Category: Singapuraku

80 Year Old Grandpa Arrested for Murder, Oldest Murder Suspect in SG

SINGAPORE: An 80-year-old man was charged on Friday morning (Aug 22) with the murder of a woman, 54, whose bloodied body was found in a Tampines flat on Thursday.

Char Chin Fah is alleged to have committed murder by causing the death of Madam Ong Guat Leng. The murder is alleged to have been committed between 9am and 10.04am at Block 440, Tampines Street 43.

Char, who was dressed in a red polo tee-shirt, was seen glancing through the courtroom as the charge was being read out to him in Mandarin. It is unclear if any of his relatives were present in the courtroom at the time.

Char will be remanded in the A Division of the Central Police Division for further investigations and brought to the crime scene.

On Thursday morning, the bloodied body of Madam Ong, understood to be his daughter-in-law, was found in the bedroom of her third-floor corner unit.

Char will return to court next Friday for the next mention of his case.

If convicted of murder, he faces the death penalty.

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/80-year-old-man-charged/1324926.html

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August 22, 2014
18,000 Commuters Affected in 9-Hour Train Breakdown

SINGAPORE — Train services between Punggol and Sengkang MRT stations were disrupted for nine hours yesterday, in what was the longest breakdown on the North-East Line (NEL) since the record 12-hour delay in March 2012.

Yesterday’s disruption, which took place between 6am and 3pm, affected about 18,000 commuters. Initially, train services between three stations — Punggol, Sengkang and Buangkok — were hit and scores of commuters fanned out of the stations to bus stops and taxi stands. At about 8am, trains were turned around at Sengkang station, enabling service between Sengkang and HarbourFront stations.

NEL operator SBS Transit said the disruption was due to a power fault caused by a dislocation of the cantilever arms holding the contact wire of the power supply line at the tunnels near Punggol station. As a result, power supply to the trains was cut off. This is the first time the arms have dislodged, added SBS Transit.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said it would carry out an investigation into the cause and the operator’s management of the incident, which was criticised by some commuters, in contrast to the praise SBS Transit received from commuters and Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew in the aftermath of the March 2012 disruption.

Student Chia Yao Le, 19, was among the commuters who were affected yesterday. She ended up half an hour late for school. She said the service staff deployed did not know where the queues for the free shuttle buses started. “It was confusing with so many people.”

Another commuter, Mr Joke Jong, said he noticed only one sign that was placed outside the train station. The 31-year-old Indonesian said: “There were a lot of people queuing for the shuttle buses … people were asking around for where to start queuing.”

Mr Mohammad Faruq Senin, 23, and Mr Matthew Yeo, 21, both Nanyang Technological University undergraduates, were stuck at Sengkang station for a while before they gave up waiting to board a free shuttle bus. “The queues were very long,” said Mr Yeo.

Addressing commuters’ feedback, SBS Transit’s senior vice-president of corporate communications, Ms Tammy Tan, said when the disruption happened, the operator immediately instructed all its Goodwill Ambassadors to head to affected stations. “It, however, took some time for all our Goodwill Ambassadors to reach the various stations and this might have affected information dissemination on the ground. We deeply apologise to all commuters affected,” she said.

SBS Transit said more than 70 Goodwill Ambassadors and traffic inspectors were sent to assist commuters, while more than 20 engineers were involved in the recovery work.

Checks were also conducted to ensure safe operations before full service resumed, it added. The operator said it is conducting detailed investigations to determine the cause of the fault.

Almost 40 shuttle buses were in operation during the disruption, while commuters were able to board public bus services for free at designated bus stops near the affected stations.

This is the fourth major disruption on the NEL this year. In April, train services towards Punggol station were delayed for almost an hour due to a power fault, while on March 29, a stalled train at Clarke Quay station disrupted services by 40 minutes. Eight days before that, a power fault delayed services for more than half an hour along nine stations.

Source: http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/9-hour-nel-breakdown-hits-18000?page=1

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August 22, 2014
Singapore Presidents Have Been Honoured For Contributions to Country

SINGAPORE – A new mosque, a leading think-tank and a professorship will be named after Singapore’s first president Yusof Ishak to honour his contributions to the country, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at his National Day Rally on Sunday.

The new mosque in Woodlands will be named Masjid Yusof Ishak, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Iseas) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) will now be known as Iseas-The Yusof Ishak Institute and a Yusof Ishak Professorship in Social Sciences will be started at NUS to enhance research in multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism.

Mr Yusof served as Yang di-Pertuan Negara after Singapore gained self-government in 1959, and as president from independence in 1965 until he died in office in 1970, aged 60, from a heart attack. His portrait has featured on Singapore currency notes since 1999.

We take a look at some of the ways Singapore’s other presidents have been honoured:

Benjamin Sheares (Term of office: 1971-1981)

Singapore’s second president lends his name to one of the Republic’s most notable bridges – the Benjamin Sheares Bridge. Completed in September 1981, months after Dr Sheares’ death at age 73, the 1.8km bridge is the longest in Singapore.

Since the opening of the Marina Coastal Expressway in December 2013, an arterial road bearing his name – Sheares Avenue – has connected the East Coast Parkway to the Central Business District.

Apart from his contributions to the nation, Dr Sheares was also an outstanding surgeon who was the first Singaporean to be appointed Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Malaya in Singapore in 1950.

In tribute, the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School launched the $2.5 million Benjamin Sheares Professorship in Academic Medicine in 2011, which recognises leadership in medical teaching and research. One of the four advisory colleges at the school is also named after Dr Sheares.

Devan Nair (Term of office: 1981-1985)

Mr Devan Nair helped found the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) in 1961, and was elected its first secretary-general.

To honour his contribution to the labour movement, the NTUC named an adult education centre after him in 2014. The Devan Nair Institute for Employment and Employability opened in May and is situated in Jurong East.

Said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at this year’s May Day Rally: “(Devan Nair) was pivotal in forging a united and forward-looking labour movement. This institute is a good way to honour his life as a teacher. He became a unionist, and as a unionist, his passion as a teacher continued.”

Mr Nair died in 2005 at age 82.

Wee Kim Wee (Term of office: 1985-1993)

The former editorial manager of The Straits Times lends his name to the Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. The school’s communication studies course was rated sixth-best in the world in rankings released earlier this year by education consultancy Quacquarelli Symonds.

The school was renamed in 2006, a year after Mr Wee’s death. The same year, the university set up the Wee Kim Wee Legacy Fund, which benefits communications students by supporting programmes like Going Overseas for Advanced Reporting (Go-Far), an annual journalism course which exposes students to the challenges of reporting in a foreign country. The Singapore Management University also has a Wee Kim Wee Centre, for better understanding of cultural diversity in the business environment.

A research laboratory at the National Cancer Centre also bears Mr Wee’s name. The Wee Kim Wee Laboratory of Surgical Oncology was set up in 2005 after the Goh Foundation pledged $3 million to the centre. Mr Wee died at age 89 from complications arising from a relapse of his prostate cancer, and also suffered from colon cancer.

Ong Teng Cheong (Term of office: 1993-1999)

Singapore’s first elected president Ong Teng Cheong played a major role in the setting up of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Council, and his 1989 recommendation for the construction of a new performing arts centre eventually took shape as the iconic Esplanade.

To honour those contributions to the arts, the NUS set up the Ong Teng Cheong Professorship In Music after Mr Ong’s death in 2002 from cancer at the age of 66. It continues to fund well-known musicians who want to teach at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

In 2002, the Singapore Institute of Labour Studies was renamed in honour of Mr Ong, who was a former labour chief. In 2009, the institute, which trains future union leaders, merged with NTUC’ leadership development department and got its present name, Ong Teng Cheong Labour Leadership Institute.

S R Nathan (Term of office: 1999-2011)

The Institute of Policy Studies in July 2014 named Banyan Tree Holdings executive chairman Ho Kwon Ping its first S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. The fellowship was set up to recognise Mr Nathan’s contributions to public service and the advancement of Singapore.

A professorship at the National University of Singapore, the S R Nathan Professorship in Social Work, is also named after Singapore’s sixth president, who was an early graduate of the university’s department of social work. The professorship will allow distinguished teachers to be brought in, including one full-time faculty member to work with the department’s Centre for Social Development.

There is also the S R Nathan Education Upliftment Fund which supports education assistance programmes and needy students.

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/more-singapore-stories/story/how-singapores-presidents-have-been-honoured-20140820

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August 21, 2014
Pre-schoolers Speak Mixing of English and Mandarin Have Better Grasps of Languages

SINGAPORE: Parents and teachers tend to frown upon children speaking a mix of English and Mandarin, but a study done on pre-schoolers here has found that such a habit does not necessarily reflect a weaker command of either language.

On the contrary, the study — which saw the participation of 51 pre-schoolers aged between five-and-a-half and six-and-a-half years old — found that children switch between these languages because they have the linguistic capacity to do so. In fact, those who switch between English and Mandarin more frequently were found to have a better command of the latter language.

Assistant Professor Yow Wei Quin from the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), who conducted the study, said many parents and teachers discouraged children from switching between these languages, which she called “code-switching”.

“Code-switching is a pretty common thing that Singaporeans do and there are people, parents and those whom I have worked with — teachers and pre-school principals — who say that code-switching, code-mixing seems pretty bad,” said Asst Prof Yow, who will present her findings at the Ministry of Education’s Mother Tongue Languages Symposium this Saturday.

However, upon noting that there was a dearth of research to prove that code-switching is bad, she set out to discover more, within the context of Singapore. Over the course of nine months, Asst Prof Yow and her research team studied the way the children spoke during free play, language lessons, meals and group project time at two pre-schools. These children shared similar family profiles, with parents whose average highest education was a university degree and who spoke more English than Mandarin at home.

To test their English receptive vocabulary, Asst Prof Yow and her team used the internationally-recognised Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, where children were required to identify the picture that depicts the word being read to them. To measure their competencies in both spontaneous English and Mandarin speech, they considered the number of unique word types used, the mean length and complexity, some aspects of grammar and complexity of their sentences.

The team found that the children “code-switched” 14 per cent of the time, but this did not affect their English language skills. Those who switched between English and Mandarin more frequently displayed better Mandarin vocabulary and expressed themselves better in the language.

The findings suggest that code-switching gives children the opportunity to speak Mandarin. “The children are not pressured to think that they must speak in a full Mandarin sentence. Whatever they know, they will just use (it),” she said.

Asst Prof Yow hopes that with the findings, parents would not discourage their children from code-switching. However, she said it is important that parents continue to use full sentences in one language. Acknowledging the limitations of her study, she said she was considering an expansion of her research to include a study into the impact of switching between other mother tongue languages and measuring language competencies through the analysis of syntax, for example.

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/using-two-languages-in/1322760.html

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August 21, 2014
Singapore Female Bodybuilder Champion And Hubby Often Mistaken as Gay Couple

“Are you a man in a bikini?”

“What’s your ‘ladyboy’ name?”

Bodybuilder Doreen Yeo doesn’t feel angry when she receives such questions.

The 27-year-old does, however, get embarrassed, and can only bravely smile and walk away.

When she’s with her husband Mohamad Haris, they’ve been mistaken for a gay couple, and are often subjected to looks of disgust. They are so used to it that they aren’t bothered anymore, but Haris, 29, won’t hesitate to defend his wife if he has to.

“It’s ok if people are curious about her physique, and want to take photos with her, but some give offensive looks like she’s committing a crime. Sometimes I don’t tell her if I see people giving us weird looks,” said Haris, who works as a personal trainer just like Yeo.

Yeo added, “He’s with me most of the time and when people criticise me, he won’t be able to take it. He has seen the hardship I went through as a bodybuilder and thus knows what I have gone through.”

Poor self-image

Yeo’s buff physique may have earned her the gold medal in the open bodybuilding category at the 12th Southeast Asian Bodybuilding Championships in June, but she was not the most athletic person when growing up.

In fact, at 14, she was exempted from all fitness tests and classes due to a car accident which left her with a torn knee ligament and slipped discs in the neck and back.

By the time Yeo entered university, she was mocked for being too skinny: at her height of 1.64m, she weighed just a petite 45kg.

Then there was the pressure from her mechanical engineering course – but thankfully, she found her place of solace.

“I was studying all the time and I needed another channel to release stress. That was how I found the gym. I went to the one in school and started going every day, each time I had a break,” she shared.

She started reading up and bought protein powder to aid her workouts, putting on 8kg of muscle within a year, while her waistline remained unchanged.

“In university, students dress well but I was skinny, weak and didn’t have much friends, so I wanted to be different,” Yeo explained. “I wanted to become strong and toned. The desire to improve my poor self-image was what kick-started my passion for working out in the gym.”

Dealing with negativity

It was a poster for Muscle & Fitness War, a bodybuilding competition organised by NUS Health & Fitness Club, that gave her the idea to go into bodybuilding.

Fired up with the determination to compete and stand on stage one day, Yeo kept training even though she received nothing but negativity all around.

Her friends thought she was crazy, her colleagues at work said she wasn’t good enough and other gym-goers would ridicule her training methods.

Undeterred, Yeo continued to train while balancing her work schedule.

She became a trainer at True Fitness – where she met her husband – then a master trainer at Celebrity Fitness, before stepping out on her own as a freelancer this February.

Source: https://sg.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/fit-to-post-sports/singapore-bodybuilder-triumphs-over-public-scorn–image-issues-091034283.html

August 21, 2014