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Virus threatens Chinese traditions of chopsticks and family-style meals

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Virus threatens Chinese traditions of chopsticks and family-style meals

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Due to the rising concerns over the acceleration of the spread of corona virus by sharing utensils  , the Chinese government is promoting the use of serving utensil when dining. However, such campaign has aroused resistance among Chinese civilians as sharing of food is one of their most ingrained traditions of indicating affection and respect.
Word Bank
heed :to pay attention to someone’s advice or warning
" heed the call"
"If she had only heeded my warnings, none of this would have happened ."
Integral :  forming a necessary part of something
"Vegetables are an integral part of our diet."
"integral to" -" Statistics are integral to scientific research."

Done by Jingyu 4D

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Virus threatens Chinese traditions of chopsticks and family-style meals

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China’s government is promoting using serving utensils to help curb spreading the coronavirus, but resistance is strong – sharing food with personal chopsticks is one way Chinese people express intimacy.

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Floundering in digital wave, older hawkers could call it quits - taking a piece of Singapore with them

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Floundering in digital wave, older hawkers could call it quits - taking a piece of Singapore with them

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Older hawkers are left behind as they are unable to offer online services during the pandemic when many business shift to online sales and delivery services. Altered consumer habits affect these hawkers drastically.

Word Bank
Floundering : To be in serious difficulty
Weathering: To bear up against and come safely through
(e.g to weather a crisis / storm)

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SINGAPORE: Forty years after weathering the ups and downs of the hawker trade, an elderly couple selling wanton noodles at Tekka Market in Little India said they were facing their toughest crisis yet after new COVID-19 curbs kicked in two weeks ago.

By now, Mr Goh, 69, and Mrs Goh, 68, of Chin Seng Cooked Food - who declined to give their full names - felt like they had done everything they could to change their fate.

They had showed up to work at 7am daily. They had ventured into the unfamiliar world of online food deliveries by becoming listed on the WhyQ platform during the April to June "circuit breaker" last year. And they had simply hung on when the crowds never returned for the rest of the year.

And when things were back to square one on May 16, as the month-long Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) that bans dine-in at food and beverage establishments and allows only takeaways, among other things, kicked in to stem a worrying rise in the number of COVID-19 clusters and unlinked cases in the community, Mrs Goh was left blaming themselves for not having done enough.

Their business has nosedived to a point where they could foresee drawing a combined salary of only S$500 for this month.

"We don't know how to use the Internet. Anything also don't know. We don't have Grab. Anything also don't have," she said, pointing to the unusually quiet scene at the iconic food centre on a Monday morning, where there were more idling hawkers than hungry customers.

Like the Gohs, older hawkers who are neither IT-literate (some are illiterate to begin with) nor social media-savvy have found themselves to be at a greater disadvantage this time round, given that the other segments of the food and beverage industry are better prepared to exploit the various digital platforms to keep the latest disruption to their businesses to a minimum.

In fact, many hawkers have reported even poorer business compared to last year's circuit breaker, although the current curbs are relatively more relaxed.

As well-known food critic and consultant K F Seetoh noted: "Last year, people were desperate. The authorities were clueless on what this virus was going to do to us, where it was going to take us. The first thing people went for was food, water and toilet paper, so people went out to buy.

"This time round, after one year, people are more cool-headed as they know that there are many delivery models, they know there are (vaccine) jabs going around, so all they do is they sit back and order online."

When that happens, the "shinier hawkers, the glossier ones" get the business, as delivery platforms will naturally promote the popular bigger ticket items - the S$40 to S$50 sets, for instance - to earn more commission.

"Can't blame them. It's their business model. But in the course of doing so, they overlook these humble and quiet hawkers, young or old," Mr Seetoh said.

ISLANDWIDE IMPACT
The latest round of restrictions on dining-in has seen hawkers operating in the once-bustling areas in the city centre or city fringes - which are heavily dependent on the working or shopping crowds - being among the worst hit.

These days, the popular Zhao Ji Claypot Rice at Chinatown Complex Food Centre - where people usually had to queue up to an hour to get their fix - is seeing only 5 per cent of its usual crowd, said its 58-year-old owner, Ms Deng Shu Ling, who mans the stall alone.

There is "completely no business" between 2pm and 4pm on Saturdays, she added.

Madam Noorhani Ali, a 57-year-old nasi padang hawker at an eating house near Geylang Serai Market, was reduced to tears on May 18 as she sat before what looks like six full trays of unsold food, having sold almost nothing near dinnertime for the third day in a row.

The scene was captured on Facebook Live by entertainer Roslan Shah, who operates a rojak stand next to hers, and wanted to rally support for Mdm Noorhani.

The former cook at the staff canteen at Ngee Ann City's Takashimaya Departmental Store said her stall, Snan's Corner, which opened on May 1, marked the fulfilment of her dream to have a nasi padang stall.

But when takings amounted to only S$200 in the first week of the period of Heightened Alert, she contemplated giving up the stall and returning to work as a cook - never mind the S$5,000 in savings that she had invested to get the business going.

Mdm Noorhani said: "I was telling my husband ... In about a week's time, if we really can't make money, we will have to tell the (eating house) owner that we want to stop the business.

"(Mr Roslan) is smart using all this technology (to improve business). For me, I don't know how," added Mdm Noorhani, who dropped out of school after Primary 4.

In some other parts of Singapore's heartlands, while the impact is not as bad as the central business district, hawkers who rely solely on footfall have also seen a dip in their business, presumably because many of their regular customers are now turning to online deliveries.

Madam Sim Chee Moey, who is in her 60s, the boss of Xing Ji Rou Cuo Mian, one of the minced meat noodle stalls that were previously known for their long queues at Bedok's 85 Fengshan Food Centre, said the lines that normally form in the evenings are gone.

Her neighbouring hawker Goh Peng Huan, 61, said his stall selling fried oyster omelette, carrot cake, bak chor mee and handmade ngoh hiang is now making a loss as business has dropped by 50 to 70 per cent, partly as the supper crowds have thinned.

If the period of heightened alert were to extend beyond Jun 13, he said he would consider closing his stall for a while, like the BBQ seafood stall nearby which could not even achieve sales of S$100 in one day earlier this month.

ALTERED CONSUMER HABITS
Pandemic-related curbs aside, the older generation of hawkers must also grapple with the changing habits of their customers, especially the younger ones, who are now getting used to having food delivered to their doorstep.

Also, while many customers may still want to buy from their favourite hawkers, it does not make sense for them to travel out of their way for just a takeaway, given that eating at hawker centres is not allowed for now and people are encouraged to stay at home as far as possible to break the COVID-19 transmission chain.

For an entrepreneur in his 30s who wanted to be known only as Mr Chen, it is important for him to be near home to teleconference and pick up his work calls, so he is mainly getting his meals from the two coffee shops below his block.

"When I feel like eating something that is not within convenient reach, I will reach out for the app," he added, referring to a habit that developed after last year's circuit breaker, when he relied heavily on Deliveroo's S$14 flat monthly fee for unlimited free deliveries.

Anticipating a heavier reliance on such apps, he had bought Grab's S$1.99 stay-home pack, which was introduced shortly before May 16. It lets users shave S$4 off their delivery fees per order with a minimum spend of S$15 for 30 times.

Likewise, university student Kaavya Ganeshan, 22, who had been ordering food online at least once a week since last year's circuit breaker said that: "I guess this is safer and convenient during this period of time where there still is local transmission of COVID-19."

The growing preference for online deliveries - spurred by the pandemic - has not only hit the hawkers' pockets, but also undermined their autonomy, which is important to hawkers who are, after all, business owners who want to be able to control and steer their business, said psychologist Praveen Nair.

Pointing out that hawkers are used to operating independently - they take matters into their own hands by working hard and making good food, so as to make more money - Mr Nair said: "Imagine how difficult things might be for someone who likes to take things into their own hands when this needs to come to an end because of the pandemic."

"Suddenly, they are at the mercy of Grab, foodpanda, government handouts, and other platforms that they may not know about.

"Nobody wants to depend on another person's decision. If you go to Grab, they can suddenly change the margins of the price, whereas in the past, hawkers would have the mental concept that everything is in their power - their rental, their cleaning fees, etc," said Mr Nair, who is from Raven Counselling and Consultancy.

The commission rates that delivery companies Deliveroo, foodpanda and GrabFood charge their F&B merchant partners are at around 30 per cent.

One year since the pandemic, why do users, riders and restaurants alike still have complaints about food delivery apps? A business professor and a ride-hailing app founder weigh in on CNA's Heart of the Matter podcast: THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
The fear of losing control aside, many hawkers also have to deal with another major challenge: Digital technology, which entails some basic competence in logic and literacy - much to the horror of those who only received some primary school education, typical of the older generation of hawkers.

There are those who are keen to adapt, such as long-time hawkers Arthur Wong, 75, and his wife Loh Mei Ling, 70. With business at only 10 per cent of what it was pre-COVID-19, the couple is now a lot more receptive to technology than before, given that the pandemic is unlikely to blow over anytime soon.

They were entertaining the thoughts of joining WhyQ and starting a Facebook page for their hawker stall, Chinatown Sun Seng Gourmet's Corner, which sells dishes such as fried rice, hor fun and sliced fish mee hoon. Their business started as a roadside stall in Chinatown before it was moved into the Chinatown Complex in 1983.

But despite being a little more digitally savvy than other 70-year-olds, knowing how to watch shows on video streaming sites such as Netflix or browse Facebook, the couple still had their reservations.

With WhyQ, Mr Wong said he was afraid that he would not know how to use the system, and might even mess up processes if he and his wife have to manage on-demand delivery orders while taking orders from the walk-in crowd simultaneously. They don't have a stall helper.

His immediate neighbour, Rice Bowl Boys, which is on WhyQ, Deliveroo and GrabFood, has offered to help in case they have teething problems, but Mr Wong doubts that he could remember everything that would be taught to him.

"It is very hard for us to learn from the young, although the young might find it easy to learn from the old. They 'run' so fast, how to learn from them?" he quipped.

When it comes to starting a Facebook page, Mr Wong is worried that he might not have the time and effort to keep people updated all the time.

In the end, the semi-retired couple pushed aside those digital thoughts for now, and decided to extend their operational hours by one-and-a-half hours to 6pm to see if more people would patronise the stall.

Mr Yeo Cheng Poh, 74, and Madam Toh Bong Chee, 73, who sell S$3 char kway teow and carrot cake at their stall, Fried Kuay Teaw Mee, at Seah Im Food Centre in the Harbourfront area, had also resorted to working longer hours to make up for the shortfall in income.

Mdm Toh said they are at their stall at 7.30am and close it after 8.30pm daily, with no rest days.

Asked if they had thought about going on delivery platforms, Mdm Toh said that the only mobile phone they have is an "old man's phone" - a Samgle-brand keypad phone - which they mainly use to call suppliers.

Another hawker, Ms Deng of Zhao Ji Claypot Rice, said it took her four months to learn the English words making up the dishes that her stall offers - including words like "skating chicken", "bacon", "sausage" and "salted fish" - before she could take orders properly through Facebook, via her stall's page which her son and his girlfriend had helped set up. All she replies when she sees an order is "Ok".

Mr Calvin Sim was surprised when he found out a month ago that his 73-year-old father - Mr Sim Ah Tee who runs Ah Tee Ko Ko Mee at Jalan Berseh - had been using his own savings to cover the losses he had incurred during last year's circuit-breaker.

The 49-year-old central kitchen assistant said that his father - a hawker for more than 50 years - had always said "so-so lorh" whenever he was asked about how business was going at his stall due to the pandemic.

It was only when the latest dining-in restrictions began that his father told Mr Sim of the true situation - he could not afford to cover the losses anymore, and wanted to close his stall permanently.

"I know he wants to continue his business but it's tough when savings are low," Mr Sim said, who had shared his father's story on the Hawkers United - Dabao 2020 Facebook group on May 15 to rally support for his business.

The older Mr Sim did not benefit from any digitisation efforts as he is illiterate and can only speak Hokkien and a bit of Mandarin.

For 19-year-old student Lim Hui Yi, although her parents' hawker business, Pho 99 Vietnamese Delight at Telok Ayer Street, is on GrabFood, being on the delivery platform has not been helpful as their profit margins are very low, and they sometimes earn nothing at all, she said.

Her parents, Mr Lim Heng Lee, 49, and Ms Bou Dalis, 45, who speak limited English and are not digitally savvy, make losses sometimes too when customers report receiving the wrong order.

In such cases, Grab would refund those customers the amount that they had paid for their original order, so her parents would receive less money for the food delivered.

Ms Lim would then have to step in to send Grab an appeal for the refunded order. She also regularly helps her parents post shoutouts on the Hawkers United - Dabao 2020 Facebook group, which has close to 300,000 members.
BRIDGING THE DIVIDE
As the urgency grows to bridge Singapore's digital divide amid the ongoing pandemic, Singapore Management University sociology professor Paulin Straughan said society's first mistake is to look at education as the "magic wand that solves everything".

"We give the elderly the hardware, and the information download which is often heavy. And we expect the elderly to make the link and connection between the two," she said.

But a more hands-on approach to familiarisation, in dealing with hawkers requiring immediate help to onboard smoothly onto the platform and tweak their operations accordingly, would be a better approach.

"Have proper infrastructure to support them. Have a good help source (hotline number, for example)," Prof Straughan said.

Assoc Prof Tan Ern Ser, from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Sociology department, suggested designing apps catered for those without a basic level of literacy, pointing out that these would preferably feature no text-only icons, with highly visible symbols and few steps. It would also help if hawkers can organise their menu into different sets, A, B or C, with no complicated configurations, he said.

NUS senior lecturer Natalie Pang Lee San said it may be useful to consider community-based approaches to support elderly hawkers to digitise their businesses.

This can be done by incentivising fellow elderly hawkers who have successfully digitised their businesses to mentor and impart working knowledge to others, she said.

However, Singapore University of Social Sciences' economist Walter Theseira said policymakers should be careful about pushing all forms of digitalisation on business. He pointed out that some of them offer very little benefit to these hawkers at present.

For example, he cited the push for e-payment. "Their customers all carry cash. The hawkers are used to operating with cash and transact with their suppliers with cash. Their job frankly is not made any easier on a day-to-day basis by accepting e-payments. So why should they be asked to?" he said.

"There must be real benefits, from being able to access more customers, or reduce costs of cash management. Otherwise, this is an example of adopting a technology that offers no benefit and poses great learning cost, especially if a hawker fails to get paid."
WHY FOOD DELIVERY PLATFORMS NOT FOR ALL
While being listed on food delivery platforms is likely to bring hawkers some real benefits, the learning cost for an elderly hawker who is not digitally savvy might be too high, said Assoc Prof Theseira.

In order to gain a reasonable business following online, the hawkers would have to learn things such as how to make their offerings more attractive to an online audience, and how to do digital marketing, he noted.

Although there are some success stories involving older hawkers, they usually involve an interested party, such as a younger relative, who cares enough to help them.

"I don't think we can expect the elderly hawkers to do all this themselves, and I don't think commercial services to help them make sense," said Assoc Prof Theseira.

Mr Jonathan Lim, founder and chief executive officer of Oddle, which helps restaurants build their own online ordering systems, said that not all hawkers can benefit from being on food delivery platforms, as delivery is really a "premium service".

Oddle charges merchants a 10 per cent platform fee, and there would be another delivery fee component set by its logistics partners Lalamove, GrabExpress, Zeek, and Pandago, which is more like a taxi meter charge.

"For it to make business sense, the business owner has to make enough to want to deliver to you because you'd order enough, or the customer got to pay a large enough premium. But there seems to be a disconnect in the market right now," he said.

That's why not many hawkers are on Oddle, Mr Lim said, as the basket size for food such as chicken rice and char kway teow would be too small to justify a delivery.

Agreeing, Mr Seetoh, founder of Makansutra, which publishes street food guides, said the issue lies more with hawkers being unable to afford going digital, rather than older hawkers being unable to digitalise.

"Hawker profits, because of their low margins, hover around 12 to 15 per cent. So in the world of common logic, how can anybody afford a 30 per cent commission, unless they are selling big-ticket items, and they have expensive sets?

"So you see, not just the old, who are not online. A lot of people just can't afford to be online ... they don't know how to do sponsored posts, they don't know how to hit you directly. So sometimes I feel this digital culture we are embarking on, especially to the hawkers, is leaving a lot of people behind," Mr Seetoh said.

Not many people would pay a delivery premium for a bowl of noodles costing S$5, noted Mr Au Yee Yang, 33, the hawker behind Soon Ji Ban Mian at Chinatown Complex. His stall typically receives one to two orders in two weeks via Grab, and two to three orders in a week via foodpanda.

HELP FROM GOVERNMENT, DELIVERY FIRMS
Amid the pandemic last year, hawkers were able to tap the Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS), which handed out a total of S$9,000 over nine months. They also benefited from rental waivers and subsidies for table-cleaning and centralised dishwashing services.

On top of that, there was a one-time funding of S$500 for cooked food stallholders operating in hawker centres managed by the National Environment Agency (NEA) or NEA-appointed operators to engage food delivery platforms to deliver food to their customers.

This time round, while there is no more SIRS, the Ministry of Finance announced on Friday that hawkers would be part of the group of workers who will receive additional one-off support under the COVID-19 Recovery Grant (Temporary).

NEA will also waive rentals again while fully subsidising table-cleaning and centralised dishwashing services.

According to NEA, last year's funding assistance had benefited more than 1,300 hawkers, including some 500 hawkers aged 60 and above.

Compared with last year, NEA noted that new forms of online food ordering services have emerged, and some of these services are available to hawkers with no commission fees, and do not require hawkers to use digital devices to process orders. There have also been recent ground-up initiatives to publicise hawkers who may require more support and patronage.

NEA said it has worked with hawkers' associations and other stakeholders to spread the word on the options available. "We are mindful that some hawkers may need more help to pivot, and will continue to provide the appropriate assistance through the respective hawkers' associations," it added.

Meanwhile, Enterprise Singapore announced a food delivery booster package that will fund 5 percentage points of the commission cost charged by the three food delivery platforms - Deliveroo, foodpanda and GrabFood from May 16 to June 15.

Separately, Grab had announced that it will provide full commission rebates for stall owners operating in NEA-managed hawker centres during the period of heightened alert. For other food outlets, it will give a 50 per cent rebate on commissions for more GrabFood orders as compared to their current level of sales or previous month's sales.

Foodpanda is also offering zero commission on delivery orders for hawkers operating in centres managed and regulated by NEA till June 13.

A Grab spokesperson said that aside from reducing costs, it would be ramping up its marketing promotion efforts for hawkers and other smaller F&B outlets.

Grab is also expanding the list of hawker centres on its Hawker Centre 2.0 programme, which lets consumers mix and match orders from multiple stalls within the same hawker centre and pay just one delivery fee, the spokesperson said.

Grab said the programme now has close to 400 hawker merchants from 50 hawker centres, and the participating hawkers had observed an overall increase in their number of GrabFood orders since the programme was introduced last year.

Foodpanda said it is supporting hawkers by offering free mix-and-match delivery for hawker centre orders with a minimum order value of S$35 from now until further notice.

"This makes it easier for families to order together. The initiative also helps support individual stalls within the hawker centre, as customers will be more incentivised to order from more stalls to save on delivery fees," its spokesperson said.

Deliveroo said it continues to work closely with all restaurants and hawkers to understand their concerns and how best to support them during this period.
COMMUNITY EFFORTS
Just like during last year's circuit breaker, Singapore's various food-related online spaces are once again abuzz with rallying calls to help hawkers in need, be they in the form of photo posts, bulk group buys or Facebook Live shoutouts.

Many new initiatives have also popped up to consolidate lists of hawkers who are not on the delivery space to let netizens discover them. One of them is the Oldie Hawker Pickups Google Form, started by marketing consultant Melissa Koh, 40.

Collecting over five days the details of hawker stalls that could have fallen under the radar as their owners might not be tech-savvy, she released on May 26 the user-generated list that contained more than 160 entries of hawkers who are not on any delivery platforms.

Another pair of netizens had started a similar initiative by coming up with a Google map of these spots, and Ms Koh has since appended it to the list as well, so that people can search for the hawkers by their exact locations.

Ms Koh said she wanted to help the struggling hawkers build an online footprint, after reading about them on Facebook posts and finding that the existing efforts to help them were too scattered.

Her initiative is also a movement against the increasingly high costs of food deliveries as well.

"People do want options. This shows that we don't need delivery services to increase sales," she said: "When ordering food from apps, you don't really know where your food comes from anymore. We see the cheapest delivery, we just buy."

Another effort is a Telegram bot called @SaveTheHawkersBot, which helps match people who are physically buying food from the hawker centre with other consumers living nearby who are looking for someone to help them buy food from the same hawker centre as well.

Social media executive Jocelyn Ng, 24, also started an Instagram page, @wheretodapao, to capture the stories of the elderly-run hawker stalls. Just a week since its inception on May 21, the page already has a strong following of 28,900 accounts. It allows users to send in pictures and stories of their favourite hawkers through a Google Form.

Ms Ng said that the elderly hawkers whom she has interacted with have "kind hearts, care for their community, are very understanding and have a selfless attitude".

"If we don't give them our support, it might discourage them from helping us preserve their traditional way of cooking," she said.

Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh once remarked that the hawker centre "saved Singapore" as it is one place ordinary Singaporeans can go to have a good meal at an affordable price.

He offered a simple suggestion: Attach young IT-savvy volunteers to the older hawkers to grant them the help that they need.

Prof Koh said: "My wife and I still go to the markets and hawker centres. We patronise the older hawkers who are not active online. I urge Singaporean to join me in supporting them through this difficult period."

Mr Seetoh had written a viral Facebook post earlier this month that called on Singaporeans to "patronise these silent sufferers", many of whom "are not online nor on anything except a prayer and hope".

Reiterating his message, Mr Seetoh said: "If you feel that this hawker food culture of ours deserves longevity so that your children, your grandchildren, who won't be millionaires down the road, can still afford to eat cheap and affordable hawker food, then start doing something now.

"Otherwise, if you don't do your part now, your grandchildren in the future would tell you: 'Ah gong ah, you knew that the food culture was dying and you knew people love it. Why didn't you do anything to help them preserve this? Why am I stuck with this expensive fast food?'"

Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak: https://cna.asia/telegram For more news like this, visit todayonline.com

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The Big Read: Floundering in digital wave, older hawkers could call it quits - taking a piece of Singapore with them

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Older hawkers who are neither IT-literate nor social media-savvy have been at a greater disadvantage this time round, as others in the F&B industry are better prepared to exploit the various digital platforms to keep the latest disruption to their businesses to a minimum.

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mandatory COVID-19 tests start for residents at Yishun, Hougang HDB blocks

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mandatory COVID-19 tests start for residents at Yishun, Hougang HDB blocks

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/745-yishun-st-72-501-507-hougang-ave-8-covid-19-testing-14924150

summary
6 COVID cases have been identified at a block in Yishun, spread across two different families. subsequent wastewater testing found COVID-19 viral fragments in the block. testing is scheduled to take place today and tomorrow.

wordbank
1. damnation - condemnation to eternal punishment in hell.
2.fustigate - criticise harshly.

Dior 4D

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Seniors who were hesitant among those who opt for walk-in jab

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Seniors who were hesitant among those who opt for walk-in jab

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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/seniors-who-were-hesitant-among-those-who-opt-for-walk-in-jab

PM Lee said on Monday those aged 60 and above can walk into any centre for a vaccination. Some who were once reluctant to take the jab did take it as it is made more convenient for them, and inoculation is even more important for the vulnerable groups.

Word bank:
1. inoculated-- to immunise, or vaccinate
2. testimony--declaration about truth; proof

Done by Isaac

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Computers are not the best judge of our emotions

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Computers are not the best judge of our emotions

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Emotion AI has been widely adopted in many areas to assess people’s emotion response, such as recruitment, advertising，law enforcement and security.  It can ensure efficient and effective public security and help people in need. However, it is not always as effective and efficient as we think. It sometimes ignores differences between cultures and even individuals, leading to discrimination. What’s more, a lack of legislative oversight may result in insecurity of people’s privacy. Hence, in terms of the utilisation of emotional AI, the right balance must be found.
https://www.ft.com/content/dffbc409-b611-49aa-a2a1-1f0164ebfe78
word bank
moratorium: a temporary prohibition of an activity.
disconcerting: causing one to feel unsettled.

done by yichun

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China allows three children in major policy shift 

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China allows three children in major policy shift 

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57303592
Summary of article:
the Chinese government increased its original two children policy to three children policy when the two children policy failed to increase number of births. however this was faced with backlash from the Chinese public. some reasons include stressful work life and more Chinese women choosing to pursue their own careers instead of settling down to start a family.

Word Bank :
endowment: a quality or ability possessed or inherited by someone
endemic: (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area

Done by tze sun

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Remains of 215 children found at former indigenous school site in Canada

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Remains of 215 children found at former indigenous school site in Canada

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https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/remains-215-children-found-former-indigenous-school-site-canada-2021-05-28/

summary :
remains of 215 children were found at the site of former residential school for indigenous children with help of a ground penetrating radar specialist. some children were abused there. some even died while attending school.

word bank :
1. indigenous : originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.
2. genocide : deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

done by Charmaine

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Is bone-breaking surgery to grow taller worth the risk?

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Is bone-breaking surgery to grow taller worth the risk?

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/bone-breaking-limb-lengthening-surgery-grow-taller-risk-india-14884022
Bone-breaking surgery for cosmetic reasons have risen in popularity in the recent years. These patients ,seeking an increase in height for cosmetic reasons, are not always rejected. Sometimes their desire for these surgeries could be due to dysfunctional thoughts. The article also explores a case in which one patient experiences a mishap during his bone breaking surgery which resulted in him undergoing 6 more surgeries until he could walk again.

Word bank
1)allegations- a claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically one made without proof.
2)Cessation-the fact or process of ending or being brought to an end. (Cessation of hostilities)

By DAYAN TAN JIE AN

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.asiaone.com/asia/no-chickenjoy-jollibee-closes-philippines-outlet-after-woman-finds-fried-towel-meal

summary:
woman finds towel in jollibee chicken so jollibee closed.

wordbank:
essence- presence

shalom

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Gaming may be used to help probationers learn about the impact of their crimes

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Gaming may be used to help probationers learn about the impact of their crimes

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/gaming-may-be-used-to-help-probationers-learn-about-the-impact-of-their-crimes

By allowing probationers to game, they will have to make more decisions based on real-life challenges. They will also be able to see the consequences of their actions and be more empathetic. This helps them to learn to not commit their crimes again. This article is supported by a research.

gamification: application of gaming in other activities
piloted: tested

Done by Emily

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Regular Caffeine Consumption – From Coffee, Cola, or Energy Drinks – Affects Brain Structure

# data[].attributes.subject
Regular Caffeine Consumption – From Coffee, Cola, or Energy Drinks – Affects Brain Structure

# data[].attributes.body
https://scitechdaily.com/regular-caffeine-consumption-from-coffee-cola-or-energy-drinks-affects-brain-structure/

Summary:
- Caffeine does not affect sleep, but does affect our brain by reducing the volume of gray matter temporarily if consumed regularly, however halting consumption will regenerate the lost gray matter

Word bank:
- Placebo → A medicine given to patients to make them feel better without having any actual effect on the body
- Abstinence → The avoidance of something enjoyable such as food or alcohol

Done by: Seng Hoi

# data[].attributes.headline
history of the body positivity movement 

# data[].attributes.subject
history of the body positivity movement 

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z2w7dp3

summary:
everyones talking about body positivity nowadays, how we should love our bodies. the body positivity movement has been called out for "promoting obesity" by diet amd fitness companies but those companies also create unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards. this article is how this movement has grown from originally being a place for plus sized people to get acceptance to now a place where all bodies are accepted no matter skinny fat tall short, everyone is beautiful just the way they are, and everyone has the right to choose what they want to do for their bodies.

word bank:
1) picketing: to protest
2) buzzphrase: a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context.

by: marcus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is because the body positivity movement has flooded our timeline for years now. There are some who think it promotes unhealthy lifestyles and encourages obesity, but those who support the movement say it's all about self-acceptance and not letting your physical appearance get you down.

While it may be commonplace on your social media feed today, body positivity's roots are not very well known, and often disputed.

We've asked Tigress Osborn, the soon to be chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) in America, to explore the history of the movement for us. NAAFA is an organisation that was key to the founding of the modern day body positivity movement, so we've asked her to give us the low down on how it started, and how it's evolved.

Every day of our lives we are reminded that no one's body is good enough. It might be your friend's DM about how much she hates her hair. It could be the new diet company advert that promises a better life if you drop a few pounds. You definitely can't have that spot, and those eyebrows? Just, no.

Enter Body Positivity. Body Positivity tells us we're actually already ok. Loving our bodies is more important than what we look like. We don't have to listen to this toxic culture that makes us hate ourselves.

But Body Positivity can also be much more than battling a low self-esteem day. It can question capitalism, challenge patriarchy, and ask us to examine whether our ideas about bodies are fatphobic, sexist, racist, or ableist.

But how and where did start?

Body Positivity begins with the Fat Rights Movement

In 1969, a young engineer in New York named Bill Fabrey was very angry about the way the world was treating his fat wife, Joyce. He had read an article a couple years earlier by a fat man called Lew Louderbach about the unfair ways fat people were treated. He made copies and handed them out to everyone he knew. Then he gathered a small group of people and created the National Association to Aid Fat Americans (today known as the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance or NAAFA, the world's longest-running fat rights organisation).

On the other side of the U.S. a group of California feminists were also angry about the treatment of fat people. They formed the Fat Underground. What NAAFA called Fat Acceptance, they called Fat Liberation. By 1973 they had released their ground-breaking Fat Manifesto. It demanded "equal rights for fat people in all areas of life." It also called out the "reducing" industries (aka diet culture) and declared them enemies.

Across fat activism, people were motivated by the leadership they saw in Civil Rights and other movements for equality and freedom. Radical fat activists saw fat liberation as linked to other struggles for oppression. But mainstream fat activism - usually associated with NAAFA at the time - often shut out the voices of People of Colour. They thought trying to take on more than one issue at a time might dilute their message. Plus, many white activists believed that because Black communities and other communities of colour seemed to be more accepting of fat people, that meant fat People of Colour simply didn't need fat activism. Unfortunately, especially in the beginning, this important movement to help marginalised people, often marginalised whole groups of people itself.

Fat folx hit the streets

The fat rights movement continued to grow. By the 1980s, enthusiasm for fat liberation was beginning to spread further across the globe. The London Fat Women's Group was formed in the mid-80's and was active for years.

People weren't using the term Body Positivity in the '70s, '80s and '90s, but fat activists could be spotted on daytime talk shows and in other media, arguing that the diet industry was a scam. By the 90's, fat activists were picketing in front of the White House, staging protests in front of gyms with fatphobic advertising, and dancing alongside floats in San Francisco's Pride parade. Their talk about loving their own bodies puzzled some listeners and inspired others. If someone who looked like them could learn to love their body, maybe anyone could.

Big bodies online

In the early 2000's, the internet was one of the main places where body shame and body love were spread. Anonymity led to bullying, but it also led to self-expression. As '90s message boards and chat rooms gave way to social media, fat people who had first found community in activism continued to build that digitally. Fat activists moved from AOL groups and NAAFA's online forums to Tumblr and Instagram. Hashtags and Facebook groups helped people connect in new ways. A new generation was spreading vibes known as Body Positivity.

Online, fat people began to lean into a new role - Fat Visibility as a brand of activism. Selfies and #OOTD (outfit of the day) pics represented personal choice as a political statement of unapologetic body acceptance. Even though trolling could be a problem, it was still a safer space for experimenting with newfound fat freedom than it might be to do it IRL (In Real Life).

And it wasn't just fat people who supported seeing fat women show their confident sides. The same way 'fierce fatties' (as some activists defiantly call themselves) brought Body Positivity to the masses. Women of Colour and Queer folx often led the way. For example, Sonya Renee Taylor's spoken word video "The Body is Not An Apology" became so viral it led to the creation of a whole digital media company and social networking site for body love by 2012.

Body Positivity gets big... then forgets where it came from?

Body Positivity became a social media buzzphrase. Variations of it (body love, body positive, and of course, #BOPO) have now been used millions of times. Today, for every celebrity who's repping for a diet company, there's another who's reminding us to love ourselves exactly as we are.

But many of the most popular Body Positivity role models only have "imperfect" bodies when they take off their clothes and draw arrows pointing to their imperfections. Visibly fat influencers - those who are undeniably fat no matter what they're wearing - also have their own followings, but they deal with more harassment, more account bans, and more pushback for "glorifying obesity." Intersectional influencers who were dealing with oppression in more than one areas were often the most outspoken. Where early fat activism hadn't always made space for fat Black and brown people, Black and brown fat people were more able to carve out their own spaces online.

Unfortunately, as more people started using hashtags like #loveyourbody and #allbodiesarebeautiful, the most marginalized bodies in society have become marginalized again within the very movement they started.

Some Body Positive believers say that weight loss talk should be included in Body Positivity messaging, as losing weight makes people feel better about themselves. Even major diet companies describe themselves as Body Positive. Some activists still embrace Body Positivity as a gateway to more radical body liberation movements. To others, the phrase has become so meaningless that they've either adopted variations or simply won't use it at all.

Body Positivity is nothing without its Fat Activist grandparents of all genders. It's also nothing without the Black women and femmes who amplified the message at the beginning of the trend. The women who wrote the Fat Manifesto ended it by saying, "We commit ourselves to pursue these goals together." If together doesn't include the fat people and Black people who made Body Positivity possible - as well as other marginalized bodies - it's not Body Positivity at all.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about the history of the body positivity movement and how it evolved from New York to Instagram in this BBC Bitesize guide.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.todayonline.com/big-read/big-read-short-older-hawkers-struggle-press
After last years circuit breaker, hawkers are finding it difficult to sustain business. Some major factors contributing to this problem is due to a change in consumer habits and the lack of exposure to technology. However,  Singaporeans have tried to help these hawkers using technology. for example, the  Telegram bot called @SaveTheHawkersBot, which helps match people who are physically buying food from the hawker centre with other consumers living nearby who are looking for someone to help them buy food from the same hawker centre as well.
word bank:
patronage- the support given by a patron.
centralize-bring (activities or processes) together in one place
done by corliss

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Impulse buying: Why some people can't stop shopping and how not to overspend

# data[].attributes.subject
Impulse buying: Why some people can't stop shopping and how not to overspend

# data[].attributes.body
https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/women/shopping-impulse-buying-how-to-stop-overspending-14924232

summary:
Impulse buying is an escape from life’s problems that provides us with a sense of comfort and thrill which can, however, cause financial problems that can be deemed dangerous. Thankfully, there are ways to prevent such misfortune from happening such as the precautions of keeping to a certain plan that maintains financial stability and more that are mentioned in this article.

word bank:
salve - soothe (wounded pride or one's conscience)
austere - severe or strict in manner or attitude

done by: pearlena

# data[].attributes.headline
Yemen fuel tanker could 'explode at any moment'

# data[].attributes.subject
Yemen fuel tanker could 'explode at any moment'

# data[].attributes.body
One of the most catastrophic oil spills is set to occur as the Yemen fuel vessel which has been holding an astounding 1.1 million barrels of oil is at grave risk of exploding around the war-torn coast of Yemen. The United Nations are yet to respond regarding this debacle but they have been urged to investigate and search for solutions to prevent disaster from striking. The floating storage platform has been neglected for little over 6 years and corrosion is starting to take place for good measure. If no one does anything about this , the world will experience a devastating impact which could have been prevented.

Word Bank

Debacle : a sudden and ignominious failure; a fiasco.

Continencies : a future event or circumstance which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty.

done by : rehan

# data[].attributes.headline
Arctic sea ice thinning faster than expected, new study shows

# data[].attributes.subject
Arctic sea ice thinning faster than expected, new study shows

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/climatechange/arctic-sea-ice-thinning-faster-than-expected--new-study-shows-14944518#cxrecs_s

Summary:Sea ice in the artic region has been found to be thinning up to twice as fast a previously thought.Sea ice thickness is estimated by measuring the height of the ice above the water. But that measurement is distorted by snow weighing the ice floes down.Previous calculations made with snow maps from 20years ago but this time calculations are first to account for the decreasing snow depth.This thinning of is fuelling geopolitical tensions as many countries eye the untapped artic resources.

Word bank:
∼Complement-thing that contributes extra            features to something else in such a way as to improve or emphasize its quality.
∼geopolitical-relating to politics, especially international relations, as influenced by geographical factors.

Joshua 4E

# data[].attributes.headline
In Singapore, Talking About Death Is Taboo. But That’s Exactly Why We Should Do it 

# data[].attributes.subject
In Singapore, Talking About Death Is Taboo. But That’s Exactly Why We Should Do it 

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-features-talking-about-death-taboo/

Singaporeans are keeping their loved one in the dark about their conditions as they find it too heavy a burden for them to bear.
the loved one can only wait as their time comes not knowing their conditions

Word Bank
Comatose : relating to or in a state of coma.

"she had been comatose for seven months"
Prognosis : the likely course of a medical condition.

"the disease has a poor prognosis"
Done by kang you

# data[].attributes.headline
White House warns companies to step up cybersecurity

# data[].attributes.subject
White House warns companies to step up cybersecurity

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/white-house-warns-companies-cybersecurity-attacks-ransomware-14940720

As technology improves, more organizations are prone to being cyberattacked regardless of size or location of the organization. This article brings awareness to the public of the dangers of what cyberattacks are now capable of, shifting from a mere stealing of data to even disruption of services in countries.

Ransomware - a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.

Encryption - the process of converting information or data into a code, especially to prevent unauthorized access.

Zi Le 4E

# data[].attributes.headline
The rivers that 'breathe' greenhouse gases

# data[].attributes.subject
The rivers that 'breathe' greenhouse gases

# data[].attributes.body
The rivers that 'breathe' greenhouse gases - BBC Future
summary: rivers that are polluted with oxides of nitrogen will release 10 times the green house gas as a clean river

word bank
microbes-Microbes are tiny living things that are found all around us and are too small to be seen by the naked eye.

postdoctoral-relating to or denoting research undertaken after the completion of doctoral research.

done by guo yichen

# data[].attributes.headline
Weekend catch-up sleep won’t fix the effects of sleep deprivation on your waistline

# data[].attributes.subject
Weekend catch-up sleep won’t fix the effects of sleep deprivation on your waistline

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/weekend-catch-up-sleep-wont-fix-the-effects-of-sleep-deprivation-on-your-waistline-2019092417861
Summary: Sleeping in during weekends just to compensate for the lack of sleep during weekdays would not do anything which is what many believe in but in reality it will continue to harm the body instead.
Word bank:
Jet-lag :Temporary sleep problem that can affect anyone who quickly travels across multiple time zones.
Reframing : frame or express (words or a concept or plan) differently.
Done by Zi Yu

# data[].attributes.headline
Aspiring data analysts, systems engineers or biotechnologists can get insights into these career paths - for free

# data[].attributes.subject
Aspiring data analysts, systems engineers or biotechnologists can get insights into these career paths - for free

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/parenting-education/aspiring-data-analysts-systems-engineers-or-biotechnologists-can-get

There is an increase in the number of people pursing areas in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These are subjects where there is much growth for innovation to improve all walks of life.

managerial-relating to management of things

Done by Johann 4E

# data[].attributes.headline
Police investigating incident in which racist remarks were made to interracial couple

# data[].attributes.subject
Police investigating incident in which racist remarks were made to interracial couple

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/racist-remarks-made-to-interracial-couple-are-unacceptable-and-worrying-shanmugam

A Singaporean man assulted an Indian man by saying that he was racist for marrying a Chinese wife. He said that he was preying on his wife and people should only date someone their own race. The perpetrator was also wearing a shirt with the Singapore flag on it, which caused many to be very ashamed of his behaviour. The ministers are now very worried and unsure about Singapore's harmony.
(the video is found in the link, it's very funny)

word bank:
bigotry: obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction; in particular, prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
outpouring: an outburst of strong emotion

done by emily

# data[].attributes.headline
Getting onto food delivery platforms eats into already-thin profit margins, says hawkers 

# data[].attributes.subject
Getting onto food delivery platforms eats into already-thin profit margins, says hawkers 

# data[].attributes.body
summary:
Hawkers that get onto food delivery platforms say it does little to increase their profit. Large commission fees to board onto the platforms make hawkers hesitate to do so. There are government schemes to help hawkers get onto the platforms, for example NEA's one time $500 grant. However hawkers that successfully get onto the platforms still can't make enough as the delivery orders barely make up for the huge drop in walk-in customers due to the pandemic. This leaves hawkers at a loss, deciding whether to let their food prices remain as normal, or increase the prices but risk losing customers. Therefore some hawkers question if getting onto delivery platforms is actually worthwhile.

word bank:
viable: capable of working successfully, feasible

leeway: the amount of freedom to move or act that is available

done by tze sun

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Getting onto food delivery platforms eats into already-thin profit margins, say hawkers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SINGAPORE - Food delivery platforms may not be the easy answer to solve the current woes faced by hawkers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more at straitstimes.com.

# data[].attributes.headline
coronavirus mutated 32 times inside South African HIV-positive woman over course of seven months 

# data[].attributes.subject
coronavirus mutated 32 times inside South African HIV-positive woman over course of seven months 

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/africa/article/3136136/woman-hiv-had-covid-19-seven-months-virus-mutated-32-times-inside

summary:
a 36-year-old woman with advanced HIV carried the novel coronavirus for 216 days, during which the virus accumulated more than 30 mutations. 13 of these mutations were known to help the virus escape the immune response, while the other 19 could change the behaviour of the virus.

word bank:
1. anfractuous - have a lot of bends and curves.
2. amicable - friendly.

dior

# data[].attributes.headline
Singapore researchers develop blood test for cancer treatment and detection 

# data[].attributes.subject
Singapore researchers develop blood test for cancer treatment and detection 

# data[].attributes.body
summary : Through a simple blood test, this ExoScope technology would allow us to determine earlier which patients are more likely to have a good response to treatment. This has the potential to inform us on whether the patient would need additional or different therapies and it can determine the effectiveness of cancer treatment within 24 hours, but also detect the disease in annual check-ups.

word bank :
epidermal : outermost layer of the skin.
Haematology-Oncology : combined medical practice of hematology (the study of the blood's physiology) and oncology (the study of cancer)
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-researchers-develop-blood-test-for-cancer-treatment-and-detection

done by charmaine

# data[].attributes.headline
Cutting down of trees in Yoyogi raises new frustrations over Tokyo Olympics

# data[].attributes.subject
Cutting down of trees in Yoyogi raises new frustrations over Tokyo Olympics

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/tokyo-olympics-covid-19-yoyogi-park-closed-live-zone-athlete-ioc-14919832

As Japan continues with its decision to hold the olympics, they prepare to cut down trees in the Yoyogi park to make space for the Live Zone. This provokes the Japanese public as they see the Yoyogi park as a place with a lot of memories and value. Moreover, the governments decision to carry out with the olympics despite closing down the Yoyogi park earlier this year comes off as hypocritical to some. The article briefly mentions the history of the Yoyogi park as well.

Word bank:
vandalous-destructive
lionize- glorify
might-is-right -those who are powerful can do what they wish unchallenged, even if their action is in fact unjustified.
indignation-anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment.(S:resentment)
By dayan tan jie an

# data[].attributes.headline
Raids worldwide as police reveal vast hack of criminal encryption platform

# data[].attributes.subject
Raids worldwide as police reveal vast hack of criminal encryption platform

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/anom-encryption-crime-australia-new-zealand-14970016
the "world's most sophisticated" sting, law enforcement from New Zealand, Australia the United States and Europe resulting in hundreds of arrests.
1)redolent-describe something as suggestive, we mean it suggests or calls up thoughts or ideas of other things. (His recommendation was suggestive of his boss’s thinking.)
2)erstwhile-The adjective former means, broadly, earlier in time (during a former stage in the proceedings) or, of two things in succession, earlier in order
By Ramachandran

# data[].attributes.headline
5 months' jail for policeman who helped to intentionally pervert the course of justice

# data[].attributes.subject
5 months' jail for policeman who helped to intentionally pervert the course of justice

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/5-months-jail-for-policeman-who-helped-to-intentionally-pervert-the-course-of

summary:
A policeman was charged for intentionally perverting the course of justice by attempting to assist a social media personality in passing on instructions to a witness of the defendant’s case, which included the intent to lie in the witness statement. However during the call, the officer was caught as the witness was in the middle of an interview with other authorities. Hence, he was charged and suspended from service.

word bank:
1. Pervert: distort or corrupt the original course, meaning, or state of (something).
2. Fraudulent: obtained, done by, or involving deception, especially criminal deception.

done by: pearlena

# data[].attributes.headline
Issuing of banknotes, ATM withdrawals and cheque clearance fall amid rise in e-payments

# data[].attributes.subject
Issuing of banknotes, ATM withdrawals and cheque clearance fall amid rise in e-payments

# data[].attributes.body
Summary :
Singapore has seen a shift from traditional cash or cheque payment towards e-payments .Singapore monetary authority is now proactively promoting the adoption of e -payment in place of paper notes,  which alleviates the environmental impact while producing, processing and transporting the physical currency.
Word Bank :
incineration : the destruction of something, mostly waste materials, by burning  “ waste incineration”
aberration : a departure from what is normal , usual or expected. Usually unwelcomed
Submitted by JIngyu

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
SINGAPORE: As e-payments rise in popularity, fewer banknotes are being issued, ATM withdrawals are declining and fewer cheques being used, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said.

The number of S$2, S$5, S$10 and S$50 banknotes issued fell 24 per cent last year from the previous year. Cash withdrawals at ATMs also dropped by 16 per cent to 172 million transactions, while 36.4 million cheques were cleared, a 23 per cent decline.

These come amid efforts to promote e-payments, such as online fund transfer service PayNow, as a convenient alternative and a way to reduce the environmental impact of using physical notes and cheques, said the MAS in its first sustainability report released on Wednesday (Jun 9).

"We are promoting the adoption of e-payments in Singapore that will help to slow the demand for physical currency, whose production and processing have significant environmental impact," managing director Ravi Menon said in the report.

The MAS is also reducing the issuance of new notes during festive periods.

Around 100 million new notes are issued for Chinese New Year and other festive periods every year. However, most of them "are not needed by the public for daily use", especially the S$2 note, and the majority are returned to the MAS after each Chinese New Year.

This is a waste of resources and results in unnecessary carbon emissions, the central bank said. Around 330 tonnes of carbon emissions are generated by producing new notes each Chinese New Year.

As a solution, it introduced the "good-as-new S$2 note programme" in 2013, which reissues the high-quality S$2 notes returned after the festive period. This has saved about 50 tonnes of carbon emissions a year.

Looking ahead, MAS said it is "progressively" reducing the issuance of new S$2 notes for Chinese New Year. It will also continue to promote e-gifting as an alternative and is encouraging financial technology firms to develop such solutions.

Other efforts to be more sustainable include working with its vendors to manage the carbon and environmental impact of printing currency notes. Steps taken by appointed printers include sourcing for renewable energy and printing carbon-neutral notes through carbon offsetting.

MAS' CARBON FOOTPRINT DOWN BY NEARLY HALF IN 2020

In the inaugural report, the central bank also laid out its carbon footprint over the past three financial years.

It had engaged an external consultant to establish its carbon profile, which covers three areas: Direct emissions primarily from fire extinguishing agent; indirect emissions from electricity usage by its offices in Singapore and overseas, as well as that from corporate activities like business air travel and waste incineration.

Indirect emissions from outsourced currency operations, such as currency production, processing and transportation, are excluded as MAS is still working to obtain and review emissions data from its vendors.

It expects these emissions to contribute "significantly" to its total carbon footprint when they are eventually included.

"Preliminary estimates indicate that they could account for up to 40 per cent to 60 per cent of MAS' overall carbon profile," the report said.

For now, indirect emissions from electricity usage and business air travel form the bulk of MAS' carbon profile.

It generated 8,968 tonnes of carbon emissions in the 2018/19 financial year, before trimming that to 8,225 tonnes in the following year. For both financial years, electricity and business air travel accounted for more than 90 per cent of these emissions.

Total carbon emissions fell by nearly 50 per cent to 4,383 tonnes last year but the MAS noted that it was "an aberration" due largely to air travel being a no-go during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moving forward, the central bank said it will continue to track its usage of electricity, water and paper. Since 2013, it has managed to cut energy and water consumption by 23 per cent and 5 per cent, exceeding or meeting the respective public sector targets of 15 per cent and 5 per cent.

It will do more to optimise energy and water efficiency at its offices, such as upgrading its lights to motion-controlled LED ones and installing solar panels on its rooftops.

As part of developing a roadmap to reduce carbon emissions, it will also look at its business air travel needs given how the pandemic has accelerated the use of technology to stay connected.

In addition, MAS said it will continue to include sustainability considerations in its procurement policies and aims to build a culture of sustainability among employees.

It also said it will work on reducing the environmental impact of its currency operations where it is able to. But given its mandate to meet public demand for notes and coins, this is an area "where it is unlikely that MAS can make a significant emissions reduction".

"Nevertheless, MAS will continue with ongoing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of our currency operations," it said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Issuing of banknotes, ATM withdrawals and cheque clearance fall amid rise in e-payments

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SINGAPORE: As e-payments rise in popularity, fewer banknotes are being issued, ATM withdrawals are declining and fewer cheques being used, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said.The number of S$2, S$5, S$10 and S$50 banknotes issued fell 24 per cent last year from the previous year

# data[].attributes.headline
Covid has made online shopping addicts of us all

# data[].attributes.subject
Covid has made online shopping addicts of us all

# data[].attributes.body
summary:
Since the pandemic began, online spending keeps breaking records. Such shopping compulsion can be  a sign of people trying to escape from negative feelings and uncomfortable feelings. Yet, over shopping can result in a vicious cycle. Instead of easing our feelings, it can result in our guilt due to over-splurging which increases discomfort and intensifies the urge to shop. Hence, we should all think twice before clicking the “purchase” bottom.
word bank:
repercussion: unpleasant consequence
normalcy: the condition of being normal; the state of being usual, typical, or expected.
link:
https://www.ft.com/content/d2074321-ef2b-43ad-acf7-60f37d605fc7

by yichun

# data[].attributes.headline
Mass of Human Chromosomes Measured for the First Time – Mysteriously Heavier Than Expected

# data[].attributes.subject
Mass of Human Chromosomes Measured for the First Time – Mysteriously Heavier Than Expected

# data[].attributes.body
https://scitechdaily.com/mass-of-human-chromosomes-measured-for-the-first-time-mysteriously-heavier-than-expected/

Summary:
- Scientists manage to measure the weight of a chromosome, which was heavier than they would expect, revealing that there are components in a chromosome yet to be discovered.

Word bank:
- NIL

Done by Seng Hoi

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/plastics-plastics-everywhere
Summary: The amount of plastics found in the environment has drastically increased to unimaginable levels of pollution, and not just plastic bags or bottles, there are also microplastics that are not able to be seen through the naked eye that are also polluting the environment.
Word bank: Exfoliating: is the process of removing dead skin cells from the surface of your skin using a chemical, granular substance, or exfoliation tool.
Tributaries: 1. is a river or stream flowing into a larger river or lake.
2. a person or state that pays tribute to another state or ruler.
Done by Zi Yu

# data[].attributes.headline
How COVID-19 vaccines are being weaponised as countries jostle for influence

# data[].attributes.subject
How COVID-19 vaccines are being weaponised as countries jostle for influence

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/covid-19-vaccines-weaponised-coronavirus-china-us-russia-14564748#

Summary of article:
The Italian prime minister , Mario Draghi , has rejected exporting some 250,000 AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia which many people view it as an act of vaccine nationalism. Back in 2020 , when the outbreak of the virus had just begun the US , EU , UK , India and China had implemented export restrictions of personal protective equipment or better known as the acronym 'PPE'. Not only 'PPE's were restricted but antiseptic chemicals and shipments of ventilators had been halted as national health services are battling for health supplies. However , it is speculated that the outcome of vaccine nationalism is the rise of vaccine diplomacy. It is a form of politics where nations gain the most advantage from their vaccine capabilities for geopolitical benefit.

Word Bank:
Geopolitical : relating to politics, especially international relations, as influenced by geographical factors

Vaccine diplomacy (not a word but still) : Vaccine diplomacy is the use of vaccines to improve a country's diplomatic relationship and influence of other countries

done by : rehan

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https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ghost-town-shops-orchard-xchange-tell-sluggish-business-landlord-smrt-moves-take-back

summary:
rented businesses depend heavily on consumers to generate money to pay rent on top of getting profits. what happens when businesses suddenly slow down? shop tenants at OrchardxChange have been struggling with rent over the past 3 years and with the recent covid-19 resurgence rendering businesses a lack of customers, the landlord of the shops at OrchardxChange, smrt, has decided to take back the shops from the tenants.

word bank:
sluggish: slow-moving or inactive.

prospective: expected or expecting to be the specified thing in the future.

Marcus yee

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Speaking to TODAY, the tenants said that they were sold a bustling food-and-beverage (F&B) concept by the rail operator, and they were told that about 70 to 75 per cent of the units would be occupied by the time they moved in.

However, since they took over the units in 2018, they estimated that, at most, only 50 per cent of the units have ever been occupied, and business has never picked up to what was expected.

They said that things were already bad before the pandemic but the situation worsened as a result of reduced patronage from lesser human traffic and use of MRT services, for example.

The tenants asked not to be named because they are still negotiating some outstanding rental issues with SMRT and are waiting for these discussions to be completed.

In response to TODAY's queries, SMRT said that it will have an anchor tenant to take over the area, though it did not identify the prospective tenant and when it will be taking over the area.

Mr Daniel Chua, SMRT Properties' general manager, said: "We plan to revamp our retail and F&B offerings at stations such as Dhoby Ghaut, Orchard and Tanjong Pagar, to bring in new experiences for our commuters and surrounding communities.

"We will make them known in due course after finalising negotiations with prospective tenants."

He did not specify how many units were being taken back by SMRT.

One of the affected tenants said that her shop, an F&B business, was able to make just S$400 a day and this was already better than some of her neighbours, who would only see S$50 to S$100 a day in sales.

Still, she said that what she earned was only enough to cover rental fees, but not the cost of manpower and materials. She declined to disclose how much she was paying each month.

Another tenant, who owns a hair salon and moved from a previous location to Orchard XChange in 2018, said that because of the poor business, a handful of her staff members gradually left as the salon was barely surviving on the revenue from its regular customers.

Some tenants chose to draw their shutters last year, even before SMRT took the units back around January this year. This only made the situation at Orchard XChange worse, the remaining tenants said.

"Last time, when (more F&B outlets) were open, at least there were some people around during lunchtime. But after they closed, you barely see anyone walking past," the F&B shop owner said.
NO HELP WITH PROMOTION
Even with the poor business, the tenants said that SMRT made little effort to spruce up the area or do anything to market the area and attract more customers.

A tenant who ran another F&B store said that during festive periods such as Christmas, Chinese New Year and Hari Raya Puasa, the tenants took it upon themselves to hang up decorations to attract customers.

"At Ion (next door), they brought in a Christmas band and everyone was attracted to go there. But ours, nothing, zero... No attractions, no footfall," he said.

The first F&B shop owner said that when they asked the rail operator if they could put up posters or distribute flyers at the MRT station below, SMRT said that it would have to charge the tenants extra if they did so within the premises of the station.

"So we could not even do our own marketing," she said.

They recalled that SMRT did some promotion, such as putting up offers on its Wink rewards mobile application, but the tenants said that these efforts did not bear any fruit.

Customers shopping in the area told TODAY that they were not even aware that there used to be shops at Orchard XChange even before the tenants moved out.

Domestic worker Chita Mora, 48, said that she stops by the area only when she wants to buy food from fast-food outlet Popeye's, which was one of the three stores that were still open when TODAY visited last Thursday (June 3).

A shopper who wanted to be known only as Mr GG said that he only noticed the stores at Orchard XChange because he lives in the area and goes to Orchard Road frequently to shop or get takeaway. Still, he never patronised any of them when they were open.
'DEAD MAN'S STREET'
TODAY's checks at the other centrally located SMRT XChanges at Dhoby Ghaut, Raffles Places and Tanjong Pagar on Friday afternoon found footfall to be equally sparse, if not non-existent.

At Dhoby Ghaut XChange, more than half of the units did not appear to be occupied, while most of those that were occupied were not open for business.

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'A ghost town': Orchard XChange shops suffer sluggish sales as landlord SMRT moves to take back units

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SINGAPORE - Due to sluggish business and low foot traffic, the Orchard XChange shopping area has become a "ghost town", tenants there said. They were recently asked to vacate the premises because landlord SMRT has chosen to take back most of the units.

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Thai man brings cockroach to vet after seeing it injured by the road

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Thai man brings cockroach to vet after seeing it injured by the road

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https://mothership.sg/2021/06/man-bring-cockroach-to-vet/

Summary: A man, that is out of the ordinary, sees a cockroach on the road and decides to bring it to the vet to get it treated. This man embodies compassion that we should all have towards animals, such as cockroaches that we often overlook as a pest.

Word bank: pegged - fix (a price, rate, or amount) at a particular level.

ZI LE

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What Covid-19's long tail is revealing about disease

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What Covid-19's long tail is revealing about disease

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due to the covid-19 pandemic, many hospitals and clinics are still seeing more than half of the patients that have covid-19. however, the bizarre thing is t he
sudden influx of completely healthy patients  who were experiencing chronic symptoms. Their stories all followed a recurring pattern, beginning with a seemingly mild infection before a strange constellation of aliments start to emerge. Rather than subsiding, these symptoms continued to persist even after the virus had supposedly left their bodies.
work bank:
constellation:  a group of people or things that are similar.
recurring: keeps coming back / repeating.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210609-how-long-will-long-covid-last
done by corliss

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Cambodians being evicted from their floating homes

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Cambodians being evicted from their floating homes

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The government of cambodia is evicting the people living in the floating homes on the Tonle sap Riverdespite the objections from the residents who say they have no where else to go.  The dloating homes were the livelihood of the people living there for generations. They depend on their homes for fishing and a safe place to stay.

Clink the link below to find out more⬇️
Cambodia begins evicting floating homes amid protests
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/cambodia-begins-evicting-floating-homes-amid-protests

Word bank:
Interspersed
Grayling

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77 people fined for COVID-19 breaches at parks; enforcement stepped up at hotspots including HDB common areas

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77 people fined for COVID-19 breaches at parks; enforcement stepped up at hotspots including HDB common areas

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-77-fined-parks-no-mask-enforcement-hdb-common-areas-14992678

Summary:77 people have been fine for not complying with covid19 rules of phase 2(heighten alert).Some of which are found to be in groups of more than 2 or not wearing a mask even though they are not engaging  any strenous exercise.To ensure the safety of the public, Nparks would continue to close some parks and sections of beaches.If there are too many people frequently gathered at facilities,such as hard courts,car park and shelters,breaching covid19 rules these facilities would also be closed.MSC hopes that the public would act responsibility to make public spaces safe for everyone.From July 14,group size would increase from 2 to 5 as the first step to move into phase 3(heighten alert)and more restrictions would be ease from 21july ,like dinning in.
Word bank:
Flouted
-openly disregard (a rule, law, or convention)
Cordon
-prevent access to or from an area or building by surrounding it with police or other guards.
Joshua 4E

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Test-bedding technologies crucial to accelerating solar deployment: Experts

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Test-bedding technologies crucial to accelerating solar deployment: Experts

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https://www.straitstimes.com/world/test-bedding-technologies-crucial-to-accelerating-solar-deployment-experts

As the world move to more renewable sources of energy so that less fossil fuels are used, solar panels are becoming more common. However, to make use of solar energy the costs to manufacture and maintain it is expensive hence to move complete reliance on renewable energy will still take a few years.

photovoltaic - the conversion of light into electricity

validate - to prove the accuracy or to support the truth

Johann 4E

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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/grow-a-clam-for-a-healthier-reef

Clams grow on the reef and are known to spawn naturally. However, little is known about its reproduction. Out of two clam species in Singapore, Tridacna crocea(boring giant clam) is smaller, measuring 15 cm in length. To ensure its survival and prevent poaching in the long term, researchers are trying to breed them. Serotonin is injected into the clams, causing them to contract the muscles in the sexual organs, releasing 🤬, and shortly after, eggs. The gametes are fused together forming small clams, cross bred between two clams. These are grown in a lab in optimised conditions, protecting them from predators, and increasing supply to meet demand for clams.

Word bank
1. Siphoned---drawing a liquid into a straw of pipe.
2. Serotonin--a neurotransmitter involved in pain perception sleep wake cycle and mood.

Done by Isaac

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Agreement to boost climate finance but critics say details scant

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Agreement to boost climate finance but critics say details scant

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https://www.straitstimes.com/world/g7-agrees-to-increase-climate-finance-calls-on-others-to-join

At Carbis bay, England, G7 leaders raised their contributions to 100 million USD a year till 2025 to help developing countries cut CO2 emissions. Leaders also pledged to conserve 30% of global land and sea by 2030. However, some people are skeptical whether they would carry out what they planned to do.

Word bank:
1. Communique--official bulletin or communication
2. Grappling--grab, wrestle

Done by Isaac

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Commentary: What if another widespread Internet outage happens?

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Commentary: What if another widespread Internet outage happens?

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summary : With the growing reliance on the Internet, the impact of cyber disruption or even cyberattack is being tremendously disruptive. Concerns have been raised as people see themselves suffering from the inconvenience of even a temporary cessation of internet service. An alternative plan should be prepared by authorities and organizations, while individuals should remain calm and patient while waiting for the backup system to kick in.
word bank:
Avert - to prevent something bad from happening  -“to avert a crisis / conflict / strike / famine /disaster/ economic collapse”.
Premeditated —(especially of a crime or something unpleasant) done after being thought about or carefully planned - “premeditated murder / attack”.
Submitted by Jingyu

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We need to make allowances for outages, like additional time and expense of getting things done - making transactions, appointments, or applications - the manual way. We need to find out if there even are alternative ways of getting those things done, and demand that businesses and organisations provide them as a backup. We need to see if we can build in redundancy.

For businesses and organisations, some writers have warned against reliance on CDNs as a "single point of failure". But CDNs are actually more resilient and faster to recover than individual organisations. In fact, Fastly may have actually met its service level commitment - one hour down-time in a year is not unreasonable.

Small businesses don't even have the luxury of choosing CDNs, because they rely on larger businesses for services like e-commerce shopfronts (Lazada, Shoppee), delivery (Grab), and web services and storage (Amazon).

Organisations instead need scenario planning, and can learn from the cybersecurity sector. One common cybersecurity scenario that businesses practice is website unavailability, because that could have tremendous impact both on share price and publicity.

After a spate of incidents involving organisations such as the UK National Health Service, the government of Georgia and the Romanian sites of Google and Paypal, most large organisations have rehearsed how to quickly recover should their web assets get hijacked.

This incident reminds us that it doesn't take a cyberattack or a bunch of tech whiz hackers to make your website unavailable.

MAKING SURE BUSINESS CAN RESUME

Business Continuity Planning (BCP), which outlines procedures and instructions to follow in the event of disasters or disruptions to IT networks, is not the most exciting work to do. But its principles are something every company and worker are familiar with, after a pandemic has damaged best laid plans.

As with COVID-19, in a prolonged outage, BCP could be reason why your business survives. Having alternative service providers and processes to ensure that business operations can still continue is a must-have.

In January 2021, in response to the SolarWinds attacks of late 2020, the Monetary Authority of Singapore updated its technology risk management guidelines and recommended its licensees evaluate the cybersecurity and code handling processes of their respective service providers.

A malware in a IT software provider like SolarWinds exposed tens of thousands of clients and potentially gave hackers access to the data and networks of their partners and customers.

These are sound suggestions and we see wisdom in wider adoption.

For corporates and government services, while digital access to essential services has been efficient and beneficial, they should also provide people with alternative access, in case digital access is not available. Even under normal circumstances without an Internet outage, these alternatives will help those on the other side of the digital divide.

Our businesses, organisations, government, and ourselves, could all be more resilient if we have back-up plans for the most important things we do. This also applies to other critical infrastructure like electricity, water, transport, and telecommunications, because those outages can occur too.

(Can you really tell the difference between a legitimate email offer and a scam? Listen to cybersecurity experts discuss how scammers are getting increasingly sophisticated on CNA's Heart of the Matter podcast.) A GLOBAL COMMONS, A NEW CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

With the relentless push to digitalisation, our reliance on the Internet will only increase in time. We have been lucky so far, with only a few hours of inconvenience until backup systems kick in. The next outage could be bigger, longer, or the result of some form of premeditated cyberattack.

It would be foolish to assume we can operate in an online environment as if we were in an offline one. In order to thrive in the digital world, we should ask ourselves what skills, practices and habits we ought to develop to address the unique challenges digitalisation brings.

The Internet is critical infrastructure, and has been recognised so under Singapore's Cybersecurity Act passed in 2018.

Some may be wondering why Singapore has been actively involved, in particular, chairing the United Nations working group on international law in cyberspace since late-2020.

But this incident precisely illustrates how important the Internet is, and why Singapore needs to help promote a rules based international order, to avert cyber conflict that could cause much worse outages.

We also have Singaporeans volunteering their expertise on the Internet Engineering Task Force which oversees the technical developments of the engineering running the Internet. Others spend attending the Internet Governance Forum in which issues on the governance of the Internet are discussed and debated.

The Internet is too important a resource to be someone else's problem only - we all need to take individual and collective ownership.

Bryan Tan is a technology media and telecommunications partner at international law firm Pinsent Masons. He is co-chair of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association's TMT committee and a former president of the Singapore chapter of the Internet Society.

Benjamin Ang is Senior Fellow, Cyber and Homeland Defence, at the Centre of Excellence for National Security, RSIS NTU. He is a former president of the Singapore chapter of the Internet Society.

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Commentary: What if another widespread Internet outage happens?

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We need to make allowances for outages, like additional time and expense of getting things done - making transactions, appointments, or applications - the manual way. We need to find out if there even are alternative ways of getting those things done, and demand that businesses and organisations provide them as a backup.

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Eating Air: Discover the farm life in New Zealand

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Eating Air: Discover the farm life in New Zealand

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https://www.straitstimes.com/life/eating-air-discover-the-farm-life-in-new-zealand

A virtual trip to a farm in australia. Where blue skies and sprawling pastures strech out endlessly behind the host. The first 10  mins were spent introducing the farm - which houses hundreds of sheep, chickens and pigs. The host says it is 3-4 deg c there so i tried to ignore singapores tropical heat for a fuller experience. He conducts pop quizzes whileon the way to the new location. He introduces sheeps and a couple of wondering kunekune pigs. This is a sustaijnable farm where technonlgy is intrgrated so he can run his one man show.

wanderlust: a strong desire to travel
rousing: exciiting ;stirring

Done by Kang You

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Singapore marine life enthusiasts ‘horrified’ over beach goers digging up sea creatures

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Singapore marine life enthusiasts ‘horrified’ over beach goers digging up sea creatures

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summary: marine life enthusiasts witnessed people at changi beach picking up and collecting various sea creatures from the sand. these include crabs, sea cucumbers, fish, shells, eels, jellyfish and sea anemone. they were angered by this as they claimed that stuffing the creatures into pails will suffocate them and cause them distress. additionally, the creatures were roughly handled and grabbed with tongs. this not only kills the creatures, but also risks the collectors' safety. people that walk on the beach with their feet exposed risk stepping on venomous creatures and the pain from getting stung by such creatures is extreme.

word bank:
ethical: relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these

intertidal: of or denoting the area of a seashore which is covered at high tide and uncovered at low tide
"let's go on an intertidal walk"

done by tze sun

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SINGAPORE: A Facebook post about the treatment of marine creatures by Changi Beach visitors recently has got wildlife enthusiasts riled up.

The post was shared in the Singapore Wildlife Sightings Facebook group by one of its members, Ms Daphne Ting, who witnessed the happenings at Changi Beach on Sunday (Jun 13) morning while she was on an intertidal walk.

An intertidal walk is one that traverses the coastal area at the edge of land and sea that is submerged at high tide, but dry and exposed to air during low tide.

In the post, Ms Ting noted groups of beach goers, armed with shovels, tongs and pails, were digging up holes, "searching for these marine creatures and wrecking the entire shore".

Among the creatures they collected were crabs, fish, shells, sea cucumbers, eels, jellyfish and sea anemone, Ms Ting said in her post.

"There were other beach goers who were very angry at this too. But even after telling these people not to collect the marine life, they just walked away and continued collecting more," the 28-year-old wrote.

Speaking to CNA over the phone, Ms Ting added that she'd shared her post hoping someone would shed light on what can be done, as this was the first time she'd seen people collecting marine creatures "on a mass scale".

"When my boyfriend and I saw them collecting the creatures in the pail, we saw the way they handled the tongs. They'd pick up soft creatures in a very rough manner. If you were there, you'd also feel horrified at the way they handled the creatures," she told CNA.
WHY THE UPROAR
Such a sight is, unfortunately, common, according to marine biodiversity enthusiasts who spoke to CNA.

"It's not that people aren't aware of these creatures, but they're unaware of how the creatures behave. They don't know that putting them into buckets with other creatures can cause stress or harm to them. If you're going to stuff them into a pail, the oxygen level depletes rapidly and might cause them to die," said Dennis Chan, 27.

The founder of The Untamed Paths, an organisation that attempts to raise awareness of unconventional biodiversity in Singapore, said that "putting these creatures in buckets also increases the temperature of water, causing more distress".

Some marine creatures that suffer in this way include starfish and anemone.

"Starfish will detach their arms when stressed; anemones will die when forcefully uprooted and taken out of the water. Like most marine life, starfish are also stressed by natural elements like the influx of freshwater or rain. They become pale and die off slowly. So imagine human impact on these delicate creatures," said Mr Jianlin Liu, who has been going on intertidal walks at least thrice a month for nine years.

"Prying soft invertebrates like marine flatworms and nudibranchs off rocks can also severely hurt or kill the animal."

The 31-year-old, who has flown to Bali twice a year for the last five years to do intertidal surveys, reasoned that such behaviour usually stems from a "lack of education", an "others do, so I follow" mentality and being able to see the creatures clearer in the pail.

"But other reasons include to harvest and consume marine life, sell the animals for money to aquariums or to collect for one's personal aquarium," he added.

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Singapore marine life enthusiasts 'horrified' over beach goers digging up sea creatures

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SINGAPORE: A Facebook post about the treatment of marine creatures by Changi Beach visitors recently has got wildlife enthusiasts riled up.The post was shared in the Singapore Wildlife Sightings Facebook group by one of its members, Ms Daphne Ting, who witnessed the happenings at Changi Beach on

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Centuries-old shipwrecks discovered in S'pore waters; artefacts to be displayed in museums

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Centuries-old shipwrecks discovered in S'pore waters; artefacts to be displayed in museums

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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/centuries-old-shipw

Two shipwrecks - one dating possibly to the 14th century and the other to the 18th - have been excavated within Singapore's waters - a first for the nation and a groundbreaking development for its maritime heritage.

Both wrecks, bearing Chinese ceramics as their primary cargo, were found in the waters off Pedra Branca, a rocky outcrop surrounded by shallow waters where ships throughout history have come

to grief.

The plan is to display the artefacts in museums here from the end of this year.

Pragmatist-an approach that evaluated theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application

Fissure-long and narrow opening
By Ramachandran

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Vietnam's proposal to postpone SEA Games opposed by most member states

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Vietnam's proposal to postpone SEA Games opposed by most member states

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/sport/vietnam-postpone-sea-games-covid-19-meeting-oppose-14980660#.YMnTbPa82D4

Vietnam has experienced an acute surge in covid-19 cases. The situation is so dire that the country is even planning to postpone the 31st South East Asian Games or better known as SEA Games. However , majority of the participating Federations have surprisingly opposed to this proposal. Countries such as Malaysia , Indonesia , Philippines,  Thailand , Timor Leste and Singapore were not onboard with postponing it as they claim to be deep in preparations. Furthermore , the plans to postpone the 2021 SEA Games to 2022 was not ideal for anyone as it just makes 2022 even more packed for the athletes with the 2022 Asian Games and other major competitions set to take place as well.  However despite most of the nations rejecting the proposal , Vietnam does have the right to postpone it since it is the host nation. Will they postpone it or not ? Find out in two more weeks.

Congregate : gather into a crowd or mass

Zeitgeist : the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

done by rehan

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JTC and Shell Singapore sign MOU to explore development of solar farm on Semakau Landfill

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JTC and Shell Singapore sign MOU to explore development of solar farm on Semakau Landfill

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/semakau-landfill-jtc-and-shell-singapore-sign-mou-solar-farm-15031852

summary :
JTC Corporation and Shell Singapore have signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly explore the development of a solar farm on part of Semakau Landfill and maximise the use of Semakau in a way that is compatible with its primary purpose as a landfill. it is the first large-scale solar project in Singapore where a sanitary landfill is also used for clean energy generation. It is to reduce Singapore’s carbon emissions and meet its growing clean energy needs

word bank :
Memorandum : a written message in business or diplomacy

done by charmaine

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Raising bilingual children is challenging but immensely rewarding

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Raising bilingual children is challenging but immensely rewarding

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/mother-tongue-parent-child-teach-school-bilingual-language-learn-14946504

Summary: Raising bilingual children is hard as many children  view their mother tongue as only an academic subject and do not find any real life applications for learning their mother tongue. Moreover, it has been shown that children gravitate to languages that their peers use, most commonly english, which also increases the difficulty in raising a bilingual child. Ways to ignite a passion for the language in children include teaching the children the relevant uses of the language that may appeal to them. This gives value to learning the mother tongue, incentivising children to learn the language because they want to and not because they are compelled to by their parents. Lastly, it is imperative that parents do not give up and that they persevere even though their child may not reciprocate to their efforts in cultivating a joy for learning  the  language

idiosyncratic- a mode of behaviour or way of thought perculiar to an individual.
affinity - a natural liking for and understanding of someone or something.
Rote learning - memorization technique based on repetition.

By Dayan tan jie an

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myanmar footballer to seek asylum in japan 

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myanmar footballer to seek asylum in japan 

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Myanmar footballer to seek asylum in Japan
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/myanmar-footballer-seek-asylum-in-japan-15031200

summary: A goalkeeper from Myanmar's national team who raised an anti-coup salute during a match outside Tokyo has refused to fly home and will seek asylum in Japan. The footballer, whose teammates are believed to have returned home on Wednesday, said he will not go back until ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi returns to power.

immaculate: perfectly neat, clean or tidy.
decadent: characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline. (adjective) ; a person who is luxuriously self-indulgent. (noun)

dior 4D

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COVID-19 pandemic sparks surge in Hong Kong 'devil's breath' cash druggings

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COVID-19 pandemic sparks surge in Hong Kong 'devil's breath' cash druggings

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/covid-19-pandemic-crime-surge-hong-kong-devil-breath-cash-scam-15032056

summary:
There has been an increase in crimes happening in Wanchai, Hongkong where customers of bars have been marked as targets of opportunistic crimes. Victims tend to find themselves with no recollection of events and find that their bank accounts have been emptied out by the scammers who have drugged them by drugging their drinks and taking down their PIN numbers. With these crimes, not only is there the damage of having to deal with the financial loss, it leaves victims wondering how they could they be so submissive to these crimes.

word bank:
1. Conceded: admit or agree that something is true after first denying or resisting it
2. Pliable: easily influenced

done by: pearlena

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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/the-human-genome-is-finally-complete/619172/

Summary: Scientists have finally discovered the remaining 8% of  unexplored DNA

Word bank:
Consortium (noun) - An association of several companies
Enigmatic (Adj) - Base: Enigma (noun) - A mysterious or puzzling person or thing
Pomp (noun) - Special clothes, music, and customs that are part of a grand public ceremony
Grassroots (noun) - The most basic level of an activity or organisation

Done by Seng Hoi

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All credit and debit card customers affected by duplicate transactions have been given refunds: DBS

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All credit and debit card customers affected by duplicate transactions have been given refunds: DBS

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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/all-customers-affected-by-duplicate-transactions-refunded-dbs

DBS bank refunds all customer when a glitch happens in tthe system which charges customer twiceq causing many to panic.

breached: make a gap in and break through (a wall, barrier, or defence).
"the river breached its bank"
Monetary: relating to money or currency.
"documents with little or no monetary value"
done by  kang you

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Schools Love the Idea of a Growth Mindset, But Does it Work ?

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Schools Love the Idea of a Growth Mindset, But Does it Work ?

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Summary : People with a growth mindset deceive challenges and failures as motivations for improvement, thus they tend to constantly invest more efforts for greater self - improvement . The consensus on the significance of cultivating students’ growth mindset in schools has impelled teachers to stress this notion to their students . However, little statistical significance has been yielded  through direct intervention. Instead of purposely installing the notion into students, educators should place more heed on developing students’concrete capabilities , which would in turn lead to achievements and  naturally propel students better value personal growth.

Word bank :
platitudinous - boring and meaningless because it has been said so many times before  (hackneyed)
" It was such a platitudinous speech"
proselytize  -to persuade someone to change their religious or political belief or way of living to your own (promote)
"Missionaries were sent to proselytize in rural areas of the country."

Done by - Jingyu

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Over the past century, a powerful idea has taken root in the educational landscape. The notion of intelligence as something innate and fixed has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is instead something malleable; that we are not prisoners of immutable characteristics and that, with the right training, we can be the authors of our own cognitive capabilities.

Nineteenth-century scientists including Francis Galton and Alfred Binet devoted their own considerable intelligence to a quest to classify and understand human cognitive ability. If we could codify the anatomy of intelligence, they believed, we could place individuals into their correct niche in society. Binet would go on to develop the first IQ tests, laying the foundations for a method of ranking the intelligence of job applicants, army recruits or schoolchildren that continues today.

In the early 20th century, progressive thinkers revolted against this idea that inherent ability is destiny. Instead, educators such as John Dewey argued that every child's intelligence could be developed, given the right environment. The self, according to Dewey, is not something 'ready made' but rather 'in continuous formation through choice of action'. In the 1960s and '70s, psychologists such as Albert Bandura bridged some of the gap between the innate and the learned models of intelligence with his idea of social cognitive theory, self-efficacy and motivation. One can recognise that there are individual differences in ability, Bandura argued, but still emphasise the potential for growth for each individual, wherever one's starting point.

Growth mindset theory is a relatively new - and wildly popular - iteration of this belief in the malleability of intelligence, but with a twist. In many schools today you will see hallways festooned with motivational posters, and hear speeches on the mindset of great sporting heroes who simply believed their way to the top. These are all attempts to put growth mindset theory into practice through motivation. However a growth mindset is not really about motivation, but rather about the way in which individuals understand their own intelligence.

According to the theory, if students believe that their ability is fixed, they will not want to do anything to reveal that, so a major focus of the growth mindset in schools is shifting students away from seeing failure as an indication of their ability, to seeing failure as a chance to improve that ability. As Jeff Howard noted almost 30 years ago: 'Smart is not something that you just are, smart is something that you can get.'

Despite extraordinary claims for the efficacy of a growth mindset, however, it's increasingly unclear whether attempts to change students' mindsets about their abilities have any positive effect on their learning at all. And the story of the growth mindset is a cautionary tale about what happens when psychological theories are translated into the reality of the classroom, no matter how well-intentioned.

The idea of the growth mindset is based on the work of the psychologist Carol Dweck at Stanford University in California. Dweck's findings suggest that beliefs about ourselves can have a profound effect on academic achievement and beyond. Her seminal work stems from a paper 20 years ago that reported on a research project with schoolchildren that probed the relationship between their understanding of their own abilities and their actual performance.

In the experiment, a group of 10- to 12-year-olds were divided into two groups. All were told that they had achieved a high score on a test but members of the first group were praised for their intelligence in achieving this, while the others were praised for their effort. The second group were subsequently far more likely to put effort into future tasks while the former took on only those tasks that would not risk their initial sense of worth. Praising ability actually made the students perform worse, while praising effort emphasised that change was possible.

Dweck's work suggests that when people believe that failure is not a barometer of innate characteristics but rather view it as a step to success (a growth mindset), they are far more likely to put in the kinds of effort that will eventually lead to that success. By contrast, those who believe that success or failure is due to innate ability (a fixed mindset) can find that this leads to a fear of failure and a lack of effort.

Imagine two children who are faced with taking a test on a tricky maths problem. The first child completes the first few steps but then hits a wall, and instantly feels demotivated. For this child, the small failure is incontrovertible evidence of simply not being good at maths. By contrast, for the second child, this small failure is merely a barrier to eventual success, and confers an opportunity to improve overall maths ability. The second child relishes the challenge, and works to improve - that child is displaying a growth mindset. According to the theory, the key to encouraging this disposition is to praise the effort and not the ability. By telling children that they are smart or intelligent, you are merely confirming the idea of innate ability, fostering a fixed mindset, and actually undermining their development. Dweck's claims are supported by a lot of evidence, indeed she and her associates have spent more than 30 years exploring this phenomenon, including taking the time to respond to criticism in an open and transparent way.

Growth mindset theory has had a profound impact on the ground. It is difficult to think of a school today that is not in thrall to the idea that beliefs about one's ability affect subsequent performance, and that it's crucial to teach students that failure is merely a stepping stone to success. Implementing these ideas has been much harder, however, and attempts to replicate the original findings have not been smooth, to say the least. A recent national survey in the United States showed that 98 per cent of teachers feel that growth mindset approaches should be adopted in schools, but only 50 per cent said that they knew of strategies to effectively change a pupil's mindset.

The truth is we simply haven't been able to translate the research on the benefits of a growth mindset into any sort of effective, consistent practice that makes an appreciable difference in student academic attainment. In many cases, growth mindset theory has been misrepresented and miscast as simply a means of motivating the unmotivated through pithy slogans and posters. A general truth about education is that the more vague and platitudinous the statement, the less practical use it has on the ground. 'Making a difference' rarely makes any difference at all.

A growing number of recent studies are casting doubt on the efficacy of mindset interventions at scale. A large-scale study of 36 schools in the UK, in which either pupils or teachers were given training, found that the impact on pupils directly receiving the intervention did not have statistical significance, and that the pupils whose teachers were trained made no gains at all. Another study featuring a large sample of university applicants in the Czech Republic used a scholastic aptitude test to explore the relationship between mindset and achievement. They found a slightly negative correlation, with researchers claiming that 'the results show that the strength of the association between academic achievement and mindset might be weaker than previously thought'. A 2012 review for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the UK of attitudes to education and participation found 'no clear evidence of association or sequence between pupils' attitudes in general and educational outcomes, although there were several studies attempting to provide explanations for the link (if it exists)'. In 2018, two meta-analyses in the US found that claims for the growth mindset might have been overstated, and that there was 'little to no effect of mindset interventions on academic achievement for typical students'.

'Kids with the growth mindset aren't getting better grades'

One of the greatest impediments to successfully implementing a growth mindset is the education system itself. A key characteristic of a fixed mindset is a focus on performance and an avoidance of any situation where testing might lead to a confirmation of fixed beliefs about ability. Yet we are currently in a school climate obsessed with performance in the form of constant summative testing, analysing and ranking of students. Schools create a certain cognitive dissonance when they proselytise the benefits of a growth mindset in assemblies but then hand out fixed target grades in lessons based on performance.

Aside from the implementation problem, the original growth mindset research has also received harsh criticism and been difficult to replicate robustly. The statistician Andrew Gelman at Columbia University in New York claims that 'their research designs have enough degrees of freedom that they could take their data to support just about any theory at all'. Timothy Bates, a professor of psychology at the University of Edinburgh who has been trying to replicate Dweck's work in a third study in China, is finding that the results are repeatedly null. He notes in a 2017 interview that: 'People with a growth mindset don't cope any better with failure. If we give them the mindset intervention, it doesn't make them behave better. Kids with the growth mindset aren't getting better grades, either before or after our intervention study.'

An enduring criticism of growth mindset theory is that it underestimates the importance of innate ability, specifically intelligence. If one student is playing with a weaker hand, is it fair to tell the student that she is just not making enough effort? Growth mindset - like its educational-psychology cousin 'grit' - can have the unintended consequence of making students feel responsible for things that are not under their control: that their lack of success is a failure of moral character. This goes well beyond questions of innate ability to the effects of marginalisation, poverty and other socioeconomic disadvantage. For the US psychiatrist Scott Alexander, if a fixed mindset accounts for underachievement, then 'poor kids seem to be putting in a heck of a lot less effort in a surprisingly linear way'. He sees growth mindset as a 'noble lie', and notes that saying to kids that a growth mindset accounts for success is not exactly denying reality so much as 'selectively emphasising certain parts of' it.

Much of this criticism is not lost on Dweck, and she deserves great credit for responding to it and adapting her work accordingly. In a recent blog, she noted that growth mindset theory 'is on a firm foundation, but we're still building the house'. In fact, she argues that her work has been misunderstood and misapplied in a range of ways. She has also expressed concerns that her theories are being misappropriated in schools by being conflated with the self-esteem movement: 'The thing that keeps me up at night is that some educators are turning mindset into the new self-esteem, which is to make kids feel good about any effort they put in, whether they learn or not. But for me the growth mindset is a tool for learning and improvement. It's not just a vehicle for making children feel good.'

For Dweck, it's not just about more effort, but rather purposeful and meaningful effort. And it's not just in the classroom where she feels that the growth mindset is being misunderstood, it seems to be happening in the home too: 'We're finding that many parents endorse a growth mindset, but they still respond to their children's errors, setbacks or failures as though they're damaging and harmful,' she said in an interview in 2015. 'If they show anxiety or overconcern, those kids are going toward a more fixed mindset.'

Dweck might be right that the theory is not always well understood or put into practice. There is always the danger of disappointment in the translation from educational laboratory to classroom, and this is partly due to the Chinese whispers effect, whereby research becomes diluted and distorted as it goes through its journey. But there is another factor at work here. The failure to translate the growth mindset into the classroom might reflect a profound misunderstanding of the elusive nature of teaching and learning itself.

Effective teaching, at its best, defies prescription. The same resources and the same approaches that are successful in one classroom can be completely ineffective in another. In his book Personal Knowledge (1958), Michael Polanyi defined 'tacit knowledge' as anything we know how to do but cannot explicitly explain how we do it, such as the complex set of skills needed to ride a bike or the instinctive ability to stay afloat in water. It is the ephemeral, elusive form of knowledge that resists classification or codification, and that can be gleaned only through immersion in the experience itself. In most cases, it's not even something that can be expressed through language. As Polanyi put it so beautifully in his book The Tacit Dimension (1966), 'we can know more than we can tell'. As a contrarian colleague once said to me about his frustration with the increasing codification of the classroom: 'Perhaps we should be brave enough to allow it to remain a mystery.'

Good teachers are like good actors, not in the sense that they are both artists, but in the sense that the best teachers teach you without you realising that you've been taught. If students get a whiff of being part of an 'intervention', then it is likely that the very awareness of this will have a detrimental effect. The growth mindset advocates David Yeager and Gregory Walton at Stanford claim that these interventions should not be seen as 'magic' and should be delivered in a 'stealthy' way to maximise their effectiveness - miles away from the standard use of motivational stories, posters and explanations of brain plasticity. As they put it in 2011: 'if adolescents perceive a teacher's reinforcement of a psychological idea as conveying that they are seen as in need of help, teacher training or an extended workshop could undo the effects of the intervention, not increase its benefits.' Pedagogy is not medicine, after all, and students do not want to be treated as patients to be cured.

How students learn well can be very counterintuitive. You might think it is safe to assume that, once you motivate students, the learning will follow. Yet research shows that this is often not the case: motivation doesn't always lead to achievement, but achievement often leads to motivation. If you try to 'motivate' students into public speaking, they might feel motivated but can lack the specific knowledge needed to translate that into action. However, through careful instruction and encouragement, students can learn how to craft an argument, shape their ideas and develop them into solid form.

The idea that videos of failed sportsmen can translate into a growth disposition is unrealistic

A lot of what drives students is their innate beliefs and how they perceive themselves. There is a strong correlation between self-perception and achievement, but there is some evidence to suggest that the actual effect of achievement on self-perception is stronger than the other way round. To stand up in a classroom and successfully deliver a good speech is a genuine achievement, and that is likely to be more powerfully motivating than woolly notions of 'motivation' itself.

One reason for this might be the over-generalised picture of the growth mindset: it tends to be talked about as a global or general skill as opposed to a domain-specific one. Many interventions focus on kids having a kind of global attitude to their own intelligence that can then be transferred to any learning situation but this is rarely the case. For example, some students can have a positive mindset in maths but a negative mindset in history due to a highly variable range of factors. The idea that a workshop on the plasticity of the brain and some videos of famous sportsmen who have failed in the past can translate into a domain-general growth disposition is simply unrealistic.

Students are most engaged when they are being supported through specific tasks to stretch their understanding beyond its current base, but 'engagement' doesn't necessarily mean they're learning anything. As the New Zealand education researcher Graham Nuthall showed in The Hidden Life of Learners (2007), 'students can be busiest and most involved with material they already know. In most of the classrooms we have studied, each student already knows about 40-50 per cent of what the teacher is teaching.' Nuthall's work demonstrates that students are far more likely to get stuck into tasks they're comfortable with and already know how to do, as opposed to the more uncomfortable enterprise of grappling with uncertainty and indeterminate tasks. The psychologists Elizabeth Ligon Bjork and Robert Bjork at the University of California, Los Angeles, describe such activities as 'desirable difficulties', which refers to the kinds of things that are difficult in the short term, but that lead to greater gains in the long term. These point to a range of strategies that are more prosaic and less attractive than growth mindset interventions - familiar strategies such as testing, self-quizzing and spacing out learning.

Clearly, something has gone wrong somewhere along the way between the laboratory and the classroom. The US education scholars Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle outline a fundamental problem with the education system. Teachers, they say in their book Inside/Outside (1992), are subject to top-down models of school improvement, and are often passive objects of study in the educational research that underpins those models:

The primary knowledge source for the improvement of practice is research on classroom phenomena that can be observed. This research has a perspective that is 'outside-in'; in other words, it has been conducted almost exclusively by university-based researchers who are outside of the day-to-day practices of schooling.

In a very real sense, teachers have been given answers to questions they didn't ask, and solutions to problems that never existed. It is not surprising that they feel subject to fads and theories about students that do not hold up to scrutiny. For example, the problem of how to plan lesson content to match the individual 'learning style' of students has now been proven to have been a waste of time, and a sad indictment of how much time and energy has been expended on theoretical interventions with little to no evidence to support them.

Recent evidence would suggest that growth mindset interventions are not the elixir of student learning that many of its proponents claim it to be. The growth mindset appears to be a viable construct in the lab, which, when administered in the classroom via targeted interventions, doesn't seem to work at scale. It is hard to dispute that having a self-belief in their own capacity for change is a positive attribute for students. Paradoxically, however, that aspiration is not well served by direct interventions that try to instil it. Yet creating a culture in which students can believe in the possibility of improving their intelligence through their own purposeful effort is something few would disagree with. Perhaps growth mindset works best as a philosophy and not an intervention.

All of this indicates that using time and resources to improve students' academic achievement directly might well be a better agent of psychological change than psychological interventions themselves. In their book Effective Teaching (2011), the UK education scholars Daniel Muijs and David Reynolds note: 'At the end of the day, the research reviewed has shown that the effect of achievement on self-concept is stronger that the effect of self-concept on achievement.'

Many interventions in education have the causal arrow pointed the wrong way round. Motivational posters and talks are often a waste of time, and might well give students a deluded notion of what success actually means. Teaching students concrete skills such as how to write an effective introduction to an essay through close instruction, specific feedback, worked examples and careful scaffolding, and then praising their effort in getting there, is probably a far more effective way of improving confidence than giving an assembly about how unique they are, or indeed how capable they are of changing their own brains. The best way to achieve a growth mindset might just be not to mention the growth mindset at all.

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Schools love the idea of a growth mindset, but does it work? | Aeon Essays

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A generation of schoolchildren is being exhorted to believe in their brain's elasticity. Does it really help them learn?

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Surgeons to rebuild face of boy mauled by hyena

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Surgeons to rebuild face of boy mauled by hyena

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https://www.straitstimes.com/world/surgeons-to-rebuild-face-of-boy-mauled-by-hyena

On may 2, during night church service outside Harare, Zimbabwe a 9 year old child was mauled by a hyena. Due to a lack of facilities there, the child was brought to Johannesburg, South Africa, for surgery. The surgeons agreed to operate on him for free.

Word bank
1. Maul --handle or use roughly, injure by rough beating, shoving or the like
2. Exploratory-- preliminary

Done by Isaac

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Biologists Raise Alarm: Brain Damage Caused by Even Small Amounts of Plasticizers

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Biologists Raise Alarm: Brain Damage Caused by Even Small Amounts of Plasticizers

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https://scitechdaily.com/biologists-raise-alarm-brain-damage-caused-by-even-small-amounts-of-plasticizers/
Summary:According the the study of University of Bayreuth even small amounts of Plasticisers could cause disruption of signals between nerve cells in the brains of fish and have warn that it very likely that similar interference can also occur in the brains of adult humans.Plasticisers bisphenol A and bisphenol which is found to cause these damage are found in in plastic products world wide in items including food packaging,bottles,toys and even tooth fillings.Therefore,it is essential that science and industry develop new plasticizers to replace these bisphenols, while being safe for human health.
Word bank:
Plasticizers
-is a substance that is added to a material to make it softer and more flexible, to increase its plasticity, to decrease its viscosity, or to decrease friction during its handling in manufacture.
detrimental
-tending to cause harm
Joshua

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Don't feel hungry when it’s hot? Some animals in Australia are starving as climate change drives up temperatures

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Don't feel hungry when it’s hot? Some animals in Australia are starving as climate change drives up temperatures

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/climatechange/not-hungry-when-hot-australia-animals-starving-heat-15034218
Summary:Australian National University found that wild animals eat less when they are hot,this is causing animals to be suffering and starving despite having ample amounts of food,this can be fatal in certain sensitive and vulnerable species. It is said that these finding can be relevant to many animals and birds all around the world,which can lead to mass die-offs during heat waves or individual mortalities, longer term effects include lower survival rates for offspring, missed reproductive cycles with reduced offspring numbers and, over time, greater population susceptibility to other threats.It is hope that these findings could be a wake up call for all and more can done to to save these animals.
Word bank:
tenuous
-very weak or slight
monocultures
-the cultivation of a single crop in a given area.
Joshua

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12 dead in Alabama due to tropical depression Claudette, including 10 children

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12 dead in Alabama due to tropical depression Claudette, including 10 children

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summary: a tropical depression is a tropical cyclone, a rapidly rotating storm system with a low pressure center which has low level circulation, strong winds and a spiral of thunderstorms that result in heavy rains. it may also develop into a hurricane later on. flash floods, strong winds and tornadoes in Alabama have destroyed many homes. a multi-car accident caused by the slippery roads left 12 dead, 10 of which were children. many were also left injured.

word bank
hydroplaning: a situation in which a vehicle slides out of a wet road
"avoid driving during wet weather, the slippery roads increase the risk of hydroplaning."

offset: counteract (something) by having an equal and opposite force or effect

done by tze sun

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The eight children killed in the van were returning to a youth ranch near Camp Hill, northeast of Montgomery, from a week at the beach in Gulf Shores, youth ranches CEO Michael Smith told The Associated Press. The van caught fire after the wreck. Candice Gulley, the director of the Tallapoosa County ranch, was pulled from the flames and remained hospitalised in Montgomery in serious but stable condition. "She's going to survive her physical injuries," Smith said.

Two of the dead in the van were Gulley's children, ages four and 16. Four others were ranch residents and two were guests, Smith said.

"This is the worst tragedy I've been a part of in my life," said Smith, who drove on Sunday to the ranch to talk to the remaining residents, who had returned from Gulf Shores in a separate van and did not see the wreck.

"Words cannot explain what I saw," Smith said of the accident site, which he visited Saturday. "We love these girls like they're our own children."

Garlock said the location of the wreck is "notorious" for hydroplaning, as the northbound highway curves down a hill to a small creek. Traffic on that stretch of I-65 is usually filled with vacationers driving to and from Gulf of Mexico beaches on summer weekends.

"Butler County has had one of the most terrible traffic accidents," county Sheriff Danny Bond wrote on Facebook, adding: "I believe is the worst ever in our county."

The Tallapoosa County school system said counsellors would be available on Sunday at the 225-student Reeltown High School, where some of the ranch residents were students. Smith said the ranch, which is Christian-based, would likely have a memorial service later, asking for prayers as he began to cry.

A GoFundMe account was set up for Tallapoosa County Girls Ranch to help offset the costs of funeral expenses, medical costs for the injured and counselling for those impacted.

Gulley, the lone survivor from the van, had worked with children for years, beginning when she and her husband were house parents at the ranch for seven years.

"During those years, there have been 74 girls that have come through our house and called us mom and dad," she told the Opelika-Auburn News in August 2019. She said she then became a relief parent, working on fundraising and being involved in the community, before she became the ranch director.

"My heart goes out to the loved ones of all who perished," Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said in a statement.

Top winds from Claudette remained near 45kmh on Sunday. National Hurricane Center forecasters predicted it would strengthen back to tropical storm status Monday over eastern North Carolina before heading out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean.

The center of Claudette's disorganised circulation was located about 15km west-southwest of Athens, Georgia, on Sunday afternoon. It was moving east-northeast at 28kmh, the National Hurricane Center said.

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12 dead in Alabama due to tropical depression Claudette, including 10 children

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ATLANTA: Tropical depression Claudette claimed 12 lives in Alabama as the storm swept across the southeastern US, causing flash flooding and spurring tornadoes that destroyed dozens of homes.Ten people, including nine children, were killed on Saturday (Jun 19) in a fiery multi-vehicle crash about 55

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World in worst 'cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes': UN

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World in worst 'cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes': UN

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/un-human-rights-china-xinjiang-hong-kong-russia-ethiopia-15060710
Extreme poverty, inequalities and injustice are rising. Democratic and civic space is being eroded Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, wracked by war and with some 350,000 people threatened by famine.
Sweltering means very hot
Congregation means gather
By Ramachandran

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How COVID-19 vaccines are being weaponised as countries jostle for influence.

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How COVID-19 vaccines are being weaponised as countries jostle for influence.

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/covid-19-vaccines-weaponised-coronavirus-china-us-russia-14564748
Summary: Countries with supply and access to vaccines are leveraging it for geopolitical gain. This signals that a hybrid cold war is on the way and progress to make countries more interconnected with each other through globalisation will be hindered. Vaccine diplomacy has become a common occurrence with countries strategically using their supply of vaccines to build better relationships with other countries for their own benefit.
Wordbank:
self-serving- having concern for one's own welfare and interests before those of others; self-seeking.
callous-showing or having an insensitive and cruel disregard for others.

by dayan

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US to review dark history of indigenous boarding schools 

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US to review dark history of indigenous boarding schools 

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/us-to-review-dark-history-of-indigenous-boarding-schools-15070718
the federal government will uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences which forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities
Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation. federal government's attempt to wipe out tribal identity, language and culture by cycles of violence and abuse, premature deaths, mental health issues and substance abuse.

legislation : laws, considered collectively
coalition : a group formed of different organizations or people who agree to act together, usually temporarily, to achieve something

done by charmaine

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ACRES & SPCA visit House of Seafood in Punggol after it took crabs for walk on leash

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ACRES & SPCA visit House of Seafood in Punggol after it took crabs for walk on leash

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https://mothership.sg/2021/06/acres-spca-house-of-seafood/

summary:
the workers are naive, they brought the crabs out for a walk to make them muscular and meaty. (to them: more meaty, greater satisfaction for customers). yes, then this got out into the internet and now SPCA knows about it. hygiene is KEY especially during covid

1. extravagant- lacking restraint in spending money or using resources.
2. mitigate- make (something bad) less severe, serious, or painful.

dior 4D

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'Too much': EU leaders confront Hungary's Orban over new anti-LGBT law

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'Too much': EU leaders confront Hungary's Orban over new anti-LGBT law

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/too-much-eu-leaders-confront-hungary-s-orban-over-new-anti-lgbt-15083090

summary:
Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban was confronted by fellow European Union Leaders on the issue of the new law implemented in Hungary, banning LGBTQ+ content in schools.  Not aligning with the values of the European Union, leaders from 17 countries signed on a letter of the disapproval of threat against fundamental rights, specifically in terms of one’s sexual orientation. The EU is now conducting an investigation on the new law being put in place in Hungary, with a consideration of potentially removing Hungary from its Union.

word bank:
1. Flouting: openly disregard (a rule, law, or convention).
2. Conflating: combine (two or more sets of information, texts, ideas, etc.) into one.

done by: pearlena

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Fires destroy two more churches in Canada indigenous communities

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Fires destroy two more churches in Canada indigenous communities

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/fires-destroy-two-more-churches-in-canada-indigenous-communities-15101228#

Two churches has been set ablaze in the early morning. Both the churches were left in a grim state and were within one hour. It is indeed highly suspicious as the authorities are investigating this issue very cautiously as it is incredibly uncommon to see two churches that are one hour away from each other to go down in flames. It is certain that the perpetrator is opposed against the indigenous community. This has caused the prime minister to apologize for the policy of indigenous assimilation and how it is harmful. It has been concluded where Canada has committed 'grave genocide'

shivoo - a boisterous party or celebration

paucity - the smallness of quantity or scarcity

done by rehan