Monday, July 8, 2024
29 C
Brunei Town

Colorado wildfires destroy hundreds of homes

SUPERIOR, UNITED STATES (AFP) – Fast-moving wildfires in the United States (US) state of Colorado destroyed hundreds of homes and forced at least 33,000 people to flee, officials have said, as flames tore through areas desiccated by a historic drought.

At least 1,600 acres have burned in Boulder County, much of it suburban, with officials warning that deaths and injuries were likely as the blaze took hold of a hotel, shopping centre and apartment complex in the town of Superior.

“We know that approximately 370 homes in the Sagamore subdivision… have been lost.

There’s a potential of 210 homes lost in Old Town Superior,” Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle told a news conference on Thursday.

“Due to the magnitude and intensity of this fire, and its presence in such a heavily populated area, we would not be surprised if there are injuries or fatalities.”

Colorado media outlets reported that at least six patients were hospitalised with injuries.

About 33,000 people in the towns of Louisville and Superior were told to flee, with the National Weather Service (NWS) describing the situation as “life-threatening.”

A wildfire rips through a development near Rock Creek Village near Broomfield, Colorado. PHOTO: AP

Patrick Kilbride, 72, was at work in a hardware store when he heard the order to evacuate, The Denver Post reported.

He raced home to gather his possessions, but was unable to save anything other than his car and the clothes he was wearing.

His dog and cat both perished.

“It’s ashes,” he said of the home he has lived in for three decades.

“It’s just a strange feeling to go from having everything to make your life comfortable to having nothing,” he said.

The fast-moving fires are thought to have begun when power lines were toppled by gusting winds.

Winds of over 160 kilometres per hour were reported in some places, fanning flames and preventing aircraft from taking off. Patti Holtz described the terror of evacuating her Boulder County home. “The ditches and things and the trees, they’re all up in flames,” she said.

“There’s embers everywhere. So it makes me very frightened of course, with the wind, that it’s going to continue to spread to other homes.

“It was so dark, of course, that you just can’t see anything. It’s like the black of night.”

Changing weather conditions may provide some relief: NWS cancelled high wind warnings in affected areas late on Thursday and forecast heavy snow across Colorado over the next two days.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis declared a state of emergency on Thursday over what he said were devastating fires.

Unlike previous blazes in the state, he said, this one is not in the countryside.

“This area is right in and around suburban sub-developments, stores,” he said.

“It’s like the neighbourhood that you live in. It’s like the neighbourhood that any of us live in.”

Ronaldo statue kicks up a fuss in India’s Goa

CALANGUTE, INDIA (AFP) – A statue of Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has caused a stir in the southern Indian state of Goa, with locals accusing officials of insensitivity for honouring a sports star from the region’s former colonial power.

Protesters with black flags gathered at the site after the statue was unveiled this week in the town of Calangute.

They expressed anger that authorities had shunned Indian sports stars and chosen a player from Portugal, which granted Goa independence in 1961.

Micky Fernandes, a former Indian international player who is from Goa, said the choice was “hurtful” and a “hangover” from Portuguese rule.

“Ronaldo is the best player in the world but still we should have a statue of a football player from Goa,” Fernandes told AFP.

Michael Lobo, a local minister with India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, told AFP the aim was to inspire young people to excel not just inside the country but internationally.

A newly installed statue of Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo in Calangute after the statue caused a stir, this time in Goa, the southern Indian state that was a Portuguese colony until 60 years ago. PHOTO: AFP

“All the boys and girls who want to make football a career will get inspired by people like Cristiano Ronaldo,” Lobo said.

“If you pursue your dream and you’re passionate about it then you can reach a higher goal. This is what we have written on the plaque.”

Most of present-day India gained independence in 1947.

But Portugal’s then military dictatorship only relinquished Goa following an invasion by the Indian army and a two-day war in 1961.

Portugal’s centuries-long influence remains visible in local architecture, particularly the many churches. Many people in Goa have Portuguese-origin surnames.

Unlike in most of India, many Goans prefer football to cricket – and many support Portugal in international tournaments such as the World Cup.

“I follow (Portugal) too but when we have our own players we cannot put up a statue of someone from outside,” Fernandes said.

It is not the first time a statue of Ronaldo, 36, has caused an upset.

A grinning bust unveiled at Madeira airport in Portugal in 2017 was widely ridiculed as looking little like its subject.

Dune isn’t the only great space opera

Silvia Moreno-Garcia & Lavie Tidhar

THE WASHINGTON POST – Ah, the space opera! That “hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn”, as science fiction author Wilson Tucker memorably put it when he coined the term in 1941.

Science fiction writers (and readers) seem to never get enough of big spaceships, big galactic empires or giant worms. Frank Herbert’s Dune may seem like the most epic of these epics, but before him writers such as EE ‘Doc’ Smith and Edmond ‘The World Wrecker’ Hamilton were dreaming up sweeping space adventures.

Let’s talk about some of our favorites in this action-packed genre.

Silvia: Because of the success of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation, many people have been asking me for books that resemble the movie.

Although the obvious recommendation is to plow through the many volumes of the Dune series itself, newbies are sometimes fearful of being thrown into the deep end of the pool (the six Dune books penned by Frank Herbert span some 900,000 words).

Therefore, I’m not going big, but small, and recommending Binti (2015), a novella by Nnedi Okorafor.

Like Dune, Binti has a young protagonist traveling from one distant corner of the galaxy to another, while undergoing a great personal transformation. It’s a coming-of-age tale rooted in African culture, which is continued in two other novellas.

For people looking for full-blown novels, there is Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire (2019).

A new ambassador arrives at the city of Teixcalaan, intent on investigating the sudden death of their predecessor.

It’s heavy on intrigue, politics and court machinations and utilises the tried-and-true science fiction trope of transplanted memories.

An older title that falls into the brick-of-a-book category is Hyperion (1989) by Dan Simmons.

It borrows the structure of The Canterbury Tales and blasts it into space in one massive undertaking.

Lavie: I recently came back from France, where I was really taken with the vibrancy of French space opera. There’s Pierre Bordage, whose Warriors of Silence trilogy dates back to the 1990s, and Jean-Claude Dunyach, whose Dead Stars (1991) is an important early title.

Both are still popular. Joining them are a host of new writers, such as Floriane Soulas, whose The Forgotten of the Amas (2021) is a grandly ambitious novel set around a Jupiter that is presented in the true scale of a full space opera.

I was also taken with Carina Rozenfeld’s Terres (2021), which is not a neat fit but fascinating for its exploration of an entire multiverse. English-language publishers, take note!

The big blockbuster of translated science fiction has to be Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (2008). The trilogy is hugely ambitious and cosmic in scope. And while I’m talking about space opera in translation, brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky in Russia created one of the great settings of 20th Century science fiction with their Noon universe, in a series of novels now gaining new appreciation and new translated editions.

Hard to Be a God (1964) and The Inhabited Island (1969) were rereleased by Chicago Review Press a few years ago. I adore Noon: 22nd Century (1961), a mosaic novel which is first in the sequence, charting the expansion into space of a Soviet utopia. This is one sadly long out of print, though.

I have a strong suspicion that the Noon universe partly inspired Iain M Banks’s Culture series.

These sprawling novels of galactic milieus, giant orbitals and even larger AI ships and their various machinations offer one of the most compelling and sustained visions of a far-flung future.

Silvia: It’s worth noting the Strugatsky translations by Chicago Review Press seem to be the most accurate ones, as the previous editions were censored back in the day.

I’ll end this column with the ever-popular X meets Y: In this case, Dune meets Hans Christian Andersen in The Snow Queen (1981) by Joan Vinge.

It contains the prerequisite galactic empire replete with political machinations. There’s also a hero’s journey, an ageless monarch, a low-tech society versus a high-tech one, and of course a lot of talk of Winter with a capital W.

So, what galactic empire floats your boat, dear readers?

India’s year of the unicorn

MUMBAI (AFP) – Sumit Gupta has had a big year – turning 30, getting married and seeing his startup become one of India’s newest tech unicorns.

Hampered by the coronavirus pandemic and too busy expanding and getting funding for his cryptocurrency platform CoinDCX, his team finally grabbed a few days on the beach in Goa to celebrate recently.

“That was very delightful to everyone,” Gupta told AFP. “It’s been a very, very exciting journey. I’ve learned a lot… The future of India is very bright.”

This year 44 Indian unicorns – privately held startups valued at more than USD1 billion – were minted as investors piled money into a country long overlooked despite its vast potential.

Overseas funds put more than USD35 billion into Indian startups in 2021 – a tripling from 2020, according to data compiled by Tracxn – buying into everything from fintech and health to gaming.

Foreign investors have long preferred China, another Asian country with more than a billion people.

But Beijing’s clampdown on runaway growth in China’s powerful Internet sector, and reining in of big businesses, have spooked investors and wiped billions off giants such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.

In the startup space, investors this year sank USD54.5 billion into Chinese firms, down from USD73 billion in 2020, analysis by GlobalData showed.

Men work at a poultry shop where a QR code for Paytm, an Indian cellphone-based digital payment platform, is displayed in Mumbai. PHOTO: AFP

India by contrast became more attractive, with its large pool of well-educated entrepreneurs upending how many businesses work using a fast-developing digital infrastructure.

“India really is that final frontier where businesses can attract a sixth of the world’s population,” said founder of investment firm Bay Capital Partners Siddharth Mehta.

“I think India is about 13-14 years behind China in terms of size and scale of the market.

India’s overall digital marketplace is about sub-USD100 billion today but that number can easily be a trillion or USD2 trillion over the next 10 to 15 years.”

Among those attracted are Japan’s Softbank, which invested USD3 billion in India this year, as well as China’s Jack Ma and Tencent, and United States (US)-based Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global.

“I believe in the future of India. I believe in the passion of young entrepreneurs in India. India will be great,” Softbank’s founder Masayoshi Son said earlier this month.

Indian tech also saw a record number of initial public offerings (IPO) this year.

Companies going public included food delivery app Zomato and beauty products platform Nykaa, listing at huge premiums to their IPO prices and making billionaires of their founders.

At their October high, Indian stocks had rallied more than 125 per cent from their April 2020 low, becoming one of the world’s best-performing equities markets.

But some experts warn that many of these firms may be grossly overvalued.

For instance, local fintech giant Paytm, the biggest IPO of the year, is yet to make a profit and its share price is some 40 per cent down from its IPO valuation.

India’s bumper year for startups also masks serious problems for an economy struggling to provide jobs for the 10 million young people entering the workforce every year.

Desperate for employment, many take low-wage “gig economy” jobs, earning as little as INR300 (USD4) a day with little to no job security.

But for white-collar workers in the startup sector, demand for qualified workers has outstripped supply this year.

Flush with cash, companies are competing to recruit and retain top talent, offering cash, stock and even motorcycles and tickets to cricket matches as incentives.

“Recruiters reach out to us all the time,” one tech employee told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“Salaries have inflated in the last year and it feels like everybody is hiring. People are changing their jobs constantly.”

CoinDCX’s Gupta, fresh from his beach holiday, was bullish.

“If you remain persistent, it’s very possible to create a unicorn, especially if you’re living in a country like India, which is full of opportunities,” he said.

Do at-home COVID-19 tests detect the Omicron variant?

Carla K Johnson

AP – Do at-home COVID-19 tests detect the Omicron variant?

Yes, but United States (US) health officials said early data suggests they may be less sensitive at picking it up.

Government recommendations for using at-home tests haven’t changed. People should continue to use them when a quick result is important.

“The bottom line is the tests still detect COVID-19 whether it is Delta or Alpha or Omicron,” said President of the College of American Pathologists Dr Emily Volk.

Government scientists have been checking to make sure the rapid tests still work as each new variant comes along. And this week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said preliminary research indicates they detect Omicron, but may have reduced sensitivity. The agency noted it’s still studying how the tests perform with the variant, which was first detected in late November.

Top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said the FDA wanted to be “totally transparent” by noting the sensitivity might come down a bit, but that the tests remain important.

There are many good uses for at-home tests, Volk said. Combined with vaccination, they can make you more comfortable about gathering with family and friends.

If you’ve been exposed to a person who tested positive but you don’t have symptoms, a rapid test five days later can give a good indication of whether you caught the virus. It can also help if you’re not sure whether your runny nose or sore throat is COVID-19.

But consider the context when looking at results. If you feel sick after going out to a nightclub in an area with high infection rates, for example, you should look at a negative result from an at-home test with a little more scepticism, Volk said.

Following up with a PCR test is a good idea, she said. Those tests are more accurate and are done at testing sites and hospitals.

Businesses worry as China food import law kicks in

BEIJING (AFP) – Getting chocolate, and coffee into China could get even harder from today, with new import restrictions adding fresh hurdles for foreign companies bringing products into the world’s largest market for food and drink.

Chinese consumers bought USD108 billion worth of imported produce in 2020, with that number set to grow for 2021 as imports jumped nearly 30 per cent year on year in the first three quarters.

But under laws kicking in on January 1, all producers of food shipped to China will have to register with the customs authority – yet another barrier for international companies that have long complained of being unfairly penalised.

The extra hurdle was previously required only for products posing potential health risks, such as seafood. But now coffee, alcohol, honey, olive oil, chocolate and several other products will also be scrutinised.

On New Year’s Day, “the import curtain will fall”, China-based lawyer with the firm Adaltys Alban Renaud told AFP.

But he said there were still many unknowns: “Will there be a margin of tolerance? What about the applications that are in progress but not approved? What about those who applied too late?”

Chocolates of different brands are on display at a store in Beijing. PHOTO: AFP

One businessman involved in imports told AFP: “You need (certification) otherwise the goods will arrive at ports and you’ll have to pay penalties.”

Companies without the right paperwork will face border hold-ups, he warned.

Importers have complained that the new application details were published late and the website for registering only went online last month, adding that they faced frustrating hurdles trying to register, such as information not being available in English.

Some companies were even given the wrong country code, a Beijing-based diplomat told AFP – such as a Portuguese importer being registered as Spanish.

Food companies and importers have already been battered by control measures included in Beijing’s strict zero-COVID strategy, with China linking the virus to food ever since a Beijing outbreak last year was blamed on imported salmon.

Products entering China are now subject to extra screening and repeated disinfection, with products often banned when a COVID outbreak is discovered at the point of packing overseas.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the chances of COVID-19 being transported in food are slim.

Illinois police seek two in killing of one cop, wounding of second

BRADLEY, ILLINOIS (AP) – Authorities were searching on Thursday for two people believed to have been involved in the fatal shooting of one police officer and wounding of another at a northern Illinois hotel.

The two Bradley police officers were shot late Wednesday while speaking to people in a room at a Comfort Inn along a highway in Kankakee County, the county sheriff’s office said.

The officers were taken to nearby hospitals, where one died and the other was listed in critical condition and undergoing surgery, said the Bradley Police Department. The county coroner identified the slain officer as Sergeant Marlene Rittmanic, 49.

Illinois State Police identified the other as Officer Tyler J Bailey, 27.

An arrest warrant was issued for 25-year-old Darius D Sullivan of Bourbonnais, and the sheriff’s office posted a Facebook request for the public’s help in finding him, saying he should be considered armed and dangerous.

Police also obtained a Kankakee County arrest warrant for Xandria A Harris, 26 of Bradley, but her role in the shootings wasn’t clear.

The police department said in its news release that it was also searching for what it described as a person of interest believed to have been involved, though it didn’t release any identifying information about that person. The officers were at the hotel to investigate a report of dogs that were barking in an unattended vehicle in the parking lot, the sheriff’s office said. They found the room where the vehicle’s possible owner was staying and were shot while talking to the people in that room, it said.

The Comfort Inn, where two Bradley Police officers were shot. PHOTO: AP

Mayor Mike Watson of Bradley, a village of roughly 16,000 people about 80 kilometres south of Chicago, said the wounded officer had been transferred to a Chicago-area hospital, the (Kankakee) Daily Journal reported.

Rittmanic’s body was transported early Thursday in a police procession from the Riverside Medical Center to the Kankakee County morgue, and officials later lowered the flag at Bradley Village Hall to half-staff.

“This is a very sad and tragic day for the Bradley village family. Our hearts and prayers go out to the family members of all involved,” Watson said.

Rittmanic, who lived in Kankakee, joined the Bradley Police Department in 2007 and was promoted to sergeant in 2014, said department spokesman Lieutenant Philip Trudeau. She previously spent seven years as a deputy with the Iroquois County Sheriff’s Department, he said.

Silencing the vocal

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Palestinian journalists have raised the alarm over what they describe as unjust suppression of their content on Facebook, a claim backed by rights groups but rejected by the social media giant.

On December 4, Palestine TV correspondent Christine Rinawi posted a video on her Facebook account in which Israeli security forces were seen shooting a Palestinian on the ground, killing him. He had just carried out a knife attack on an Israeli civilian.

Shortly after she posted her video, Rinawi, who has nearly 400,000 followers, noticed it had been removed from her account.

This was not her first experience with Facebook’s enforcement, and Rinawi said her account had already been restricted after she shared footage of a November attack in Jerusalem.

In both cases, Facebook said it intervened because the posts violated the platform’s standards.

A spokesperson for Facebook’s parent company Meta said its policies “were designed to give everyone a voice while keeping them safe on our apps”.

Palestinian activists and journalists hold banners with their campaign hashtag ‘#FBCensorsJerusalem’ as they protest against what they consider censorship by the social media outlet Facebook of Palestinian content, in the occupied-West Bank city of Hebron. PHOTO: AFP

“We apply these policies to everyone equally, regardless of who is posting.”

Allegations of pro-Israeli bias at Facebook have simmered for years and were renewed in October when Human Rights Watch, a vocal Israel critic, said the platform had “suppressed content posted by Palestinians and their supporters speaking out about human rights issues in Israel and Palestine”.

Palestinian reporters have cited multiple incidents they describe as censorship.

One popular online news outlet, Maydan Quds News, may even have to fire reporters after its main Facebook page with 1.2 million followers was deleted, a source who requested anonymity told AFP.

The Meta spokesperson told AFP it has “a dedicated team, which includes Arabic and Hebrew speakers, who are focussed on keeping our community safe by making sure we’re removing harmful content”.

It also strives to address “any enforcement errors as quickly as possible so people can keep sharing what matters to them”.

In the midst of a bout of fighting in May between Israel and armed factions in the Gaza Strip – the worst in years – Facebook had acknowledged widescale deletion of Palestinian posts, ascribing it to a technical bug that it sought to fix.

According to Palestinian social media monitoring centre Sada Social, 600 Palestinian accounts or pro-Palestinian Facebook posts were restricted or deleted in 2021, a record. The centre helped launch a social media campaign called “Facebook Censors Jerusalem”.

Rama Youssef, a Jerusalem-based journalist who volunteered for the campaign, said Facebook hews to an Israeli point of view and has “double standards”.

The Arab Centre Washington DC think-tank said the Israeli government also pushes to censor “tens of thousands of posts and accounts” that support a Palestinian point of view.

Meta did not answer AFP questions about requests from the Israeli government.

But the company denied accusations of bias, saying its community standards prohibit violence, terrorism, hate and large-scale criminal activity, as well as posts supporting those subjects.

Israeli officials have also accused various social media platforms, including Facebook, of failing to curb anti-Semitism.

In February, then-diaspora affairs minister Omer Yankelevich presented Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter with proposals to beef up the fight against anti-Semitism, saying it was “running rampant” online.

Media expert Iyad al-Rifai of Sada Social said he regularly meets with Facebook representatives to ask for more transparency.

He said the site appeared to target the word “shahid”, Arabic for martyr, which Palestinians frequently use to describe people killed by Israeli forces, including those who carried out attacks.

Rifai told AFP that Facebook insisted it is bound by American standards which consider “attackers to be terrorists”, not martyrs to a political cause.

But he said censoring the term wholesale ignored the wider context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meta did not respond to a question about its policies regarding the use of the word “shahid”.

But it said it reviews posts according to its own policies, as well as “local laws and international human rights standards”.

Rifai said he was concerned that deleting accounts might discourage Palestinians from “engaging with pivotal issues” for fear of losing “their digital history and presence”.

He said he obtained from Facebook “promises to improve the working mechanisms of the algorithms so as to differentiate between journalistic content and ordinary content”, but he feared they offered “temporary rather than radical solutions”.

Mosques receive contributions

VAM®BRN Sdn Bhd handed over a donation to Kampong Belimbing Subok Mosque, Kampong Tanah Jambu Mosque and Kampong Sungai Hanching Mosque yesterday as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Five VAM®BRN Sdn Bhd employees presented the contributions to Bilal Jamalulhair bin Mohin of Kampong Belimbing Subok Mosque, Shakrizal bin Murni of Kampong Tanah Jambu Mosque and Azi Farihan bin Haji Matsah of Kampong Sungai Hanching Mosque.

The donations included equipment for temperature screening, hand sanitiser with auto dispensers, hand soaps, fogging machine, disinfectant sprays and face masks.

VAM®BRN Sdn Bhd presents a donation to Kampong Belimbing Subok Mosque. PHOTO: VAM®BRN Sdn Bhd

Tuchel frustrated by ‘noise’ after Lukaku voices dissatisfaction

LONDON (AFP) – Thomas Tuchel admitted yesterday that he was frustrated with the “noise” around Romelu Lukaku’s situation at Chelsea after the Belgium forward expressed his dissatisfaction with his role at the club.

The “surprised” Chelsea boss said he would sit down with the 28-year-old to discuss the issues but did not see any evidence that his player was unhappy.

Lukaku rejoined the Premier League side from Inter Milan for a club-record fee of GBP97.5

He has scored seven times in a season hampered by injury and coronavirus but Chelsea boss Tuchel has at times left him out of the starting XI even when he has been fit.

Lukaku told Sky Italy he was “not happy with the situation” at Stamford Bridge in an interview released on Thursday, but it was understood to have been conducted three weeks ago.

The player has since told ESPN Brazil he had “a couple of conversations” with Tuchel about what the German wanted from him, during which he told his boss he was “multidimensional”.

Tuchel, whose second-placed side face Liverpool this weekend, told his pre-match press conference that the situation was frustrating.

Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel with Romelu Lukaku. PHOTO: AFP

“We don’t like it, of course, because it brings noise that we don’t need and is not helpful,” said the Chelsea boss. “But on the other side, we don’t want to make more out of it than it actually is.

“You know very well how it is – it’s very easy to take lines out of context, to shorten lines to make headlines, then realise later it’s not so bad or what he meant.”

Tuchel said he was not aware that Lukaku was unhappy at the club.

“The thing with Romelu is that I don’t think anyone in this building is aware he’s unhappy,” he added.

“That’s why (there is) surprise at the statement. That’s why we need to check with him now, because I can see no reason why it should be like this.

“So I will wait to see what Romelu has to say and then we will deal with this.”

The former Paris Saint-Germain boss said a certain level of tension in a dressing room could be turned into an advantage.

“It’s not necessary for the dressing room to be always in harmony,” he said. “You don’t have to hug each other and love each other every day.

“Sometimes it’s good to be on the edge, sometimes it’s good to be in disharmony, when it is in between certain boundaries.”

1...6,9446,9456,946...6,967Page 6,945 of 6,967

Social Media

Category

Site Links

About Us

Borneo Bulletin is the leading English daily in the country. It was first published by Brunei Press. Today, Borneo Bulletin has become the foremost source of information on local and foreign affairs, and the region’s business news.

© 2013 Borneo Bulletin Online - The Independent Newspaper in Brunei Darussalam, Sabah and Sarawak

ns5006141