SINGAPORE – A National University of Singapore (NUS) student allegedly exposed his private parts and sexually stimulated himself in front of a woman at the university’s science library on April 10.
Singaporean Xiong Jiawei, 27, was then charged in court with one count of insulting the woman’s modesty and the pre-trial conference for his case will take place on Nov 5.
The woman cannot be named due to a gag order.
In a statement on Wednesday (Oct 30), NUS said that a board of discipline was convened this June to look into the matter.
Disciplinary sanctions, including suspension of candidature for two semesters, mandatory assessment by a psychiatrist as well as mandatory counselling, were then imposed on Xiong. He must also be certified medically fit before being allowed to resume studies after the suspension.
The NUS spokesman added: “The university takes a serious view of any misconduct by our students. We conducted an internal investigation into the incident and offered pastoral care to the affected students.
SINGAPORE – A 65-year-old man died after his car crashed into a tree on a slip road exiting the Central Expressway (CTE) on Tuesday (Oct 29).
The police said they were alerted to the accident at 2.33pm. The man was unconscious when he was taken by the Singapore Civil Defence Force to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
The accident happened on the slip road into Moulmein Road.
In a video submitted to citizen journalism site Stomp, a maroon car is seen lodged against a tree.
Police are investigating the case.
This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
SINGAPORE: The existing Vehicular Emissions Scheme (VES) for newly registered cars, taxis and imported used cars will be extended by a year until Dec 31, 2020.
The extension is intended to continue encouraging the purchase of cleaner car models, the National Environment Agency (NEA) and Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in a joint media release on Wednesday (Oct 30).
There will be no change to the scheme during the extension.
The VES, which came into effect on Jan 1, 2018, was aimed at encouraging buyers to choose car models with lower emissions across five pollutants in order to help reduce carbon emissions, improve ambient air quality and thereby improve public health.
These pollutants are carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.
Under the scheme, rebates or surcharges are granted based on how clean the vehicle’s emissions are.
(Image: One Motoring website)
According to the media release, the scheme has been effective in encouraging the uptake of cleaner car models.
Between July 2018 and June 2019, the number of new cars registered in Certificate of Entitlement (COE) categories A and B that qualify for rebates under VES Bands A1 and A2 has collectively increased by about 60 per cent.
Within the same period, the number of new cars subject to surcharges under VES Bands C1 and C2 has collectively fallen by about 14 per cent.
“Motor dealers are encouraged to introduce cleaner car models to the market during the extension. The scheme will be reviewed regularly, taking into consideration its impact on motorists’ purchasing decisions and advances in vehicle technology,” the media release said.
A cyclist came face-to-face — albeit too literally — with the back of a car after ignoring traffic rules.
In a brief 10-second video uploaded to Go-Jek Singapore Community’s Facebook page on Oct 28, a man was captured on camera cycling in the middle of a road at Newton Circus before promptly crashing into the back of a stationary sedan.
The cyclist was believed to have intended to change lanes in order to turn right. However, it would seem that he did not notice the red light and failed to stop in time.
The impact of the collision caused the cyclist to slam his face into the rear window of the car as the entire bicycle flipped over.
When Shih Choon Fong became president of the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2000, he recognised the need to produce more enterprising graduates as the internet looked to become the future.
The Silicon Valley dot-com boom was in full swing, though it would soon bust and put many of the more dubious internet start-ups out of business. Still, the realisation that Singapore had few of its own start-ups led Shih to work with several other professors to launch the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme.
The hope was that sending students to intern at the surviving technology start-ups in Silicon Valley while studying entrepreneurship in Stanford University would groom them to be more entrepreneurial, which would lead to innovation later down the road, whether through their own start-ups or taking on innovation-related roles in their careers.
SINGAPORE: Teachers from the 28 secondary schools that will be piloting Full Subject-Based Banding (Full SBB) from next year are being prepared and given additional support, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said on Wednesday (Oct 30).
The new system will be rolled out by 2024 across all secondary schools.
“This will ensure that our teachers are well equipped to implement the various aspects of full subject-based banding and manage the needs of a broader range of students,” said MOE in its news release.
To encourage the sharing of best practices and teaching approaches in the classroom, MOE has extended subject-specific networked learning communities (NLC) to teachers from the pilot schools.
In these NLCs, master teachers or teaching leaders and mentors, as well as curriculum planners from MOE headquarters will support teachers from the pilot schools in identifying and addressing their needs for a particular subject.
“NLCs will also give educators the opportunity to learn from one another in developing curriculum and assessment plans,” said MOE.
Teachers in the full subject-based banding pilot schools will meet face-to-face at least once a semester, said MOE, and can also collaborate and share resources online.
“In this way, MOE is able to gain a better understanding of the challenges teachers face and how to better support them in the transition to full subject-based banding,” said the statement.
Students at Swiss Cottage Secondary School discuss meritocracy and social inequality at a Glocal Perspectives class led by teacher Mini Sathiya Sidhan. (Photo: Lianne Chia)
MOE has also developed new workshops for teachers from the 28 pilot schools “to empower them to teach and manage more diverse classrooms”.
These workshops include ones on strengthening positive classroom culture, tailoring instruction to meet different learning needs and ways to assess students’ learning.
For example, the secondary 1 form teacher workshop aims to help teachers support students to learn and relate well to other students. Participants of this workshop will learn “how to better foster a sense of belonging and connectedness” in the new re-organised classes, and discuss good practices to create an environment that “celebrates diversity and empowers students”.
Selected pilot schools will also invite master teachers and curriculum planners to co-construct and deliver lessons in class. MOE said that it hopes this partnership will create resources, such as video recordings of lessons in re-organised classes, which can then be shared with teachers in other schools when full subject-based banding is further implemented.
Full subject-based banding was announced earlier this year to replace the existing system of streaming students into Express, Normal (Academic) or Normal (Technical) based on their PSLE results.
Under the new system, students will take subjects at a higher or lower level based on their strengths.
Students in these schools will also take a set of subjects such as art, design and technology as well as music at a common level.
A mile-high romance is brewing in the air, but it’s not your average romantic comedy.
A new Taiwanese drama set in Singapore features Lilu Wang and Huang Peijia — both female — as the leading couple.
In fact, Lilu’s androgynous looks caught the eyes of curious Singaporeans when they filmed here. Standing at 1.74m, dressed in a male air steward uniform with her hair shaved short, she looked every bit like a very pretty man.
However, in an interview with Sin Chew Daily, Lilu said her gender became the subject of many onlookers’ hushed discussions and the gossiping left her feeling rather uncomfortable.
Handsome Stewardess is the third instalment of Golden Horse-winning director Zero Chou’s Six Cities Rainbow Project. Launched in 2017, the project aims to tell female-centric stories from different parts of the Chinese-speaking world. It is currently airing on GagaOOLala, a Taiwan-based video streaming service.
SINGAPORE: The Housing and Development Board (HDB) will start installing Digital Display Panels (DPPs) in housing estates starting next year as part of Singapore’s Smart Nation drive.
About 6,000 DDPs will be installed across public housing estates, HDB announced in a press release on Wednesday (Oct 30).
A tender for the installation, operation and management of the DDPs will also be launched on the same day.
Several town councils currently have such boards installed at some HDB common areas, including lifts and lift lobbies.
“HDB’s pilot roll-out builds on the (town councils’) initiative by aggregating demand across different estates for greater economies of scale,” it said.
DDPs will be installed at lift lobbies on the ground floor and inside some residential lifts to “facilitate the delivery of community and municipal messages to residents in a convenient, timely and neater way”.
These will feature news and information from government agencies, community organisations and advertisers.
Digital Display Panels seen at a block in Strathmore Avenue.
“The content could range from local notices on estate happenings and events, to nationwide updates on emergencies and public health advisories,” HDB said.
“Commercial advertisements could also be displayed, but these will be capped at no more than 30 per cent of the total screen time.”
The digital boards will complement the traditional noticeboards in HDB estates, which involve paper notices and may have limited information due to space constraints, it added.
“With the provision of DDPs, content can be seamlessly refreshed so that residents can be kept updated on important messages as well as the latest happenings within their estates.”
An internship stint in Shenzhen, China, for four National University of Singapore (NUS) final-year students earlier this year led to an idea to make the world’s first 7-in-1 USB-C hub with a solid-state drive (SSD) enclosure.
Their idea is now on the cusp of fruition.
Material science and engineering undergraduates Helen Tan and Karyn Chen, both 22; civil engineering student Fatim Mohrini, 22; and biomedical engineering student Aaron Ramzeen, 25, launched the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for their brainchild earlier this month. The campaign had raised more than $40,000 by last week, far exceeding their funding goal of $15,000, and is on track to launch next month.
The four undergraduates got to know one another only when they were in the NUS Overseas Colleges internship programme in Shenzhen. During their internship there, they came to know of Flujo Technology, a Singapore PC accessories maker based in Shenzhen.
