Loud dance music reverberated in the background as residents mingled, chomped on snacks and indulged in some shopping.
They were soaking in the atmosphere at the first of 17 Rock Our Blocks parties yesterday at Block 648A,…
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TODAY's brief, Monday, July 4
Sarawak chief minister meets Najib to discuss greater autonomy for state
Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem will meet with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak today in Putrajaya to discuss greater autonomy for the state. Sarawak wants autonomy in taxation,…
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Tennis: Troicki, Serena handed $13,460 fines for meltdowns
LONDON – Viktor Troicki was fined US$10,000 (S$13,460) on Saturday for his astonishing Wimbledon meltdown while Serena Williams was hit with the same punishment for smashing her racquet.
Fiery Troicki, the 25th seed from Serbia, slumped to a second round 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3 defeat to Spain’s Albert Ramos Vinolas after slipping to match point down on a controversial over-rule by umpire Damiano Torella.
“You’re the worst umpire in the world, you’re so bad,” screamed Troicki, who received a code violation for his behaviour.
He lost the match on the next point but continued his rant as Torella climbed down from his perch.
“You’re horrible, you know what you did. You are the worst ever, you’re an idiot,” he said.
Defending women’s champion Williams was handed a $10,000 fine for smashing her racquet after losing the first set of her third round tie to Christina McHale on Friday and then throwing it behind her, where it landed on the lap of a television cameraman.
Britain’s Heather Watson was handed the heaviest fine of US$12,000 after jamming her raquet into the ground during her defeat to Germany’s Annika Beck.
Australian Nick Kyrgios has been fined after both his matches so far and his US$4,000 punishment for an audible obscenity during Friday’s second-round win over Dustin Brown took his tally to US$6,500.
Brexit effect? Welsh soccer team beating Europe, not joining
LILLE, France – Are Wales channelling the Brexit effect?
The national soccer team’s progress to the Euro 2016 semi-final a week after the Welsh voted to leave the EU recalls an earlier upset by eurosceptic underdogs, immortalised in one of the snappiest one-liners in political and sporting history.
In June 1992, Danish voters delivered Brussels an earthquake on the scale of Britain’s Brexit by vetoing the Maastricht Treaty that was going to create the much closer European Union.
Three weeks later, the unfancied Danes, playing in Euro92 in Sweden only because the disintegrating Yugoslavia had just been disqualified, beat the newly reunified Germany 2-0 in the final.
That very evening, Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen flew in for a summit dinner in Lisbon to face the music for the referendum from a furious German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the assembled leaders of the 12-nation European Community.
Turning to the cameras, a red and white supporters scarf on his shoulders, pipe in hand, a beaming Ellemann-Jensen said he knew he could secure more concessions before Denmark would join the new European Union: “We are going to win,” he declared. “Because, as we say, if you can’t join them, beat them.” He did get a deal, and the next year Danes voted to back Maastricht. What will happen to Wales, which voted 53 percent to quit the EU – more than the UK as a whole – is another matter.
The Welsh outfoxed hot tips Belgium 3-1 in Lille, prompting former Finnish premier Alexander Stubb to offer congratulations on Twitter on Saturday and to recall Ellemann-Jensen’s remark.
For now, Britain is in political chaos but rallying behind Chris Coleman’s Wales, the only home nation still playing in Europe as they face Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal on Wednesday.
Philippine police kill 10 in Duterte's war on crime
MANILA – Philippine police have killed 10 people with suspected links to drugs since President Rodrigo Duterte took office, authorities said Saturday, in a brutal start to his controversial war on crime.
Duterte was sworn into office on Thursday after a landslide win built largely on a pledge to kill thousands of suspected criminals in a relentless law-and-order crackdown he said was needed to stop the Philippines becoming a narco-state.
Police in Bulacan province neighbouring Manila said they launched an anti-drug trafficking blitz on Thursday, the day Duterte took office, that claimed nine lives.
“We are just following the marching orders of our new chief of the Philippine National Police,” Bulacan police spokeswoman Senior Inspector Linel Solomon said.
She said the nine died in seven encounters, insisting police were forced to kill them because the suspects fought back.
Another drug suspect was also shot dead after he used a gun during a raid on his home in the central city of Dumaguete on Friday, local police desk officer Mark Tikling told AFP.
With Duterte encouraging them, police had already killed dozens of suspected criminals between his election victory and being sworn into office.
AFP, Reuters
Duterte, who has been accused of links to vigilante death squads that killed more than 1,000 people during his nearly two decades as mayor of southern Davao city, insisted during his inauguration speech that he would not break the law during his war on crime.
But in a series of speeches afterwards he urged communist rebels and ordinary citizens to kill suspected criminals and drug addicts.
He also promised to use his presidential powers to protect police who faced legal charges for mass killings.
“If in the process you kill 1,000 persons because you were doing your duty, then I will protect you,” he said in a speech to install the country’s new chief of police, Ronald Dela Rosa.
Dela Rosa also warned on Friday that police officers linked to drug trafficking to surrender by Sunday or be killed.
Spokesmen for the new president could not be contacted for comment on the new killings.
Wilnor Papa, the local coordinator for human rights group Amnesty International, warned Duterte was inciting extrajudicial killings.
“When you have the highest ranking person, the president, saying this is the way he wants it to happen, you are emboldening the members of law enforcement to go beyond what the law requires,” he told AFP.
“It is not sustainable, it will create more problems.” Papa warned there would be an “erosion of due process”, with ordinary people using violence to solve disputes.
In a sign of possible vigilante activity, a bullet-riddled body was found in a Manila slum on Friday with a sign on it that read: “I am a Chinese drug lord.”
AFP, Reuters
19-year-old teenager among 20 foreigners killed in Bangladesh siege
NEW DELHI – An Indian teenager was among 20 foreigners who were killed after being taken hostage by a group of attackers at an upmarket cafe in Bangladesh capital Dhaka, a government minister said Saturday (July 2).
Tarushi Jain, 19, was caught up in the horrific 11-hour siege at the Holey Artisan Bakery, a Western-style cafe popular with foreigners located in the diplomatic quarter of the capital.
“I am extremely pained to share that the terrorists have killed Tarushi, an Indian girl who was taken hostage in the terror attack in Dhaka,” India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj posted on Twitter.
Swaraj said she had spoken to the girl’s grief-stricken father and conveyed her condolences to him.
“The country is with them in this hour of grief,” she tweeted.
Jain had finished her schooling from the American School in Dhaka and was pursuing her studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Swaraj added.
The Bangladesh army said most of the slain civilians were either Italian or Japanese and that many had been hacked to death with sharpened weapons.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly condemned the attack in a post on Twitter.
“The attack in Dhaka has pained us beyond words. I spoke to (Bangladesh) PM Sheikh Hasina and strongly condemned the despicable attack,” the premier tweeted.
Reuters, AFP
Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-shing explains why he wears a $680 wristwatch
Number of seniors with complex care needs set to rise in Singapore: AIC
To help seniors manage their conditions better and reduce unnecessary hospital admissions, the Agency for Integrated Care has a two-year pilot that sees teams of healthcare professionals visiting seniors with multiple chronic conditions regularly.
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Jaywalker hits woman's car after getting honked at
SINGAPORE – A man who was jaywalking turned aggressive after a driver honked at him.
According to citizen journalism site Stomp, the incident took place at Bukit Batok West Avenue 6 on June 30, at around 7am.
The female driver, Ryn, told Stomp: “The lights were in my favour and and there were many other vehicles making a turn too.
“But he said [after the video] that I should be the one giving way to him.”
An in-car camera recording shows the man making aggressive gestures at Ryn and even hitting her car after he got honked at.
Ryn added that she has made a police report.
candicec@sph.com.sg
Myanmar mob torches mosque as religious tensions spike: Report
YANGON – A mob wielding weapons razed a Muslim prayer hall in northern Myanmar, state media reported Saturday, the second attack on a mosque in just over a week as anti-Muslim sentiment swells in the Buddhist majority nation.
Myanmar has struggled to contain bouts of deadly religious bloodshed in recent years, with bristling sectarian tensions and rising Buddhist nationalism posing a steep challenge to the new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
On Friday villagers in Hpakant, a jade-mining town in northern Kachin state, ransacked a mosque “wielding sticks, knives and other weapons” before burning it down, according to the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar.
“The mob was unresponsive and entirely beyond control. The building was razed by the riotous crowd,” the paper reported, adding that the rampage was sparked by a dispute over the mosque’s construction.
No arrests have been made, it said.
The riot coincided with the end of a 12-day visit by a United Nations rights investigator who warned that “tensions along religious lines remain pervasive across Myanmar society”.
In a press conference concluding her trip Friday, Yanghee Lee called on authorities to investigate the destruction of another mosque in central Bago late last month.
“The government must demonstrate that instigating and committing violence against an ethnic or religious minority community has no place in Myanmar,” she said.
Religious intolerance has mushroomed across the country in recent years, threatening to unravel advances towards democracy since the former junta stepped down in 2011.
Authorities have been reluctant to launch prosecutions out of fear of stoking further unrest.
The worst religious violence struck western Rakhine State in 2012, leaving scores dead and pushing tens of thousands of the stateless Muslim Rohingya into destitute displacement camps.
The state remains almost completely divided on religious grounds, with Muslim communities subject to a host of restrictions on their movements and access to basic services and employment.
Lee urged the country’s new government to make ending “institutionalised discrimination against Muslim communities in state… an urgent priority”.
Suu Kyi, the Noble peace prize winner who championed her country’s struggle against a repressive military regime, has dismayed rights groups by not taking swifter moves to carve out a solution for the Rohingya.
