A woman was arrested at Novena Square on Tuesday afternoon (Oct 13) after allegedly pouring a bowl of soup on a stranger, biting him and spitting at him, the police confirmed to AsiaOne.
In a viral clip of the arrest, shared on the Facebook page ROADS.sg, the woman, who did not appear to be wearing a face mask, was surrounded by four police officers and could be heard yelling, “This is against human rights!”
According to the police, the 35-year-old had shouted “randomly” at the male patron in a restaurant before allegedly pouring a bowl of soup over his head.
A scuffle followed, with the woman spitting at the man and biting his right hand.
She continued to shout incoherently when engaged by the officers in the mall. Her next-of-kin, who arrived on the scene, was not able to calm her down, the police added.
The woman also hurled verbal abuse at the police officers on the scene and spat on them.
“As she was assessed to be posing a danger to herself and the public, she was subsequently apprehended under Section 7 of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) Act,” the police said.
SINGAPORE – A “Right to Disconnect” law would help employees have protected time to rest and recharge, said labour MP Melvin Yong (Radin Mas) on Wednesday (Oct 14) in a bid to address arguments made against a proposed legislation he had mooted.
The most common criticisms revolve round the potential rigidity of stipulating working hours and its impact on workers’ productivity as well as Singapore’s competitive edge.
On top of the “Right to Disconnect”, Mr Yong also urged the Manpower Ministry to do a yearly workplace survey to tackle the wider issues of burnout and mental health.
Speaking during the debate on the Government’s Covid-19 strategy – as outlined by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat in Parliament on Oct 5 – he cited France for having successfully implemented such a legislation.
He said the country requires employers and employees to negotiate the protocol for non-emergency calls and non-critical e-mails, outside of working hours.
By nature, children are playful and simply love testing the waters. For some parents, spanking and scolding might do the trick but for others, it’s a different story.
But is corporal punishment such as caning truly an effective means of discipline? How can parents spare the rod without spoiling their child?
At least for mum Leza Klenk, she’s not taking any chances. The Singapore mother shares her creative method of discipling her three children, a 9-year-old, a tween, and a teenager at home through a I have a teenager, pre teen and a 9 year old. I don’t beat and I hate raising my voice. Recently shared these tips on…
SINGAPORE – A power fault shut down train service on parts of the North-South and East-West MRT Lines at around 7pm on Wednesday (Oct 14), severely disrupting the evening rush-hour commute for many commuters.
At 7.30pm, the fault disrupted service along a 16-station stretch of the Circle Line.
Preliminary investigations indicate that a faulty power cable had caused the breakdown, which is one of the most serious power-related incidents to hit the MRT network in recent years.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in a statement that operator SMRT started to detrain passengers who were stuck on trains on the North-South and East-West lines at 7.30pm, and on the Circle Line at 8pm. However, SMRT had to stop this process when it began raining heavily.
Free bus bridging services were activated at all affected stations, and bus operators increased the frequency of regular services serving these areas, the LTA added.
LAUSANNE, Switzerland: Apple brought all its usual marketing glamour. Tuesday (Oct 13) saw the unveiling of its latest iPhone.
There is the breathless exclamation for new colours. It speaks about the chip speed. Then there’s the less breakable ceramic cover.
And don’t you think a LIDAR (light detection and ranging) is only for those self-driving cars made by Waymo. The Pro line of iPhones also have it now. The Lidar will boost augmented reality (AR).
The real punch was the new 5G wireless speeds. But here lies the problem. Apple, for the first time, is ahead of its foundational technology.
The late Steve Jobs had warned against the danger of being too early. “Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. These waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you’re going to surf.
“If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely, it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years.”
Jobs was referring to when he waited for two years for broadband. When it finally arrived, he jumped into the window of opportunity with the iPod.
Countless others went earlier than Apple with their own MP3 players. They all failed miserably.
File photo of an iPod. (Photo: Unsplash/Ruijia Wang)
Before the 2000s, music sharing was possible – on Napster. But it would take hours to download an album.
With connectivity that poor, even the best-designed hardware made for hopelessly sluggish downloading. Jobs was waiting for the inevitable improvement of broadband to materialise.
Contrast that with 2020, Apple has launched an iPhone with a 5G chipset where the networks are far from ready. Around the world, 5G speeds are not necessarily faster than that of 4G.
But Apple CEO Tim Cook has few choices. The shifts to both 3G and 4G were hugely important for spurring people to upgrade their smartphones in the past.
By the law of large numbers, Apple finds it hard to sustain the same growth rate as it saw in 2014, when the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were released and became the best-selling iPhone models of all time, selling more than 220 million units worldwide.
Their successors, in comparison, the iPhone 7 and 7Plus, have sold less than 80 million units to date. It’s hard to know how many iPhone 12 Apple could actually sell.
The fundamental problem is, while those faster speeds will help with video-streaming and gaming, it won’t necessarily make a difference in regular web surfing or email checking.
That may cause some consumers to pause before spending the money on a new phone, particularly given the economic uncertainty.
Apple?s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak unveils the all-new iPhone 12 Pro at a special event at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, in a still image from video released October 13, 2020. (Photo: Apple Inc./Handout via REUTERS)
But if you are a shareholder, please don’t sell your Apple shares quite yet. There is one more trick Apple has to get people having the latest iPhone they don’t need.
EVERYTHING IS A SUBSCRIPTION
Starting later this year, Apple One will be available in over 100 countries, including in the US. Apple One includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and iCloud storage, for either individuals or families; Apple Premier adds on Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+.
At this moment, it’s a bit of a stretch to see how Apple One, as a standalone bundle, will get consumers to buy a new iPhone.
But since last year, you can pay for a new iPhone on a monthly basis. In the US, for example, you can get an iPhone 11 and Apple TV+ for US$17 per month. Apple also adjusted their AppleCare+ terms.
You can subscribe monthly, and your AppleCare+ coverage will carry on until you cancel, just as other Apple services like Apple Music.
Of course, Apple has the iPhone upgrade programme that bundles a yearly iPhone and AppleCare+, but this shift to allow AppleCare+ to be purchased on its own is another step towards assuming that Apple’s relationship with its customers will be a subscription-based one.
If this sounds complicated, it is. That’s because Apple is running all these different bundles to gather consumer data. It needs behavioural data to calculate the lifetime value of a user.
If I give you a new iPhone, how likely are you going to cancel it in six months? How likely are you going to break it and I will need to replace it for free? If I bundle different services, are you more or less likely to upgrade your phone?
All these questions can only be answered by real world experiments.
Apple’s new iPhone 11 phones are displayed at the Apple Store in IFC, Central district, Hong Kong, China, on Oct 10, 2019. (Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha)
To that end, it will be only a matter of time before Apple creates a variant of the iPhone upgrade programme that is simply an all-in Apple subscription. You pay one monthly fee, and get everything Apple has to offer.
Indeed, for an iPhone 12 and beyond, nothing would show that Apple is a services company more than making the iPhone itself a service.
When that happens, make sure you really stock up on Apple shares.
From Netflix to Amazon Prime, from Disney+ to Microsoft 365, the subscription model is king for one reason: Customer adoption. Whenever something turns into a subscription, you will no longer pay a lump sum upfront.
You pay a small monthly fee and then get habituated. After all, when was the last time you cancelled a magazine subscription?
But for a technology company like Apple, subscriptions solve another problem. It helps push the technology toward maturity rather than having it win the consumer over.
Here is the scenario. Unless there are lots of phones with 5G chipsets, telecom carriers won’t be very eager to roll out 5G vastly. But without a good 5G network, the iPhone 12’s appeal won’t be big.
The subscription model breaks that cycle. You and I won’t mind having a feature we don’t really use. Since the monthly subscription feels cheap, having a new phone with a nice packaging is already enough.
That lowers the barrier to consumption. Which in turn creates this push against telecom providers to plunge ahead with 5G rollout.
Is it a sustainable strategy? We don’t know. But it’s the only viable strategy to keep Apple growing. So Apple is taking it.
Howard Yu is LEGO Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School. This commentary is part of a fortnightly CNA-IMD Business School series on leadership and business issues.
Following the death of a two-month-old baby who was found face down and not breathing on his mattress, a coroner has declared an open verdict in his death and seeks to remind parents and caregivers of the importance of safe sleeping practices.
This comes after a thorough investigation — which included an autopsy examination — failed to establish the cause of death.
According to State Coroner Kamala Ponnampalam in findings made available this week, suffocation cannot be determined or excluded with certainty in this case.
However, she pointed out that the case raises “unsafe sleeping practices which have possibly led to infant death”.
According to reports, the baby was two months and three weeks old when he was found unresponsive by the family’s domestic helper in a Sengkang flat.
Here is the sequence of events that led up to the boy’s death:
SINGAPORE: We’d dawdled over lunch. After all, this was the first chance to get solid food in our bellies since the previous day’s dinner.
Over plates of luscious white beehoon, my colleague Gaya Chandrmohan and I discussed the day’s developments.
There had been the surreal walk with actress Zoe Tay to start the day, a tranquil stroll through the towering casuarina trees of Coney Island, and the unexpected encounters with readers who recognised us en route.
A sumptuous plate of white bee hoon. (Photo: Matthew Mohan)
As our aching muscles nagged their disapproval, we had to wrench ourselves away from the air-conditioned comfort of the restaurant and face the baking sun. Our final 7km of the day awaited.
But we had scarcely walked more than 500m when we were met with a plastic bag straining with cold drinks.
CNA readers Foo Siang Hwee (extreme left) and Sherlyn Lee with journalists Matthew Mohan and Gaya Chandramohan. (Photo: Foo Siang Hwee)
Our refreshments came courtesy of CNA readers Sherlyn Lee and Foo Siang Hwee, who had been following our journey on Twitter and drove down from their home in Punggol. They’d patiently waited while we were scoffing down our food so as to not disturb us.
And here they were, with drinks in hand. Our stomachs were full, but our hearts fuller.
A SURPRISE GUEST
Wednesday had been a day full of surprises.
Our route was due to take us from Singapore Expo to Pasir Ris park, then north to Coney Island, before taking a coastal loop that would see us end the day on the edge of Yishun Dam.
We’d started off the day feeling a little nervous – and it wasn’t because of the road ahead of us.
Zoe Tay had been following our exploits on social media and had reached out to us to check if she could join us for a portion of the journey. We had to pinch ourselves to check if those messages were real – they were.
Actress Zoe Tay and CNA journalist Matthew Mohan walking through the Expo area on Day 3 of the Singapore on Foot expedition. (Photo: Gaya Chandramohan)
And so we walked, making quick work of our early morning start. The nervousness slowly ebbed away, as we breezed through conversation topics.
We learnt about how Zoe started walking regularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, what life was like when she grew up in Lim Chu Kang (an area which we will cover in the last leg of our trek), and her love for dogs.
One question we had to ask was whether the current rule about wearing a mask means that she is less recognised in public at the moment.
Yes indeed, she said. Most people don’t realise it’s her.
As we rounded the corner to Pasir Ris park, clouds began to gather on the horizon. After a momentary distraction in the form of two gorgeous striped Bengal cats and their affable owner, we sought shelter under a nearby pavilion.
A pet Bengal cat at East Coast Park. (Photo: Gaya Chandramohan)
“Are you guys from CNA?” came the question. Here we were with a major celebrity like Zoe Tay, but we were the ones being recognised! Was this what stardom feels like? Of course, we eventually told them who our walking companion for the day was – to their utter delight.
There were several other surprises along the way – those of the feathered, scaly and furry kinds.
The serene Lorong Halus wetland. (Photo: Matthew Mohan)
There were the squawking herons in Pasir Ris Park, the lone wild boar at serene Lorong Halus wetland and the monstrous monitor lizard close to Coney Island. Wildlife seemed to spring up at every corner and we were enjoying every second of it.
After trudging through some areas of urban sprawl on the first two days of our journey, we were now seeing a very different side of Singapore. This was a reminder that even though we live in a city-state, nature has been carefully preserved as much as possible.
At the entrance to Coney Island, we met another reader who had been following our journey on Twitter. He had taken a brief stop during an epic 80km bike ride, following a loop from Woodlands.
Journalist Matthew Mohan exploring Coney Island. (Photo: Gaya Chandramohan)
His was a one day sprint, and ours a five day marathon. But there were similarities in the spirit of adventure, in the desire to explore and embrace what Singapore has to offer.
On a quiet bridge leading to Coney Island, we had found a kindred spirit.
It’s that time of the year again when people start losing their minds over the latest version of iPhones. Though a couple of things have changed drastically since last year’s iteration (finally, OLED displays), one thing that stays firm is the painful price points of over $1,100 each.
Traditionally, Apple fans here would typically wait for the price plans from the big three telcos — Starhub, Singtel and M1 — to get their hands on the latest and greatest iPhones at a monthly fee. Interestingly enough, none of them were the first to announce their mobile plan bundles for the iPhone 12 because that glory goes to Circles.Life.
The mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) has announced that it would be selling the iPhone 12 series at “the best price available in the market”, where shoppers have the option to buy the phone upfront or pay for their device via an instalment plan.
SINGAPORE: Due to a power fault, there is no train service on parts of the North-South Line between Jurong East and Marsiling stations and on the East-West Line between Dover and Tuas Link stations, SMRT said on Wednesday (Oct 14) evening.
It later added that the Circle Line was affected as well, with no train service between Serangoon and Harbourfront stations due to a power fault, in a Twitter post made at about 8.15pm.
The transport operator also asked commuters to add 25 minutes to their travel time between Dhoby Ghaut and Serangoon stations on the Circle Line.
Free regular bus services and bridging services are available between Jurong East and Woodlands, between Queenstown and Tuas Link, and between Paya Lebar and Harbourfront, SMRT said on Twitter.
SMRT added that passengers are advised to avoid Jurong East MRT station.
A photo sent in by a CNA reader at about 7.12pm showed crowds at Jurong East station after the train service was disrupted.
Jurong East MRT station after train services were disrupted on Oct 14, 2020. (Photo: Boony)
CNA reader Yang Long, who was at Yew Tee station along the affected part of the North-South Line, captured photos of the station in darkness at about 7.15pm.
He also took photos of the front door being opened on a train that stopped on the tracks.
He estimated that the train had remained in the same place for about 40 minutes.
A train on the tracks with its front door open on Oct 14, 2020. (Photo: Yang Long)
He also captured photos of staff manually opening the doors of a lift at Yew Tee station, allowing two people to exit.
A lift door being opened at Yew Tee MRT station on Oct 14, 2020. (Photo: Yang Long)
This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.
This story came from a reader tip-off. If you would like to send in information, photos or videos about something newsworthy, submit your news tips on CNA Eyewitness.
While you wouldn’t bat an eyelid over common house geckos on the walls of car parks, even the most hardened of us would get a shock should we stumble upon a massive monitor lizard lurking at a staircase landing.
Which was exactly what one resident of the Buangkok Edgeview HDB estate encountered on Tuesday (Oct 13) afternoon.
Abdullah Muhammad alerted his neighbours in the estate’s Facebook group page to the unexpected sight at 997 Buangkok Crescent, a multi-storey car park.
As it is a newly-established Build-To-Order estate located next to Kampong Lorong Buangkok, the resident believed that the colossal reptile had escaped from its habitat near Singapore’s only surviving traditional village. Though it was also likely that it might have just gotten lost after wandering off from the North Eastern Riverine Loop canal nearby.
