COE supply for May-July to rise by 15%, Transport News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/coe-supply-for-may-july-to-rise-by-15?xtor=EREC-16-2[ST_Newsletter_PM]-20160415-[COE+supply+for+May-July+to+rise+by+15%25]&xts=538291

COE supply for May-July to rise by 15%

SINGAPORE - There will be more certificates of entitlement (COEs) in the coming months which should, in turn, drive prices further south.

The Land Transport Authority announced on Friday (April 15) that there will be on average 9,634 COEs a month from May to July, a 15 per cent increase from the previous three-month quota period.

Car COEs will rise by 14 per cent to 8,384 a month (including Open, which is almost exclusively used for registering bigger cars). The big car COE supply will rise by 21 per cent, while the small car quota goes up by 9.3 per cent.

Overall, the single biggest expansion will be in the commercial vehicle category. It goes up by 40.7 per cent to 456 pieces a month.

Motorcyclists will see an 11.4 per cent increase in their supply, to 794 COEs a month.

That the COE supply would grow is no surprise. The trend, fuelled by the scrapping of old vehicles bought during the last supply bonanza about 10 years ago, is expected to continue for another 18 months or so.

But the quantum of the latest increase was somewhat of a surprise.

Mr Ron Lim, general manager of Nissan agent Tan Chong Motors, said: "The numbers look much higher than expected. March deregistrations must have been very high."

Indeed, according to data just released by the LTA, 13,580 vehicles were scrapped in March - 46 per cent more than the average of the preceding two months.

The figure would have been even bigger if not for a small wave of COE extensions. Around 10 per cent of expiring COEs are extended, when vehicle owners pay the so-called prevailing quota premium - a moving average of COE prices over the previous three months.

COE SUPPLY FROM MAY TO JULY 2016

	AVERAGE MONTHLY QUOTA	% CHANGE
CARS UP TO 1,600CC AND 130BHP	4,433	+9.3
CARS ABOVE 1,600CC OR 130BHP	2,924	+21
COMMERCIAL VEHICLES	456	+40.7
MOTORCYCLES	794	+11.4
OPEN	1,027	+15.1
TOTAL	9,634	+14.6

SOURCE: LAND TRANSPORT AUTHORITY SINGAPORE

Sent from my iPhone

Parliament: Health Minister Gan Kim Yong declares 'war on diabetes'; new taskforce set up, Health News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/moh-declares-war-against-diabetes?xtor=EREC-16-2[ST_Newsletter_PM]-20160413-[Parliament%3A+Health+Minister+Gan+Kim+Yong+declares+%27war+on+diabetes%27%3B+new+taskforce+set+up]&xts=538291

Parliament: Health Minister Gan Kim Yong declares 'war on diabetes'; new taskforce set up

SINGAPORE - The Ministry of Health (MOH) has declared war on diabetes, with each of the political leaders at the ministry leading a different charge against this disease - one of the biggest drains on the healthcare system.

In setting the battle scene, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said the disease is already costing the country more than $1 billion a year.

Of the more than 400,000 diabetics today, one in three do not even know they have the disease. Of those who do know, one in three have poor control, Mr Gan said in Parliament on Wednesday (April 13) during the debate on his ministry's budget.

"Left undetected, untreated or poorly managed, diabetes can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and amputations," he said, adding that four Singaporeans lose a limb or appendage every day because of complications from diabetes.

And if nothing is done, things will just get worse, as the prediction is that one out of every three people here will get diabetes.

"Therefore, I am declaring war on diabetes. We want to help Singaporeans live life free from diabetes, and for those with the disease, to help them control their condition to prevent deterioration," the minister said.

He will co-chair a new Diabetes Prevention and Care Taskforce with Acting Education Minister Ng Chee Meng.

The taskforce will include representatives from government agencies, the private sector, patient advocacy and caregiver groups.

Mr Gan said: "The war on diabetes will not be a quick battle, but a long war requiring sustained effort."

He outlined three key prongs in the multi-year plan to fight diabetes.

First, promote a healthy lifestyle and reduce obesity rates in order to cut down on new diabetes cases. 

To encourage more people to exercise, current programmes such as the National Steps Challenge will be expanded, and new programmes will be introduced in schools, workplaces, and the community. The MOH will also do more to curb smoking rates because the risk of developing diabetes is 30-40 per cent  
higher for active smokers than non-smokers.

Second, strengthen early screening and intervention to identify the disease early among those at risk or undiagnosed.

Third, support better disease control to slow disease progression, and reduce complications.

Success in this war will be far reaching, he said, as it will "curb not just diabetes but other related chronic disease such as heart disease, and we will improve the lives of Singaporeans and reduce the burden on their families".

Sent from my iPhone

More teenage boys paying for sex: Study, Singapore News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/more-teenage-boys-paying-for-sex-study?xtor=EREC-16-1[ST_Newsletter_AM]-20160410-[More+teenage+boys+paying+for+sex%3A+Study]&xts=538291

More teenage boys paying for sex: Study

The number of teenage boys who have visited prostitutes is on the rise, a trend that has researchers worried as some do not use condoms consistently, may catch sexually transmitted diseases and go on to infect their girlfriends.

In the first-ever study of Singapore youth who have had sex with prostitutes, it was found that about two in five of the teens surveyed had paid for sex. The interviews were conducted with some 300 heterosexual boys aged between 16 and 19 who went to a government specialist clinic that treats sexually transmitted infections (STIs), between 2009 and 2014.

In earlier cohorts of boys who went to the Department of Sexually Transmitted Infections Control (DSC) Clinic between 2006 and 2009 and were interviewed, only 15 per cent said they had intercourse with prostitutes.

Associate Professor Wong Mee Lian - working with Adjunct Professor Roy Chan and Dr Martin Chio at the clinic - invited new teenage patients at the clinic each year since 2006 to be part of their research.

The doctors wanted to understand their background and behaviour which could put them at risk of contracting an STI, and find ways to reduce infection rates among the young.

Prof Wong, who is with the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, said the jump in the proportion of teens who visited prostitutes is significant.

While the findings cannot be generalised to represent the population of teens who are sexually active, she said they do suggest that it has become more common recently for teenage boys to pay for sex.

This is a public health concern as sex workers are a major source of infection - and 30 per cent of the boys she polled between 2009 and 2014 who visited prostitutes said they did not use a condom each time they had paid sex.

The worry is that they could infect their girlfriends or others they sleep with, she said, as they had a median of 4.5 sexual partners, including their girlfriends, by the time they were polled. "Many of those infected with an STI show no symptoms and they could have sex with others without knowing they are infected," she said.

Her study was published in the science and medical journal PLOS One in January. PhD student Junice Ng was the co-author.

Another worrying finding is that of those who had paid for sex, their median age was only 16 and 38 per cent had their first sexual encounter with a sex worker.

Doctors and social workers say two main factors account for why more teens visit prostitutes. The first is the easy access to pornography online. There has also been a proliferation of vice websites advertising sexual services here.

Dr Lin Kai Wei of Nuffield Medical Siglap clinic said his young patients go online to seek sexual services as they find it less daunting than going to the red light districts where others can see what they are up to. "There are all these websites where there are pictures of the girls and their vital statistics. So the boys are tempted," he said.

Singapore Children's Society chief executive Alfred Tan, a father of two, including a 21-year-old son, said the study's findings are worrying, especially as youth are more exposed now to all sorts of vice online.

"We have to start talking about sexuality issues with our children, to let them know what's right and what's wrong, when they are as young as possible," he said.

Sent from my iPhone

The Panama Papers leak, explained with an adorable comic about piggy banks - Vox

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/4/11361780/the-panama-papers-cartoon

The Panama Papers leak, explained with an adorable comic about piggy banks

It's easy to get confused by all the headlines about the Panama Papers, a massive 2.6-terabyte leak of documents that reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance. But Vox's German Lopez uncovered a great explanation of what's happening, and it's courtesy of brilliant redditor DanGliesack.

He uses piggy banks to help explain the main (and complicated-sounding) thing that was happening in Panama: foreigners setting up Panamanian shell companies to hold financial assets that obscure the identities of their real owners. We thought this analogy was quite fitting for a comic, so we created these illustrations to explain the key issue at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal.

---

Let's say you save your quarters in a piggy bank that is on your closet shelf.

But your mom keeps checking up on how much you're putting in and taking out.

You don't like that.

So you get an extra piggy bank...

...and take it to Johnny's house.

Johnny's mom is busy. She doesn't check piggy banks. So you can secretly keep yours there without anyone checking up on it.

The neighborhood kids also think this is a good idea.

So they also put their piggy banks in Johnny's closet.

But one day, Johnny's mom finds the piggy banks.

She's mad and calls everyone's parents to tell on the kids hiding their money.

That's basically today's document leak — and a lot of important and powerful people hid their piggy banks at Johnny's house in Panama.

Not everyone was doing something bad, though. For example, you just wanted privacy from your mom.

But your neighbor Michael was stealing money from his mom's purse and hiding it in Johnny's closet. And Jacob was stealing other people's lunch money and didn't want his parents to ask where it came from.

Soon we'll know who was doing this for bad reasons and who wasn't.

But everyone who hid their piggy bank at Johnny's house is still in trouble, because secret piggy banks are not allowed.

So journalists are now scouring the records to better understand what type of activity was going on at Johnny's house in Panama — whether it was legal, appropriate, or a bending of the law. To read more of Vox's coverage of the Panama Papers, go here.

---

Sent from my iPhone

Parliament: PSLE scoring system to be revamped; T-score to be removed from 2021, Education News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/parliament-psle-scoring-system-to-be-revamped-t-score-to-be-removed-from-2021?xtor=EREC-16-2[ST_Newsletter_PM]-20160408-[Parliament%3A+PSLE+scoring+system+to+be+revamped%3B+T-score+to+be+removed+from+2021]&xts=538291

Parliament: PSLE scoring system to be revamped; T-score to be removed from 2021

SINGAPORE - To encourage students to go beyond book smarts, the aggregate score for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) will be replaced with wider scoring bands from 2021.
The new scoring system, which affects this year's Primary 1 pupils, will be similar to grading at O and A levels, said Acting Education Minister Ng Chee Meng (Schools) as he announced his ministry's plans on Friday during the Committee of Supply debate in Parliament.
PSLE grading will also no longer be based on how pupils do relative to their peers, as it is now, he explained, adding that the hope is that this will encourage students to focus on their own learning rather than competing to do better than their peers.

Mr Ng said: "Today, there is a deeply ingrained mindset that the PSLE is a very high-stakes exam. Many perceive that a child's PSLE T-score at the age of 12 determines his or her success and pathway in life.
"The main issue to address is that the way we currently score the PSLE is too precise, and differentiates our students more finely than necessary. We should therefore, in time, move away from such fine distinctions, which are not meaningful, especially at that young age."
The Ministry of Education (MOE) will take the next few years to develop and test the new exam and secondary school posting systems, said Mr Ng. The posting system will still be a fair and transparent system based on academic merit, he added. More details will be revealed in the next two to three months.
The PSLE review was first announced by PM Lee Hsien Loong in 2013. It is meant to reduce the over-emphasis on academic results and allow students more time and space to develop holistically.
Mr Ng stressed the need for a paradigm shift towards holistic education.
He admitted that despite efforts to change, there is still a narrow emphasis on academics and paper qualifications. "This is deeply ingrained in our culture," he said, and even manifests in employer mindsets. While MOE can take the lead in moving away from an excessive focus on academics, it will take parents and the community to come aboard, he added.
Mr Ng said that the MOE will also review the Direct School Admission (DSA) scheme to realign it with its original intent to recognise achievements and talents in specific areas instead of general academic ability.
While many students have benefited from DSA, "there is some unevenness in how different schools select their DSA students", he added.
To address this, MOE intends to expand the DSA opportunities in more secondary schools for students with specific strengths, and it will also "sharpen the focus of the DSA" to better recognise talents and achievements in specific domains rather than general academic ability that can be demonstrated through the PSLE.
Introduced in 2004, DSA was intended to promote holistic education by providing opportunities for students to be recognised for a more diverse range of achievements and talents, such as in sports and arts, when seeking admission to secondary schools.
The DSA has been criticised for turning into a channel for students to secure places in the most sought-after Integrated Programme schools whose students bypass the O levels. Some parents also send their children for DSA preparation classes and enrichment programmes to boost their chances of doing well in interviews and auditions.
"Today, I fear we are over-crowding our young ones with a narrow focus on academics. While we have their interests at heart, too much of one thing impedes rather than supports growth," said Mr Ng. The changes to come will help to reduce emphasis on exam results, but there is no silver bullet to the issues of stress and competition.
"While MOE can change policies and structures, ultimately, this is a personal journey for every child, parent and family."

Sent from my iPhone

Seven long weekends in Singapore for 2017, up from six in 2016, Singapore News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/seven-long-weekends-for-2017-up-from-six-in-2016?xtor=EREC-16-2[ST_Newsletter_PM]-20160405-[Seven+long+weekends+in+Singapore+for+2017%2C+up+from+six+in+2016]&xts=538291

Seven long weekends in Singapore for 2017, up from six in 2016

SINGAPORE - Workers planning a holiday can look forward to seven long weekends next year.
The Ministry of Manpower has released a list of dates of public holidays for 2017, with a total of 11 gazetted public holidays.
Seven of these holidays fall on a Friday, Sunday or Monday. This is an increase from six days this year.

Three public holidays next year fall on a Sunday. When a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday will be a day off.

One of the public holidays next year falls on a Saturday. Workers who are not required to work on Saturdays are entitled to another day off or an extra day's salary in lieu of that public holiday.
Workers who are required to work on a public holiday are entitled to an extra day's salary. Alternatively, an employer and employee may mutually agree for the worker to claim a day off for working on a holiday.
The public can access the list of public holidays for 2017 on the Ministry of Manpower website.

Sent from my iPhone

Panama Papers: Leaked documents spark uproar worldwide, World News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

http://www.straitstimes.com/world/panama-papers-leaked-documents-spark-uproar-worldwide?xtor=EREC-16-1[ST_Newsletter_AM]-20160405-[Panama+Papers%3A+Leaked+documents+spark+uproar+worldwide]&xts=538291

Panama Papers: Leaked documents spark uproar worldwide

LONDON/PANAMA CITY • The "Panama Papers", with their exposes of world leaders or their associates having shady offshore financial dealings, have caused a furore worldwide, with a furious Kremlin calling it a plot to destabilise Russia, France saying it is good news that could boost tax revenue, and others such as Iceland's premier facing calls to resign.

The documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, leaked by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday, allegedly showed how the firm's clients avoided tax or laundered money.

They detailed schemes involving an array of figures from friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin to relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan, journalists who received them said.

• THE TREASURE TROVE

• 11. 5m

  Number of documents leaked

• 2.6

  Terabytes of information

• 140

  Number of world leaders, politicians and public officials named in the documents

• 40

  The documents cover a period of nearly four decades, from 1977 to last December

  SOURCE: THE INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS

While the Panama Papers detail complex financial arrangements benefiting the world's elite, they do not necessarily mean the schemes were all illegal... The Kremlin yesterday said the documents contained "nothing concrete and nothing new" while a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said the reported links of the politician's late father to an offshore company were a "private matter".

While the Panama Papers detail complex financial arrangements benefiting the world's elite, they do not necessarily mean the schemes were all illegal.

According to ICIJ, most of the services the offshore industry provides can be used for legal purpose and are by law-abiding customers. But the documents show that banks, law firms and other offshore players often fail to follow legal requirements to make sure clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption.

Prime Minister Najib Razak's son Mohd Nazifuddin, who was said to be holding directorships in two offshore firms,  reportedly told ICIJ that one of the firms was set up for international business, according to website Malaysiakini.

The Kremlin yesterday said the documents contained "nothing concrete and nothing new" while a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said the reported links of the politician's late father to an offshore company were a "private matter". The documents showed Mr Putin linked to a network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth US$2 billion (S$2.7 billion).

Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, whose wife was named in connection with a secretive firm in an offshore haven, said he would not bow to the opposition calls for him to resign.

Pakistan denied any wrongdoing by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family after his daughter and two sons were linked to offshore firms.

Australia, New Zealand, India, France and Austria were among countries which said they had begun investigating the allegations, based on more than 11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca. Banks, as well as individual clients, came under the spotlight.

China, where it was a public holiday yesterday, has kept silent, although President Xi Jinping's brother-in- law Deng Jiagui has been named, along with retired premier Li Peng and former top political adviser Jia Qinglin, whose daughter and granddaughter, respectively, had set up offshore firms.

Media reports in 2014 said Mr Xi had instructed his extended family to leave business so as to boost his authority in taking on other top leaders in his anti-corruption campaign. Mr Deng's two firms, according to the leaked papers, had been dormant in late 2012.

A report by Bloomberg in June 2012 revealed that Mr Deng, his wife and their daughter had held investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, share holdings and other assets.

Beijing-based political analyst Yang Dali said the ICIJ findings may have a limited impact on Mr Xi as he has managed to get his relatives to divest their investments, sometimes even at a loss.

"But the party still has to limit news of these findings to avoid damage to its image and credibility as the anti-corruption campaign is deemed by some to have been selective in its targets and avoiding some families," he told The Straits Times.

Apart from political leaders, sports and other celebrities have also been named in the papers.

They include Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan and Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan.

In sports, Barcelona striker Lionel Messi has been named, along with world football body Fifa's ethics committee member Juan Pedro Damiani.

REUTERS

•  Additional reporting by Kor Kian Beng

Sent from my iPhone