SINGAPORE: Hard Rock Cafe at Resorts World Sentosa, Universal Studios Singapore and IKEA Tampines were among the new locations added on Tuesday (Oct 6) to the list of public places visited by COVID-19 cases in the community during their infectious period, the Ministry of Health (MOH) announced.
The Giant hypermarket at Tampines North Drive 2 was also added to the list.
The remaining locations added to the list include a children’s gym at Katong Swimming Complex, which was listed on Sep 26.
A beauty salon and supermarket at Bayshore Road were also listed on Sep 22 and Sep 26 respectively.
Those who had been identified as close contacts of confirmed cases would already have been notified by MOH.
As a precautionary measure, people who were at these locations during the specified timings should monitor their health closely for 14 days from their date of visit, said MOH.
“They should see a doctor promptly if they develop symptoms of acute respiratory infection (such as cough, sore throat and runny nose), as well as fever and loss of taste or smell, and inform the doctor of their exposure history,” said the ministry.
There was no need to avoid places where confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been, added MOH. The National Environment Agency will engage the management of affected premises to provide guidance on cleaning and disinfection.
Both community cases were linked to a 15-year-old student at a private school who was reported as a case on Monday.
There were also four imported infections, all of whom were placed on stay-home notice upon arrival in Singapore, and five cases in migrant worker dormitories.
SINGAPORE – Some of the world’s biggest banks in commodity trade finance are creating a digital trade finance registry in Singapore to reduce risk of trade fraud and boost transparency after losing billions of dollars due to a spate of defaults.
Banks have pared their commodities business this year following collapses, including that of Singapore oil trader Hin Leong Trading (Pte) Ltd, which shocked lenders after instances of financial wrongdoing were laid bare by the coronavirus crisis.
According to a joint statement issued on Tuesday, DBS Group and Standard Chartered are leading a group of 12 other banks in Singapore to create and conduct a central database to access trade transactions financed across banks.
“A digital trade registry strengthens trade financing banks’ ability to avoid duplicate financing, and facilitates more sustained credit flow in trade financing,” said Ho Hern Shin, an assistant managing director at the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The move comes after investigations into commodity trading firms revealed that multiple layers of financing from different lenders were obtained for the same inventory.
Maslinda Zainal, a former Head of Department for English at Woodgrove Secondary School, took the stand on Tuesday (Oct 6), stating that she did not check or count the money handed to her by other teachers for the purpose of printing learning materials.
There were no guidelines then on how cash should be collected or handled, she said, noting that teachers had left the money on her desk in envelopes and Ziploc bags after collecting them from students.
“I did not keep records because nobody told me I had to keep records when money was given to me,” said the 46-year-old.
Maslinda is contesting two charges of criminal breach of trust as a public servant.
She is accused of misappropriating about S$40,000 meant for students’ learning materials between January 2016 and April 2017.
Maslinda told the court the money collected was meant for the printing of Excel packages, which were used in place of English textbooks and workbooks for the students.
When the packages were introduced in 2007, they were printed in-house at the school for all students, she said.
This continued until 2012, when then-principal Sung Mee Har called for such heavy printing to be outsourced, with the cost to be borne by students, she added.
When questioned by her lawyer Singa Retnam of IRB Law, Maslinda said there was no surplus cash collected until April 2016, when she realised there was money left over in the box where she usually kept it.
She could not return the funds as she did not keep records of who had paid or how much had been initially collected, she claimed.
She said she decided to use the extra money to buy assessment books and stationery for the students, which she noted was usually paid for out of pocket by teachers.
She thought this was “okay” as the items were to be used by students for their schoolwork, she said.
The stationery, which she said all teachers had access to, was kept in boxes in her cubicle at work, said Maslinda.
However, she noted she could not prove to investigators that they had been bought with the money as she could not produce receipts of their purchase.
About S$8,000 had been recovered when investigators searched Maslinda’s desk on Apr 7, 2017, the day she was arrested.
Another S$11,000 was found in her handbag, though Maslinda told them this was her own money.
Maslinda claimed that investigators had told her there was still some S$34,000 which was unaccounted, and that she would not be charged if the amount was paid in full.
She paid the amount on May 17, 2017, she said, explaining that she felt responsible as she had not kept records of the money that was collected.
She also did not want the school to be responsible for the loss of the money or the students to suffer for her negligence, she said.
Despite this however, Maslinda was charged in October that year.
The accused allegedly misappropriated S$40,000 that was entrusted to her in her capacity as the Head of Department in Woodgrove Secondary School. (Screengrab from Google Street View)
“GREED”
In her cross-examination, Deputy Public Prosecutor Stephanie Chew pointed out a discrepancy from an invoice dated Feb 3, 2016, stating that Maslinda had collected about S$1,700 for the materials for a particular module for Secondary One students which only cost about S$500 to print.
Ms Chew added that on Feb 15 that year, Maslinda had even sent text messages to other teachers, asking them to make payment.
Maslinda however countered by claiming that she did not receive the invoice until much later, and that as a teacher for the Secondary Four and Five students, she did not know what materials Secondary One teachers required or how much they had to pay.
Earlier on Tuesday in court, Maslinda said that there were multiple missing invoices.
However, Ms Chew pointed out that this was not brought up when the school bookshop staff member responsible for overseeing the printing – referred to as Colleen – had appeared in court.
The alleged missing invoices were an “afterthought”, said Ms Chew.
Ms Chew also pointed to a statement made by Maslinda to the police in which the accused had said the unaccounted cash was spent “not solely for myself”, and asked if this meant she had spent some of the money for herself.
Maslinda however said she was referring to stationery she had bought for teaching purposes.
When asked why she did not explain to police that was what she had meant, Maslinda said she was not asked to clarify what she had said.
Maslinda told the court that she had no need to pocket the extra money, pointing to the S$7,000 after Central Provident Fund contributions she brought home each month as a head of department.
In one of six statements made to the police, Maslinda had admitted to taking about S$10,000.
Maslinda had previously said that she had been harassed by investigators, and that her statements were made under duress.
On Tuesday, Ms Chew had also asked Maslinda if she knew that spending the money on items that were not Excel packages – without the knowledge or consent of students – was wrong, and if the decision was made unilaterally.
As a senior teacher, who had taught at Woodgrove Secondary for 15 years, Maslinda should have been familiar with what to do with cash, said the Deputy Public Prosecutor.
Maslinda replied that she did not think it was wrong at the time.
Ms Chew also noted that an ex-colleague of Maslinda’s previously said in court that the former head of department had replied “greed”, when asked via text message how she had gotten into her predicament.
Maslinda however said that the exchange had never happened, claiming that she had no contact with the teacher in question since the end of 2016 when she stopped teaching at Woodgrove Secondary, or with any of her other colleagues since her arrest.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
If convicted of criminal breach of trust, Maslinda can be jailed up to 10 years and fined for each charge.
Lenney Leong, CEO & Founder of Get Customers grew up in a humble family where scrimping and saving was necessary to get by.
He started working at the age of 12, selling bottled water, dabbled in starting various different businesses, buying and selling Bitcoin, coding his own private Maple Story servers out of curiosity, and was always looking at making a decent income to support his parents.
On Money and Me, Michelle Martin finds out from Lenney about his journey with money and why he says he is a believer in starting a business to make your money work hard for you.
Michelle Martin: I understand you grew up in a family where you felt you needed to work at age 12. Why is that?
Lenney Leong: One of the biggest motivations was for my parents to retire. So, from a very young age, I set my goals to give them a good life when I grew up.
Singapore’s Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung on Tuesday signalled travellers from Hong Kong may soon be able to visit without being required to stick to a controlled itinerary or complete a 14-day quarantine.
During a 30-minute speech in parliament, Ong said Singapore had responded “positively” to Hong Kong’s intention to establish an “air travel bubble”.
“We hope to commence discussions with Hong Kong and other partners soon,” Ong said during a statement about recovery plans for the city state’s battered aviation sector and its national carrier, Singapore Airlines.
Almost 400,000 travellers from Hong Kong entered Singapore in 2018. Countries around the world have been rushing to establish bubbles to help airlines and tourism sectors recover from the debilitating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic that forced border closures and paralysed international travel.
Ong said Singapore would continue to consider similar arrangements with countries and regions deemed safe.
SINGAPORE – Mr Leong Sze Hian may not have known that the allegations he shared were false, but he made no attempt to ascertain the truth either way, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, taking the witness stand in the second half of Tuesday’s defamation hearing.
Responding to Mr Leong’s lawyer, Mr Lim Tean, who had asked why PM Lee accused his client of malice when he did not know the truth, Mr Lee told the High Court: “Because he didn’t take the trouble to know. This is reckless disregard of the truth.”
PM Lee is suing Mr Leong over a post the blogger shared on his Facebook page on Nov 7, 2018, which contained a link to an article by Malaysian news site The Coverage.
The article contained allegations that former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak had signed “secret deals” with PM Lee in exchange for Singapore banks’ help in laundering money from scandal-ridden Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.
The content of the article had been taken from the States Times Review (STR) site, owned by Singaporean Alex Tan Zhi Xiang. who lives in Australia.
The National Library Board (NLB) will be rolling out a children’s book subscription service where customers get eight curated books delivered to their doorstep every month.
NLB launches children’s book subscription service
According to NLB in a news release on Thursday (Oct 1), subscribers of The Little Book Box will get their hands on eight English children’s books monthly, selected from a variety of fiction and non-fiction books.
“The books span a broad range of children’s interests and are catered for two age groups – from 4 to 6 years old and 7 to 9 years old,” it said.
The pilot subscription service will run for nine months from November to July next year and charges a monthly fee of $10.70 (inclusive of GST).
Subscribing to this service will “make it more convenient and accessible for parents to get a variety of books for their children,” said NLB’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ng Cher Pong.
“Families have busy lifestyles and parents have to juggle work with childcare. Some might find it difficult to go to the libraries together with their children regularly.”
With an increase in retrenchments and pay cuts in Singapore due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many are finding it harder to put food on the table.
However, some residents along Yishun Street 51 have noticed the recent appearance of an unattended shelf filled with dry groceries at the foot of Block 513C. Two laminated sheets of paper pasted above it read: “Suspended groceries. Take what you need, give what you can.”
The cupboard was placed there by a group of three friends as part of The Jumaat Initiative which hopes to provide an emergency source of food to those in need as a way to give back to the community.
Stay in the know with a recap of our top stories today.
1. LTA to go ahead with new on-board units in vehicles ahead of next-gen ERP system
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is contractually bound to the OBU design after awarding the tender in 2016, so it cannot make alterations without incurring extra costs… » READ MORE
2. ‘Take what you need’: Group of friends set up free food pantry in Yishun for the needy
A health and beauty establishment in the crosshairs of the internet over an alleged unscrupulous incident has had their Google Maps profile blemished — by getting recategorised as a public restroom.
If that sounds familiar, it should be — Suntec City beauty salon Opatra was labelled by Google Maps users as a “public toilet” after its employees were accused of having coerced an elderly woman into purchasing over $13,000 worth of products.
The same thing has transpired for Bellecare, a spa that has been accused of refusing service to a domestic helper.
Her employer had allegedly been informed by the establishment that they would not serve her as “no domestic workers [are] allowed”. This, despite the fact the spa had listed work pass holders under those eligible for the service, and that the employers had informed the spa a month in advance that they had purchased the package for their helper.
