Term 3 Week 6 0) Chinese badminton players to make public apology (BBC, 2 Aug 2012) - SPORT (Mr Lim) - China's

top-seeded pair Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli were among eight players thrown out for trying to lose matches. - Apart from Yu and Wang, South Korean badminton pairs Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na, and Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung, along with Greysia Polii and Meiliana Jauhari of Indonesia were disqualified. All four pairs were accused of wanting to lose, in an attempt to secure a better draw for the knockout stage. - This can related to: too much emphasis on winning in sport, sport is overrated, integrity, ethics... 1) Ministry of Social and Family Development's immediate priorities-Earlier family building (The Straits Time, 2 Aug 2012) - FAMILY (Kaixin, #1) -The new Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) will re-examine public policies which aim to get Singaporeans to marry and have their first child earlier. - Encouraging young Singaporeans to start families earlier and overcoming the challenges of parenthood - these are some of the pressing issues that are top on the agenda for the new Ministry of Social and Family Development in the year ahead. -This can be related to: Family in Singapore, low birth-rate, married couples without child etc - N.B.: The concrete policies have not been implemented, but I will keep track of this issue and update more details in the future :) - Kaixin 2) Government help to nurture core of local talent (The Straits Time, 3rd Aug 2012) EDUCATION (Yuge ^^, # 2) - It is co-funding scholarships to help industry develop bright Singaporeans. - Private-sector companies, such as home-grown footwear retailer Charles & Keith, which cannot draw in top young talent on their own have been given a boost by the Government. - Dubbed the Singapore-Industry Scholarship, 90 such awards were given out yesterday by the Government in partnership with 27 private-sector companies and a statutory board. - With the strong core of Singaporean talent in place, Education Minister Heng Swee Keat said, the nation can embark on a Singapore plus plus strategy. The first plus is to complement our core with a right mix of global talent, to enable us to build the best multidisciplinary team, he said. The second plus is to ensure that Singaporeans have global cultural literacies to interact with people across cultures. 3) Saudi woman athlete makes headlines (BBC, 3 August 2012) - SOCIAL (culture, religious practices, customs) (Joey, #3) - Wojdan Shaherkani became the subject of worldwide media attention when it was announced that she would be one of the first two Saudi female athletes to compete at the Olympics. (gender equality) - The International Judo Federation initially said Shaherkani would not be allowed to wear a headscarf (hijab) during the competition due to safety concerns. - As the debate raged over whether Shaherkani should be allowed to take part, her father, Ali, insisted: "I would never put my religion or my daughter's hijab on the line, even if it meant missing out on the Olympics."

- Back home, Shaherkani and her family have been subjected to fierce criticisms fear of being influenced by western culture Related: London 2012 Olympics: Saudi Arabian women to compete (BBC, 12 July 2012) - GENDER, SPORT - The Saudi authorities lifted a ban on women from the Gulf kingdom competing in the Games last month. - The public participation of women in sport is still fiercely opposed by many Saudi religious conservatives. - New York-based Human Rights Watch said the inclusion of Saudi women was a step forward. "It's an important precedent that will create space for women to get rights, and it will be hard for Saudi hardliners to roll back", the organisation's Minky Worden said. 4) Shafilea Ahmed parents guilty of murder (The Sun, 4th August 2012) - TRADITION (Meilin #4) - Pakistani Muslim parents feared daughter's western ways would shame them, killed their daughter in an honor killing. - Shafilea had rejected an arranged marriage, wore western clothes and talked to boys - Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife Farzana, 49, were jailed for life 5) Anger against open door policy (Asia News Network, 28 July 2012) - FOREIGNERS (SiBin #5) - In recent years, the level of anger has been rising as public quarrels between resentful, hot-headed Singaporeans and provocative foreign immigrants have increased in number and intensity. Local displeasure with the governments open door policy has been building up. - Some 78% of Singaporeans polled said they were anti-foreigners, a disturbingly high figure for a society whose forefathers themselves were immigrants. -Despite all these, PM Lee does not seem to be changing his positive stance on foreigners, having handed out citizen certificates to 350 foreigners over the weekend. Despite the social friction, Singapore is set to grant 20,000 citizenship to foreigners every year. - The worried PM recently warned his people of the danger of social friction and appealed to the Singaporeans to help the immigrants to fit in, and also to new citizens to embrace Singapore values.

6) S.China Sea issue a test for Asean (The Straits Time, 03 Aug 2012) INTERNATIONAL POLITICS (#6 Manbo) - South China Sea issue will remain a test case of Aseans ability to forge consensus on difficult problems and act in the regions broad interest. - It is imperative that we address our dialogue partners and investors concerns and demonstrate that we are capable of reaching consensus on even the most sensitive of issues. - This may be used for essays regarding whether a country should interfere other countries affairs

7) Wind whisks away U.S. flag during ceremony (The Star Online, Aug 5, 2012) SPORTS (Minghui #07) - The flag of the US flew at the Olympic medal ceremony for Serena Williams tennis victory Saturday, although not in the way of organisers intended. - With Williams wearing her womens singles gold, the medallists flags were hoisted as the Star-Spangled Banner played, but a gust of wind blew the US flag away, leaving only the Russian and Belarusian flags flying. - Organisers opted not to raise the Stars and Stripes again. - It is not the first flag fiasco for London 2012 organisers, with the South Korean flag shown on a video screen when North Koreas womens soccer team met Colombia in Glasgow last week. (i remember one of the test questions is about hosting major events, maybe this news can be used for that Q.)

9) Sasaeng Stalkers (Part 1): K-pop fans turn to blood, poison for attention (Yahoo! Entertainment, Aug 2 2012) - POP CULTURE, MEDIA, BUSINESS (Jacelyn, #09) - Sasaeng are usually female, starting as young as 13 to about 22, and they have made it their life's goal to make sure they are noticed by their idols, by hook or by crook. - Popular stars have between 500 to 1,000 sasaeng fans. On any given day, the stars have at least 100 full-time stalkers on their heels. - Examples of the ways sasaeng fans terrorise their idols: 1. TVXQ's phone lines are tapped and personal conversations recorded 2. Several sasaeng saved their menstrual blood and had it delivered to the JYJ members. 3. TVXQ's apartment was broken into and sasaeng attempted to kiss them while they were sleeping 4. JYJ's Yoochun had sasaeng fans who installed spy cameras in his parking lot and took pictures of him. 5. TVXQ's Yunho was poisoned by an anti-fan who gave him a drink with an adhesive mixed in. He had to have his stomach pumped. 6. Actor Jang Geun Suk also took to Twitter, furious that sasaeng had bugged his car with a GPS system and were using it to stalk him via taxi. - Many skip school and some drop out completely. - Their lives become filled with every move their idols make. The sasaeng position themselves strategically around the homes or the management companies of their idols. - Competition is so rife that there have been reports of sasaengs attacking fans within their groups because they were unhappy that other fans were able to speak or touch their idols. - According to Korean newspaper JoongAng Daily, there are taxi services catering specifically for these fans. They are willing to speed at up to 200 km/h, chasing after the company vans transporting the stars. - According to Korean online news site OhMyNews, the lucrative sasaeng industry has prompted the opening of companies specialising in helping sasaeng stalk their stars when they are physically unable to.

 Jacelyn, this is too long to be a snippet. And what is TVXQ and JYJ?? (Mr Lim) 10) China: The paradox of foreign education(BBC, Aug 1, 2012) - EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT (Shiyue, #10) - There was a time when Chinese students who obtained higher education abroad were considered to be the most fortunate of their generation. - After graduating from elite universities in the US and Britain, they were virtually guaranteed the best career prospects upon their return. - Those students were colloquially referred to as sea turtles - returning home with the world on their backs. - These very students are now referred to as seaweed - washed up on the shore, with little or no prospect of finding work once they return home. - The reason why are foreign education qualifications not valued as highly as they once were are: 1) "The reason employers valued them in the past has probably changed," says the regional director of the specialist recruitment company Hays. 2) According to Simon Lance, the main turning point centres around speaking another language. Previously, studying abroad brought with it some very strong language skills. But Chinese universities have come a long way in the past decade in the teaching of languages, and the skills obtained abroad are therefore less crucial. 3) It has been suggested that employers might regard people educated abroad as having a feisty attitude - that they would not be the pliant employee they were seeking. 4) "A lot of companies realise they need candidates with international skills and international experience, but they have not yet adapted their culture to attract or retain those types of people," Mr lance says. 11) Australias Tasmania may allow same sex marriage (Channel News Asia, Aug 5, 2012) - FAMILY, HUMAN RIGHTS (Huixian, #11) - First Australian state to allow same sex marriage after Premier Lara Giddings backed legislation to permit it - Marriage is covered by federal legislation in Australia which defines it as between a man and a woman so while civil same-sex unions are recognised in five states, the couples are not seen as "married" by the national government. - Same-sex couples have, however, the same rights as heterosexual couples in areas such as pension schemes and medical benefits. - However, conservative Liberal/National opposition will likely reject the legislation there is little prospect of the laws changing. - This can be related to: Alternative family structures or discrimination against same sex marriage when love is being challenged by the law.

12) The Muslim women who overcame the odds and the prejudice to make history today on the Olympic stage (Daily Mail Online, 3 August 2012) - SPORTS, CULTURE, GENDER DISCRIMINATION (Xinyi, #12)

-Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei have all entered women athletes into the 2012 Olympic Games for the first time -23-year-old Tahmina Kohistani, from Afghanistan is competing for the first time at the Olympics, also a 100m sprinter -To reach the Games, they have had to overcome political, social, religious and sporting obstacles. -Shaherkani from Saudi Arabia had been rocked by the barbs of the country's clergy, who strongly discourage female participation in sport in any form and labelled her the 'Prostitute of the Olympics.' -Zamzam Mohamed Farah of Somalia finishes her race in last place, 25 secs after 2nd last (Display of sportsmanship?) 13) More arts & culture programmes in the pipeline (Channel News Asia, 4 August 2012) - ARTS AND CULTURE SCENE IN SINGAPORE (Kaiyi, #13) - The government will be rolling out more arts and culture programmes this year and the next to engage the community on a larger scale to address the need for more ground-up cultural development - This is to increase community engagement efforts by broadening its heritage spaces in the form of heritage corners, community museums and heritage trails. For example, National Heritage Board launched an enhanced Jalan Besar Heritage Trail where Dr Yaacob, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, introduced the "Living Arts, Loving Culture" tagline and logo as a new umbrella identity to encompass the programmes being launched. - The National Library Board is also developing a one-stop portal, called ArtsCultureSG, which will provide consolidated information on arts and culture activities in Singapore, which will be ready by mid-2013 - According to the Singapore Cultural Statistics 2012, the number of arts performances have increased by 14 per cent in 2011 compared to 2010. More people are also attending arts events as ticketed arts attendance rose from 1.38 million in 2010 to 2.14 million last year. - This can be related to: a growing Singapore arts and culture scene, arts and culture being important for a society 14) US breast cancer foundations screening campaign misleading (The Straits Times, 4 Aug 2012 - MEDICAL, CAUSES (Venus, #14) - Medical experts say the group oversells mammography and understates risks - The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation uses misleading statistics in its proscreening campaigns--> Undermined decision-making by generating false hope about the benefit of mammography sscreening -They accused Komen of overlooking the potential harm, with up to half of women screened annually over 10 years experiencing at least one false alarm that required a biopsy -Screening also results in overdiagnosis-detecting cancers that would never have killed or even caused symptoms-and unnecessary treatment - New England Journal of Medicine said mammograms have only a modest impact on reducing breast cancer deaths

15) Managing racial and religious tensions (The Strait Times, 3 Aug 2012)- SOCIETY, RELIGION (Sizheng, #15)

- legislation: Sedition Act(1948) and Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act(1992) examples: - 2009 a Christian couple was exposed for mailing anti-Islamic tracts to households - 2011 Nov, PAP youth activist described a school bus of Malay pupils as terrorists in training - 2012 April, an Easter weekend party that was advertised using photographs of women in nun costumes was cancelled after it sparked outrage among Catholics.

16) Old folk, old caregivers (The Strait Times, 3 Aug 2012) - SOCIAL, FAMILY (shenghuan, #16) - The study by an Aged Care Transition(Action) team, under regional health-care group Eastern Health Alliance, interviewed 3,086 patients and caregivers from 2008 to 2010. - Many old folk who return home from hospital are cared by spouses who could be as old and frail as them. The majority of these caregivers have little education and many also have health problems as more than half are above 65 years old. - Action was set up in 2008 by Changi General Hospital and the Agency for Integrated Care to help the elderly ease back into life at home after hospitalization. - At 28 per cent, spouses form the largest group of main caregivers followed by maids and children at 23 percent and 21 percent respectively. - The biggest problem faced by the spouses is the physical stress. - This can related to: overlook on daily life of the elderly, weak family bonding (children are too busy to take care of their old parents)

17) Bullying Research Looks To Twitter (Medical News Today, 4 August 2012) TECHNOLOGY, SOCIAL-BULLYING (Rachel, #17) - Typical bullying research methods rely on the kids - victims and bullies alike - to describe their experiences in self-reporting surveys. The process is both time- and labour- intensive. - Amy Bellmore, a University of Wisconsin-Madison educational psychology professor, and graduate students Junming Sui and Kwang-Sung Jun have been helping Jerry Zhu, a UWMadison computer sciences professor who studies machine learning, teach computers to scour the endless feed of posts on Twitter for mentions of bullying events. - Sufficiently trained, the computer worked on samples of the 250 million publicly visible messages posted on Twitter on a daily basis and identified more than 15,000 bullyingrelated tweets per day. The traffic ebbs and flows on a weekly schedule - more active Monday through Thursday, presumably because the school-aged subjects see less of each other on the weekends. - Using the data to show the bullied that they are not alone - the researchers have considered mapping social media mentions of bullying events - could also help children deal with their feelings.

18) Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users (BBC, Aug 3rd) -TECHNOLOGY ( Yuhan, #18) - In total, the company said it estimated there were 83.09 million fake users, which it

classified in three groups.The largest group of "fakes" were duplicates, which the company defined as "an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account." - Others were described as "user-misclassified" where, Facebook explained "users have created personal profiles for a business, organisation, or non-human entity such as a pet".Finally, "undesirable" accounts were profiles deemed to be in breach of Facebook's terms of service. - Facebook, whose business model relies on targeted advertising, is coming under increased scrutiny over the worth of its advertising model which promotes the gathering of "likes" from users. - A number of advertisers have been challenging Facebook to prove that the clicks they are receiving on their ads are "real" . This can be related to potential problems of social network.

20) Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas (NYTimes, 8th August 2012) ENVIRONMENT/BUSINESS ETHICS/INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND POLICIES(UN) (Neville, #20)

19 factories in Argentina, China, India, Mexico and South Korea exploited the carbon credit issued by UN under the Clean Development Mechanism to make handsome profits. This forms an incentive for plants in the developing world to increase production of the coolant gas (HFC-23) and keep it high a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. UN is unable to curb the problem as manufacturers of the coolant gas in China and India (the act is still legal in these two regions) threaten to vent the gas if they are not given due payment for reducing harmful emissions by destroying the harmful gas.

Note: This is to set the context for this snippet. Essentially it is background information behind the carbon credit system. Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent warming gas, released by smokestacks and vehicles, is given a value of 1. Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that, based on their warming effect and how long they linger. Methane is valued at 21, nitrous oxide at 310. HFC-23 (the coolant gas in question) is near the top of the list, at 11,700. The United Nations used the values to calibrate exchange rates when it began issuing carbon credits in 2005 under the Clean Development Mechanism. That system grants companies that reduce emissions in the developing world carbon credits, which they are then free to sell on global

trading markets. 21) Baidu workers arrested for deleting posts for money (BBC, 6th August 2012) - MASS MEDIA (Me, Mark, #21) (I GOT DO HOR.)

Three employees of China's main search engine Baidu have been arrested on suspicion of having accepted bribes to delete posts from its forum service. The web giant fired the three, along with a fourth person who was not arrested. Baidu's spokeswoman Betty Tian said the sums involved amounted to "tens of thousands of yuan" (thousands of pounds). Web censorship: Baidu, as well as other Chinese web companies and foreign websites aiming to operate in China, has to comply with the country's strict internet regulations. Known as The Great Firewall, the system bans a number of foreign web services in the communist nation, and imposes strict censorship and selfcensorship rules.

23) Opposition: Syrian forces deploy heavy weapons as battle for Aleppo intensifies (CNN, 3rd August 2012) - POLITICAL/SOCIAL/SYRIA (Ma Kou, #23)

A standoff loomed Sunday between Syrian rebels and government forces near Aleppo as the battle for control of the most populous city intensified and the regime deployed heavy weapons to drive out the fighters. As rebels scrambled to fend off regime forces in Aleppo, more gunfire erupted in other parts of Syria, with at least 67 killed nationwide Sunday, the opposition Local Coordination Committees said. Roughly 17,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict first flared in March 2011, when government forces began cracking down on protesters, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last month. Opposition activists put the toll at more than 20,000. Hillary Clinton plans to visit Turkey on Saturday to discuss the Syrian crisis, the State Department said.

25) Olympics: Singapore win their first medal (Channel news asia, 01 August 2012) FOREIGN TALENTS (Yingzhe? ,#25) - Singapore have won their first medal at the London Olympics. With Feng Tianwei beating Japan's Kasumi Ishikawa 4-0 in the women's singles table tennis match to clinch the bronze for Singapore. - The bronze is Singapore's first singles medal since the 1960 Rome Olympics. - This can be related to foreign talents bringing benefits to Singapore, whether having foreign talents is a bane or boon for Singapore.