SINGAPORE – The two SMRT employees who lost their lives in an accident on Tuesday were laid to rest, side by side, on Wednesday (March 23) evening at the Choa Chu Kang Muslim cemetery, following prayers.
The mood was sombre as hundreds gathered at the…
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2 SMRT staff killed in accident laid to rest beside each other
D'Leedon murder: Belgian accused could escape death penalty
SINGAPORE – A Belgian man accused of murdering his five-year-old son in Singapore could be spared from hanging if he pleads guilty to an amended charge, state prosecutors said Wednesday.
Philippe Graffart, 42, was charged with the murder of his son Keryan at an upmarket condominium in October 2015 but has been found to be suffering from severe depression.
Murder is punishable by death through hanging in Singapore, but Graffart would instead face a maximum term of 10 years and caning should he plead guilty to an amended charge of culpable homicide under the Singapore penal code.
“The accused suffered from major depressive order which substantially impaired his mental state at the time of the offence,” the Attorney-General’s Chambers told AFP in reply to a query.
“The charging and sentencing position will be made clear when the matter is heard in open court.” Execution by hanging dates back to British colonial rule in Singapore and is applied to convicted murderers and drug traffickers. There is no other form of execution in the city-state.
Graffart’s lawyer Ramesh Tiwary said his client was “still very depressed about what happened”.
The Belgian, a former finance executive who has been in remand since his arrest in October hours after the killing, did not appear in a district court on Wednesday during a pre-trial session because he was unwell, Tiwary said.
He said the next pre-trial conference on the case is scheduled for March 29.
According to Singapore media reports, Graffart’s son was found strangled in his bedroom with hand-shaped bruises around his neck.
The father was believed to have been fighting for the boy’s custody with his ex-wife at the time.
Graffart’s account on business networking service LinkedIn before his arrest described him as an executive director and head of fund distribution in the Asia-Pacific region for Oslo-based Nordea Investment Management.
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The Straits Times, Shin Min Daily News, Lianhe Wanbao, Facebook screengrabs, The New Paper
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016 – 18:20
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Robinsons Expo @ Singapore Expo 24 Mar – 3 Apr 2016 | SINGPromos.com
Robinsons Expo starts tomorrow (24 Mar to 3 Apr)
Robinsons Expo @ Singapore Expo 24 Mar – 3 Apr 2016 | SINGPromos.com
Robinsons Expo will be back and happening at Singapore Expo Hall 3 from 24 March to 3 April 2016, 10.30am to 10pm
Differences between the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Ministry of Finance
Everyone must have heard of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) in Singapore. They are two key entities in the local financial scene and greatly impact everyone living in Singapore. But do people really understand what these two entities do and how they differ?
Here’s what these two entities do.
What The MAS Does?
Chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, MAS manages over US$244 billion in foreign reserves as at February 2016. Mr Heng Swee Keat is also a Board Member.
But what does this mean for us?
MAS is Singapore’s central bank. As such, it takes care of Singapore’s monetary policy. This includes considerations of our interest rates and exchange rates. Do note that in Singapore, MAS overlooks exchange rates gives up control of interest rates (based on the impossible trinity).
MAS allows the Singapore dollar to fluctuate against an undisclosed basket of currencies from the nation’s trading partners and competitors. The basket is being reviewed periodically.
In addition, it also supervises the financial sector, provides liquidity, builds trust within the financial system, and supports Singapore’s vision in becoming a financial centre, It also aims to promote financial literacy in Singapore.
The MAS also has many significant programmes in Singapore that aims to promote financial literacy including chairing MoneySense, a national financial education programme.
What The MOF Does?
The MOF controls Singapore’s fiscal policies including planning government spending and collection of tax and duty revenues. Mr Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s Finance Minister, leads the MOF.
Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world, and the MOF plays a big part in its fiscal prudence and shrewdness. With the upcoming Budget 2016 to be announced on 24 March 2016, it is important to note that the MOF plans and executes the Singapore budget.
Singapore’s reserves are managed by the MOF and distributed to three entities – MAS, GIC and Temasek.
As discussed above, MAS manages Singapore’s foreign reserves. GIC and Temasek are fund management entities with the objective of achieving long-term returns to Singapore’s assets.
Note that CPF monies are also distributed to GIC and MAS for investments.
MOF also supervises company laws, accounting standards and corporate governance principles to establish Singapore as a recognised international business and finance centre.
Summary
The MOF and MAS have to work hand-in-hand in many situations to ensure that Singapore remains at the forefront of international financial centres and creates a conducive and trustworthy environment for international businesses.
They also have objectives that encompassing social issues surrounding social progress and financial literacy respectively.
DollarsAndSense.sg is a website that provides bite-sized and relevant articles to help Singaporeans make better financial decisions.
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Thursday, March 24, 2016 – 06:30
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28-year-old woman found dead in Circuit Road block
March 23, 2016 5:34 PM
SINGAPORE – A 28-year-old woman was found dead in her Circuit Road flat yesterday. The police have classified the case as an unnatural death.
New Myanmar finance chief discovers his PhD is fake
YANGON – Myanmar’s incoming finance minister said Wednesday he was shocked to discover his PhD is fake after netizens pointed out he had been a victim of a high profile scam run out of Pakistan that ensnared thousands of others.
Kyaw Win was one of 18 people named on Tuesday to the incoming cabinet of democracy veteran Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) will take office at the end of the month – ending decades of military-led rule.
The 68-year-old was one of six NLD members in Suu Kyi’s big-tent cabinet – which also includes three army officers as well as opposition party figures.
Suu Kyi, who is banned from becoming president, was confirmed as foreign minister while the other roles are expected to be formally announced later in the week.
However local media widely published a leaked list of earmarked roles, with Kyaw Win, a career bureaucrat and adviser to the NLD’s economics committee, taking the influential finance and planning portfolio.
An official CV issued by the NLD shortly after the cabinet announcement stated he held a PhD from a college in the United States called Brooklyn Park University.
But social media users quickly pointed out that Brooklyn Park was one of a number of fake online organisations created by a Pakistani group that ran a global fraudulent degree empire out of Karachi until its exposure last year.
“I openly admit it that I studied at this fake online university in my older age,” Kyaw Win, who confirmed he would take on the finance portfolio, told AFP.
He explained how, like many others in junta-run Myanmar, he had a thirst for education but little opportunity to study abroad.
“Education has been my dream since I was young. I never stopped studying my whole life. But I could not study abroad because I did not have enough money,” he said.
Kyaw Win said he did not discover the degree was fake until the the news spread on Facebook after his cabinet nomination Tuesday, an experience he described as “really painful”.
Myanmar has undergone a dramatic political transformation since 2011 after almost a half-century of isolation under a military junta.
Its growing political openness was crowned by a historic November election that saw the NLD storm to victory.
Suu Kyi, 70, is the only woman on the incoming cabinet. There is widespread speculation she will take on four ministerial portfolios: foreign affairs, education, energy and the president’s office.
Blocked from becoming president by a junta-era constitution because she married and had children with a foreigner, she has vowed to rule through a proxy president, the recently elected Htin Kyaw.
Dawn of a new era in Myanmar as Aung San Suu Kyi’s party takes over
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016 – 17:29
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Golf: Tiger's injuries self-inflicted, says ex-caddie
LONDON – Tiger Woods’s long-term injuries may have been self-inflicted but he will win again – although probably not a major, according to his former caddie Steve Williams.
“I don’t doubt that he’ll come back to the winner’s circle,” Steve Williams said in an interview broadcast by the BBC.
“But whether he comes back and wins more major championships? That’s going to be a very difficult task,” added the New Zealander.
Williams was Woods’s right-hand man between 1999 and 2009, carrying his bag for 13 of the American’s 14 major victories and an astonishing 84 tournament wins in all.
“He has an incredible work ethic, when he can work hard, so I wouldn’t go as far as saying he won’t get back into the winner’s circle because one thing he does know how to do is win,” Williams said.
The former world number one has plummeted to 467th in the rankings having not picked up a club competitively after undergoing two back operations in September and October.
Williams agreed when his interviewer suggested that Woods’s spate of injuries was “self-inflicted” by an intensive training and strengthening regime in his younger days.
“It’s very hard to pinpoint how he’s got to where he is now, but there’s a lot of merit in what you’ve just said,” Williams said.
“When he looks back he might question some of the activities he did, some of the gym work he might have done that had all these injuries escalate.” Williams now works part-time for Adam Scott and will carry for the Australian when the season’s first major, the US Masters, begins at Augusta in just over two weeks.
He also worked for other former major winners in Greg Norman and Ray Floyd before he picked up the job with Woods, but says Tiger is unique in his “unbelievable desire to win”.
“Now other guys would be happy if they had a top-five finish, a top-10 finish, some weeks even if they made the cut… but the only time (Tiger) enjoyed was when he won.
“The rest of it didn’t matter. Unless you won it wasn’t a satisfactory week.” Williams and Woods do not speak since they parted company in 2009, despite the pair being once so close that they were best man at each other’s weddings.
And Williams caused a furore when writing in his book last year that his former boss treated him like “a slave”. But he still recalls with pride their heyday between 1999 and 2005, when Woods won nine of his major titles.
“He had this amazing drive to want to break Jack Nicklaus’s record (of 18 major wins), which of course I bought into,” admitted Williams.
“I saw no reason to believe he wasn’t going to do that. It’s just a shame that it looks very difficult at this time that he’s going to achieve that.
“I’m not saying it’s going to be impossible but it looks harder and harder.”
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016 – 17:19
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Get a room! River Safari pandas Kai Kai and Jia Jia preparing to mate
SINGAPORE – Visitors to River Safari hoping to see giant pandas Kai Kai and Jia Jia might be disappointed if the two decide that it’s time to make baby pandas.
The black and white duo have been seen exhibiting ‘public displays of affection’ and if they are deemed ready to mate, they will be ‘getting a room’ – the pair will be taken out of their Giant Panda Forest exhibits for three days to allow privacy for natural mating in their den.
According to Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS), park guests visiting now may witness some intriguing courtship behaviour from the pandas, which may include bleating, scent-marking, as well as restlessness.
Male panda Kai Kai may also display the flehmen response, a behaviour whereby an animal curls back its upper lip to sniff for pheromones, or behaviour-altering agents, to assess the breeding readiness of its mate.
Kai Kai, 9, and Jia Jia, 8, attempted to start a family last April but did not manage to conceive through natural mating or artificial insemination.
As the endangered bears have a notoriously complex reproduction process, River Safari’s team of vets and keepers are carefully monitoring the pandas as they gear up for a second shot at making a baby.
To get the pandas in the mood for love, Kai Kai and Jia Jia swapped exhibits and dens in January and February to stimulate their mating instincts by smelling each other’s scent.
WRS also revealed that Kai Kai has also been dutifully doing “sexercise” in his den for months so as to strengthen his hind legs and improve his stamina.
In case Jia Jia does not get pregnant, vets have collected Kai Kai’s semen for artificial insemination to increase the chances of breeding.
WRS’ chief life sciences officer Dr Cheng Wen-Haur said: “We have learnt much about the care of this endangered species and their breeding behaviour in the last few years, and the team is ready to apply this knowledge and hope for a Singapore baby panda this year.”
Perhaps some panda porn might help now.
minlee@sph.com.sg
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016 – 15:52
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The most bizarre lawsuits in football
Football fans are often prone to over-reaction and exaggeration, but it looks as if one Napoli fan has topped it all.
While Juventus ran out as comfortable 4-1 winners over Torino in the Turin derby on Sunday (March 20), the…
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PM pays tribute to Mr Lee Kuan Yew at Cabinet meeting
At today’s Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Cabinet members observed a minute of silence to remember Mr Lee Kuan Yew on the first anniversary of his passing. PM Lee also delivered a speech to pay tribute to the late Mr Lee, which was broadcasted as a live video on his Facebook page.
This is his full speech:
Colleagues,
One year ago today, Mr Lee Kuan Yew passed away. The week of national mourning that followed was a landmark in our nation building, and in developing a Singapore identity. Time passes quickly, and now we are at the first anniversary.
We are marking this day by celebrating Mr Lee’s life and looking forward. Many groups all over Singapore are holding events to commemorate his values and his life work. We are all rededicating ourselves to Mr Lee’s lifelong passion – Singapore.
As we begin our Cabinet meeting today, let us take a moment to remember Mr Lee and what he stood for and did over the years, especially in this very room.
The PAP came into power in 1959. At first, the Prime Minister’s Office was at the City Hall. In 1971, Mr Lee moved his office to the Istana. Cabinet meetings were held in this room. Every week for 40 years, Mr Lee chaired or attended Cabinet here to discuss the issues of the day, and to make decisions that set the course for Singapore.
There is a Chinese saying “运筹帷幄之中，决胜千里之外”. The general sits in his command tent, devising strategies and plans that bring his armies victory a thousand miles away. This Cabinet Room was Mr Lee’s command tent, where issues were examined and debated, decisions were taken, instructions given, and progress tracked.
This was a collective endeavour. Mr Lee was primus inter pares – first among equals.
Series of events held as tribute to Lee Kuan Yew
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The Straits Times
But the Ministers took active part in Cabinet deliberations. Many know Mr Lee’s public face – his leadership style, his approach to problems, his record of achievements. But few have had the privilege of his Cabinet colleagues, including quite a number of us here today, who worked directly with him, and experienced up close how he ran his Cabinet and Government.
It was an open, interactive, dynamic process, an unforgettable experience for all those who participated in it.
Mr Lee would usually have clear views on the matter under discussion. He would recount the history and the considerations that led us to where we were, so that we kept sight of the context when making fresh decisions.
He was mindful that before removing a fence, one had to understand why it had been put there in the first place. Though he often gave his views up front, he would encourage Ministers with different views to argue their case, and listen to them with an open mind.
One example I remember well was our decision to cut CPF contributions in 1985. During a phase of rapid growth, Mr Lee had systematically built up CPF contributions, eventually raising them to 50% of wages. He had defended this in his usual robust way, against critics who wanted to reduce the CPF to cut costs.
Then we ran into a severe recession. I chaired the Economic Committee, which eventually concluded that our costs had got out of line, and that we did indeed need to reverse policy, to cut the CPF to make the economy competitive again.
Dr Tony Tan, who was the Minister for Trade and Industry, agreed. MTI put up a Cabinet paper proposing to cut the CPF contribution rate from 50 per cent to 40 per cent. Mr Lee listened to our arguments. Then to our surprise he said if you are going to do it, do it properly. 40 per cent is neither here nor there. Make a decisive move, and cut it to 35 per cent. Furthermore, cut only the employer’s contributions. Do not cut employee’s contributions to increase take home pay.
That may sweeten the package, but it will do nothing to make us more competitive.
It was bitter medicine, and we had to work hard to sell it to the unions and workers. But it worked, brought us out of the recession and brought jobs back. It also was an important bonding experience for the younger ministers and population. We learnt a lesson not just in economic management but in political leadership.
As Prime Minister, Mr Lee kept an eagle’s eye on every aspect of Singapore, whether it was the health of our economy, the state of our foreign relations, the trees along the East Coast Parkway, or the cleanliness of the Singapore River. He left nothing to chance.
Yet he knew that he could not control everything personally, and that even more so another Prime Minister would have to govern in a different way. He advised us that one could not use ten fingers to catch ten fleas, quoting Mao. One had to focus on the important things and build a team.
He himself made an enormous effort to ensure that his successors succeeded. Even after he stepped down as Prime Minister, he continued to attend Cabinet meetings as Senior Minister and Minister Mentor.
Most remarkably, three generations of younger ministers benefitted from his experience and insights, his views and concerns, and increasingly his thoughts for Singapore’s future.
So for nearly half a century, here in this room, we had a level of discussion and decision-making that would have been exceptional in any Cabinet room in the world.
Now we are a new team, dealing with a changed world in new ways, but always inspired by Mr Lee’s example and his memory, and holding firm the ethos and values that he stood and fought for.
These will guide us as we in our turn follow the rainbow that Mr Lee himself chased all his life – to build an exceptional nation and to improve the lives of all Singaporeans.
We have so much to be grateful for. Let us observe a minute of silence together.
Cabinet marks 1st anniversary of Lee Kuan Yew’s passing
Live from the Cabinet room: PM Lee and Cabinet members remember Mr Lee Kuan Yew on the first anniversary of his passing(PMO Video by Alex Qiu and Chiez How)#RememberingLeeKuanYew#RememberingLKY
Posted by Lee Hsien Loong on Wednesday, March 23, 2016
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016 – 16:45
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