Sweet success for young scribes

CONGRATULATIONS! Johorborn Kong Yong Sin (front row, far right), who is a participant of The Star’s BRATs Young Journalist Programme, with Queen Camilla (back row, fourth from right), the three other top awardees and guests, at Buckingham Palace on Nov 16. The 15-year-old SMK Tinggi Kluang student was named the runner-up of the senior category of this year’s edition of the 140-year-old QCEC. While a number of awards – gold finalist, gold, silver and bronze – were given for both the junior and senior categories, only a winner and a runner- up were named for each category. The cream of the crop recently enjoyed a “Winners’ Week” in the UK, which included a special award ceremony hosted by Camilla at Buckingham Palace. Among the guests present at the royal reception were luminaries in their fields Ayesha Dharker, Sir Ben Okri, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and Dame Joanna Lumley. The winners of both categories, as well as the junior runner-up, are from India.

IT was 2153. The Earth had suffered a terrible war and a deadly virus outbreak.

Led by a teenager, a group of young survivors found their way to a distant planet with the help of artificial intelligence.