Quick News: Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Cleaner stabs resident in neck after void deck row

A RESIDENT, who told a cleaner to quieten down, is now unable to speak after being stabbed in the neck. K Mohan, 49, pleaded guilty in a district court on Tuesday to hurting Mr Ngoh Chin Boon, 33, with a knife. He will be sentenced on Jan 21. The court heard that Mr Ngoh was playing chess with retiree Chan Keng Mun, 64, at the void deck of Block 26 Sin Ming Industrial Sector A at 10pm on Aug 1, 2009. Mohan was drinking beer with a friend nearby but an hour later, the cleaner started shouting and swearing vulgarities into his mobile phone.
Mr Ngoh told the cleaner not to talk so loudly or the police might come. A row broke out and when Mohan swung a beer bottle, Mr Ngoh pushed his attacker, who fell to the floor. The cleaner picked himself up and walked away briskly only to return minutes later with a knife that had a 13cm-long blade. Mohan then slashed the victim's arm and stabbed him in the neck before running off. Deputy Public Prosecutor Stella Tan said Mr Ngoh requires speech therapy and voice rehabilitation to try and speak again. Mohan was found fit to stand trial but the psychiatric report from the Institute of Mental Health stated he would require lifelong medication for his schizophrenia. Mohan has been in trouble with the law since 1982 and has been behind bars for fighting, theft and drug consumption. Defence counsel Suresh Damodara had asked for sentencing to be adjourned as Mohan intends to carry a kavadi during Thaipusam on Jan 20 so as to repent and cleanse himself. The cleaner is out on $15,000 bail furnished by his sister.

 

Lee Foundation makes $150m gift to NTU

THE Lee Foundation has given $150 million to Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) new medical school. Two endowment funds will be established at the school. Half of the gift - $75 million - is designated for an endowment fund offering student financial aid in the form of scholarships, bursaries and other forms of student financial support. The remaining half will form another endowment fund for the advancement of medical education and clinical research at the medical school. In recognition of the gift, the school at NTU will be named the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, after the founder of the Lee Foundation - renowned business leader, pioneer and philanthropist Tan Sri Dato Lee Kong Chian. Together with the enhanced Singapore government matching, NTU will receive a total of $400 million. 'Lee Foundation is honoured to be chosen by NTU and Imperial College to be partners in moving Singapore's medical education a step further. Together with the enhanced Singapore Government matching, this school will contain some of the best features of current medical education, and also provide assistance to bright and needy medical students who can pursue their life's mission,' said a Lee Foundation spokesman.

 

Alleged killer faces child abuse charges

A MAN accused of the murder of his girlfriend's three-year-old son was charged on Tuesday with ill-treating him seven times. Muhammad Raffiq Jaffah, 23, allegedly slapped Danish Iman Abdullah at a hotel in Lorong 22 Geylang while the child was under his care in mid-September last year. He is said to have ill-treated the child six more times at a Geylang Road shophouse between November and Dec 10, 2010. He is accused of - among other things - biting the boy on his hand and leg, placing a lighted disposable lighter on his body, and caning him with a plastic clothes hanger. The boy died on Dec 20, five days after he was warded for injuries.
Raffiq has been remanded for psychiatric assessment. He will appear in court on Jan 25.
Each charge under the Children and Young Persons Act carries a maximum of $4,000 fine and four years' jail.

Court told of frantic phone calls

A WOMAN broke down on the witness stand on Monday while testifying at the trial of a man accused of raping her daughter. The 51-year-old housewife was recounting the events of Feb 12, 2009, when she lost her composure. She was one of six witnesses called to the stand at the start of the trial of Ong Mingwee. The 28-year-old accused, who helps out in his father's minimart business, claimed trial on the charge of raping the then 22-year-old woman at his Toa Payoh North flat in the early hours of that day. On Monday, Ong was more than an hour late for his hearing. His lawyer, Ms Goh Siok Leng, tried calling him, but to no avail. She then spoke to Ong's father, who said he had left home. When the court convened at around 10.15am, District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim gave the benefit of the doubt to Ong, giving him 30 minutes to appear. He arrived at about 10.40am and counsel apologised on his behalf.

 

Launch of S'pore-made satellite delayed again

SINGAPORE'S long-awaited journey into space has hit another unexpected delay.
The Republic's first locally-built satellite was to be launched at the end of last December. But the refrigerator-sized micro-satellite, dubbed X-Sat, will now not be launched until the first week of February, said Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chairman K.Radhakrishnan.

HDB to launch 11,000 new flats

THE Housing Board will launch 11,000 new flats in the first half of this year in estates such as Bukit Panjang, Jurong West, Punggol, Sengkang and Yishun. The HDB also said on Monday that it plans to offer up to 22,000 new flats for the whole of this year if the demand for homes is sustained. This follows the statutory board's recent aggressive moves to ramp up supply, with 17,700 new homes launched last year. On top of this figure, last year it also unveiled premium condo-like executive condominium (EC) units and Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) units, a total of 4,000 and 3,000 flats, respectively. Of the EC units, 1,659 have already been put up for sale. The other projects will be launched by private developers as and when they are ready, said the HDB. This year, it also plans to add to the supply of premium homes by launching the sale of four sites in the first half of the year under the DBSS, which will generate about 2,720 flats - about two-thirds of the 4,000 flats expected for the year.


Estate agents' council swamped on Day 1

THE new statutory board in charge of regulating and licensing property agents here had a rough first day of business on Monday. The Toa Payoh premises of the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) was thronged with people, mainly disgruntled property agents or their bosses, who had shown up to ask about licences that had yet to be issued or sort out property transaction disputes.

The machine issuing queue numbers was working overtime, and several people saw a few hours go up in smoke as they waited in line. About 30 people were still there when The Straits Times dropped in at 5pm. Premiere Realty chief executive Jimmy Ng was there to find out why his 30 agents, approved as practising agents last year, had yet to receive their licences. After trying unsuccessfully to call the CEA's hotline for two hours, he turned up at its offices in HDB Hub at 11am.

Parking labels for disabled open to abuse

WHEELCHAIR-BOUND Norrizwan Rasip knows all too well that sticking a parking label for handicapped drivers on the windscreen of his car is no guarantee of landing that parking space set aside for drivers like him.
The IT training executive, 30, who drives a modified car after having lost the use of his legs from a spinal-cord injury in 2000, has seen too many instances of these parking labels being abused.




Director of defunct school charged over fake booze

IN AN unusual twist to the sudden closure of the School of Applied Studies (SAS) last October, one of the directors of the defunct school is now being accused of adulterating the contents of a brand of whisky. SAS, a private school, closed down suddenly because of financial difficulties, leaving about 300 students stranded

Sorry, no free parking here on Sundays

SHOPPERS hoping to do some Sunday shopping at nex shopping mall in Serangoon - while enjoying free Sunday parking at nearby HDB estates - are in for some disappointment. Even before it opened in November, HDB had removed free parking on Sundays and public holidays at carparks around the shopping mall. HDB has removed free parking on Sundays and public holidays at carparks around nex shopping mall, such as this one between Blocks 203 and 204 at Serangoon Central.

Housing: Resale flat price rises are stabilising

THE relentless pace of rising Housing Board (HDB) resale flat prices over the past year or so has finally met some resistance as prices rise at a slower rate.
Advance estimates released by the HDB on Monday showed that for the three months ended Dec 31, resale flat prices rose 2.4 per cent compared with the previous third quarter of 2010.
In the third quarter, resale prices had risen at a markedly faster pace of 4 per cent from the second quarter of 2010. The latest data brings the total rise in HDB resale flat prices for 2010 to about 13.3 per cent - a fresh record for prices. However, the 2.4 per cent fourth quarter gain is the smallest quarterly rise since the second quarter of 2009. The highest growth rate posted in a calendar year was in 2007 when resale flat prices shot up by 16.6 per cent.

Manufacturing revs economy to new high

A SURGE in manufacturing output provided the rocket fuel that powered the economy to a record rate of growth for 2010. The crucial sector built on a rebounding pharmaceutical sector to rack up a bumper year overall and a blistering final quarter.
Manufacturing's robust performance - up 28.2 per cent in the fourth quarter over the same period in 2009 - allowed the Singapore economy to expand by 12.5 per cent in the last three months of 2010.
These were flash estimates released by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) on Monday with more data to be released next month. The fourth quarter performance in turn delivered the record 14.7 per cent growth for the whole year, a result that likely makes Singapore the fastest growing economy in Asia and among the fastest growing in the world. Manufacturing was the standout in the fourth quarter, but results were mixed elsewhere.

Hospital bills now more transparent: Khaw

PATIENTS can now compare prices between private and public hospitals on treatments for a wider range of common medical conditions. On Saturday, the Ministry of Health (MOH) updated its list of hospital bill sizes to include data from private hospitals for around 40 common medical conditions.
Previously, private hospitals - save for Mount Alvernia Hospital which complied fully - submitted bill sizes for only 10 out of the 70 common medical conditions tracked by the ministry. Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan, writing in his blog on Monday, hailed the move as a 'major achievement in our drive to promote bill size transparency'. He added that it took much cajoling to get the private hospitals on board. 'With persuasion and hand-holding over the past year, all private hospitals are now able to comply, though to slightly different degrees of comprehensiveness.

Casino exclusion orders to be approved faster

FAMILIES will now be able to get their relatives with gambling problems barred from casinos, just two weeks after they apply for it. This comes after changes to the application process by the National Council of Problem Gambling (NCPG). Acting on feedback that six weeks was too long, the NCPG has more than halved the processing time by ensuring that a hearing date is set for each case once someone contacts the council for a family exclusion order. Earlier, families and subjects of the exclusion order would have to go through counselling, and have a detailed 25-page report on their circumstances submitted before a hearing date could be set. This part of the process is often the most time-consuming, said Tanjong Pagar Family Service Centre senior counsellor Charles Lee, because problem gamblers can be uncooperative and delay the hearing by skipping appointments. With the new process, a hearing date is set even before the counselling is done, and regardless of whether the gambler turns up or not, a decision can be made based on the family's input.