Delta Airlines passengers wait in line to check bags at San Francisco International Airport on July 27, 2011 in San Francisco, California. Delta Airlines reported
LOS ANGELES, July 19, 2012 (AFP) - A man known for his enormous penis was stopped by security at San Francisco International airport and questioned about the bulge in his pants, he was reported as saying Thursday.
Jonah Falcon, 41, has an organ which is 9.5 inches long when flaccid and 13 inches (33 centimeters) erect, according to Rolling Stone magazine. He has featured in a number of documentaries about the world's biggest penises.
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Singapore: Yale to Curtail Rights on New Campus
LOS ANGELES, July 19, 2012 (AFP) - A man known for his enormous penis was stopped by security at San Francisco International airport and questioned about the bulge in his pants, he was reported as saying Thursday.
Jonah Falcon, 41, has an organ which is 9.5 inches long when flaccid and 13 inches (33 centimeters) erect, according to Rolling Stone magazine. He has featured in a number of documentaries about the world's biggest penises.
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Singapore: Yale to Curtail Rights on New Campus
The Singapore government has long severely restricted the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, and has imposed harsh punishments on violators, Human Rights Watch said.
“Yale is betraying the spirit of the university as a center of open debate and protest by giving away the rights of its students at its new Singapore campus,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of defending these rights, Yale buckled when faced with Singapore’s draconian laws on demonstrations and policies restricting student groups.”
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US, Singaporean troops drill at Marine training area in Hawaii
The two Stryker armored vehicles pulled up outside a courtyard with 7-foot mud walls and disgorged about a dozen Singaporean army soldiers and a lesser number from Schofield Barracks who lined up on either side of a gate leading into the compound.
The objective was to clear the area of enemy fighters, and the brief blank-fire gunbattle that followed resulted in a wounded Singaporean soldier and a captured combatant.
Tuesday's exercise at Marine Corps Training Area Bellows was a company-level drill, but it's also part of a big push by the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific region with the war in Iraq over, Afghanistan nearing an end and China's military growth a continuing worry.
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NORDAM fined $2 million in bribe case
NORDAM CEO Meredith Siegfried
The Tulsa company's employees in Singapore paid bribes to employees of airlines in China.
NORDAM, the Tulsa-based aerospace manufacturer, will pay a $2 million fine for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over a bribery scandal in Singapore, federal and company officials said Tuesday.
Investigations by the Justice Department and the company disclosed the payment of bribes by NORDAM employees in Singapore to employees of state-owned airlines in China.
The bribes were paid between 1999 and 2008 to win business from the China airlines for NORDAM's maintenance, repair and overhaul facility in Singapore, officials said.
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Meltdown for Asean over South China Sea
Indonesian diplomats scurry across region attempting to put the pieces back together
The combination of aggressive Chinese jawboning and Filipino pride are combining to create a diplomatic crisis in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that Indonesia is trying desperately to untangle.
The squabble has sent Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who previously called the Phnom Penh deadlock “perplexing” and “very, very disappointing,” flying on a diplomatic mission across the region to attempt to find support for a common position on the South China Sea issue.
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Singapore reviews rates setting amid Libor scrutiny
The Monetary Authority of Singapore MAS said today it is examining the setting of interest rate benchmarks by financial institutions operating in the city-state as central banks worldwide scrutinise the troubled Libor process.
Regulators in several international financial centres are looking into the setting of key market interest rate benchmarks by banks MAS is doing the same in Singapore, a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
The Singapore interbank offered rate Sibor set by the Association of Banks in Singapore using inputs from 12 banks operating in the Southeast Asian financial centre is widely used in the pricing of mortgages and other loans.
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Fight for talent goes pink
More companies are supporting events for the gay community, in an effort to lure and maximise talent
Until a tech behemoth called Google came along last year, the organisers of Pink Dot Singapore never expected a multinational corporation to back the annual event held at Hong Lim Park.
In tandem with growing efforts by companies to develop internal diversity programmes, more are also publicly giving their support to activities for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) community, through sponsorship of events like Pink Dot Singapore.
DBS’s Indonesia Prize In Sight
DBS Group Holdings Ltd.’s huge Indonesia deal looks it’s been given the greenlight.
The Singapore lender’s proposed $7.3 billion acquisition of PT Bank Danamon, announced in April, has been stalled since as the bank has anxiously awaited proposed rule changes on foreign ownership of Indonesian banks by regulators.
Now it looks like DBS, one of the highest-rated banks in Asia, could be getting its way, depending on how the new law is interpreted. Announced on Wednesday, the new bank-ownership rules by Indonesia’s central bank stipulate that single ownership of its banks will be capped at 40%, unless the buyer can prove high levels of corporate governance and financial health over three consecutive rating periods within five years of the initial stake purchase.
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Challenges in a changing labour scene
The workforce has now exceeded three million, with a third being foreign workers, and this has caused a host of new conflicts that are not within easy solution.
WHO is ultimately responsible for protecting the rights and interests of Singapore’s 2.5 million workers – the Manpower Ministry or the city’s only trade union body?
A cynical reply could be: No difference, since they are like different arms of the same government.
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Another sign Singapore is bursting at the seams?
Yahoo! screengrab of Straits Times article. - A shouting match over a parking spot at Serangoon Gardens turns into a vicious scuffle.
In yet another worrying sign that Singapore is fraying at the edges, an elderly retiree was left with a fractured eye socket after a parking scuffle at Serangoon Gardens turned ugly.
Retired businessman Goh Poh Ket, 65, claimed he was punched and assaulted by a man and his two sons after he parked his car outside their home along Jalan Chulek, reported The Straits Times.
What began as a shouting match between all four ended up in Goh being viciously hit by a remote control, a plastic bottle and a sock filled with a hard substance, no less.
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Hip, modern Singapore housing comes with a rich history
My friend, Huck Lim, who hails from Penang, is an architect who has devoted himself to heritage causes. When I first met him, he was working with another architect, Fernando Jorge, on a project in Malacca, Malaysia.
The historic core of this city was recently inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization list because of its remarkable stock of structures, which are mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
There was certainly a lot for heritage advocates to do there: community organizing, information drives, as well as building conservation. Out of their experiences, Huck and Fernando fashioned “Malacca: Voices from the Street,” an elegant, richly illustrated tome.
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Singapore housing market needs more certainty: Conrad Raj
Singapore National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan's comments in Parliament on the state of the property market illustrate the conundrum of viewing a glass of water as being half full or half empty.
Noting that residential property prices have moderated in recent months he said the various measures to cool the market,have helped buyers including those at the middle and low end of the market.
Growth in mass market private housing prices outside of the central region slowed to 0 4 per cent in the second quarter of the year compared with 1 1 per cent in the previous quarter while overall private home prices moved up just 0 3 per cent in the first six months of the year compared with 6 per cent a year ago.
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Singapore home prices at record high, seen peaking — Alaric Yeo and Elaine Chow
Private home prices in Singapore have been on an uptrend post-global financial crisis with the market having risen about 55 per cent since the middle of 2009 to hit a new high.
Excess liquidity in Asian markets a lacklustre United States economy and weakening European markets, as well as local factors such as low mortgage rates higher immigration numbers rising affluence and decreasing household sizes, have been driving demand for private residential properties in Singapore.
However against a backdrop of increasing economic turmoil in the euro zone slowing growth of Asian economies and increasing Government intervention it appears that property prices here are beginning to peak.
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