The BruHealth app has now become synonymous with our daily life and we are now already accustomed to do our daily self-report without fail since it is a pre-requisite to scan before entering any public premises.
As a recently recovered COVID-19 patient, I found the Home Isolation feature very useful and handy while I was in self-isolation. Once you are confirmed positive after uploading your antigen rapid test (ART) result, your code will automatically turn to purple and BruHealth will automatically configure a 10-day Home Isolation End Date calendar to monitor your health condition on a daily basis. It even has a ‘swab icon’ as a reminder for you to conduct an ART test on the fifth day of home isolation.
Having COVID-19 is a no-fun experience but the latest Home Isolation feature helps to keep you on track in monitoring your health status until the 10-day isolation period is over.
Even with BruHealth experiencing technical glitches at certain times, we should give credit to the mobile app and to make allowance for further improvements for everyone’s convenience.
BEIJING (CNA) – China aims to increase renewable power, maintain crude oil output and boost natural gas production, as it seeks to balance energy security and achieve its climate change goals.
China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gases emitter, has said its carbon emission would peak by 2030, while it has said it would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
“We will accelerate the adjustment of the energy structure and promote energy supply security and low-carbon transformation at the same time,” the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement yesterday.
China will keep annual crude oil output at 200 million tonnes and crank up annual natural gas production to more than 230 billion cubic metres (bcm) by 2025.
It said the country would “actively expand” exploration and development of resources such as shale oil and shale gas, and would seek to establish coalbed methane production bases in the Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Shanxi regions.
China also planned to achieve gas storage capacity of 55-60 bcm, or 13 per cent of total annual consumption by 2025, and complete a southern extension to the existing China-Russia gas pipeline, the commission said.
Beijing would encourage developing ethanol, biodiesel and bio-jet fuel, provided it did not affect food security, it said.
China suspended a nationwide plan for blending gasoline to have 10 per cent ethanol from 2020 after a sharp fall in the country’s corn stocks and limited production capacity of the biofuel.
China aims to make non-fossil fuels account for about a fifth of total energy consumption by 2025, up from 16 per cent in 2020, and to control coal use in heavy industry including steel, chemical and cement.
About 30 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power capacity would be phased out during 2021-2025, while it aimed to raise hydropower capacity to 380 GW and nuclear power capacity to 70 GW by 2025, it said.
China plans to install at least 62 GW capacity of pumped hydropower, a system that involves pumping water to a higher reservoir during off peak times to generate power at peak times.
It also aims turn more than 200 GW of coal-fired power plants to peak-shaving facilities that are used to stabilise the grid operation as the use of intermittent renewable power rises.
ADEN (AFP) – Five-year-old Amina Nasser hugs her toys in a decrepit cancer ward in Yemen, her life in the hands of a healthcare system pushed to the brink of collapse by grinding conflict.
Rudimentary equipment, peeling paint and the stench of urine are constant reminders of how Yemen’s seven-year-old war has ravaged essential public services.
Amina, two months into her treatment for leukaemia at the Al-Sadaqa hospital in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, is one of millions whose lives have been upended.
”We didn’t have any other choice,” her mother Anissa Nasser said, sitting with her daughter in the rundown paediatric oncology ward. Amina gets free chemotherapy, but her unemployed parents must find the cash to somehow pay for other medicines and tests.
”We wanted to send her for treatment abroad,” the mother said, but that was far beyond their reach.
The World Bank estimates just half of Yemen’s medical facilities are fully functional, and that 80 per cent of the population have problems accessing food, drinking water and health services.
Three-quarters of Yemen’s 30 million population depend on aid. It is the legacy of a war that started when Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa in 2014.
ABOVE & BELOW: People walk toward the entrance of the Al-Joumhouria hospital in the Khor Maksar area of Yemen’s southern city of den; and a battered bronze plaque in Arabic and English marking the year 1954, during British colonial rule, when Queen Elizabeth laid the founding stone, is fixed on a wall at the hospital. PHOTOS: AFP
ABOVE & BELOW: An amputee sits on a wheelchair near the battered bronze plaque at the hospital; and a patient lies in a bed
The internationally recognised government fled south to Aden, and a military coalition intervened in 2015.
Fighting continues. The United Nations (UN) has estimated the conflict has killed 377,000 people, both directly and through hunger and disease. Some parts of Al-Sadaqa hospital have funding; the malnutrition centre, backed by UN agencies, has polished floors and smells of detergent.
Tiny, emaciated children, shrunken by their hunger, lie hooked up to drips.
The UN, which has called Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, warned this week that the number of people in famine conditions is projected to increase five-fold this year to 161,000.
Some 2.2 million children are expected to be acutely malnourished in the coming months, with over half a million children already facing life-threatening starvation.
And the UN has itself warned of a dire funding shortfall ahead; a pledging conference raised less than a third of the money it said was needed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
In the hospital, donor funding means that at least in the ward for malnourished children, there is electricity and the staff have been paid. But with medics stretched thin, funding for one area means other areas can be neglected.
If there is support for one section of the hospital, then ”everyone wants to work there, hoping to improve their living situation”, said the hospital’s Director-general Kafaya Al-Jazei.
In Aden, public hospitals lack basic equipment as well as staff – with doctors and nurses preferring the higher salaries at private clinics or international organisations.
In another Aden hospital, Al-Joumhouria, a battered bronze plaque in Arabic and English marks the year 1954, during British colonial rule, when Queen Elizabeth II laid the founding stone.
Today, the building is in a pitiful state, with shortages of staff, drugs and equipment.
”The hospital isn’t maintained or air-conditioned,” said nurse Zubeida Said. ”There are leaks in the bathrooms. The building is old and dilapidated.”
Hospital staff have protested the ”deplorable” conditions, said the hospital’s interim chief Salem Al-Shabhi who hires medical students to meet the staff shortfall, for YER10,000 (about USD9) a day.
Final-year medical students are under no illusions about what awaits them, with some hoping to leave Yemen when they graduate.
”We want a job with a good salary in a safe place,” said Eyad Khaled.
But classmate Heba Ebadi, who plans to specialise in gynaecology, is determined to help her country ”even if the health system gets worse”.
”We want to help the people here,” she said. ”Who else will help them? We have to stay here.”
DALLAS (AP) – A storm system that left widespread damage and some injuries in its wake in Texas drifted into Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama yesterday, possibly triggering “a regional severe weather outbreak”, the Storm Prediction Center said.
The affected areas, including the cities of Baton Rouge and Jackson, Mississippi, could see strong tornadoes, forecasters said.
Louisiana’s federal and state authorities reminded thousands of hurricane survivors living in government-provided mobile homes and recreational vehicle (RV) trailers to have an evacuation plan because the structures might not withstand the expected weather.
More than 8,000 households live in such temporary quarters spokesman for a joint information centre for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Bob Howard said on Monday.
In a joint statement, the agencies said floods might cause the most damage. “Repeated bouts of heavy rainfall can occur over the same areas, increasing the risk for flooding,” the statement said. “Move to higher ground if you hear of flood warnings.”
Nearly 1,800 households in trailers provided directly by FEMA are unable to return yet to homes damaged or destroyed by hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020, according to a news release last week. Another 1,600 trailers were deployed for Hurricane Ida’s displaced households, Howard said, and Louisiana has set out more than 4,400 RV trailers for Ida’s victims under a test programme paid for by FEMA.
Anyone living in state or FEMA temporary housing needs to keep cellphones on and fully charged, with the volume high and severe weather alerts enabled, the agencies said.
“The danger is expected to be highest at night,” they added.
The release noted that the mobile homes and RV trailers are government property that cannot be moved.
PUTRAJAYA (BERNAMA) – There is no report of any Malaysian involved in the tragic crash of China Eastern Airlines MU5735 in Guangxi Province, China, said the Malaysian Foreign Ministry.
In a statement yesterday the ministry said, however, the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing as well as Consulates General of Malaysia in Kunming, Nanning and Guangzhou have been closely monitoring the developments since the accident.
The ministry, on behalf of the Malaysian government, also extended its condolences and sympathy to the Chinese government and the families of the victims who perished in
the accident.
A passenger plane with 132 people aboard crashed in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Monday afternoon.
The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft, which departed from Kunming and was bound for Guangzhou, crashed into a mountainous area near the Molang village in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou at 2.38pm, causing a mountain fire.
Brunei Darussalam Meteorological Department (BDMD) yesterday held the recitation of Surah Yaasiin and Tahlil ceremony in conjunction with World Meteorological Day 2022.
The ceremony began with a mass recitation of Surah Yaasiin and Tahlil, followed by Doa Selamat and Doa against COVID-19.
Joining the virtual ceremony was Minister of Transport and Infocommunications Dato Seri Setia Awang Abdul Mutalib bin Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Setia Dato Paduka Haji Mohd Yusof.
According to BDMD, as a member of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Sultanate celebrates March 23, which is the date of the establishment of the world scientific body under United Nations in 1950.
The ceremony was also held to appreciate the important contributions made by the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services around the world in ensuring the safety and well-being of the community. This year the theme of the celebration is ‘Early Warning and Early Action’.
Permanent secretary, deputy secretary (infocommunications) and acting deputy permanent secretary (transportation) at the Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications (MTIC), Director of as chair of event, heads of executives, heads of departments as well as senior officials and staff from the MTIC, departments and authorities under it were also present.
A robust economic ecosystem lies in the hands of the public even during COVID-19 restrictions, said Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office and Minister of Finance and Economy II Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Mohd Amin Liew bin Abdullah in response to a media query on the government’s plans for economic recovery. More details in Wednesday’s Borneo Bulletin.
Brunei Darussalam was ranked 12th in the Refinitiv Islamic Finance Development Report 2021: Advancing Economies, in terms of overall development in the Islamic finance industry out of 135 countries being assessed. More details in Wednesday’s Borneo Bulletin.
Brunei Darussalam will sight the new moon of Ramadhan for 1443 Hijrah next Friday to determine the first day of fasting, according to the Syariah Court of Appeal on Tuesday. More details in Wednesday’s Borneo Bulletin.
