Man jailed for making false bomb threat on Scoot flight to Perth, suffered relapse of schizophrenia

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

Hawkins was monitored closely for the rest of the flight, and he was compliant, remaining in his seat.

The plane landed at a remote location at Changi Airport, where airport police set up a cordon. Airport staff and police officers were activated.

The K9 unit performed checks and the airport emergency services were also activated in case there was a fire from a bomb blast.

Checks of the luggage and belongings of Hawkins and his wife revealed nothing incriminating. He was escorted out of the plane and arrested at about 9.10pm.

The plane was towed along the tarmac to a gate at Terminal 1, and the 11 crew members and the remaining 362 passengers got off the plane at about 9.20pm.

They reboarded the plane at about 10.45pm and departed for Perth at about 11.40pm – a total of about seven hours’ delay.

HAWKINS’ MENTAL STATE

Hawkins was remanded for psychiatric assessment at the Institute of Mental Health and found to have suffered a relapse of schizophrenia along with an episode of major depressive disorder around the time of the offence that contributed to his offending.

However, he was not of unsound mind and was fit to plead in court.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Grace Chua asked for four to six months’ jail for Hawkins, saying bomb hoaxes are “particularly pernicious” in the present climate and citing the difficulty of determining from the outset if a threat was genuine or not.

Substantial resources were deployed to combat the perceived threat, said Ms Chua.

She cited three aggravating factors – the first being that the bomb hoax was made on a plane where there was no means of escape and parties were forced to remain on board and “endure the stress”.

Second, there were significant disruptions to other passengers, and the “frustration and distress caused” cannot be understated, she said.

Fighter jets, airport and police staff had to be mobilised, with the net effect being “a severe drain on public resources”, said Ms Chua.

MENTAL CONDITION INHERITED: DEFENCE

Defence lawyer S S Dhillon asked for four months’ jail for his client, who is a forklift operator in Australia.

Hawkins is married with no children, said Mr Dhillon. His father suffers from bipolar disorder and his mother had major depression with anxiety, so his mental condition “is sort of inherited from his family”, said the lawyer.

He said Hawkins was previously hospitalised for psychotic episodes in 2019 and suffered no relapses until the current incident.

Mr Dhillon stated in his written mitigation plea that Hawkins had gone to Thailand for a holiday with his wife and stayed with her parents there.

Hawkins felt suspicious as he felt left out of family activities and began hearing a repetitive voice telling him to divorce his wife. He also began feeling that his wife did not love him and felt that her family members were talking about him, said Mr Dhillon.

The lawyer said Hawkins felt the plane would crash when he boarded the Scoot flight, as he thought people were looking at him suspiciously and speaking about him.

He felt it was better if he was arrested and put into a mental hospital for the rest of his life, so he did not have to face his social problems.

Hawkins posted on his Facebook account that he was going to murder his wife when they returned to Perth, but he deleted this.

Then, he told the crew he had a bomb, hoping to be arrested in Perth but not knowing he would cause the plane to return to Singapore and inconvenience others, said Mr Dhillon.

“He just wants to get over this episode,” said Mr Dhillon. “Return back home, and continue his treatment.”

In sentencing, District Judge Elton Tan said an empty threat such as in this case is both “expensive and wasteful”, causing “considerable disruptions to the lives of innocent parties”.

False threats often have the potential to exact and often do exact considerable private and public costs, said Judge Tan.

However, he accepted two mitigating factors in Hawkins’ favour – his plea of guilt, a sign of contrition, and his mental disorders which contributed to the offence.

“He did not know at the time the extent of the inconvenience he would cause,” said the judge, citing a psychiatric report.

However, despite Hawkins’ understanding of the situation being distorted by his mental condition, he still knew what he was doing, said Judge Tan.

He urged Hawkins’ family to help him seek the necessary psychiatric care upon his release and allowed the jail term to be backdated to his first date of remand in October.

Continue Reading

Puccini’s 'Tosca' shines at Budapest’s restored opera house

By:
On:
In: Asia

Budapest’s Opera House completed years of restoration in 2022 and now stands in its original 1884 glory, one of the grandest and most elaborately decorated structures of the 19th century. With only 1,700 seats, fewer than the Vienna State Opera’s 2,200 or La Scala’s 1,800, it is an intimate theater with no bad seats and preternaturally transparent acoustics.

The connection between musicians and the audience in the Budapest theater has an immediacy that I have felt nowhere else in sixty years of opera-going, and the Hungarian Ensemble made the most of it.

Hungary has a grand musical tradition; its conductors bestrode the podiums of the world two generations ago. The Second World War and Soviet occupation took a heavy toll on Hungary’s musical capacity but failed to extinguish the distinctly Magyar dialectic of passion and intelligence that informs Hungarian interpretation at its best.

Conductor Levente Török gave an electrifying reading of Puccini’s score, a reminder that Puccini is too good to be left to the humdrum Italian music directors who usually take the baton in Tosca. The cast featured no names that would draw crowds at New York’s Metropolitan Opera or Covent Garden, but they all sang extremely well. More than that: They formed an ensemble and made the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

Mark Twain quipped that Wagner’s music is better than it sounds. The reverse is true of Puccini, who contributed four works to the standard operatic repertoire: His music is worse than it sounds. In the care of the right conductor, it sounds ravishing. Puccini used enormous skill in spinning out musical phrases to tease listeners’ expectations.

Timing is everything in a Puccini opera, and there is something to be said for a Mitteleuropäische interpretation. This style requires as much attention to metrical variation as Mozart. Puccini’s repertoire of musical tricks is smaller, but no less demanding; it’s harder for a comedian to make people laugh at a bad joke than a good one.

Puccini, moreover, was the least Italian of Italian composers. His mature operas – La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, and Tosca – borrow from late Romantic chromaticism, but always in the melodic service of the drama. The orchestra has its own contribution to the dramatic flow, in the fashion of the best film scores.

In his later works, Girl of the Golden West (1910) and Turandot (1925), Puccini drew on French Impressionism in an original way, slowing harmonic motion to create suspense. Maestro Török made the orchestra a full partner in the drama, in one of the best readings I have heard.

Zsuzsanna Ádám as Tosca has a beautifully produced dramatic soprano, and wielded it fearlessly in all registers. László Boldizsár as her lover Caravadossi has a dark-hued instrument with a sheen in the upper register. Peter Kálmán’s Scarpia was dark and menacing; the baritone is the best-known among the three leaders.

I didn’t hear a false note among the three leads, who are also persuasive actors, Ms. Ádám in particular. It’s quite possible to place superstar singers in major roles and produce dismal music; the major houses do it all the time.

And it’s most unusual to cast a major operatic production entirely with local talent. Classical music is the most globalized of businesses, throwing together musicians with vastly different training and traditions. The advantage, as the Budapest troupe demonstrated, is that musicians who trained in the same school and have worked together for years can mount large and complex works with the intimacy and precision of chamber music.

All of these virtues of the Budapest musicians played to the strengths of the house. The intimate setting and the forward position of the orchestra allow the singers to be heard without bellowing—although all the lead singers could summon operatic volume when required. Some moments that tend to be lost in the cavernous space of modern opera houses, for example, the lovers’ tiff and flirtation between Tosca and Cavaradossi during Act I.

In general, I dislike modern-dress productions of operas set in other centuries, but the Budapest “Tosca” is an exception. General Director Szilveszter Ókovács mixed images and themes from Hungary’s tragic 1956 Revolution into Puccini’s story, set in the Roman revolution of 1800.

The French playwright Victorien Sardou’s creaky 1887 melodrama, a vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt, was a huge commercial success, portraying Italian allies of the French Republic fighting against the clerical reaction. Puccini’s musical adaptation premiered in 1900 and survived Sardou’s long-forgotten play, which glorifies republican resistance to clerical reaction.

The plot is easily updated: A political prisoner escapes. A prominent painter hides him. The chief of the secret police tricks the painter’s jealous lover, the soprano Tosca, into helping him track the fugitive.

The painter is tortured within earshot of his lover, who in her distress reveals the prisoner’s location. The secret police chief offers to free the painter in return for the singer’s sexual favors; she murders him rather than submit. Her lover is murdered in turn, and Tosca kills herself rather than be captured when her crime is uncovered.

In the present Budapest version, the police wear modern uniforms and carry machine guns. The painter Cavaradossi is taken inside a tank to be tortured—a reminder of the Soviet tanks that rolled into Budapest to crush the rebellion. Rather than leap to her death, the heroine shoots herself offstage. Giant images of the 1956 rebellion are projected while the secret police do their dirty work.

I doubt this production would travel well, but it has deep significance for Hungarians, who have long memories and painful wounds. Washington encouraged the Hungarians to rise against the Russians with light weapons and stood by while Russian armor crushed the rebels.

It is a reminder of why Hungarians never will trust the United States. A prominent Hungarian diplomat who attended the same performance told me, “We expected you Americans to turn up, and you didn’t. We won’t forget that.” Puccini usually falls on the lighter side of operatic entertainment. This was an opportunity to take him in deadly earnest.

All of the Budapest Opera’s December performances and most of January are sold out, in contrast to the Metropolitan Opera, which now fills only 60% of its seats in a city four times the size of the Hungarian capital. Visitors should book tickets as far in advance as possible.

Asian tourists, who before Covid comprised a fifth of the Metropolitan Opera’s audience, do not appear to have discovered Budapest, although they have long flocked to the Vienna State Opera just two hours away. Vienna is a grand and venerable opera stage, but Budapest offers a different kind of experience.

East Asia is now the epicenter of support for Western classical music; I suspect that when Asians find out about Budapest, they will come in strength. Our experience of the classics degrades over time, and the Hungarian ensemble offers the closest thing to the original experience of 19th-century opera to be found in any theater I know.

David P Goldman is Asia Times’ Business Editor and Tablet Magazine’s classical music critic.

Continue Reading

Afghanistan: 'Tea is sometimes all I have to give my hungry baby'

By:
On:
In: Asia
SohailaBBC/Aamir Peerzada
By Yogita Limaye
Afghanistan correspondent

“The last time I was able to buy milk for my baby was two months ago. Normally I just fill the [feeding] bottle with tea. Or I soak bread in tea and then feed it to her,” Sohaila Niyazi says, sitting on the floor of her mud brick home up a hill in eastern Kabul.

There are no roads to her house – you have to walk up steep mud tracks with sewage flowing by the side of them.

Sohaila is a widow. She has six children, her youngest a 15-month-old girl named Husna Fakeeri. The tea that Sohaila refers to is what’s traditionally drunk in Afghanistan, made with green leaves and hot water, without any milk or sugar. It contains nothing that’s of any nutritional value for her baby.

Sohaila is one of the 10 million people who have stopped receiving emergency food assistance from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) over the past year – cuts necessitated by a massive funding shortfall. It’s a crushing blow, especially for the estimated two million households run by women in Afghanistan.

Under Taliban rule, Sohaila says she can’t go out to work and feed her family.

“There have been nights when we have had nothing to eat. I say to my children, where can I go begging at this time of night? They sleep in a state of hunger and when they wake up I wonder what I should do. If a neighbour brings us some food the children scramble, saying ‘give me, give me’. I try to split it between them to calm them down,” Sohaila says.

To calm her hungry baby girl, Sohaila says she gives her “sleep medicine”.

“I give it so that she doesn’t wake up and ask for milk because I have no milk to give her. After giving her the medicine, she sleeps from one morning to the next,” says Sohaila. “Sometimes I check to see if she’s alive or dead.”

We inquire about the medicine she’s giving her daughter and find that it is a common antihistamine or anti-allergy drug. Sedation is a side effect.

Doctors have told us that while it’s less harmful than the tranquilisers and anti-depressants we have found being given by some Afghan parents to their hungry children, in higher doses the medicine can cause respiratory distress.

Sohaila says her husband was a civilian killed in crossfire in Panjshir province in 2022, in fighting between Taliban forces and those resisting Taliban rule. After his death, she depended heavily on the aid given by the WFP – flour, oil and beans.

Now the WFP says it’s able to provide supplies to only three million people – less than a quarter of those experiencing acute hunger.

Sohaila is entirely reliant on donations from relatives or neighbours.

For much of the time that we are there, baby Husna is quiet and inactive.

The Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital in Kabul

BBC/Aamir Peerzada

She is moderately malnourished, one of more than three million children suffering from the condition in the country, according to Unicef. More than a quarter of those have the worst form of it – severe acute malnutrition. It’s the worst it’s ever been in Afghanistan, the United Nations says.

And while malnutrition is ravaging the country’s youngest, aid which had prevented healthcare from collapsing has had to be withdrawn.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was paying the salaries of health workers, and funding medicines and food at more than 30 hospitals – an emergency stopgap measure implemented following the regime change in 2021.

Now it doesn’t have the resources to continue, and aid has been withdrawn from most health facilities, including Afghanistan’s only children’s hospital, Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul.

“The salary of doctors and nurses comes from the government now. They have all had their pay cut by half,” Dr Mohammad Iqbal Sadiq, the Taliban-appointed medical director of the hospital, tells us.

The hospital has also closed its outpatient department and is providing services only for those who need to be admitted to the hospital.

The malnutrition ward is full, and on many days, they have to fit more than one child in a bed.

In one corner Sumaya sits upright. At 14 months she weighs as much as a newborn baby, her tiny face wrinkled like that of a much older person.

Next to her is Mohammad Shafi. He weighs half of what he should at 18 months. His father was a Taliban fighter, killed in a road accident. His mother died of an illness.

When we pass his bedside his elderly grandmother, Hayat Bibi, comes to us looking distraught, wanting to tell her story.

Grandmother Hayat Bibi holds her grandson in her arms

BBC/Aamir Peerzada

She says the Taliban helped bring her grandson to the hospital, but she doesn’t know how they will get by.

“I’m relying on the mercy of God. I have nowhere else to turn to. I’m totally lost,” Hayat Bibi says, her eyes welling up. “I’m struggling myself. My head hurts so much I feel like it might explode.”

We asked the Taliban government’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, what they were doing to convince the international community to give more aid.

“Aid has been cut because the economies of donor countries are not doing well. And there have been two big calamities – Covid and the war in Ukraine. So we can’t expect help from them. We won’t get aid by talking to them,” he told us.

“We have to become self-reliant. Our economy has stabilised and we are giving out mining contracts which will create thousands of jobs. But of course, I’m not saying aid should be cut because we still have challenges.”

Did he recognise that Taliban policies were a part of the problem too; that donors didn’t want to give money to a country where the government had imposed stringent restrictions on women?

“If aid is being used as a pressure tool then the Islamic Emirate has its own values which it will safeguard at any cost. Afghans have made big sacrifices in the past to protect our values and will endure the cutting of aid too,” Mr Mujahid said.

His words will not comfort many Afghans. Two-thirds of the country’s people don’t know where their next meal will come from.

In a cold, damp, one-room home off a street in Kabul we meet a woman who says she’s been stopped by the Taliban from selling fruit, vegetables, socks and other odd items on the street. She says she’s also been detained once. Her husband was killed during the war and she has four children to provide for. She doesn’t want to be named.

She breaks down inconsolably minutes into talking about her situation.

“They should at least allow us to work and earn an honest living. I swear to God we are not going out to do bad things. We only go to earn food for our children and they harass us like this,” she says.

Woman with her children

BBC/Aamir Peerzada

She’s now been forced to send her 12-year-old son out to work.

“I asked one Taliban brother, what do I feed my children if I don’t earn? He said give them poison but don’t come outside your home,” she says. “Two times the Taliban government gave me some money, but it is nowhere close to enough.”

Prior to the Taliban takeover, three-quarters of public spending came from foreign money given directly to the previous regime. It was stopped in August 2021, sending the economy into a spiral.

Aid agencies stepped in to provide a temporary but critical bridge.

Much of that funding has now gone.

It is hard to overstate the severity of the situation. We have seen it over and over again this past year.

Millions are surviving on dry bread and water. Some will not make it through the winter.

Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson. Photos by Aamir Peerzada.

Related Topics

More on this story

Continue Reading

Houthis attack tanker & French warship in Red Sea

By:
On:
In: Asia

Houthi rebels using a drone hit a Norwegian tanker ship for the second time in the Red Sea on Monday, December 11.

The ship had first been hit on Sunday by a Houthi cruise missile, most likely a Quds-1, a copy of the Iranian Soumar cruise missile or the Russian Kh-55.

The Quds-1 cruise missile. Photo: Arms Control Wonk

The first attack was reported by the UK Marine Trade Operations (UKMTO) office which reported the attack took place at 2100 UTC (or midnight local time) in the vicinity of the Bab El Mandeb strait, about 15 nautical miles west of port Mocha, Yemen.

The French FREMM frigate Languedoc destroyed two drones on Sunday that were aimed at the warship, and shot down another drone on Monday that apparently had been aimed at the Norwegian tanker.

The Languedoc also blocked a Houthi assault team trying to hijack the Norwegian ship, which explains why the warship was targeted by the Houthis. The Languedoc is working with the US Central Command in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

It is costly to shoot down cheap Houthi drones. The French frigate fired Astra 15 missiles that downed the three drones, at a cost of $2 million per missile.  

The USS Carney destroyed three Houthi “land attack missiles” in October using SM-2 missiles. These cost around $2.1 million each.

There is no official information on the types of drones or the cruise missiles used in these attacks.  The best candidate for the drones is probably the Houthi “copy” of the Iranian Shahed 136 drone, the same model that was sold by Iran to Russia and used in the Ukraine war.  The Shahed costs around $20,000 per copy.

Houthis parade their Shahed-136 copies. Photo: Military Review

​The tanker, the MK Strinda, was carrying biofuel (probably palm oil), not fuel oil, and was headed to the Suez Canal.  Its voyage originated in Malaysia.  The crew on the Strinda was reportedly safe.  However the ship was engulfed in flames at one point.

The Houthis took full responsibility for the attack.  The claimed the tanker was headed to Israel when in fact it was headed to the Suez Canal in transit to Italy. 

MK Strinda. Photo: J Ludwig Mowinckels Rederi

 The USS Mason responded to the distress call of the Strinda.  

According to al-Arabiya, the Strinda “had been tentatively nominated by charterers for a cargo out of the Israeli port of Ashdod in January of 2024.”

The Straits and the Red Sea are international shipping lanes. The Houthi attacks violate the Law of the Seas. Attacks on merchant vessels are acts of war, as commonly understood.

Strinda on Fire. Photo: X (Twitter).

Both the Pentagon and France’s Defense Ministry say that the Houthis are operating as a proxy for Iran.

The Houthis also have been firing cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones aimed at Israel. Israel has been able to destroy Iran-supplied ballistic missiles using its Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 air defense systems. According to Israel, one of its Arrow shots destroyed a Houthi missile in the exoatmosphere, the first time any air defense system has knocked out a ballistic missile threat in space.

Meanwhile the Israelis have also shot down cruise missiles and drones using their F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (called Adir, or Strong One, in Israel). This is the first time the US-made F-35 has been used against a cruise missile threat.

Israel’s Adir (F-35). Photo: International Defense Analysis

Nonetheless the situation continues to deteriorate in the Red Sea. Israel considers, correctly, that the Houthi operation is an attempt to blockade Israel. In 1956 and again in 1967 Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tira, which connect the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. Those blockades prevented Israel from getting oil from Iran, then under the Shah. Israel at the time said Egypt’s actions were an act of war.

While the US and France have been willing to try and prevent Houthi attacks on international shipping, neither has retaliated against Houthi launch sites or military installations. This has, naturally, encouraged the Houthis to increase their attacks.

The latest attack on the French warship changes the game. While there were other attacks that might have targeted the USS Carney and the USS Mason, the US said the targets were ambiguous. Not so in the direct attempt to hit the France’s highly advanced Languedoc frigate.

Will the attack bring about a change in allied strategy?

Reportedly, Saudi Arabia fears that any retaliation against the Houthis could lead to a renewal of Houthi attacks on the Kingdom.

The US has also been trying to calm regional tensions and, in particular, not cause a direct clash with Iran. Iran is sponsoring attacks by its proxies against US bases in Iraq and Syria, and mortar and rocket attacks against the US Embassy in Baghdad, and against Israel, by providing most of the weapons and training for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

While the attacks by the Houthis have not yet risen to a major threat to Israel, without countering the Houthis it is likely the threat will grow more dangerous for Israel. Israeli officials are warning that if the international community does not take action to stop the Houthi attacks, Israel will do so.

Meanwhile the Houthi attack on the Languedoc may force a policy change in Washington.

Stephen Bryen, who served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the
US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense
for policy, currently is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.

This article was originally published on his Weapons and Security Substack. It is republished with kind permission.

Continue Reading

'You are rubbish. You are not human': Woman admits berating, abusing maid

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

SINGAPORE: A woman admitted in court on Monday (Dec 11) to abusing her domestic helper physically and verbally, yanking the maid’s ponytail, slapping her and punching her.

Tan Siew Mei also called the Indonesian maid “stupid” and told her that she was “rubbish” and “not human”.

The victim’s plight was uncovered only when a neighbour called the police, but even then, Tan used her phone to reformat the memory cards of the CCTV cameras that had captured the abuse.

The 41-year-old Malaysian and Singapore permanent resident pleaded guilty to five charges including voluntarily causing hurt to a maid, causing distress with abusive words and obstructing the course of justice. 

Another 17 charges will be considered in sentencing.

The court heard that the victim, a 43-year-old female Indonesian, was employed by Tan’s husband but dealt with Tan daily.

CCTV cameras were placed in Tan’s flat, including the kitchen, dining area and living room. The footage could be viewed via an application installed on Tan’s phone.

Tan abused the victim several times in June 2020. In one instance, she got upset with the victim when the latter tried to talk to Tan when Tan was blow-drying her hair.

After the victim went to the kitchen to prepare milk for Tan’s child, Tan abruptly yanked the maid’s ponytail from behind with force.

She began shouting at the victim and tried to slap her face, but the victim blocked the blows which landed on her arm instead.

YOU CANNOT TELL ME ENOUGH: ACCUSED TO MAID

On Jun 13, 2020, Tan inflicted several blows on the maid and threatened her verbally. 

The victim shouted: “Enough!”

In response, Tan told her that “you cannot tell me enough” and kicked her lower body. 

The victim then shouted that she wanted to go home, as she had enough of Tan’s abuse. 

Tan told her that this was her home, calling her stupid in Malay.

She then began berating the maid: “You are rubbish. You are not human. Remember you are always rubbish.”

She also told the maid that she wanted to punch her and make her clean.

“I want to keep you, I want to wash you, I want to scrub you, I want to kick you,” Tan told the maid.

The victim was distressed and tried to leave, but Tan struck her, including with an umbrella. Based on what was described in court documents, the victim did not provoke Tan nor retaliate against her.

Tan also abused the victim when she felt the maid had not served breakfast although Tan’s children had already woken up, or over how the maid was washing clothes.

For the laundry incident, angered that dirty shower water could have gone into the clothes, Tan slapped the victim’s face hard so that the victim staggered backwards.

Finally, the victim could not bear the abuse any longer and shouted for help from the service yard.

NEIGHBOUR CALLS POLICE

The police received an anonymous call on Jun 15, 2020 from a person who said a neighbour was beating her maid, who was calling for help.

When Tan heard the police arriving, she pushed the victim into her bedroom at the service yard.

According to a charge taken into consideration for sentencing, Tan instructed the victim before she was interviewed by the police, saying: “Please … don’t anyhow talk, you put me in a difficult position.”

She also claimed that she would send the maid home that day and had already arranged it.

Tan tried to stop the police from interviewing the maid, lying that her injuries were self-inflicted, but was unable to.

When Tan saw a police officer retrieving a microSD memory card from one of the CCTV cameras, she became afraid that the abuse would be exposed through the video footage.

She used her phone application to remotely reformat the microSD cards of the remaining cameras to prevent the police from getting their hands on the incriminating video footage.

DISPUTED MENTAL CONDITION

The case was adjourned for a Newton hearing – a hearing where parties give evidence to settle an issue that is disputed – as the prosecution and defence were at odds over whether Tan had any mental condition that caused or contributed to her offences.

The prosecutor said his position was that Tan was not suffering from clinical depression, with no causal or contributory link to her offences, based on two psychiatric reports from the Institute of Mental Health.

Defence lawyers James Ow Yong and Mark Yeo from Fortress Law said their client was suffering from major depressive disorder which contributed to her offences. 

They submitted five medical reports and two memos, including one from her gynaecologist.

The judge asked for some clarifications from both sides and sent the case back for a pre-trial conference.

Sentencing will be carried out after the Newton hearing is completed.

Continue Reading

'We have to do something': Philippine schools, students grapple with floods as climate change forces them to adapt

By:
On:
In: Asia

PAMPANGA AND TARLAC, the Philippines: A loss and damage fund that attracted millions of dollars in pledges as the world came together for the COP28 summit in Dubai may benefit communities on the brink of being wiped out as sea levels rise.

The fund aims to provide financial assistance to nations most vulnerable and impacted by the effects of climate change.

But as advocates push to make polluters pay and phase out fossil fuel, climate change-induced woes are already lived realities in many Philippine communities, including children there.

In Macabebe town in Pampanga province, a riverside island-community northwest of capital Manila, for instance, families prepare their children for floods during high tide, and classrooms are visibly damaged by recurring floods.

The Philippines tops the 2023 World Risk Index, which ranks 193 countries in terms of their vulnerability to extreme natural events.

The country is also is Southeast Asia’s most typhoon-prone country, hit by a yearly average of 20 typhoons.

To have a direct hand in bringing about change for its people, the Philippines wants to host the fund, hoping to have a seat on the Loss and Damage Fund Board and calling for its immediate operationalisation.

Continue Reading

Online personality Kurt Tay hires lawyer, to get more charges

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

SINGAPORE: Online personality Kurt Tay, who faces a charge of distributing sexual content on Telegram, returned to court on Monday (Dec 11) with a newly hired lawyer.

The 41-year-old Singaporean, whose name in court records is Tay Foo Wei, is set to face additional charges, the court heard.

Tay was first charged on Nov 1 with one count of distributing a photo and video of a woman performing a sex act to a Telegram group chat on Oct 27 this year.

This was without the woman’s consent, and Tay knew it was likely to cause her humiliation, alarm and distress, the charge sheet stated.

Tay’s new lawyer, Mr Rohit Kumar Singh from Regal Law, told the judge that he had just been instructed on the case and was seeking an adjournment and for his client’s attendance to be dispensed with.

The latter refers to a request for the accused to be allowed not to attend future court mentions and have his lawyer turn up on his behalf.

The judge allowed the request, but stated that Tay and his bailor had to be present if fresh charges are tendered, or if his presence is otherwise required.

The prosecution said they were not ready for the case and asked for four weeks’ adjournment to tender additional charges against Tay.

On Monday, a handful of young men gathered in the public gallery to wait for Tay’s appearance. They numbered less than half of the 15 to 20 people who turned up for Tay’s previous hearing on Nov 16, with some of them heckling him when he emerged from the State Courts’ front doors.

About five of them were waiting for Tay outside the court building on Monday with their phones raised while Tay remained inside the building with his lawyer.

Tay’s case will be heard again in January. He first came to the public eye when he auditioned for Singapore Idol in 2006, and later became known for behaviour like carrying a World Wrestling Entertainment belt and participating in a street fight.

He refers to himself online as Superstar Celebrity Kurt Tay and updates his followers on his life on social media and in private chat groups.

If convicted of distributing intimate material without a woman’s consent, he could be jailed for up to five years, fined, caned, or given any combination of these punishments.

Continue Reading

Suspension of accreditation will 'not impact' cord blood storage operations: Cordlife

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

In its filing, Cordlife also said it has notified another global body, the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB), regarding the investigations by MOH.

Following this, the association “promptly initiated an extensive post-notification protocol”.

Cordlife Singapore has been requested to provide relevant documentation, complete a root cause analysis and develop a comprehensive corrective action plan to address the issues brought forward by MOH.

“As part of the ongoing investigation, AABB is continuing to collect relevant information to inform (the) next steps regarding the accreditation status of the facility,” the association added.

“AABB shares concerns that clients of CGL (Cordlife Group Limited) and other AABB-accredited cord blood facilities may have as a result of this situation. AABB is actively investigating these issues and is committed to working with CGL to restore a robust quality system to help prevent future adverse events.”

Cordlife said the latest update by AABB will not impact the storage of cord blood units as well, adding that it is engaging with the association and providing them with details about the ongoing investigations.

In a statement, CGL group CEO Tan Poh Lan again apologised to all of its clients for “any distress” that the incident has caused.

“We are working hard to update them on their individual situations as quickly as we can, as well as address the questions and concerns they rightly have,” she said. “Our conversations with the Ministry of Health are continuing and we hope to be able to provide further updates on our progress soon.

“We will be working closely with FACT and AABB to share updates and information as the investigation with MOH progresses.”

Cordlife – which is licensed in Singapore as a cord blood and human tissue banking service, as well as a clinical laboratory service – has been given 14 days to make representations to MOH.

Continue Reading

Kashmir’s famed apples face extreme weather and economic crisis

By:
On:
In: Asia
Farmers in a market show fruits with scabAsif Umer
Written by AuqibJaveed
Kashmir’s City

Hundreds of amazon farmers in the Pulwama area of Kashmir, which is under American control, stored their produce in a makeshift tin shelter set up at the fruit market on an cloudy and hazy winter day in anticipation of the arrival of traders who would buy their produce.

The producers were concerned because this year’s fruit had not been of the highest quality, which would have an impact on the price they may receive.

In India, Kashmir is renowned for its apple selection. However, a number of obstacles, including the outbreak of fungus bruise, the effects of climate change, and numerous economic difficulties, have put the burgeoning industry in an unfavorable state of crisis.

Based on their size, color, and superior, grapes are divided into A, B, or C groups. While B and C are those with scab (venturia inaequalis ), with B being less infected than C, A is the premium category.

According to Pulwama orchardist Ghulam Nabi Mir,” Approximately 40 % of the amazon production this year has been C-grade.”

According to the Jammu and Kashmir horticulture department, apple, walnut, and orange farming directly and indirectly employ approximately 2.3 million people in the area.

Ejaz Ayoub, an independent Srinagar-based economist, told the BBC that exports from the Himalayan region’s orchards amount to over two million tonnes annually, generating roughly 120bn rupees ($ 1.44 a year, £1.14b ) in revenue, which is nearly twice as much as that of the tourism industry.

But the effects of strange climate patterns are starting to show.

According to Abdula Gaffar Qazi, 50,” Inclement rainfall in April- Does led to blister affecting the crop.” ” The rains washed it away even when some producers sprayed herbicides.”

According to Dr. Tariq Rasool More, a senior scholar at Sher-e-Kharish University of Agricultural Sciences, severe weather patterns affect the crop’s size, value, and amount.

Apples with scabs seen on a tree branch in Budgam

Asif Umer

Apple superior may drop to a B or C grade depending on whether blister affects the crop in the summer or the spring.

Farmer Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, 58, claims he has never seen such strange weather patterns in the area before. He is from the Chadoora region of Kashmir’s Budgam district.

He adds,” Storm in May damaged my crop,” adding that a protracted dry charm in August and September resulted in water scarcity and diminished apple color.

Five acres make up Mr.Bhat’s amazon garden, but more than half of the branches are scab-infected.

The speed of severe weather occurrences in the ethically delicate Kashmir Valley has increased over the past seven years, according to statistics from Jammu and Kashmir’s weather office.

According to the report, between 2010 and 2022, extreme weather events in Jammu and Kashmir claimed the lives of over 550 persons.

Kashmir experienced the hottest July in eight years on July 18, 2021, with a record temperature of 35C ( 95F ). The river had likewise recorded the coldest day in 30 years earlier that season, in January.

The area experienced dry weather from March to mid-April of this year, with temperatures about 12C above normal, according to Faizan Arif Keng, an impartial weather forecaster in Kashmir. This led to the first flowering of apple crops. However, the weather abruptly changed after that, and temperatures did n’t rise above normal until June.

This “false flower” harmed the crop, he claims.

Crop travel presents a significant challenge for farmers due to the extreme weather.

Harvest begins in the fall. However, due to floods on the perilous Srinagar-Jammu regional highway, the only route connecting the valley to the rest of the nation, it is still cut off from the outside world during the winter.

If floods block the bridge, it’s common to see hundreds of vehicles carrying apples stuck for times.

There has been an influx of Egyptian fruit in India’s fruit areas, according to Vijay Taira, vice chairman of the Kashmir Apple Merchants Association in the Azadpur fruit business in Delhi.

Growers claim that this has an impact on the price and industry communicate of Kashmiri apples.

According to Ahmad Bashir, president of the Kashmir Valley Fruit Growers Cum Dealer Union ( KVFG), a box of Kashmiri apples would have cost between 1,000 and 1,300 rupees in India’s fruit markets just two weeks ago. It is currently being sold for 800 pounds per field, which does not even cover production costs.

Farmers are also in anguish over the drop in prices, he claims, due to the American government’s decision to relinquish off a 20 % tax on fruit imported from the United States.

A fruit market in Pulwama

Asif Umer

KVFG wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November to ask for his help in resolving the crisis.

The gardening division of the region claims that these problems can only be fixed at the national level.

According to Manzoor Ahmad Mir, the department’s deputy director,” we have brought up these issues with the state.” ” On it, only they can get a call.”

Kashmiri apple producers are also concerned that the government is not putting a stop to dealers selling fake or inferior pesticides.

The blister in our vineyards would be less if the pesticides were of high quality, according to Mr. Singh.

Solid action has been taken against accused dealers, according to Shafiqa Khalid, a deputy director at the state’s gardening department, and criminal charges have been brought against them.

According to her, issues arise when producers disregard recommendations for the timing of chemical spray.

According to economist Mr. Ayoub, the” consumption that drives the local business” is directly impacted when apple producers do n’t earn a good living.

According to him,” The cash flows in the market and reaches many people associated with various types of trade.” People from all walks of life will therefore be impacted if the income stops.

Currently, BBC News India is available on YouTube. To listen and view our documentaries, explanations, and features, click here.

Presentational grey line

Learn more News stories about India here:

Presentational grey line

Related Subjects

Continue Reading