Several foreigners dressed in traditional Thai attire were spotted posing for photographs on the grounds of Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) on Sunday.
Thailand’s tourism industry has started picking up after many countries began lifting their travel restrictions, with as many as 11.81 million arriving last year.
Here we find out why foreigners find Thailand’s traditional dress so attractive.
Singapore firm offers social media platform for kids where parents retain control
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023
Children are getting their hands on mobile devices at a younger age, but some parents hesitate to grant them access to social media apps, for fear of cyberbullying, exposure to advertisements and online harm. With these concerns in mind, home-grown tech company myFirst has created a social media platform for children aged 4-12.
Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023 in Las Vegas that was held from Jan 5 to 8, the myFirst Social Circle app allows parents to limit who can interact with their children online via a list of approved contacts, said founder and chief executive Yong G-Jay, 40.
The company is known for its line of colourful smartwatches for children. It has sold about 70,000 worldwide, including 20,000 in Singapore, said Yong, who started the company in 2017.
Online safety for youngsters has been a concern for the authorities, including in Singapore, which is set to roll out its Online Safety Bill in 2023 to crack down on how social media firms operate. It will be mandatory for social media platforms to give tools for parents to manage the content that a young user can encounter online and limit any unwanted interactions.
myFirst’s approach to social media essentially gives parents complete control over who gets to interact with their children and takes action to remove posts if they find that their child has posted something inappropriate online.
Addressing concerns about social media today, Mr Yong said it is a matter of time before children go online. “We can train them early so that when they join the main channels, they are prepared and know how to use it safely.”
The app’s measures are one up on current parental controls on most platforms for users under 18.
MyFirst chief executive Yong G-Jay with a smartwatch and the app on his smartphone. Mr Yong was inspired to create the app when his daughter lost touch with many friends while cooped up at home due to Covid-19 restrictions. ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
On Instagram, for instance, parents can opt to oversee their teen’s activities online under the “supervision” setting, allowing them to determine how much time a teenager spends online and get notified about who follows their teen. But the teens still own their accounts, said Instagram, and parents cannot see the teens’ search history and cannot see what they post unless they follow them or have a public account.
Mr Yong said the idea for the social media platform for children came to him during the pandemic, when his only child, seven-year-old Ru Faye, lost touch with many friends while cooped up at home due to Covid-19 restrictions.
“She lost touch with a lot of friends and would always come to my wife to ask her to help ring some of them,” Yong said.
“Some parents do give kids a phone, but most don’t want them to use Facebook, Instagram or other apps,” he said, adding that most of these platforms are restricted to users 13 years old and above.
“These apps can be scary for children. I’ve read about incidents where children meet strangers online or read about fake news, or come across content about suicide.”
In spite of these risks, Mr Yong said there is still a place for children on social media as a means of connecting with friends from school and discovering new interests.
Using the myFirst Social Circle app, children can keep in touch with family, friends from school and relatives.
These contacts will first have to be approved by parents or guardians before the child can make any interaction, such as commenting on or reacting to another child’s posts, or having his posts seen by the other child. The restrictions do not apply to users aged above 13.
Once a friend request is accepted, parents will be prompted to tag the contact to one of four groups of relationships, comprising family, besties, friends and acquaintances.
Parents can then check on any posts uploaded by their child, such as a selfie with friends at school, and decide who gets to see it.
Young users can also form chat groups with their approved friends and family members and send voice messages or videos.
To set up an account, young users will have to scan a QR code available on their parent’s version of the Social Circles app.
For privacy reasons, parents will not be able to see their children’s private messages with other contacts, Mr Yong added.
The app will also do away with “likes”, as they can cause young users to crave attention online, he said.
This was a key finding during the app’s pilot among about 20 children when some began to compare the number of likes that their posts racked up.
Yong said the app will be enhanced later this year to detect profanities and alert parents when their children use foul language.
Safe tech for young children was an area of the market that was often overlooked, said Chris Corse, a British distributor scouring the CES show floor for potential tech products to sell.
Mr Corse, who has two children, five and eight years old, said myFirst’s app would likely appeal to young families. “There’s not much protection for children online at the moment. Like myself, parents don’t want their children to be exposed to bad content, so that is a key part of promoting this app to parents.”
He added: “But it’s impossible to keep kids away – my kids are looking at my phone on my social media, and occasionally watch videos on their own.”
Another distributor, Karin Caligari from Malta who was in the market for tech products for children, said the app will give parents peace of mind even as children go online at an increasingly earlier age.
The app is available for download for free on the App Store and Google Play Store and will be pushed out to earlier models of myFirst smartwatches in an update.
MyFirst’s smartwatches come with apps, like a GPS tracker to inform parents where their children are. ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
The brand also launched a new camera-equipped smartwatch – the myFirst Fone S3 – at CES that will come with the Social Circle app pre-installed.
Designed for children, the watches come with apps, such as a GPS tracker to inform parents where their children are, and a geofence feature that alerts parents when a child is not where he is supposed to be.
A child’s access to the watch’s features can be limited when he is in school by setting a timer via the parents’ app.
myFirst also launched new earphones, myFirst CareBuds, with a lower volume output to prevent children from harming their ears.
The device’s sound transparency mode will automatically kick in when it detects a user is walking, to ensure he can hear his surroundings and travel safely.
Russian bombing puts Kyiv’s utilities under critical strain – Klitschko
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2023
Kyiv’s infrastructure could collapse at any second as Russia’s sporadic missile attacks along with freezing winter temperatures put local authorities under increasing strain, the Ukrainian capital’s mayor said on Monday.
Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir told Reuters that Ukraine’s Western allies had to speed up deliveries of air defence systems capable of downing Russian missiles.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of indiscriminately targeting civilians as well as key infrastructure, threatening the winter supply of electricity, running water and central heating.
“We don’t talk about the collapse, but it can happen … at any second (because) Russian rockets can destroy our critical infrastructure in Kyiv,” Vitali Klitschko said, adding that there was currently a 30% deficit in energy in the capital.
“It’s pretty cold in Ukraine right now so living without electricity and heating is almost impossible. The situation is critical. We are fighting to survive,” he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos.
Former world heavyweight boxing champions Vitali and Wladimir are part of a broader high-level business and political Ukrainian delegation attending the WEF summit.
“It is important not to hesitate to give us weapons that we so need, but to deliver them the sooner the better otherwise we will continue to lose our infrastructure and most importantly our best men,” Wladimir Klitschko said, adding that they expected an escalation in the north of Ukraine from Belarus.
Part of the focus of Ukraine’s delegation in Davos will be to lay the foundations for future reconstruction and assess the appetite for investment in the country’s recovery.
“Today, we are talking about the war and ending this senseless war, but we need to think about the day after tomorrow,” Vitali Klitschko added.
Legendary Muay Thai boxer Buakaw Banchamek was left stunned when ex-volleyball player Onuma Sittirak proved that her smash was stronger than his punch.
Rescue operation resumes at Yeti Airlines crash site in western Nepal
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
The crash on Sunday is the second in less than a year, highlighting the country’s consistently poor air safety record, analysts say.
Rescuers are having a tough time retrieving the remaining bodies from the Yeti Airlines aircraft crash site in Pokhara of Kaski district in western Nepal.
They resumed their attempts to pull bodies spotted on Seti River Gorge on Monday morning. The rescue efforts were put off till this morning.
According to Tek Bahadur KC, Kaski Chief District Officer, security personnel from Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and Nepal Police and locals are attempting to pull bodies.
KC said the recovered bodies have been taken to the Pokhara Academy of Health Sciences, adding that the bodies of the identified deceased will be handed over to relatives after post-mortem.
“A hearse and an ambulance are on standby to hand over the bodies. The bodies of foreigners, deceased from Kathmandu and unidentified bodies will be sent to Kathmandu,” said KC.
Nepal saw its worst domestic air disaster on Sunday morning when Yeti Airlines flight NYT 691 from Kathmandu to Pokhara crashed a few minutes before landing at the new international airport.
The plane carried 72 persons, including passengers and crew, and 68 had been confirmed dead as of Sunday evening, the country’s civil aviation regulator said in a statement.
Rescue efforts have been suspended for Sunday.
The last communication from the aircraft to the air traffic controller was at 10:50 am from the Seti River Gorge just west of the airport, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal stated. “Then it crashed.”
Part of the fuselage of the ATR-72 turboprop could be seen on the hillside while more wreckage was strewn over the Seti River Gorge. A massive crowd had gathered as rescuers were recovering charred bodies from the crash site.
Mobile video footage showed the aircraft bearing registration number 9N-ANC banking steeply to the left a few seconds before crashing.
The Yeti Airlines crash is the first involving an ATR aircraft in Nepal. The model, manufactured by Avions De Transport Regional (ATR), a joint venture of France and Italy, was introduced in Nepal in July 2010.
This is Nepal’s third deadliest air accident and the worst in domestic aviation. More than four million passengers fly domestic carriers annually.
The disaster is the second in under a year, highlighting the country’s consistently poor air safety record, analysts said.
Among the passengers were three infants, three children and 62 adults. According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the passengers included 53 Nepalis, five Indians, four Russians, two Koreans, one Irish, one Australian, one Argentinian, and one French.
A five-member probe committee has been formed to investigate the disaster. Officials had no further information.
“The probe committee will dig out the truth. There is something wrong here,” said aviation analyst Hemant Arjyal.
“This is a terrible disaster. If a plane goes down in clear weather for no apparent reason, there is obviously something wrong. We have to wait for the probe report.”
The Kathmandu-Pokhara flight is a 25-minute hop. Analysts say a whole bunch of questions remain unanswered.
“Obviously, we are surprised. That’s a shocking crash,” said an ATR instructor pilot who flies to Pokhara regularly.
“It can be anything. Bird strike, engine failure or something else,” he told the Post, asking not to be identified as the investigation had already started. “Whatever the reason might be, the issue is serious.”
The runway of Pokhara International Airport is 45 metres wide and 2,500 metres long, and its designation is 12-30.
The ill-fated plane commanded by Captain Kamal KC, an instructor pilot, made the first contact with Pokhara control tower from nearly 110 kilometres away.
“The weather was clear. We allocated Runway 30 which is the eastern end. Everything was fine,” said Anup Joshi, spokesperson for Pokhara International Airport. He added that no problems had been reported.
The flight captain later asked for permission to switch to Runway 12 which is the western end. “We were not sure why. Permission was granted, and accordingly, the aircraft started its descent,” said Joshi who is also a senior air traffic controller.
According to Nepal’s civil aviation body, 914 people have died in air crashes in the country since the first disaster was recorded in August 1955. The Yeti Airlines tragedy in Pokhara on Sunday is the 104th crash in Nepali skies and the third biggest in terms of casualties.
The first big air accident occurred on September 28, 1992, when an Airbus A310 belonging to Pakistan International Airlines slammed into a hillside at Bhattedanda near Kathmandu Valley, killing 167 people on board.
Before that, on July 31, 1992, an Airbus A310 of Thai Airways crashed in Ghyangphedi, killing 113 on board.
The Post reported in August last year that aeroplane pilots were finding out about bird hazards in Pokhara the hard way.
The tourist hotspot lies between two rivers, the Bijayapur and the Seti, which makes it a perfect habitat for birds. Excellent for sightseers, of course, but a terror for pilots.
Nepal took out a $215.96 million soft loan from China EXIM Bank in March 2016 to build the international airport in Pokhara. The project was implemented on an engineering procurement and construction model.
Some experts told the Post that the civil aviation regulator did not follow safety protocols and allowed the plane to land from the western end of the runway.
“When the civil aviation regulator is focused on airport development and expanding business, the nation and public have to pay the cost,” said one retired chief of the civil aviation body.
“For your information, the airport was hastily inaugurated and operated without adequate preparations to meet the January 1 project deadline. Flight calibration, which tests all pieces of equipment at the new airport, has not recommended landing from the west.”
He added, “The flight procedure has not been published. Airlines have very little information about airport procedures and data.”
Experts have also pointed out some serious lapses at the new airport.
“An evaluation as required by the ‘safety management system’ was not carried out, neither by the civil aviation regulator, as a service provider of the airport, nor by the airlines,” the former chief said.
“The civil aviation body has misused its regulator role to operate the airport neglecting safety requirements. This is a serious crime and mass murder, and subject to the criminal investigation.”
Officials say that the flight procedure and flight data are not available as they have not been published in the Aeronautical Information Publication yet.
A senior captain of Buddha Air, who also flies an ATR-72, admits that flight data is not available, but it is not related to flight operation under visual flight rules (VFR), a set of rules pilots use to fly using visual references outside the cockpit.
“For VFR flights, airlines develop their own rules and procedures. We, however, are not allowed to go to the west end of the runway under instrument flight rules (IFR), guided by the instruments in the cockpit.”
But the pilot said the aircraft abruptly made a tilt which shows that there were serious hitches. “As a result of the tilt, the plane stalled and plunged,” he said.
“There was no black magic. It looks like the plane suffered a serious technical glitch. The probe report will tell this.”
President Bidya Devi Bhandari tweeted, “I am speechless about the crash of Yeti Airlines’ ATR-72 aircraft. I convey my heartfelt condolences to the passengers and the crew members who lost their lives.”
Aviation analyst Arjyal says the problem lies in Nepal’s system. “Nepal has been in the bad books of the European Union for the last decade. The message is clear, if you don’t improve, you will face the consequences.”
Global aviation watchdogs have questioned the civil aviation body’s dual role and urged Nepal to split the organisation into two entities—service provider and regulator—to enhance the safety of flyers. But the government has shown no interest in doing so, and Nepal’s aviation industry is suffering the consequences.
Several unnamed experts told the Post that the civil aviation body has been misusing its authority, but no one wants to speak against it for fear of retribution.
“Obviously, the government is not bothered to see what’s going on in the civil aviation system,” said Sanjiv Gautam, former director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. “It’s a shame that one government tables civil aviation bills and another government withdraws them.”
Nepali experts say the civil aviation body has offered no strong logic why it doesn’t want this functional separation.
On March 1, 2022, the Parliament Secretariat included two aviation bills in the agenda for a meeting of the lower house scheduled for March 2.
But on March 2, the then tourism minister Prem Ale suddenly requested the Parliament Secretariat to hold back the bills, explaining that some employees of the aviation regulator were opposed to the planned fragmentation of their office.
Parliament was subsequently prorogued, and the proposed pieces of legislation were once again put in deep storage.
In August, the then tourism minister Jeevan Ram Shrestha said that Nepal would not immediately accept the condition the European Commission has put forward to separate Nepal’s civil aviation into regulatory and service-providing organisations.
United Nations aviation watchdog International Civil Aviation Organisation has also formally asked Nepal to split the civil aviation body into two entities—service provider and regulator. The separation is a crucial organisational reform agenda which has been a work in progress for the last one and a half decades.
The civil aviation body has not made the report public.
“Money making seems to be more important than passenger safety. Furthermore, this will also impact our tourism sector and compound Nepal’s chequered aviation history,” lawmaker and Nepali Congress leader Udaya Shumsher Rana tweeted.
“Parliament needs to conduct serious deliberation on fast-tracking the two bills regarding air safety regulations—the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal and the Air Service Authority of Nepal Bill. CAAN urgently needs to split the civil aviation body into two entities—service provider & regulator.”
The existing system allows the director general of the Civil Aviation Authority to issue tenders for multi-billion-dollar projects.
The same person also has the plum job of overseeing compliance with the project and the aviation regulations governing the issuance of licences to airlines and crews.
“No one wants to lose this scope and power. That’s why, despite intense pressure, it has become hard to split the civil aviation body for a long time,” insiders say.
Following the September 2012 crash of Sita Air Flight 601 at the Manohara River which killed 19 people, including seven British citizens, the European Commission imposed a blanket ban on Nepali airlines from flying into the 27-nation bloc in December 2013.
The European Commission has said that there are no grounds for amending the list of air carriers which are subject to an operating ban within the Union with respect to air carriers from Nepal.
“The problem lies in the aviation system, not in the planes or pilots,” said Arjyal. “The government is not serious. Really not serious to improve safety despite the multiple requests of global aviation watchdogs.”
Norway naval officer goes on trial over oil tanker collision
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
A Norwegian naval officer will be standing trial on Monday accused of negligence that led to the 2018 collision between a warship he commanded and an oil tanker in which the military vessel sank.
Building a replacement for the lost Helge Ingstad frigate would cost up to 13 billion crowns ($1.3 billion), the armed forces estimated in a 2019 report.
The early-morning crash between the Ingstad and the fully loaded Sola TS crude carrier near a major North Sea oil export terminal also triggered shutdowns of parts of Norway’s petroleum production. There was no leak from the oil tanker.
Members of the 137-strong Ingstad crew described waking up in the middle of the night as water poured into their cabins and alarms went off as they tried in vain to save the ship, although they suffered only minor injuries.
The defendant was the officer in charge of the bridge of Ingstad at the time.
“He did not display caution and did not take the precautions that safe navigation requires,” prosecutor Magne Kvamme Sylta said in the charges.
The defendant believes he was unfairly singled out for blame and will plead not guilty, his lawyer, Christian Lundin, told Norwegian news agency NTB.
Recordings of communication between the two vessels showed the slow-moving Sola several times asking the faster Ingstad to alter its course or face collision, but the request was declined by the navy ship, which feared getting too close to shore.
A commission investigating the collision later said the brightly lit Sola TS may have been difficult to distinguish from the nearby terminal from where it had set off, confusing the Ingstad crew.
A video recording from the tanker showed sparks flying as the two collided, tearing a gash in the side of the warship, which was later recycled as scrap metal. The tanker suffered only minor damage.
The collision exposed safety gaps in the Norwegian navy, including inadequate training and risk assessment systems. The defence ministry later paid a fine of 10 million crowns.
Latvian town on high alert as icy water threatens to breach dam
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2023
Residents of a Latvian town were on high alert on Saturday as a mass of ice slowly moving along a local river threatened to flood a dam built to protect their homes.
Officials have been warning of the creeping threat for several days in Jekabpils, a town about 120km southeast of the capital Riga on the Daugava river with around 21,000 residents.
The river usually freezes over in winter until spring, but instead has produced an icy mass which is pushing water levels up as well as putting pressure on the dam.
The situation is stable but still dangerous, local officials said on Sunday (January 15). On Saturday, residents watched the ice slowly move downstream from a walkway on top of the dam.
“I won’t deny it is very worrying”, said businessman Martins Lauva, who had returned to the town to encourage his family to move to a safer location.
He pointed to climate change as the cause of the phenomenon, which weather experts have also said was caused by swings in temperature. “Here we are – in January, endangered by floods. This is the most definitely an anomaly of nature.”
Latvia was among several European countries seeing record-high January temperatures at the start of the month. January 1 saw a high of 11.7 degrees Celsius (53 degrees Fahrenheit) according to the LSM news portal run by Latvia’s public broadcaster.
Some outlying areas upstream of the town have already flooded, as they are not protected by the dam.
Residents have been advised to evacuate if they can, and a shelter has been opened in a local school for those who choose to do so.
Emergency services and Latvia’s Home Guard have been called in to help pump water away from flooded areas and shore up the dam with sandbags.
Jekabpils mayor Raivis Ragainis said he feared what would happen if the dam broke and the ice flowed into the town, saying it would be a wave that “goes like a bulldozer and wipes away everything”.
“It is not about whether we hide on the second floor or we live on the ground floor, or we managed to escape, it would just push away the houses”, Ragainis said.
Water levels had dropped on Sunday but remain critically high, at 30 centimetres (12 inches) above the level considered dangerous, LSM reported. Latvia’s government held a crisis meeting on Sunday morning to discuss the situation.
Nepal plane crash with 72 onboard leaves at least 40 dead
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2023
At least 40 people were killed on Sunday when an aircraft of domestic carrier Yeti Airlines crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, a Nepal aviation authority official said.
Video footage from the crash site showed rescue workers searching for survivors amid the smouldering wreckage as crowds of people looked on.
There were 72 people on the twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, including two infants, four crew members and 10 foreign nationals, said airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula. Officials said they expected to recover more bodies and that the weather was clear at the time of the crash.
Air accidents are not uncommon in Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, as the weather can change suddenly and make for hazardous conditions.
MyFirst chief executive Yong G-Jay with a smartwatch and the app on his smartphone. Mr Yong was inspired to create the app when his daughter lost touch with many friends while cooped up at home due to Covid-19 restrictions. ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
MyFirst’s smartwatches come with apps, like a GPS tracker to inform parents where their children are. ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
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