Before the long-awaited 2PM met disaster with Jun. K falling from a moving vehicle Sunday, the day seemed perfect and Ok Taec-yeon was happy.
Ok aired a V live broadcast in the time between the meet and greet event and the actual concert to take viewers around the arena.
“The day is so good, I’m stepping outside for some sun,” Ok said as he took the camera outside the Olympic Park’s Handball Stadium.
“What a perfect day. … It’s nice to throw a concert on a day like this,” said Ok, breathing in the fresh air.
Photo: Naver V app
As fans started to take note of the star’s location through the V app and swarmed in, Ok went back inside the restricted area and this time took the camera to the backstage area for a sneak peek.
Ok showed the viewers the “Quick Booth,” where 2PM changes clothes between performances.
He finished the live broadcast in anticipation of meeting fans on stage, but little did he know the concert would be suspended following Jun. K’s accident.
Jun. K, while singing on a moving vehicle during the show, fell and fractured his right elbow and right ring finger. The show was cancelled as the star was rushed to a hospital.
JYP Entertainment announced it would refund tickets for the cancelled show.
It is yet unknown if the band will still be able to pull off the “6Nights” concert that was scheduled to go until March 5.
These concerts are 2PM’s first show in a year and nine months, and the last with all six members for the next two years, as Taec-yeon and Jun. K are set to enlist for their mandatory military duty this year.
A Korea-bound Boeing 777 aircraft landed safely early Tuesday at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) after encountering problems mid-flight.
According to a report from the Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa), Korean Air Flight 644 from Singapore immediately radioed the Manila control tower for an emergency landing after smoke started filling its cabin at about 1:30 am.
Miaa immediately deployed firetrucks and medical teams to await the aircraft which was able to land and unload its 285 passengers safely.
Korean Air crew immediately inspected the aircraft and declared it safe to continue the flight at 4 a.m. although the source of the smoke was not determined.
The aircraft, with its 285 passengers, resumed its flight to Incheon taking off from the Naia past 5 a.m.
Police have found moves on social media to mobilise Dhammakaya Temple supporters, although no political connection has been confirmed so far, the national police chief said yesterday.
Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda said the Royal Thai Police were working with the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to monitor activities by a group of people mobilising demonstrators at the controversial temple in Pathum Thani.
The monitoring would cover people living in neighbouring countries “trying to stir people up”, the police chief said.
“We have found movements on social media, with attempts to provoke people. The authorities are keeping an eye on this,” Chakthip told reporters yesterday.
Authorities have laid siege to the huge 2,100-rai temple for 12 days after Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ordered a search for former abbot Phra Dhammachayo.
The 72-year-old monk is wanted for money laundering and accepting stolen assets in connection with a large sum of money embezzled from a credit union.
Prayut, in his capacity as head of the National Council for Peace and Order, had invoked his power under Article 44 of the interim charter in issuing the order.
But officials have been unable to conduct a thorough search of the compound due to resistance from monks and followers, which has prompted a stand-off with no end in sight.
Agencies involved in the hunt for Dhammachayo will meet this week to discuss a possible revision of the original plan, Justice Minister Suwaphan Tanyuvardhana said yesterday.
DSI chief Paisit Wongmuang, who is in charge of the operation, will chair the meeting, according to Suwaphan, who said he saw no need to make any change to the personnel involved at the moment.
His comment came after speculation that someone else may be put in charge of the operation.
Suwaphan said he had not suggested the appointment of Pongporn Parmsneh as the new head of the National Office of Buddhism.
On Saturday, PM Prayut – invoking his power under Article 44 – appointed Pongporn, director of the DSI’s Bureau of Taxation Crime, to replace Pranom Sonsill.
Suwaphan said Pongporn would work with the monastic community and relevant authorities in dealing with the matter. He also called on Dhammakaya to “change its standpoint” in order to allow the stand-off to end for the benefit of society.
The NCPO yesterday rejected a claim that the junta chief’s order on the temple was “a tool to destroy Buddhism”.
“That allegation is untrue. It is an attempt to distort facts and discredit authorities,” NCPO spokesman Colonel Winthai Suvari said the junta order was aimed at facilitating the search for a person wanted by the law but religious activities at the temple were not affected.
Meanwhile, a DSI search of an area at the back of the temple yesterday found 12 monks camping there.
They had no “Bai Sutthi” identity cards and claimed they were newly ordained.
The search followed a tip-off that a group of monks and laymen were staying in the area where the Klong Luang Youth Centre is located on a 52 rai (8.3 hectare) plot.
Earlier on Sunday night, a 73-year-old retired police general was detained after police searched his car and found bulletproof vests and knives.
Pol Maj-General Rungroj Pekanan was held during a search at a checkpoint near the temple.
The officer Checkpoints were set up around the temple as authorities were enforcing the junta order.in charge of the checkpoint said Rungroj drove a Lexus and tried to pass, but he looked suspicious so the soldiers stopped him.
Rungroj said he was driving from a market nearby and was on his way home in Bangkok’s Ramkamhaeng area.
He was escorted for further questioning at Klong Luang police station.
His vehicle had a temple sticker on the windshield.
Also found in his car was a banner that said a man named Anawat Thanacharoennat was a Buddhist hero who sacrificed his life in demanding the junta order to be revoked.
The 65-year-old man hanged himself on Saturday night from a high-rise radio antenna in an apparent protest against the ongoing siege of the temple.
Raf’s first drop came in the form of Calvin Klein by Appointment, starring Millie Bobby Brown.
In case you were wondering what these men look like with suits on, here’s a photo of them in the Calvin Klein suits they sported for yesterday’s Academy Awards.
Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz on Monday said the Church recognised freedom of religion as a human right and respected the wish of President Duterte to be buried without the prayers and blessings of priests.
“It is everybody’s option to embrace the religion they think is right … That is his prerogative and therefore must be respected,” the former Lingayen-Dagupan archbishop said.
“Hopefully, those who will be left behind will respect that because that would be his last wish, so to speak,” he added.
Cruz was referring to Duterte’s recent pronouncement that when he dies, he wants to be buried within 24 hours, without the blessings, prayers and rituals of Catholic priests.
In the Catholic Church, specific funeral rites are prescribed for the dead such as blessings, a special funeral Mass and prayers, including the absolution of the dead for the pardon and remission of sins.
Cruz explained that the Mass is “the most sublime prayer” even as “the blessing with the holy water is also a sanctifying element.”
Five men charged over death of bystander who was accidentally shot.
SUNDAY should have been the happiest day for a bride and groom in Chon Buri but it turned out to be a tragic one for an innocent couple after wedding guests began firing weapons into the sky – which led to the death of a man in Bang Lamung district.
Five men have surrendered to police over the killing of Thanet Inthawong, 36, in what appears to be a senseless tragedy all-too common in Thailand.
Police said the five suspects may just be some of the wedding guests who endangered the public during the raucous celebrations.
The motive for the barrage of bullets appeared yesterday to be misguided revelry rather than murderous intent.
The indiscriminate shooting of firearms is common, although it may seem shockingly inappropriate during celebrations such as weddings and ordination days in many parts of the country.
The legal ban on such behaviour seems to have little effect.
In this latest case, the groom, who remains unidentified, is known to be a gun lover.
Wedding invitations showed him standing with his bride while holding two assault rifles, with a message that said: “All are welcome to my wedding if you are free.”
The victim, however, did not attend the wedding but was minding his own business at his place of work.
Weerawan Supachon-ayu, 45, Thanet’s girlfriend, told police she was sitting with her boyfriend at a shop where he worked in Banhuay Kainao village when sounds of the celebration were heard from about 50 metres away as the wedding procession approached.
CaptionPhoto: Credits
She said she told her boyfriend, who was about to leave the shop, to wait for the procession to pass by. At the same time, she heard several gunshots.
The shooting continued as the procession continued by, Weerawan said, when suddenly she heard Thanet cry out and saw him fall to the ground.
He was unresponsive as she tried to help him, prompting her to call for help to take Thanet to hospital, where he was declared dead with a bullet wound to his chest.
Another man at the scene, Supalert Horphet, said he had shouted at the oblivious wedding guests, telling them to stop firing but they only ceased after he told them a man had been hit by a bullet.
Five men who were guests at the wedding had surrendered to police yesterday and submitted to questioning before being held without bail.
Police yesterday planned to arrest more suspects after it was reported that about 10 guests at the wedding had opened fire during the celebrations.
Four men – Wasin Krongkaew, 21, Arthit Lomrob, 21, Thinapat Charoensiri, 23, and Jirapat Lomrob, 21 – surrendered to police at the same time. They told police they had fired their guns into the sky to celebrate their friend’s marriage.
Police took the suspects’ fingerprints and tested their hands for gunpowder residue.
They were charged with recklessness leading to a death, firing guns in a public place without permission, possessing guns without permission, and carrying weapons into a public place without permission.
Another man, Prasert Nopparat, 45, who surrendered separately yesterday, was charged with possessing a gun without permission because Wasin used his pistol in the shooting, said Huai Yai superintendent Colonel Anan Phurahong.
Police also seized four guns including three licensed 9mm pistols and an unlicensed 11mm pistol with plans to test them to determine which gun killed Thanet, said Anan, adding that the test would take about 10 days.
Recklessness resulting in death carries a jail term of not more than 10 years and a fine of up to Bt20,000.
Thailand has a bad history with “celebratory” gunfire.
A similar incident occurred in July 2015 in Phetchaburi when a man attending a monk-ordination procession was carrying a gun that accidentally discharged and a bullet killed one of his friends.
On December 29, a mother and child narrowly escaped death after a stray bullet from a New Year celebration struck near them at their home.
In Angthong province, a young man firing a weapon during another monk-ordination celebration killed a 32-year-old female bystander on March 2014.
Recognising the value of internships, the National University of Singapore is restructuring its curriculum to allow some of its students to go on work attachments for as long as 18 months, starting from the new academic year in August.
For a start, students from three computing courses – information security, business analytics and data science – will go on the 18-month internships from the end of their second year.
Besides using both years’ long holiday breaks – from May to July – students will spend the whole of their third year working in a company.
They will be given an allowance.
In the fourth year, they can take on research and projects that are related to the firm’s work.
NUS provost Tan Eng Chye said university officials had studied work-study schemes, called cooperative education at several American and Canadian universities.
These include the one run by Canada’s University of Waterloo, which is known for boosting the job prospects of its graduates.
Professor Tan said the NUS scheme will start with students in the three computing courses, where the industry is hungry for talent and where the time taken from research outcomes to application is short.
Students can go out to work and apply what they have learnt from their professors and see how it can be applied to solve real-world problems in the industry.
Students’ progress will be monitored by their professors and supervisors in the firms where they are attached.
“We will set out clear learning outcomes at various stages… so that students will get the most out of it,” Prof Tan said.
Adding that students will be graded, he said: “This is to signal the importance we place on it. Besides acquiring work skills, it is an opportunity for students to try out jobs and learn more about the industry they will be entering. For employers, it is a good way to recruit talent.”
Work attachments, of up to six months, have been made compulsory for NUS engineering and computing students since 2014.
Medical, nursing, pharmacy, social work, food science, new media and accountancy students are also required to undertake work attachments.
Though 70 per cent of NUS undergraduates undertake some form of internship, the university has yet to collate figures on how many end up working for the companies they interned at, Prof Tan said.
Anecdotally, many students do end up receiving offers at the end of their work stints.
NUS final-year student Luqman B. Lukman, who is majoring in quantitative finance, said he benefited from his three internships in a government agency, an accounting firm and global financial services firm J.P. Morgan Singapore – which offered him a permanent job as a technology analyst.
The 25-year-old, who took the job, said: “It meant giving up a chunk of my holidays, but it was well worth it as the work stints helped me discover where my strengths lie and what sort of job would suit me.”
NUS computer science graduate Rey Neo Zhi Lei, 25, who became a software engineer at PayPal after interning there in his final year, said: “The six months were invaluable. I got a better understanding of what the work entails and what skills are important for work.”
sandra@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on Feb 28, 2017. Get The New Paper for more stories.
The last time Mr Stephen Sackur squared off with a Singapore politician, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam earned rave reviews for how he fielded questions from a man regarded as one of the world’s toughest interviewers.
Mr Sackur, host of the BBC’s flagship interview programme, HARDtalk, earned that reputation from conducting 30-minute one-on-one inquisitions that have seen celebrity agent Max Clifford storm off mid-show and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo threaten legal action.
Not that Mr Tharman was fazed.
The most memorable exchange at the St Gallen Symposium in Switzerland in May 2015 was perhaps Mr Sackur pressing Mr Tharman on whether he believed in the concept of a social safety net.
Without flinching, Mr Tharman replied: “I believe in the notion of a trampoline.”
It left the crowd and his interviewer in stitches and earned him plaudits back home.
But Mr Sackur, 53, told The New Paper in an interview last week that Mr Tharman would have faced a more “challenging” test had their interview taken place on his home turf – the BBC HARDtalk studios – rather than the more academic setting of the symposium.
The British journalist said: “(The symposium is) supposed to be a more relaxed and more discursive format. It is different from HARDtalk. Of course it would have been different if it was a HARDtalk interview.
“It would have been more challenging, because that is the nature of the HARDtalk format, as opposed to the symposium, which is a more academic gathering.”
While Mr Tharman may have dodged a Sackur punch, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will be following his predecessors, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Goh Chok Tong, in taking up the HARDtalk challenge.
The episode will air on the BBC (StarHub TV Ch 701) tomorrow at 12.30pm, 5.30pm and 11.30pm.
Previewing the interview, which took place here on Thursday, Mr Sackur told TNP he would be speaking to Mr Lee about the Singapore experience, homosexuality and Section 377A of the Penal Code, tying human rights to trade agreements, the impact of new US President Donald Trump and what a post-Brexit United Kingdom can learn from Singapore.
SUCCESS STORY
He added that it is important for the world to reflect on Singapore’s rise as “one of the world’s great economic success stories”.
Mr Sackur, who has helmed HARDtalk since 2006, said: “That is the basis of coming to Singapore to meet the Prime Minister and trying to tease out what Singapore has done, how it has done it, what the upsides and downsides of the Singapore experience are and to what extent it is translatable to the rest of the world.”
That notion of translatability has become more relevant to his home nation, with several prominent figures in the UK both touting Singapore as a post-Brexit model as well as cautioning against the championing of the Republic as a template.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell of the opposition Labour Party has accused British Prime Minister Theresa May of “wanting to turn Britain into a Singapore of the North Atlantic”.
Meanwhile, the single biggest individual donor to the Brexit campaign, billionaire Peter Hargreaves, has praised former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and said Singapore should be a model for the UK.
Mr Sackur said: “Some cite Singapore as the model we should pursue – committed to truly open global trading relationships, low taxes and a deregulated economy.
“People say let us be more like Singapore, without really knowing what Singapore is and how Singapore works.
“So that is going to be one of the things that intrigues me in my conversation with the Prime Minister, to try and tease out what it is that Singapore has done and whether it is translatable, and whether he believes there is anything Singapore can teach the UK as we contemplate our post-Brexit future.”
Another thing that intrigues Mr Sackur is a chance to interview Mr Trump.
The Cambridge and Harvard-educated journalist has retweeted online comments urging Mr Trump to take his place on the HARDtalk hot seat.
Mr Sackur said: “It would be true to say that every journalist in the world right now would like an interview with Mr Trump, and the opportunity to put him on HARDtalk and have a full half-hour interview with him would be fantastic.
“We would love it, our audience would love it, but whether Mr Trump would love it is perhaps another question.”
dilen@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on Feb 28, 2017. Get The New Paper for more stories.
The landmark Katong Shopping Centre is looking for buyers again, now that plans to develop the site into a mall with serviced apartments have been approved.
More than 80 per cent of the owners by share value had agreed to a collective sale last June, but it did not go through as the Government did not give its approval for the proposed redevelopment plans.
“The Urban Redevelopment Authority had previously rejected approval of the first proposal as there had been concerns on the traffic congestion in the area, which the initial proposal of a fully commercial mall would add on to,” said Ms Christina Sim, director for capital markets Cushman & Wakefield.
She added that the new zoning of the area for commercial/serviced residence use “would not add too much vehicular traffic”.
Now that the plans have received the green light, the search for buyers is back on.
The property’s reserve price remains $630 million, which translates to a land price of $2,248 per square foot of gross floor area.
Ms Sim said the plot should yield more than 400 units of serviced apartments, based on unit sizes of about 500 sq ft.
xinen@sph.com.sg
This article by The Straits Times was published in The New Paper, a free newspaper published by Singapore Press Holdings.
SINGAPORE – A taxi driver was jailed 18 weeks on Monday (Feb 27) for lying to the police that a Caucasian passenger had slapped him, which in turn led to the latter being convicted.
Chan Chuan Heng, 48, was also sentenced to a week in jail for punching Norwegian Arne Corneliussen, 52, on his head at the intersection of Circular Road and North Canal Road at about 1am on Sept 22, 2014. Chan was found guilty after a four-day trial.
District Judge Adam Nakhoda ordered both sentences to run consecutively.
Chan, defended by Mr Steven Lam, began serving his sentence on Monday although he wants to appeal.
Mr Corneliussen, a Singapore permanent resident, had been given 10 weeks’ jail in 2015, after pleading guilty to causing hurt by grabbing Chan’s neck and choking him after a night of drinking. He also paid $30,000 compensation to Chan.
The prosecution’s case is that the attack was sparked off by Chan refusing to use his taxi meter and demanding a flat rate of $45 from Mr Corneliussen who said he would report him to the Land Transport Authority.
Corneliussen had already served more than half of his 10-week sentence when his guilty plea and sentence were quashed in May 2015.
He was re-tried and fined $2,000 after he was convicted of causing hurt by wrapping his arm around the cabby’s neck.
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Cabby choked by drunk man thought he was going to die
Submitting for a sentence of four to six months’ jail, Deputy Public Prosecutors Zhuo Wenzhao and Kelly Ho said Chan intentionally gave a false statement to put someone else into trouble.
They said Chan lied that Mr Corneliussen had slapped him without provocation after he told the passenger that he was going to the toilet.
The prosecutors added that Chan’s statement clearly inferred that he was motivated by malice and his only aim was to get the Norwegian into trouble.
He had also given the police a selective portion of the video footage to bolster his lie and boost the chances of misleading the investigation officer into believing that Mr Corneliussen was the aggressor.
“Chan’s insistence on repeating and perpetuating his lies to the bitter end evidences a startling lack of remorse, and represents a considerable aggravating factor,” said DPP Zhuo.
Saying this was one of the worst cases of making a false report, DPP Zhuo said Mr Corneliussen lost his well-paying job and sustained emotional harm in the form of loss of sleep and constant worry over his job loss. He also had to pay a significant amount of legal fees to right the wrong committed against him.
Chan had previous convictions for outrage of modesty, providing entertainment without a licence and gaming in public.
He could have been jailed for up to two years and/or fined up to $5,000 for causing hurt.
The maximum penalty for giving false information to the police is one year’s jail and a $5,000 fine.
