earth’s geological fluidity. Life was forged in the furnace of adversity, establishing itself by artfully requisitioning and repurposing the silver lining of misfortune. The infant Earth, Gee reminds us, was quite unlike our planet today. Its virgin atmosphere was “an unbreathable fog of methane” and its surface “an ocean of molten lava”, lacking water and land.
While we have become accustomed to the relatively benign climate prevailing across much of the planet, Gee reminds us that life on Earth has been repeatedly pockmarked by climatic instability and inhospitality. The geological machinations responsible for this include the rambunctious motion of the Earth’s tectonic plates, which “bump against, slide past or burrow beneath one another”, causing geological mischief and volcanic eruptions.
Along with various biological phenomena, including the “extravagant consumption” of carbon by trees, such events have contrived to undermine the greenhouse effect and propel the Earth into a series of protracted ice ages. Conversely, the destabilisation of deposits of methane gas, which has a greenhouse effect significantly more potent than that of carbon dioxide, has led to the periodic broiling of the planet.
Such events have pushed life “in the direction of increasing complexity”. They have also resulted in mass extinctions, including at the end of the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, when around 90 per cent of Earth’s species vanished. More recently, just 10,000 years ago, the extinction event at the close of the Pleistocene period led to the disappearance of virtually all animals.
Although artfully avoiding the critical question of how life originated in the first place, and only touching on the issue of whether species are the inevitable results of evolutionary processes or the contingent products of chance events, Gee has nevertheless succeeded in producing a seamless and highly compressed account of life’s grand narrative, spanning its full duration of about 4.6 billion years. It is a tale of resilience and tenacity, and his writing is evocative and filled with humour. He describes the shallow oceans of the early Cambrian period, for example, as being “filled with the spiky clatter of arthropod pincers”.
But there is nothing lighthearted about Gee’s conclusion. Irrespective of humankind’s malign contributions, climatic crises and geological shenanigans will inevitably result in the extinction of our species within just a few thousand years.
In spite of this well-justified pessimism, and while life on Earth will invariably continue to be tortured and challenged, our emerging ability to synthesise and redesign the genomes of living things may provide humankind with some consolation in the form of a tentative genetic tool kit for ensuring what Gee describes as its “mayfly” survival.
OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO (AP) – In her dreams, Eveline Zagre believes her two sets of twins share premonitions and make demands of her – buy a chicken, beg for money.
“Their spirits will enter your dreams and let you know what they want and then you have to get it for them,” she said.
Despite the burden of following their dream directives, Zagre considers herself doubly blessed. The 30-year-old mother of five is raising three-year-old twin girls and 13-year-old twin boys in Burkina Faso – one of the West African countries where twins are revered for having special powers, like healing the sick, warding off danger, bringing financial prosperity and predicting the future.
The country, with its strong cultural embrace of the supernatural, regards twins as the children of spirits, and the mothers of twins as specially picked to bear them.
This deeply rooted perception stems from the days people could not scientifically explain how twins were conceived. In other parts of West Africa, twins are seen as a curse.
“People were afraid of twins because they couldn’t explain… why these children were born two instead of one,” said Honorine Sawadogo, a sociologist at the government-run National Centre for Scientific and Technological Research in Burkina Faso.
Twins eat slices of watermelon at the Patte d’Oie district of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. PHOTO: AP
Parents of twins would turn to witch doctors who came up with rules they believed they must follow to keep their children and themselves safe, said Sawadogo, who did her doctoral research on the mothers of twins. These beliefs and practices persist today despite the established scientific explanation for how twins come into the world.
Zagre and her husband Ousmane Nikiema visited a witch doctor after giving birth to both sets of twins. For their boys, the parents were given no directives. But a witch doctor told them their girls, Victorine and Victoria Nikiema, needed to beg for money on the side of the road or risk being killed by a family member’s spirit.
“If (the witch doctor) sees a spirit in the compound, you’ll have to take the children to beg to prevent the curse,” said Nikiema, who lives with his family in Burkina Faso’s capital city, Ouagadougou. “(The spirit) might not kill them, but he’ll do something to them. He can make them insane or something similar, or he can paralyse them.”
Throughout Ouagadougou, mothers and their identically dressed twins can be seen sitting on mats alongside roads and begging. They are driven by dream requests and witch doctor instructions, mothers told The Associated Press.
As they beg, visitors offer gifts, like chickens, honey cake and seashells, in exchange for blessings.
“I bless people when they come and give us things, I say may God heal you if someone comes and is sick,” said Marcelline Tapsoba, the mother of two-year-old twins.
As they sat on the ground in their usual spot in the city’s outskirts, Tapsoba and her children were surrounded by other mothers and their twins who also were begging and offering blessings.
Tapsoba said those who receive her blessings often return weeks later to thank her for their newfound romantic or financial success.
Similar scenes play out in Ghana. “If you give birth to the twins in Ghana, you have to follow the twins’ rules,” said Kasim Amadu, a businessman. It is thought that wronged and unhappy twins can lead to personal harm for the parents and others, he said.
Most cultures in West Africa cherish twins, and soothsayers believe they can enhance their communication with the spirit world through them, said Philip Peek, a professor emeritus at Drew University in New Jersey whose research includes folklore and African religion.
Peek, who is the editor of the book Twins in African and Diaspora Cultures: Double Trouble, Twice Blessed, said there is a longstanding global belief that twins have a heightened ability to communicate because of the bond they form in the womb, which allows them to connect to higher powers.
“They communicate intuitively and the ability is certainly recognised in secular terms, not just spiritual,” Peek said.
Not every West African community embraces them.
Twins are considered evil in some neighbourhoods surrounding Nigeria’s capital of Abuja, said Stevens Olusola Ajayi, a missionary who has rescued 19 sets of twins out of fear they would be killed.
Even in countries where they are viewed favourably, twins can be at risk of being exploited for financial gain. Some mothers borrow children from neighbours and pass them off as twins to make more money from begging, said Sawadogo.
It is not easy being the parent of twins. In Ouagadougou, Fati Yougma, 27, said her twin girls beat her in her dreams if she doesn’t obey their demands.
Despite that, Yougma is honoured to be their mother.
EUGENE, OREGON (AP) – Will Richardson scored 23 of his career-high 26 points in the second half, Jacob Young had a season-high 22 points and Oregon rallied from a nine-point second-half deficit to beat Utah 79-66 yesterday.
De’Vion Harmon added 11 points for Oregon (8-6, 1-2 Pac-12).
The Ducks made just one of their first 10 field-goal attempts and trailed most of the first half before Both Gach hit a tjree-pointer to give Utah (8-6, 1-3) a 40-31 lead early in the second. Richardson and Young combined to score 15 points in a 17-2 run over the next 3 1/2 minutes that gave Oregon the lead for good.
Richardson, who finished 9-of-12 shooting and hit a career-high five three-pointers, scored Oregon’s first nine points in an 11-4 spurt that made it 67-57 when Young drove the left side of the lane and dropped a wrap-around pass to N’Faly Dante for a two-hand dunk with 5:22 to play. Young hit a three about 2 1/2 minutes later to push the lead into double figures for good.
Branden Carlson led the Utes with 15 points, Marco Anthony scored 14 and Lazar Stefanovic added 10. David Jenkins Jr, who scored 1,194 points in two years at South Dakota State before leading UNLV in scoring at 14.8 points per game last season, fouled out with seven minutes to play and was held scoreless for the first time in his career. The redshirt junior went into the game as Utah’s second-leading scorer at 12.7 per game while leading the Pac-12 in both made 3s (37) and 3-point field-goal percentage (.435).
Oregon seemed to crank up its defensive intensity in the second half, pressuring Utes ball handlers into turnovers and scoring 20 of the Ducks’ 22 fast-break points. They shot 18 of 28 (64.3 per cent) from the field and 6 of 8 from 3-point range while scoring 50 points after halftime.
The Ducks are 20-2 against Utah under coach Dana Altman and have won eight straight in the series.
De’Vion Harmon celebrates with Will Richardson and Jacob Young. PHOTO: AP
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Air travel continued to be severely disrupted in the United States on Saturday, with bad weather in parts of the country adding to the impact of a massive spike in COVID-19 infections fuelled by the Omicron variant.
The United States (US) had 2,723 cancelled flights, more than half of the 4,698 cancelled worldwide, around 1pm (0400 GMT yesterday), according to tracking website FlightAware.
In addition, 5,993 domestic flights were delayed on Saturday, out of a total of 11.043 worldwide for the day.
The worst affected US airline was SkyWest, which had to cancel 23 per cent of its flight schedule, according to the site.
In the US, airports in Chicago were particularly hard-hit because of bad weather, with a snowstorm on Saturday afternoon and into the night.
The global air travel industry is still reeling from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Many pilots, flight attendants and other staff are absent from work after contracting COVID-19, or because they are quarantining after coming in contact with someone who has the infection.
Some 7,500 flights were cancelled by airlines worldwide over the Christmas weekend.
