Now comes news that Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen is eyeing Singapore property, with his trip here last week to scout for good buys.
According to the EdgeProp portal, an agent said the Ip Man star and his wife Cissy Wang checked out The Oliv in Balmoral Road, Bishopsgate Residences, Nouvel 18 in Anderson Road and South Beach Residences in Beach Road.
The couple were said to be willing to consider homes costing $5 million to $10 million.
It is not known if the current pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong prompted Yen to check out the property market here for his family use or investment.
WASHINGTON – Mr Kevin Howard watched his life fall apart when his wife of 12 years divorced him, only for him to later discover that she had been cheating on him with a coworker.
But he got the last laugh when a North Carolina judge agreed that the other man was to blame for the marriage’s failure, and awarded Mr Howard US$750,000 (S$1.03 million), US media reported on Thursday (Oct 3).
“She had originally told me that she wanted a divorce because I work too much, wasn’t around to be there,” Mr Howard told local television station WITN.
But a private detective discovered his wife had been having an affair with a work colleague, whom he had met before, CNN reported.
“He came to my house and ate dinner with us. We shared stories, we talked about personal lives,” Mr Howard said.
And so he turned to the courts, filing a lawsuit before a judge in Greenville under an “alienation of affection” law dating from the 1800s, an era when wives were considered their husband’s property.
SINGAPORE: The offence committed by convicted molester Terence Siow Kai Yuan, 23, is a serious one, the prosecution said in a post-sentence hearing on Friday (Oct 4).
“It remains the prosecution’s position that in this present case, the offence is a serious one involving sexual contact,” said Deputy Public Prosecutor Gail Wong.
“We have been through that,” said District Judge Jasvender Kaur, cutting her off.
Siow, a National University of Singapore (NUS) student, was sentenced to 21 months’ probation in September for molesting a 28-year-old woman at an MRT station last year. Another two similar charges were taken into consideration.
On Friday, the prosecution sought a stay of the probation sentence that Siow had been given, pending their appeal against the sentence.
“My understanding is that at the last hearing, there was a request by the prosecution for a stay for consideration for appeal, but no appeal was actually pending, or no notice had been filed at that point,” Ms Wong said.
Since then, the prosecution has filed a notice of appeal against the sentence, she added.
Defence lawyer Raphael Louis said his client should be allowed to continue with the probation, which he said helps Siow.
Terence Siow, an NUS student who had been given 21 months of probation for outrage of modesty, seen outside the State Courts on Oct 4, 2019. (Photo: Hanidah Amin)
Siow, who arrived in court with a mask over his mouth and a cap pulled down his face, sat in the dock looking downcast.
Mr Louis urged the judge to allow Siow to “continue with the rehabilitative process”.
“He’s in touch with the probation officer. He needs help, he wants to change, but he cannot change by himself,” said the lawyer. “His family is there, but the probation officer is there to help him.”
NUS had told CNA that it convened a disciplinary board in October last year to look into Siow’s conduct, and eventually imposed disciplinary sanctions on him including suspension.
The prosecution had pushed for six weeks’ jail for the NUS student instead of the probation sentence that Judge Kaur had meted out.
After hearing both sides, the judge granted the prosecution its application to stay Siow’s probation order pending the appeal in High Court.
Siow’s case gained wide interest after the judge reportedly described his offences as “minor intrusions”, and found that a probation report showed Siow was suitable for probation as his academic results show he has the “potential to excel in life”, according to a report in the New Paper.
After the report went viral, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said he was surprised at the court’s verdict but that people should “avoid casting aspersions” on the judge.
An online petition was also set up on Change.org titled “Say NO to Favorable Sentences for ‘Educated’ Sex Offenders”. As of Friday morning, the petition had drawn more than 75,000 signatures.
SINGAPORE – A Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) mathematics paper last Friday (Sept 27) was said to be so difficult that some pupils who took it were left in tears.
Many parents then took to social media and online forums to voice their concerns about how challenging the paper was.
Discussions over tough PSLE maths questions are an annual affair, with parents taking issue with “tricky” questions from the national examination in 2015 and 2017.
The 2019 paper was said to be among the more challenging papers, with one of its questions brought up repeatedly by tutors.
According to six maths tuition teachers The Straits Times spoke to, the question was harder than many others, but they also noted that there are usually a few difficult PSLE maths questions every year.
SINGAPORE – Residents in several Bukit Batok Housing Board blocks have been told to shut their windows and switch on as few lights as possible by the town council after swarms of black insects plagued their flats in the past few days.
This harked back to 2015, when a similar mystery bug had also emerged in large numbers in housing estate blocks in Bukit Batok Avenue 8.
It is still unclear if the critters harassing residents in Blocks 170, 171 and 172 this year are of the same species as the insects from four years ago.
The resurgence of the beetle-like creatures was reported in Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao on Wednesday (Oct 2), which said that the bugs were a nuisance to residents.
According to Wanbao, the insects were found on residents’ beds and dining tables, flew into their bottles and even clung to human skin, causing an itch whenever they crawled on people’s bodies.
The Straits Times reported in 2015 that the rice grain-sized insects haunting the three housing block estates that year were harmless beetles that did not bite.
SINGAPORE – The man accused of driving a Maserati that was caught on video dragging a Traffic Police (TP) officer along Bedok Reservoir Road has denied that he was the driver that day.
Lee Cheng Yan, 35, is claiming trial to 10 charges related to the incident, which happened on the evening of Nov 17, 2017. They include voluntarily causing grievous hurt to the police officer, failing to stop after an accident and obstruction of justice.
Lee, who owned the car at the time, is also facing 59 other charges related to matters such as online gambling and illegal moneylending.
These charges will be dealt with at a later date.
In his opening address on Thursday (Oct 3), Deputy Public Prosecutor Timotheus Koh said Lee drove the car despite being disqualified due to earlier traffic offences.
He also did not have the mandatory third-party risk insurance for the car at the time of the incident.
The court heard that Staff Sergeant Khairulanwar Abd Kahar, 26, had stopped the white Maserati in Bedok Reservoir Road at about 9.20pm as Lee was not using his seat belt.
She had no idea what hit her on a walking path, but she knows she has to live with the consequences for the rest of her life.
Madam Tan Peck Lay, 58, broke her right wrist after e-scooter rider Tan Gim Moh, who was holding a cigarette in one hand, knocked into her from behind in Yishun last year.
The part-time sales executive, who found out what happened later from witnesses, paid about $1,000 for medical costs and physiotherapy, for which she was not compensated.
For the next three months, Madam Tan, who lives alone, was unable to bathe herself or do housework as her injured wrist was in a cast.
More far-reaching, her encounter with Tan, 61, who was jailed for 18 days, left such a mark that she has given up her cycling hobby and evening walks.
“You get a phobia, honestly. You are scared to fall again. It is no joke,” Madam Tan told The New Paper.
“These errant e-scooter riders, they don’t even know how much trouble and inconvenience they cause people.”
Still, Madam Tan can consider herself lucky to be able to talk about her traumatic experience.
To help bolster regional cyber-security capabilities, Singapore has launched a new centre for Asean member states to work together to conduct research, share knowledge and train to respond to cyber threats.
Asean, which has been making progress in coordinating and strengthening its cyber efforts, needs to build on this momentum to deepen regional and international partnerships in the cyber-security realm, said Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran on Wednesday (Oct 2).
Cyber attacks can happen at any time and their devastating impact, which can cripple critical systems and cause mass chaos, is borderless. Regional efforts in beefing up cybersecurity will thus provide more trust and assurance to the region, said Mr Iswaran, who is also Minister-in-charge of Cybersecurity.
The Asean-Singapore Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence (ASCCE) will spend $30 million over five years to offer policy and technical programmes for its participants.
SINGAPORE – The Yale-NUS student who was charged in court on Tuesday (Oct 1) with taking upskirt videos of women and filming them showering on campus had been suspended since March.
The liberal arts college confirmed on Thursday morning that the accused is its student who had been suspended.
“Brandon Lee Bing Xiang, a student at Yale-NUS College, has been charged in court for insulting the modesty of a fellow student,” Professor Joanne Roberts, executive vice-president of academic affairs at Yale-NUS College said in response to media queries.
“He was suspended the day after the College was notified about the incident in March 2019.”
The college declined to provide more information on the 26-year-old.
“The matter is currently before the courts and it would not be appropriate for the college to comment further on Lee’s case,” said Prof Roberts.
Lee allegedly used a smartphone to film at least four women, and faces 24 counts of intruding on a woman’s privacy to insult her modesty.
Court documents say the offences took place between August 2017 and March 3 this year.
Don’t waste it away by spending it at home because there are lots of activities happening around the island to enjoy with your friends and family. Weekends will never be the same again with this weekend planner.
SCREAM ASIA 2019
The second edition of Scream Fest is back this year from Oct 5 to 27. Get ready for spine-chilling moments and be thoroughly spooked by horror movies for this entire month.
