During a meeting in Moscow, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev took stock of the relations between their countries and discussed how to do more together.
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Singapore-Russia ties extend beyond economic sphere: PM Lee
Technical reference to up quality of management consultants announced
According to Ms Low Yen Ling, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the technical reference will empower SMEs with a better understanding of the consulting processes and become more discerning of the quality of consulting.
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Tennis: Sharapova may not play again, says Russia's Tarpishchev
MOSCOW – Maria Sharapova may not play again after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium, the president of the Russian tennis federation was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Shamil Tarpishchev told the R-Sport news agency that Sharapova’s situation was “bad”.
The five-times grand slam champion faces a possible ban of up to four years for failing a drugs test at the Australian Open in January.
British media reported that she had been due to attend an International Tennis Federation (ITF) anti-doping hearing in London on Wednesday.
There has been no subsequent comment by the ITF.
Tennis star Sharapova fails drug test
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Sharapova stunned the world in March when she said she had returned a positive test for the Latvian-made heart medication which was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA’s) banned list from Jan. 1.
The world’s highest-paid sportswoman claimed to have been taking meldonium on doctor’s orders for 10 years and had failed to note that it had become a banned substance until hearing of her failed test at the year’s first grand slam.
She was provisionally suspended on March 12 pending the hearing, and has lost a number of her lucrative sponsorship deals.
She said at the time that she hoped she would be allowed to play again.
The World Anti-Doping Agency WADA said in April, after hundreds of athletes had tested positive for meldonium, that bans might be overturned due to a lack of clear scientific information on how long the drug takes to be excreted.
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20 national monuments to receive help in restoration and maintenance efforts
Future visitors to some of Singapore’s national monuments will be in for a pleasant surprise once restoration works for these buildings are complete.
One of Singapore’s first gazetted national monuments, the Cathedral of Good Shepherd, will have new features including a meticulously restored neo-classical ceiling, new tiled floors mirroring its original chequered design as well as a newly reinforced foundation and structural roof and walls.
This year, a total of $2.32 million will be disbursed via the enhanced National Monuments Fund (NMF) to 23 national monuments, including the Cathedral of Good Shepherd, said the National Heritage Board (NHB) in a statement on Thursday (May 19).
Therefore, more monuments and their owners will be able to benefit from the enhanced fund with greater support in their restoration and maintenance works.
The enhanced NMF also includes a new category of funding for maintenance. This new maintenance fund has been allocated $2 million and is aimed at ensuring that stakeholders conduct regular maintenance work and avoid building deterioration.
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The Straits Times, The New Paper, HDB, Former Command House, The Business Times, Lianhe Zaobao, T Kavi, MDA, Urban Redevelopment Authority, Tracy Sua, Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall
This inaugural disbursement of NMF’s new maintenance fund will have more than $100,000 dedicated to the maintenance works of 20 national monuments including Al-Abrar Mosque, Chesed-El Synagogue, Hong San See, Nagore Dargah Indian Muslim Heritage Centre, St Joseph’s Church, Tan Si Chong Su and Sri Perumal Temple.
Additionally, the enhanced NMF also sees an increase in restoration fund.
The Hajjah Fatimah Mosque is among the recipients that will benefit from this increase as the monument will be supported in terms of treatment and repair works to its wall surfaces, and for the repainting of its façade in mineral paint, which is a special type of paint more suited to the monument’s historic fabric.
Director of the Preservation of Sites and Monuments (PSM) division under the NHB Ms Jean Wee said: “Maintaining old buildings like our National Monuments is not an easy task, and requires much commitment and funds from the owners.
“We recognise this and with the enhanced NMF, we are able to help more monument owners with the rising costs of such works. This is a joint effort to ensure that our monuments will be preserved for posterity.”
ssandrea@sph.com.sg
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Watch out! Giant octopus kite in Singapore goes viral
Hold your fright, it’s only a kite.
A video of a 20-storey tall octopus kite being flown at Marina Barrage went viral on Facebook.
The video, taken on Sunday, has almost 7 million views and has been shared by more than…
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Japan govt looks to convert 'love hotels' into regular hotels for Olympic visitors
As the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games draws closer, the Japanese Government is pulling out all the stops to ensure it is prepared for a surge in tourist arrivals.
One of the measures, according to The Japan Times, is to convert “love hotels” into regular hotels to house visitors in town for the games.
Love hotels in Japan offer rooms to couples at hourly rates, and often come with quirky themed rooms with features such as vibrating beds and mirrored ceilings.
The Japanese news agency reported that there are more than 10,000 love hotels across the country, and the occupancy rate for these is at about 40 per cent on weekdays.
However, Japanese law prevents those under 18 from entering love hotels, and thus prevents these businesses from providing rooms to families.
As a result, the government has reportedly told state-run lender Japan Finance Corp. to provide higher loans to such businesses so they can convert their facilities and be registered as regular hotels instead.
Love hotels usually offer cheaper rates compared to regular hotels. South China Morning Post reports that one can get a room at a love hotel for as low as 3,500 yen (S$44) a night. With the arrival of the Olympics though, it is likely the rates will go up, especially for the love hotels that choose to convert their businesses and begin providing regular hotel services.
ljessica@sph.com.sg
Hainan Airlines puts single women in Chongqing love hotel after flight delay
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Hainan Airlines puts single women in love hotel after flight delay
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Chinese actor Dai Xiangyu, 31, marries actress 7 years older
Actor Dai Xiangyu, who rose to fame for his role as Yamamoto Yousuke in the 2008 Channel 8 blockbuster series The Little Nyonya, will marry Chinese actress Chen Zihan in December this year.
Dai, 31, proposed to Chen, 38, on Wednesday (May 18), The Straits Times reported.
According to The New Paper, they have been dating for about a year and registered their marriage today (May 19).
Dai told the media over the phone from Beijing in Mandarin: “She was very touched with my proposal, because I had her family and friends in for the surprise. We’re both overjoyed to share the news with everyone.”
The two were co-stars in the 2015 Chinese drama, The Girl Wearing Tassel Earrings, but met before working on the show.
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“We’ve been dating for about a year, and we both feel that now is the right time to settle down and have kids,” he says.
The wedding will be held in the mainland, but Dai says that he will invite his friends from Mediacorp over to China to celebrate the happy occasion with him.
Go to Lollipop for more stories.
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Malaysia-born artist creates mural for Facebook Singapore using 15,000 chopsticks
Malaysia-born artist Red Hong Yi has done it again.
The artist, who is famed for creating works of art using unusual materials, has constructed a mural entirely out of chopsticks, this time for Facebook’s Singapore office.
She said in a Facebook post on Thursday (May 19) that the social networking company wanted a mural on the 10m long wall in their Singapore office, and had asked for it to be made of chopsticks as the wall is near the office’s cafe.
She posted a video of her working on the mural on her Facebook page on Thursday.
It has been viewed at least 750,000 times, and garnered more than 17,000 likes. In the video, she pieces thousands of disposable bamboo chopsticks together and sets them ablaze with a blowtorch to create depth and colour.
Red, as she is popularly known, said in her post that she wanted to “explore bamboo chopsticks as a material and experiment with alternative methods to create murals, so instead of painting on the wall, I decided to set it ablaze”.
For her latest work for Facebook’s Singapore office, Red chose to depict the Merlion, a well-known Singapore icon.
She used 15,000 bamboo chopsticks, which were “glued, torched, then layered again and burnt a few more times to create depth and dimension to the piece,” according to her Facebook post.
Red Hong Yi – the artist who paints without a paintbrush
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Red Hong Yi’s Facebook page
Besides chopsticks, she has used coffee cup stains, straws, tealight candles and even rolled up socks to create amazing portraits of famous people, including Taiwanese musician Jay Chou, British singer Adele, Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan and Chinese film-maker Zhang Yimou.
She has also created quirky works of art using different kinds of food, from cucumbers to dragon fruit.
But she did not always know that she wanted to be a full-time artist.
Red graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Master in Architecture in 2010, then moved to Shanghai to pursue a career in architecture. It was here that she created her first work using unusual materials.
Using only sunflower seeds, she crafted a portrait of Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei.
Red describes herself in her Facebook profile as an “artist + shy rebel” who “paints without a paintbrush”.
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Seletar Airport to get new terminal to support aviation growth
A new passenger terminal building will be built at the eastern side of Seletar Airport to help boost it as a private and business aviation gateway to Singapore.
When it opens in end-2018, operations at the current terminal located on the western side of Seletar Airport will cease, the Civil Authority of Singapore (CAAS) announced today (May 19) in a statement.
A tender for its construction was called yesterday and construction is expected to begin in October.
As part of the larger Seletar Aerospace Park (SAP), the new terminal will also support growing general aviation activities.
CAAS statement said: “With the growing demand for air travel and increased traffic at Changi Airport, there is a need to ensure the optimisation of the use of resources within the entire aviation system in Singapore. When the new PTB at Seletar Airport is ready in end-2018, turboprop aircraft operations will be shifted from Changi Airport to Seletar Airport.”
Read also: Seletar Airport to be bigger and better
chenj@sph.com.sg
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Passion tides Singapore floorballers through trials and tribulations
They “are not paid to play, and must pay to play”, but national floorball athletes say their love for the sport and flying the Singapore flag eclipses the financial turmoil faced by their sports association.
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