A 47-year-old woman suffering from respiratory problems due to COVID-19 passed away, raising the number of deaths related to the virus in the country to 58.
“By the will of Allah the Almighty and with a heavy heart, the Ministry of Health (MoH) would like to inform the public that one COVID-19 confirmed case has returned to the grace and mercy of Allah the Almighty,” said Minister of Health Dato Seri Setia Dr Haji Mohd Isham bin Haji Jaafar during the daily press conference yesterday.
He said the woman had been receiving treatment at the intensive care unit.
The minister said. “The Ministry of Health as well as the people of Brunei Darussalam, would like to express its deepest condolences to the family and pray that her soul will receive blessings and is placed among the pious.”
Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Major General (Rtd) Dato Paduka Seri Haji Aminuddin Ihsan bin Pehin Orang Kaya Saiful Mulok Dato Seri Paduka Haji Abidin was also present.
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – World number one Jon Rahm says he would happily swap consistency for more victories as he opens his 2022 campaign at the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii this week.
The Spaniard heads a star-studded field at the PGA Tour’s calendar-year opening tournament in Maui following a dazzling 2021 campaign which included a maiden major victory at the US Open as well as PGA Player of the Year honours.
The 27-year-old also garnered the Vardon Trophy and Byron Nelson Award for scoring average, a reflection of a remarkable consistency which included no fewer than 15 top-10
finishes.
Rahm said on Tuesday he hopes to improve on those standards this year – but admits he would prefer to add to his collection of 13 professional wins where possible.
“My goal is always to do better each year,” Rahm said.
“But I could tell you right now I would gladly take a bit more of inconsistency but have more than one win.”
JAKARTA, INDONESIA (AP) – Indonesian prosecutors yesterday demanded a life sentence for a top terror suspect who eluded capture for 18 years and accused him of masterminding a series of deadly attacks in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
Aris Sumarsono, 58, whose real name is Arif Sunarso but is better known as Zulkarnaen, sat impassively as the prosecution announced the sentencing demand before a panel of three judges in East Jakarta District Court in a session that was held remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Police and prosecutors said Zulkarnaen is the former military commander of a Southeast Asian militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. The group is widely blamed for attacks including the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, as well as attacks in the Philippines.
Zulkarnaen had eluded capture for 18 years after being named a suspect in the October 2002 suicide bombings of Paddy’s Pub and the Sari Club in Bali. He was arrested last year in Lampung, a province on the southern tip of Sumatra. Police were tipped off to his hideout after interrogating several suspected militants arrested in earlier raids.
Zulkarnaen argued that he was a leader of the network’s military wing but was not involved in the operation of the Bali bombings, as he was focussed on organising his squad for sectarian conflicts in Ambon and Poso and in the southern Philippines.
Judges at a trial hearing of suspected militant Arif Sunarso, who remotely appeared at East Jakarta District Court. PHOTO: AP
During his trial, which began in September, other convicted militants in the 2002 Bali bombings, including Umar Patek and Ali Imron, who were sentenced to 20 years and life in jail, respectively, supported Zulkarnaen’s claim, saying he knew about the plot but did not play a role in its operation.
The sentencing demand was initially scheduled for November 24 but was postponed several times.
State prosecutor Agus Tri told the court that Zulkarnaen’s acts had resulted in deaths and injuries and that there was no reason for leniency.
“The defendant was involved in the Bali bombings plan,” he told the court. “He also instructed his group’s special forces led by him to save the militant group’s assets, including weapons nd explosives.”
Police previously said Zulkarnaen masterminded attacks that occurred simultaneously in many Indonesian regions on holidays including New Year’s Eve in 2000 that killed more than 20 people. He was also the mastermind of a bomb attack on the official residence of the Philippine ambassador in Jakarta in 2000 that killed two people, and the architect of sectarian conflict in Ambon and Poso from 1998 to 2000.
Zulkarnaen, a biologist who was among the first Indonesian militants to go to Afghanistan in the 80s for training, was an instructor at a military academy there for seven years, Indonesian police said.
Since May 2005, Zulkarnaen has been listed on an al-Qaeda sanctions list by the United Nations (UN) Security Council for being associated with Osama bin Laden or the Taleban.
The Security Council said that Zulkarnaen, who became an expert in sabotage, was one of al-Qaeda’s representatives in Southeast Asia and one of the few people in Indonesia who had had direct contact with bin Laden’s network.
It said that Zulkarnaen led a squad of fighters known as the Laskar Khos, or Special Force, whose members were recruited from among some 300 Indonesians who trained in Afghanistan and the Philippines.
Zulkarnaen was appointed the head of Camp Saddah, a military academy in the southern Philippines established for fighters from Southeast Asia, the Security Council said. He spent a decade at the camp training other militants.
He became operations chief for the militant group after the arrest of his predecessor, Encep Nurjaman, also known as Hambali, in Thailand in 2003.
The United States’ ‘Rewards for Justice’ programme had offered a bounty of up to USD5 million for his capture.
PARIS (AP) – Three women in France were found dead on New Year’s Day, allegedly killed by their partners, despite efforts by President Emmanuel Macron’s government to rein in deadly domestic violence.
In all three cases, the men told police they themselves were at fault, according to local
media reports.
Feminist groups are crying for more action and EUR1 billion in funding to train all French police and ensure better protection for those targetted by abusive partners.
In response to public anger, government ministers held online meetings on Tuesday with local officials in the town where one of the killings occurred. “We’re all mobilised,” tweeted Junior Minister for Equal Rights Elisabeth Moreno.
“Three women killed in 24 hours and their only reaction is to organise a little meeting days later?” asked Marylie Breuil of activist group Nous Toutes. “No, their work isn’t done.”
The three deaths were especially shocking after high-profile efforts by the French government to prevent such killings, and by French activists and media to shine a light
on them.
A 45-year-old woman in the French Riviera city of Nice was found strangled on New Year’s Day in the trunk of her son’s car after her husband turned himself into police, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. The couple had separated last year.
The same day in northeast France, a 56-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in the town of Labry, and her partner acknowledged killing her in an argument, local news site Lorrain Actu quoted the regional prosecutor as saying.
And in western France, a 27-year-old woman was found lying with fatal knife wounds outside her home.
Her partner was arrested and told investigators that he stabbed her and an investigation was opened into premeditated murder, according to regional prosecutors.
NEW YORK (AP) – Hospitals aren’t usually incubators of great music, but in the case of English indie-pop band Glass Animals, one member’s medical emergency led to a breakout album and a Grammy nomination.
Drummer Joe Seaward was struck by a truck in 2018 while riding his bike in Dublin, leaving him fighting for his life.
Dave Bayley, the quartet’s songwriter, singer and producer, spent long hours next to his friend in the hospital, the future uncertain under the harsh fluorescent lights.
“Hospitals are weird places, and I think because of that, they make you feel very nostalgic.
You’re looking for comfort in the past. So that was the kind of beginnings of the album,” Bayley said. “I started writing down these memories and searching for more memories, and some of them were great. Some of them are really uncomfortable.”
The album that emerged was the deeply personal Dreamland, rooted in Bailey’s past. There are playfully references to Scooby-Doo, Fruit Loops, Pepsi Blue and Mr Miyagi, but also a song about domestic abuse (Domestic Bliss) and a tune about an old friend who planned but never pulled off a school shooting (Space Ghost Coast to Coast).
Members of the group Glass Animals, from left, Edmund Irwin-Singer, Joe Seaward, Dave Bayley and Drew MacFarlane appear at the Mercury Prize 2017 Awards in London on September 14, 2017. PHOTO: AP
The standout single is Heat Waves, a hypnotic, hazy tune that honours a departed friend whose birthday brings grief each passing June.
It was a slow-moving hit, reaching the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 after 42 weeks on the chart, the longest climb to the top 10 in United States (US) chart history.
The song has earned over one billion streams on Spotify, landing it in the company of Levitating by Dua Lipa and Dynamite by BTS.
“Dreamland was made before we ever knew about COVID-19, but it was born in period of personal turbulence for Dave and the band – in the wake of Joe’s accident,” said the band’s manager Amy Morgan.
“Heat Waves, for example, is a very personal love song about loss, but it connected because I think it captures a very universal sense of loss – which is at the forefront of all of our hearts at the moment, sadly.”
Glass Animals also snagged a Grammy Award nomination for best new artist, even if that’s a little curious for a band whose debut album came out in 2014.
Later this month, they’ll compete against the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Saweetie, Finneas, Japanese Breakfast, The Kid Laroi and Arlo Parks. The band has also bagged two Brit Award nominations.
Bayley believes some of the success of the album is due to the pandemic. Finding the future bleak, many listeners looked for comfort in the past – like he had done back in the hospital.
“They were in a similar position to the position that I was in when I wrote a lot of this record,” he said. “Everyone was stuck inside. They were listening to the music they grew up with. They were eating the food that they grew up with it. They were seeking comfort in those situations and reliving these memories because they can’t be out creating new ones as well.”
The confessional roots of Dreamland were actually sown on the band’s last album, How to Be a Human Being, which saw Bailey write each song from the perspective of someone else.
The last one, Agnes, was about a friend of the band who died by suicide. It was Bayley’s most personal song and marked a change in his songwriting. He didn’t want to put it on the album. He played it for the rest of the band, who quickly insisted it be on the album.
Fans later wrote letters saying how much the song meant to them and that gave Bayley courage to turn more inward. “That response gave me a lot of confidence to write more personal things,” he said.
“The songs that have meant the most to me by my favourite writers is when they speak about something personal and it makes you feel less alone.”
Firefighters captured a 4.5-metre long crocodile found in a drain near a shop along Jalan Muara, Kampong Salar, Mentiri yesterday.
The firefighters found the crocodile inside a drain near a shop and captured the reptile with a rope and a snake catcher. It was passed to the Wildlife Division. No one was injured.
SO Murni bin Haji Misir led seven firefighters from the Muara Fire station responded following a call about a wild animal disturbance, according to the Fire and Rescue Department (FRD).
The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS) yesterday announced Child Care Centres (CCC) will be able to re-operate in stages during the Endemic Phase of the COVID-19 Recovery Framework from January 17.
Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Major General (Rtd) Dato Paduka Seri Awang Haji Aminuddin Ihsan bin Pehin Orang Kaya Saiful Mulok Dato Seri Paduka Haji Abidin made the announcement during a press conference yesterday. The minister said the decision was based on the agreement of the COVID-19 Steering Committee as well as the results from an online survey conducted in collaboration with the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Health (MoH) participated by 11,566 parents nationwide.
Brunei Darussalam detected one new Omicron case yesterday with the total number of the variant now standing at nine. All Omicron cases detected in the Sultanate are import cases.
Minister of Health Dato Seri Setia Dr Haji Md Isham bin Haji Jaafar shared this during a press conference yesterday.
The minister also said the COVID-19 Steering Committee announced the amendment in the rate of the charges for the SARS-CoV-2 tests in Brunei Darussalam from January 1.
NEW YORK (AFP) – As of Tuesday, many models of the once-indispensable BlackBerry devices will no longer work.
The Canadian company has decided to pull the plug on new updates of its operating system, meaning most BlackBerries that became synonymous with the emerging mobile digital culture of recent decades – and were embraced by politicians and business executives – will not operate correctly after January 4.
“As of this date, devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 (emergency) functionality,” the company said on its website last month.
