‘Singapore superstar celebrity’ Kurt Tay might be a controversial internet personality who has garnered notoriety for getting breast implants in 2013, but it seems that his latest ‘claim to fame’ wasn’t what he bargained for.
Tay, 33, claimed to have been pranked by someone impersonating a Mediacorp staffer, after he turned up at the TV station for an “interview” which never existed.
In a string of Facebook posts published today (Dec 4), Tay shared screenshots of a WhatsApp conversation he had with a person claiming to be Catherine Robert, a “head of producer(sic)” for Mediacorp’s Channel 5.
However, Robert is a radio DJ on Gold 905. When contacted by AsiaOne, Robert expressed surprise and stated that she had no such correspondence with Tay. The number published in the screenshots was also different from Robert’s.
SINGAPORE: Fraser and Neave is investing more than S$80 million to build a food and drinks facility in Tuas, in a move that will consolidate most of its non-alcoholic beverage operations in Singapore under one roof.
The 375,000 sq ft F&N Foods facility is to be the innovation centre of the F&N Group, and help the company accelerate the translation of ideas and concepts into finished products.
It is scheduled for completion in the second half of 2021.
The new facility will also help F&N – maker of the 100PLUS, Magnolia and F&N brands – address the evolving needs of consumers, including the demand for healthier products.
“F&N has launched zero sugar variants of its 100PLUS, F&N Orange and F&N SARSI drinks, as well as low- and no-sugar versions of its chilled Fresh Soya Milk brand NUTRISOY,” said Dr Beh Swan Gin, chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, at the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday (Dec 4).
“This new facility will undoubtedly contribute to the vibrancy of Singapore as a food innovation hub,” he added.
Singapore has focused its efforts on having consumers choose healthier drinks as part of its war on diabetes.
In October, the Government announced that pre-packaged beverages that are high in sugar will have to display colour-coded “front-of-pack” nutrition labels. The label will apply to beverages such as soft drinks, energy drinks, juices, malted drinks, flavoured milk and cultured milk drinks.
A total ban on advertising will also be imposed on beverages that are deemed the most unhealthy and graded the lowest on the nutrition label.
F&N artist’s impression of a viewing gallery. (Photo: F&N Foods)
“F&N’s vision for growth mirrors the aspirations of Singapore on three fronts: Promotion of a healthier lifestyle for Singaporeans; championing liveability and sustainability, and challenging new frontiers as an innovation launchpad,” said Mr Koh Poh Tiong, chairman of the F&N Board Executive Committee, at the ceremony.
Mr Koh said that F&N – which has been in Singapore since 1883 – chose to build the integrated manufacturing, distribution and innovation facility here because of its “deep and strong” roots.
“136 years is a relatively long time; and, our roots have already grown deep and strong,” he said.
“Most importantly, Singapore has served us well – not only as a strong base to produce, market and sell a wide portfolio of beverages to the many generations of consumers in Singapore, but also as a springboard for our exports to and expansion in the region,” he added.
SINGAPORE: The Cross Island Line (CRL) will take a direct route under the Central Catchment Nature Reserve (CCNR), the Ministry of Transport (MOT) announced on Wednesday (Dec 4).
This comes after years of debate and consultation over the routes Singapore’s longest MRT line would take.
Nature groups and environmentalists had previously raised concerns that the direct route – which will include a 2km tunnel under the CCNR – could have an impact on Singapore’s wildlife and nature.
The other route considered was a 9km stretch skirting the reserve and going under homes and businesses. The CRL is targeted to be completed in 2040.
Proposed alignment options for Singapore’s Cross Island Line.
“After in-depth studies of the two underground alignment options for the stretch of the Cross Island Line in the vicinity of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve and extensive public consultations with various stakeholders, the Government has studied the trade-offs and selected on the direct alignment option which runs 70m under the CCNR,” said MOT.
CHEAPER, MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
In explaining its decision, the ministry said the direct route offers shorter travelling time of about six minutes time for commuters.
This is expected to lower public transport fares by about 15 per cent on average due to a shorter and more direct route, MOT said.
The direct route also presents a reduction in construction costs by about S$2 billion for taxpayers.
“In the longer term, it is a more environmentally-friendly option as the direct alignment has a lower energy consumption,” MOT said.
Since the CRL was first announced in 2013, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) has conducted feasibility studies on the two CRL routes and invited the public to give their feedback.
It has also held more than 40 engagement sessions with stakeholders, including nature and heritage groups, grassroots leaders and affected residents.
Based on the sessions, LTA said the 2km tunnel under the CCNR will be about 70m deep, as opposed to the typical 20-30m, with no surface work sites to ensure that surface flora and fauna will not be affected.
The fully underground line is expected to serve more than 600,000 trips daily, more than the existing North-East Line.
It will also connect existing radial MRT lines, with almost half of its stations being interchange stations, and is part of a plan to almost double Singapore’s rail network by 2030 and put eight out of 10 households within a 10-minute walk of a train station.
SINGAPORE – Four people, including a two-year-old boy, were taken to hospital after an accident involving a car and two taxis in Ang Mo Kio last Friday (Nov 29).
One of the injured passengers in the car, Ms Jiang Tian, 32, told The Straits Times on Wednesday that she and her husband, the 32-year-old driver, were with their two-year-old son in the car when the accident happened.
Photos of the accident’s aftermath posted on citizen journalism website Stomp show the back of the car damaged and the front of one of the taxis, which is from SMRT, crushed.
Ms Jiang, a dental therapist, said her son was seated in the child seat at the back of the car, and the roads were wet after the rain that fell earlier stopped.
The car was stationary at the junction of Ang Mo Kio Street 23 and Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3, and was about to turn when Ms Jiang said something hit the rear of the vehicle.
“I heard a loud banging sound and was unsure what happened next. My husband lost consciousness briefly but after tapping him a few times, he woke up,” said Ms Jiang.
Google has stopped accepting political advertisements in Singapore months before a widely expected election, according to documents shared by a small political party which said it was angered by the decision that denies it voter reach.
In email correspondence between the Singapore Democratic Party and a senior Google public policy official, the tech firm said it “will not accept advertising regulated by the Code of Practice for Transparency of Online Political Advertisements”.
A spokeswoman for Alphabet’s Google said the email exchange was authentic but declined to comment further.
The new code of practice, part of a controversial ‘fake news’ law introduced in October, requires advertising intermediaries to maintain detailed records of political adverts and their sponsors and make those records available to authorities.
The code applies to “all advertisement or paid content that can reasonably be regarded as being directed towards a political end”.
SINGAPORE – A Maserati driver whose car dragged a police officer for more than 100m along Bedok Reservoir Road in 2017 was convicted on Wednesday (Dec 4) of several offences, including voluntarily causing grievous hurt.
After a five-day trial, District Judge Ng Peng Hong also found the driver, Lee Cheng Yan, guilty of nine other charges, including failing to stop after the accident and obstruction of justice.
The 35-year-old Singaporean is also facing 59 other charges related to matters such as online gambling and illegal moneylending. These will be dealt with at a later date.
During the trial, the court heard that Lee, who owned the Maserati, drove the car on Nov 17, 2017, despite being disqualified owing to earlier traffic offences.
He also did not have the mandatory third-party risk insurance for the vehicle at the time of the incident.
Staff Sergeant Khairulanwar Abd Kahar, 26, had stopped Lee’s white Maserati in Bedok Reservoir Road at about 9.20pm as the older man was not using his seat belt.
SINGAPORE: Joseph Schooling looked up and slammed his fist into the water. He knew the clock did not lie.
At 9.15am on August 13, 2016 in Singapore, he had stopped the race clock at 50.39s.
He had just beaten boyhood hero Michael Phelps, history’s most decorated Olympian, in the 100m butterfly. And at the Olympics no less, a sporting stage that had become the backyard of Phelps.
The scenes that followed in Rio de Janeiro have now been seared into the Singapore psyche: Two other world class exponents of the butterfly, Laszlo Cseh and Chad Le Clos, stood alongside Phelps in an unprecedented three-way tie for silver behind the triumphant Schooling, as Majulah Singapura played at an Olympic venue for the first time.
Michael Phelps of USA and Singapore’s Joseph Schooling check their times after the men’s 100-metre butterfly heat during the swimming competition. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
SOUTHEAST ASIAN ROYALTY
Even the rest of Southeast Asia lapped it all up, coming out in droves for Schooling at the 2017 SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur.
No doubt the 24-year-old will again be the biennial Games’ headline act when he takes to the pool for the first time at these Games at the New Clark City Aquatic Centre on Dec 5.
Schooling is swimming royalty in the region. He had a target on his back but still struck gold six times in 2017.
The gloss of his Olympic win has yet to wane – Schooling remains the only reigning Olympic champion swimmer at the Philippines Games – and the king of these pools will inevitably add to his 23-gold medal haul.
He is penciled in for six events – the 50m and 100m butterfly, 100m freestyle and three relays – and few would bet against him from returning with six more gold medals.
But the clock does not lie. This time it will be a little different.
THE SPRINT TO TOKYO
Schooling will still be a hunted man in New Clark City, but he is on a more important hunt of his own. His name is etched in swimming annals, next to the 50.39 seconds he took to slice through water and into history in Rio.
But the clock also shows that he is yet to be back to his best in his pet event, the 100m butterfly. He has not gone below 51 seconds since 2017 and an up-and-down 2019 saw him clock 52.93s at his last outing at the Fina World Championships in July.
Joseph Schooling swimming the 100m butterfly heats at the FINA World Championships in Gwangju on Jul 26, 2019. (Photo: Simone Castrovillari/SSA)
He was a paltry 24th, and it is unthinkable that he will not secure a ticket to defend his crown at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
There is a real danger that he will not make it to Japan, and the calendar tells us that time is running out. There are but five months until the Apr 30 deadline that the Singapore Swimming Association has set for swimmers to meet the Olympic qualifying mark.
Just 147 days from his first race in Philippines for the swimmer who decided as a child that he was going to go to the Olympics then went out and beat the greatest of all time en route to achieving his dream.
IT’S ALL CHANGED
It is in the manner in which he managed that feat that several sportswriters now look back on and hint that the legend of Schooling may well have reached the end of its wick.
There have been several changes in his life – he has left the champion-incubating environment of the United States, moved back to Singapore, under a different coach, back in the home under the watchful gaze of his parents.
Although he has since moved out, he is now closer to friends and a short hop away from his favourite chye tow kueh.
Joseph Schooling in a Hugo Boss suit. (Photo: Hugo Boss)
Where once there was a singular focus – pool, school, pool – to fine-tune every facet of the kick, kick, pull that propelled Schooling to greatness, there are now commercial obligations for a Singapore’s millionaire pro athlete. It is now smile, pose, snap and post.
Times have changed and the athlete must evolve as his life does, but still in there is the same Joe Schooling.
A man who puts his hand up when he fumbles: “I had a ‘whatever’ attitude, I didn’t care about swimming… I didn’t have the motivation,” he said in 2018, of his dip in form after striking Olympic gold.
He is an honest thinker who knows what needs to be done: “All I can do is to go back and fix the things I could have done and do better,” said Schooling after crashing out of this July’s Fina World Championships.
And a competitor who has in bundles, that distinctive quality often approximated as a will to win: “I’m a good racer because one, I hate to lose, I just don’t like it, and two, racing is the thing about swimming that excites me”.
At these SEA Games, Schooling will face US-based Vietnamese Paul Le Nguyen, Navaphat Wongcharoen of Thailand, Malaysia’s Welson Sim, Luke Gebbie of the Philippines, and even countryman Quah Zheng Wen, but the clock is his real focus.
Schooling and Quah sharing a joke after a previous race.
Schooling has his back against the wall now, and perhaps that is exactly where he needs to be. It is no secret that he prefers being the hunter, nor is there any doubt that he has crafted a legend out of proving doubters wrong.
He has delivered when the odds are stacked against him. Indeed, he seems to prefer it when they are.
He will swim at the SEA Games, but his eyes are trained on the horizon, where his former high-school teammate Caeleb Dressel and Kristof Milak, the Hungarian teenager whose meteoric rise echoes that of a young Schooling, are now holding court at the top table of the sport.
Milak broke Phelps’ 200m butterfly world record at July’s Fina World Championships in Korea, where Dressel also made the 100m butterfly world record – the one that Schooling said he was chasing after – his own.
Hungary’s Kristof Milak celebrates after smashing the 200m butterfly record at the world championships in Gwangju, South Korea. (AFP/Manan VATSYAYANA)
He’s already beaten the best, so it is not hard to imagine that falling behind has got Schooling’s goat.
And that’s why there should be little doubt that Joe will romp to gold at the 2019 SEA Games.
But you can be sure that he will be instantly looking up when he hits the wall at the New Clark City Aquatic Centre – because the clock does not lie.
Shamir Osman was a former sports journalist for 12 years before crossing the aisle to work in public relations.
Singaporeans can be a jaded bunch, but few things excite us as much as freebies. So here’s something to cheer about: if you hold a pink or blue NRIC, complimentary movie tickets are coming your way next year under the Go Local Go Cinema initiative.
Announced today (Dec 4) at the Asia TV Forum & Market, the initiative is helmed by mm2 Entertainment and Cathay Cineplexes — both wholly-owned subsidiaries of mm2 Asia Ltd, and it hopes to promote local films as an expression of the Singaporean identity.
Under the scheme, mm2 Entertainment will produce at least three Singapore movies that will subsequently be screened at all eight Cathay Cineplex locations at no cost to Singaporean and Singapore PR movie-goers.
The first film to begin production is Writing Letters (working title) to be directed by Chai Yee Wei (That Girl in Pinafore, Sister, Benjamin’s Last Day At Katong Swimming Complex) of Mocha Chai Laboratories.
Writing Letters traces the heart-warming and unlikely friendship between an illiterate father and his neighbour who helps pen his letters to his young daughter studying abroad.
SEOUL – North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un has taken a second ride on a white horse to a sacred mountain in less than two months.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday (Dec 4) released photos showing Mr Kim riding a white horse to snow-covered Mount Paektu along with his wife and other officials, also on white horses.
The mountain is the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula and Mr Kim previously went there before making major decisions.
He went to the mountain on horseback in October. The latest trip comes as a year-end deadline set by Mr Kim for Washington to come up with new proposals to salvage nuclear diplomacy is approaching.
KCNA says North Korea’s ruling party will hold a central committee meeting later this month to discuss unspecified “crucial issues”.
SINGAPORE – A code of conduct that currently focuses on mobility device users will be expanded to cover pedestrians, and will include guidelines such as encouraging them to keep left on footpaths.
In addition, e-scooter and power-assisted bicycle (PAB) users will soon need to go for a theory test before they are allowed to use their devices in public.
The Ministry of Transport (MOT) made these announcements on Wednesday (Dec 4) in accepting all the latest recommendations made by the Active Mobility Advisory Panel (AMAP).
The panel submitted the recommendations, which seek to improve safety of pedestrians and active mobility device users, on Sept 27.
Other recommendations by the panel include compulsory third-party liability insurance for those who use e-scooters in their work, a minimum age requirement of 16 years to use e-scooters on public paths, and banning the use of mobile phones when riding an active mobility device.
“The AMAP’s recommendations are timely and will complement existing efforts to improve path and road safety,” said the MOT. “The Government will work closely together with AMAP to implement these recommendations.”
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