Dangerous Myths about Retirement

With the current cost of living, a fair number of Singaporeans can expect to be happily retired. Maybe by the age of, say, 162. Now there’s any number of external causes you can blame for that: inflation, growing household debt, inadequate pension plan, etc. But some of the causes are self-inflicted…like these myths we keep believing:

On the upside, older people need less sleep. So they may actually be able to make it through a whole investment seminar.

1. I Will Spend Less as I Grow Older

Consider how most of us spend more during a weekend.
Without work, our brain has trouble processing how much time there really is to muck about in. This effect is magnified when you’re retired, since every day becomes a weekend. And according to the MoneySmart Science department (i.e. me when I’m playing with magnets) you can lie in bed watching TV till 3pm maximum, before your legs drag you out the door.
The boredom makes us take up new hobbies, go on vacation, socialize more, etc. And since retirees combat boredom every day upon retirement, many will spend more during their initial retirement years.
On top of that, the cost of healthcare and insurance will increase. Don’t assume that, just because the mortgage is paid up, the extra cash will cover the difference.
You also have to factor the cost of replacing stuff every three to five years: you’ll need cash for home maintenance, replacing your guitar / computer / TV etc. Tabulate the cost of all that, and you’ll realize even $1,500 a month is a dangerously tight sum to retire on.

2. The House Will Make Me Rich

Irony: Not wanting retirement homes near our flats, because we need their property value for retirement.

First, I’m going to make the assumption that you’ll have no problems selling the house and downgrading. This is already a huge stretch, since the thought of it causes most retirees to flip the hell out.
(Oh, you don’t see why? Wait till you’ve spent 25 years of your life paying off the house you live in, and which your children and grandchildren grew up in. See how you feel about selling then).
The good news is Singapore’s property values tend to head up over time. And at present,  the government has a $15,000 silver housing bonus.
The bad news is there’s no predicting what it will cost to buy a new house by that point; even a smaller one. No one can guarantee that your specific house will bring huge gains, whatever the condition of the country’s property market.
Now I’m not suggesting you’ll end up homeless (because if prices are bad, you can just keep the house and not sell). All I’m saying is, don’t count on getting rich when you sell the house. The profit margin may not be as huge as you imagine.
If you want to ensure a luxurious retirement, invest in other asset classes besides your house. You might also want to follow us on Facebook for the next 30+ years, as we track the state of home prices in Singapore.
(Hey, can’t blame a blogger for trying).

3. Saving Money Alone is Enough

The good news is grandpa stashed his life savings in this Milo tin. The bad news is it’s now worth less than the tin.

To understand why we no longer stuff money into Milo tins, let’s look at something called the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
The CPI is an annual gauge of how much the prices of goods have risen. So a CPI of 4% means that, over the year, the prices of everything went up by 4%. That’s why a cup of kopi cost your grandma about a cent, and costs you around $1.20.
Now, grab your wallet and check the dollar bills. You will notice that, despite the prices of everything going up, the numbers on those dollar bills are not changing to compensate.
In effect, the money you have is worth 4% less. And every year, Singapore’s CPI reaches around 3% to 4%. Over the course of 20 to 30 years, you can expect inflation (the CPI) to utterly destroy your wealth if all you do is save.
In order to be safe, you should aim to beat the CPI by 2%. So you need to invest the money, and fetch returns of about 5% to 7%. There are plenty of ways to do this, from insurance policies to ST Index funds. You can check out investment basics in our other article.
And incidentally, the cost to get started can be as low as $100 a month. (Try POSB, OCBC or Philip Securities)

4. Invest Only in Super Safe Assets to Ensure a Happy Retirement

Our mattresses are harder, heavier, and clang. So I know Dad read another retirement article.

In general, safer assets tend to have lower returns. Take, for example, a safe investment option like your CPF: the returns are guaranteed, but they only yield 2.5% for the ordinary account, and 4% for the special account. Likewise, bank fixed deposits tend to hover around 1%, even though they’re safe as fortresses.
(As to why those returns are low, see point 3 about the CPI)
In effect, your investment guarantees may just be guarantees of poor returns. A more reasonable approach would be to diversify your portfolio: mix low and medium risk investments. The riskier investments provide higher returns, while the safer ones offset any losses.
It’s worth talking to a stock broker or independent financial advisor about it. Right now, while you’re young.

5. Retirement Happens at 62, I’ll Think About it Later

Candles

We’re giving him one candle for each year in the company, so make sure the fire department’s on standby.

Retirement happens when you have attained financial freedom.

Some people retire at 62, some people retire at 70, and I know a lucky few who retire in their 30′s. If you start to manage your finances as early as possible, you don’t have to base everything on your CPF draw-down age. And even if you don’t aim to retire at 30, there can be no harm in understanding how others have managed it.

When you insist on thinking of 62 as the magic age, you tend to put off your financial education. You don’t bother learning about stocks and bonds, you don’t build your emergency fund, you don’t invest, etc. You take the all too common route of blissful ignorance, and panicking only after your 40th birthday.

Don’t do it. Regrets aren’t worth a damn, and you don’t want to find yourself hauling cans to a recycling centre at 62 because you started planning too late.

 http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/5-dangerous-retirement-myths-singaporeans-160000367.html

Preah Vihear Temple: Disputed Land Belongs to Cambodia [A study in UN/ASEAN conflict resolution]

Preah Vihear temple: Disputed land Cambodian, court rules

Cambodia should have sovereignty over most of the disputed land around the Preah Vihear temple on the border with Thailand, the UN's top court has ruled.

The International Court of Justice in the Hague said Thailand must withdraw troops from around the hilltop temple.

But it did not give Cambodia all the disputed land, saying it had no jurisdiction to rule on a hill nearby.

Both governments welcomed the ruling, with the Thai prime minister calling on her people to accept the verdict.

In a televised address, Yingluck Shinawatra told Thais that both countries would work together to achieve peace.

Her Cambodian counterpart, Hun Sen, also addressed his nation, repeating a promise to work with Thailand to keep the border peaceful and "not do anything that will lead to tension".

"This is a significant step forward... towards a peaceful resolution," he said.

The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Bangkok says the ruling was a qualified victory for Cambodia, and the two sides will now have to negotiate.

The 900-year-old Hindu temple is perched on a cliff in Cambodia, but more easily accessed from the Thai side.
Fears of violence

The long-standing rift has previously led to clashes between the two nations, which both lay claim to the land.

A 1962 verdict by the court declared the temple to be Cambodian, but did not rule on the area around it.

Cambodia sought a clarification of the ruling two years ago, after fighting erupted.

Delivering the judgement, Peter Tomka, president of the International Court of Justice, said the court had decided "that Cambodia had sovereignty over the whole territory of the promontory of Preah Vihear".

"In consequence, Thailand was under an obligation to withdraw from that territory the Thai military or police forces or other guards or keepers that were stationed there," he said.

Both sides agreed to withdraw troops from the disputed area in December 2011.

On Saturday, the chief of Cambodia's military forces on the Thailand border called an emergency meeting after Thai aircraft were seen flying low around disputed land near the temple.

However, Cambodian regional commander General Srey Deuk told the BBC he expected no problems with the Thai military after Monday's verdict.

He said no troop reinforcements had been brought up to the temple.

But fears remain about possible violence in border villages, stirred up by nationalist groups.

One Thai nationalist group, the Thai Patriotic Network, has said it will reject any judgement from the ICJ, according to The Nation newspaper. The group has already petitioned the court to throw out the case.

The territory has been a point of contention for over a century.



The decision to award the temple to Cambodia in 1962 rankled Thailand, but the issue lay largely moribund due to Cambodia's civil war, which only ended in the 1990s.

It came to the forefront again when Cambodia applied for Unesco World Heritage status in 2008, which it won - angering Thai nationalists. Both sides began a build-up of troops in the area.

The ICJ ruling is an interpretation of the 1962 judgement and cannot be appealed.

Q and A

A row over territory around the 11th Century border temple of Preah Vihear continues to strain ties between Thailand and Cambodia. The BBC looks at the background to the dispute.

Who owns the temple?

The Hindu temple was awarded to Cambodia by a 1962 ruling at the International Court of Justice, which both countries accepted at the time. Thailand does not officially claim ownership of the temple - the dispute is over the area surrounding it. Thailand says the ICJ ruling did not rule on the border, only on the temple itself.

The geography of the area makes sovereignty a particularly complicated issue. The temple is perched on top of a cliff, hundreds of feet above the Cambodian jungle. It has direct transport links to Thai towns and cities, and tourists can visit the temple from Thailand without the need for visas.

In fact, until 2003 access from Cambodian territory was possible only via a gruelling hike through jungle and mountains. In 2003 a road opened connecting a Cambodian town to the temple.

How long has the dispute been running?

The temple has been at the centre of a border dispute for more than a century. Maps drawn by Cambodia's French colonial rulers and Thailand (or Siam, as it was then known) early in the 20th Century showed the temple as belonging to Cambodia, but in later decades Thailand said the maps were not official and were therefore invalid.

The ICJ granted the temple to Cambodia in 1962, but the decision rankled Thailand. The dispute was largely moribund for decades as Cambodia plunged into a civil conflict that lingered until the 1990s.

The issue escalated again when Cambodia applied for it be listed as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2008. Thailand wanted it to be a joint Thai-Cambodia listing, but eventually withdrew its objection. The decision enraged Thai nationalists and both sides began a build-up of troops in the area.

In April 2009, soldiers exchanged fire across the disputed border. More serious trouble flared in February 2011, when at least eight people were killed in several days of fighting. The violence moved westwards to another set of temples in April, before shifting back to Preah Vihear, as widespread clashes forced tens of thousands to flee.

Is anyone trying to sort out the dispute?

In February 2011 Cambodia took the case to the UN Security Council, which then referred it to regional bloc Asean. Indonesia, as then-president of Asean, led mediation efforts. Both sides said they would allow access to Asean monitors.

However, Asean could do nothing to prevent further fighting flaring up again in April and talks between the leaders of the two countries failed to break the deadlock.

In April, Cambodia returned to the ICJ and requested it clarify its 1962 ruling. In July, the ICJ designated a demilitarised zone around the temple and ordered troops from both countries to leave the area.

Hearings at the ICJ began in April 2013. The court is set to rule on 11 November 2013.

Why is the temple so important?

The Hindu temple was built mainly in the 11th and 12th centuries, by the same Khmer civilisation that built Angkor Wat. The Khmers dominated the region for five centuries. As Cambodia has a tragic recent history of genocide and civil war, politicians often look to the glorious distant past to inspire nationalist sentiment.

And Cambodian nationalists often use Thailand as a bogeyman to stoke nationalist fervour - charting a litany of wrongs such as the successive Thai invasions that helped destroy the once mighty Khmer empires and rendered the country defenceless against French colonial conquest in the 19th Century.

Thailand also took advantage of the chaos during World War II to occupy large chunks of western Cambodia, including the temples at Angkor Wat. It was forced to hand them back when the war ended.

The Thai military often treated Cambodian refugees who fled the civil wars of the 1970s and 80s harshly - and Thailand backed the remnants of the Khmer Rouge in their struggle against the Vietnamese occupation, so helping prolong the civil war.

On the Thai side, the Khmer civilisation profoundly influenced Thai culture, and there are many famous Khmer-style temples in Thailand. In recent years, a powerful nationalist lobby allied to the military has helped drive a more muscular foreign policy agenda in Thailand.

The temple is also only one of several areas where the two countries disagree on where the border is. The maritime border is the subject of a dispute - and one which affects the development of oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand. The two sides had reached agreement on joint development, but the deal was then scrapped by the administration of former Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12378001

For a deeper understanding: download http://www.slideshare.net/LloydYeo/preah-vihar-conflict-pb

9/11: The man who 'plotted' America's darkest day

By Tara McKelvey BBC News Magazine

Relatives of the dead gathered in New York to mark the 12th anniversary of 9/11. Meanwhile, 1,400 miles away, the man who says he masterminded the attacks awaits his trial.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walked into a courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one morning in August. The door stayed open for a moment and sunlight fell across the floor.

Laura and Caroline Ogonowski watched him from a gallery behind three plates of glass. They are daughters of John Ogonowski, the 50-year-old pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.

Tom and JoAnn Meehan were also there. They lost their daughter, Colleen Barkow, 26, in the World Trade Center. Rosemary Dillard's husband, Eddie, 54, died in the jet that crashed into the Pentagon.

The room was quiet.

Mohammed adjusted his turban with both hands, as if it were a hat. He was short and overweight, and he walked in a jerky manner - like a Lego Star Wars character, someone in the gallery remarked later.

"He has a high voice," says the court illustrator, Janet Hamlin. "I expected a baritone. Darth Vader."

Mohammed and the other four defendants, Walid bin Attash, Ammar al-Baluchi (also known as Abd al-Aziz Ali), Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi are accused of helping to finance and train the men who flew the jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

They face charges that include terrorism and 2,976 counts of murder, and they could be executed.

US v Mohammed has been described as the trial of the century. At the centre of the drama is the world's most notorious al-Qaeda member.

"If we were a different country, we might have taken him out and shot him," says a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention facility, Capt Robert Durand, during the hearing.


Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Waleed bin Attash, Mohammed, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ramzi Binalshibh

The legal proceedings against Mohammed provide a chance for people in the courtroom and others to observe him and also to deepen their understanding of al-Qaeda. In addition, his public image reflects the different ways that people have looked at al-Qaeda over the years.

"History consists not only in what important people did," wrote David Greenberg in Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image, a book that looks at the ways that President Nixon has been perceived over the years, "but equally in what they symbolised".

Mohammed, a 48-year-old mechanical engineer, is thought to be a mastermind of al-Qaeda violence and a brilliant, bloody tactician. He was captured in Pakistan on 1 March 2003, less than three weeks before US troops entered Iraq.

People in the US were on edge. They wondered when al-Qaeda would strike again. Meanwhile Pentagon officials were preparing for a military intervention in Iraq. Bush administration officials spoke of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. "The evidence is overwhelming," Vice-President Dick Cheney said in a television interview.

Like other widely-held ideas about al-Qaeda, this one turned out to be untrue.

In 2009, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Mohammed would be put on trial in New York, setting off a political firestorm. The controversy reflected an ongoing and emotionally charged debate regarding national security - is al-Qaeda a serious threat?

President Barack Obama and his deputies were trying to move the nation beyond an age of fear. Not everyone believed the threat had diminished, though.

Conservatives were outraged, saying Mohammed was a danger to Americans and should be tried in a military court. Holder eventually gave up his plans, and prosecutors in Guantanamo filed charges against Mohammed in 2011.

Since that time Mohammed has in the public eye become a comical figure, a man who attempted to re-invent the vacuum cleaner while in prison. "A shoo-in for the Gitmo science fair", said late-night television host David Letterman.

Meanwhile Mohammed and the other defendants were supposedly reading EL James' 50 Shades of Grey. This turned out to be a rumour.

Nevertheless the attempts to ridicule him show how the public's view of al-Qaeda has softened. An essayist for the Washington Post called him "the Kevin Bacon of terrorism", alluding to a parlour game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which players find different ways Bacon is connected with other actors.

Once an icon of terror, Mohammed has been turned into an object of derision.

Mohammed's image has also gone through a transformation within al-Qaeda. He was "popular" in the 1990s, according to the authors of The 9/11 Commission Report. (It was compiled by members of a bipartisan federal commission chaired by a former New Jersey governor, Thomas Kean, and a former Indiana congressman, Lee Hamilton.)The man who 'plotted' America's darkest day

Mohammed's colleagues described him as "an intelligent, efficient, and even-tempered manager", wrote the authors.

His reputation "skyrocketed" after 9/11, says Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer and the author of Understanding Terror Networks. When Mohammed was arrested, he became a "martyr". He can no longer communicate with al-Qaeda, though, and consequently has little influence on the organisation.

Attorney General Eric Holder said that Mohammed should be tried in a civilian court in New York

The man who 'plotted' America's darkest day

The legal proceedings against him are unfolding in a corrugated-metal building in a compound known as Camp Justice. Prosecutors want the trial to start in one year. Defence lawyers baulk, saying that it will take much longer to resolve the legal issues surrounding the case.

Mohammed's lawyers say that he was tortured while he was held in CIA-run "black sites", reportedly in Poland and Romania. The evidence against him is tainted by the brutality of these interrogations, the lawyers say, and therefore the charges should be dropped.

On a more fundamental level the defence lawyers say that the military commissions are not legitimate. The court, they claim, favours the prosecution.

Mohammed, suntanned and wearing glasses, rifled through legal papers in the courtroom during a hearing last month. He had an e-reader, and he seemed comfortable in the courtroom - and with his fate.

He is a "death volunteer", a capital defendant who wants to become a martyr, at least that is what he claimed in 2008. He has not entered a formal plea - though he has talked at length about his role as an al-Qaeda mastermind. The court treats the situation as if he has pleaded not guilty.

Al-Qaeda commanders aim to broadcast a message, whether through violence or other means. One of their most important weapons is propaganda.

As a PR director for al-Qaeda, Mohammed attempts to shape his own image and that of al-Qaeda. He dyed his beard reddish-orange with berry juice, and he wore a tunic and a military-style camouflage jacket.

Wearing "camo" sends a message - he is a soldier.

He grew up in a religious family in a suburb of Kuwait City. He is a citizen of Pakistan, though, and his relatives come from Baluchistan.

At age 11 or 12 he started watching Muslim Brotherhood programmes on television. Later he went to youth camps in the desert - and became interested in jihad.

His family sent him to the US to study. After earning an engineering degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1986, he fixed hydraulic drills on the front lines in Afghanistan, according to a December 2006 US defence department report.

At the time he was helping the US-backed mujahedeen. He says he later became "an enemy of the US", according to the defence department.

"By his own account", wrote the authors of the 9/11 Commission Report, he hated the US not because of anything he saw during the years he lived in the US - but because of US policies towards Israel.

By this time the Muslim Brotherhood brand of jihad was too tame for him. He wanted violence, according to government documents. He chose targets for the 2001 attacks based on their capacity to "awaken people politically".

He had originally planned for the hijacking of 10 commercial jets, according to the authors of the 9/11 Commission Report. He wanted to land one of the jets himself.

"After killing all adult male passengers on board and alerting the media", he would then "deliver a speech excoriating US support for Israel, the Philippines, and repressive governments in the Arab world."

"This is theatre, a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star - the super-terrorist," wrote the authors.

Several months after the attacks, the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl arranged to interview a militant, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a former London School of Economics student, in Karachi. It was a ruse - Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded.

Mohammed says that he held the knife, "with my blessed right hand". He made this comment in court, testimony of how he had decapitated Pearl.



A memorial service was held for Daniel Pearl in New Delhi in February 2002

Mohammed spoke to another journalist about the 9/11 attack. "The attacks were designed to cause as many deaths as possible and to be a big slap for America on American soil," Mohammed told the journalist at a hideout in Pakistan.

Mohammed spoke proudly of his leadership role in the attacks, and an account of the conversation was published in the Sunday Times in September 2002.

Seven months later, Mohammed was seized in Rawalpindi and then taken to Poland. A group of men, wearing black masks "like Planet-X people", waited for him at an airport, he says, according to a leaked copy of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report.

He was taken to a cell, "about 3m x 4m with wooden walls", in a CIA black site. During the interrogations, he worked as a propagandist, offering some insight into al-Qaeda, and a lot of misinformation.

"I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive," he said, according to the ICRC report. "I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the US."

He had lied, exaggerating the threat that al-Qaeda posed to Americans. On other occasions he has been a stickler for accuracy. He is something of a control freak - and tries to ensure that messages are transmitted properly.

In military hearings, he corrected the spelling of his name.

Through his lawyer, he chided Hamlin for a sloppy drawing. "I was like, 'Oh, no, he's right,'" she says. She fixed his nose, working in pastel.

Mohammed also mentioned at one of the hearings that the journalist who had interviewed him for the Sunday Times had got things wrong.

"You know the media," he said.

He does not refute previous statements about his role in the 2001 attacks, though. Indeed, he has reinforced them.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," he said in a March 2007 hearing. He described himself and other al-Qaeda members as "jackals fighting in the night".

Still, he says he feels remorse. "I don't like to kill people," he said. "I feel very sorry there had been kids killed in 9/11."

In the mornings during the August hearings he was escorted to the courthouse from his holding cell, "a little, one-person supermax", says a military official. Barbed wire stretched like a giant Slinky along the top of a fence. Green sand bags were scattered around, along with Joint Task Force barricades marked "restricted area".

Mohammed walked past an army officer with handcuffs tucked in his waistband. Soldiers with Internal Security badges hovered near the door

Mohammed took off his glasses and put them on the table. He had a prayer blanket folded over the back of his chair, and a box decorated with an American flag is on the floor.

He is "well-travelled", says one of his lawyers. According to government accounts, he has spent time in Qatar, Indonesia, India, Malaysia and other countries.

The authors of The 9/11 Commission Report described him as "highly educated and equally comfortable in a government office or a terrorist safehouse".

During the hearings he expressed sympathy to his lawyers because they have to spend time away from their families. "He's a very gracious individual," says one lawyer.

Dillard and the others who lost family members in the 2001 attacks sit behind sound-proof glass. They listen to an audio feed that is delayed by 40 seconds so officials can block statements that are classified. This includes information about the interrogations.

For a year or so after the 2001 attacks, US officials acted as though Mohammed and other suspects had super-human intelligence and strength, as if only individuals who were larger than life could carry out the attacks.

Before detainees arrived at Guantanamo, for example, Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "warned that any lapses in security might allow the detainees, endowed with satanic determination, to 'gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down,'" wrote Karen Greenberg in her book The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days.

This mythology can still be seen in the courtroom. Steel chains, each comprised of 12 links, were fastened to the floor near the detainees' chairs. Each of the chains was arranged in a straight line, and they were installed so that they could be used to restrain unruly detainees. The chains were heavy and thick, sturdy enough for a "super-villain", as one military official tells me.

In the courtroom Mohammed waved over a legal assistant, a woman with blonde hair tucked under a headscarf. He sliced his hand through the air. He had surprisingly thin wrists, and his "blessed right hand" was pale.

It is hard to imagine that he once cut off Pearl's head. Later I mentioned this to one of Mohammed's lawyers. He was sitting at a picnic table outside the courthouse, near a metal sign that said: "No classified discussion area".

"It's inconceivable that this person could do that," said the lawyer, nodding. "That sets up a number of scenarios for us to investigate."

The lawyer and his colleagues are exploring possibilities for their clients' defence.

Sitting at the picnic table, the defence lawyer made a case for Mohammed's innocence - he confessed to crimes he did not commit while "under the tender mercies of the CIA".

I pointed out that he has spoken freely about his role in the crimes - frequently, and with journalists and others who do not work for the CIA. I mention the beheading.

"You keep going back to that," said the lawyer, looking impatient. He said that Mohammed is not being charged with Pearl's murder.

Then he changes tactics. He says that if Mohammad had carried out these crimes, he would have had a reason.

Mohammed is a principled man, the lawyer explained. Someone like him might commit crimes if he believed they were in the service of a greater good. Moreover these acts would carry a personal cost.

"You're sacrificing your life, your family and any future happiness for what you perceive as the good of the defence of your community," said the lawyer.

Even if Mohammed did plan the terrorist attacks and murder Pearl, the lawyer said, these acts do not make him special. "You may have had the opportunity of being in a press conference with George W Bush. He's responsible for about 5,000 deaths."

Many people would like to close the chapter on al-Qaeda and the global war against terrorism. Yet not everyone is ready to move on - or has that luxury.

Dillard said that she wants both the defence and the prosecution to "be very, very careful to maintain the integrity of the trial - so that there's no space for an appeal".

On the last day of the hearing, Dillard walked to a makeshift media-operations centre in an aeroplane hanger. In front of a microphone, she talked about her husband - and about Mohammed and the other accused men.

"I don't want them to ever see the sunshine," she said. "I don't want them to have fresh wind hit their face." She walked back to the side of the room and stood with others who have lost family members.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23914519

Karbala: history's long shadow

Just like Bethlehem and Nazareth for Christians, Karbala is one of those places Muslim children hear about from when they are very young.

For many it takes on a mythical, unreachable status.

But here we were pulling up to the main security checkpoint of Karbala, being asked to park to the side while our papers were checked.

Many pilgrims were going through on foot.

As we carried on, the gold dome of the Imam Hussein mosque rose from the centre of the city, and soon we found ourselves standing at one of its many ornate doorways.

I watched a little girl pull back her mother by the hand and chastise her for not having kissed the entrance in respect.
Entrance to mosque The Imam Hussein mosque is ornately decorated

Her mother dutifully spent a moment pressing her lips against the huge wooden doors to the mosque, before going inside.

In the vast prayer hall with its gold and marble, its huge chandeliers and its intricate blue and white tiling, was an incongruous red neon sign.

It marks the spot where it is believed Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was beheaded.

The area on which the mosque complex is built is thought to be the site of the Battle of Karbala, in which not only Hussein, but 72 followers and members of his family, including his infant son, were slaughtered.

When you see Shia Muslims, bloodied, whipping themselves in their annual processions, they are commemorating the events that took place in Karbala.

Because while Muhammad's grandson is revered by all Muslim sects, it is Shias who trace their beliefs directly to his teachings.

The Shrine of Hussein, in the centre of the mosque, is now circled by a constant stream of pilgrims; kissing the marble, praying, often shedding tears. For Shias, the shrine represents the greatest tribute to martyrdom.

hat battle of Karbala, in the 7th Century, in which Hussein was killed, is often cited as the moment Shia and Sunni Muslims were cleaved apart.

But Friday prayers in the Imam Hussein mosque looked almost the same as prayers in a Sunni mosque.

There are small differences in the rituals: at one point, for example, instead of crossing their hands over their stomachs, the lines of Shia devotees kept their hands by their sides.

But there is difference enough, it seems, that even to this day, some feel the need to continue the slaughter.

Sectarian violence

Over the last weeks, Iraqis have witnessed the kind of sectarian violence they had hoped was a thing of the past.

On one morning eight bombs went off in an hour in Shia districts of Baghdad. On another there were 11 almost simultaneously - again in Shia neighbourhoods.

There was an attack too on a Sunni mosque in Baqubah and another close to a funeral procession.


Speaking to Iraqis at the bombsites and in hospitals, what surprised me was the very apparent lack of hatred towards the other sect.

Instead, there appeared to be resigned consensus that Iraq's politicians were exploiting sectarian differences for their own gains - but that so too, were foreign powers.

It is something that has created a huge Sunni-Shia rift across the region: Iran the big power on one side; Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other.

Other countries in the Middle East with mixed populations are feeling the effects, as Sunni and Shia groups within them start to align in what many now see as a holy war.

Syrian shrine

In Iraq, the links between Sunni militant groups, like al-Qaeda, and the fighting across the border in Syria have been much talked about.

But a couple of days before going to Karbala, we met a man who was involved in recruiting Shia fighters to go to Syria too: to fight not with the opposition, but alongside President Assad's forces.

And where, I asked, are the Shia fighters going in Syria? His answer took us right back to Karbala.
Devotees in the Imam Hussein mosque Karbala is a place of pilgrimage for Muslims

He said their main aim was to defend the shrine of Zainab, another of the Prophet Muhammad's grandchildren, whose brother and two children were among those killed in the battle of Karbala.

After which, Shia believe, she was taken to Damascus, where she later died.

Sunnis disagree and think she was buried elsewhere, and in recent months there have been many reports of attempts to attack the Shia shrine.

The fighter told me they would keep laying down their lives until the shrine of Zainab was safe.

As I left the mosque in Karbala, with the traditional memento of a small amount of earth from the grounds, it was hard not to reflect on the way an event there 1,400 years ago was shaping the world today.

Muslim leaders' Auschwitz visit boosts Holocaust knowledge Adam Easton By Adam Easton

Muslim leaders from around the world have taken part in an unprecedented trip to Germany and Poland to see and hear for themselves about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust.

The 11 imams, sheiks and religious teachers from nine countries met a Holocaust survivor and Poles whose families risked execution to save Jews from the Nazis, in the Polish capital's Nozyk Synagogue as part of the tour.

They have been around museums, including the recently opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews on the site of the former Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. And they also visited the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.

"The main aim is to get Muslims who are leaders all over the world, particularly in the Middle East, to acknowledge the reality of what happened here and to be able to teach it to the people that they lead," said trip organiser Rabbi Jack Bemporad, who is executive director of the US-based Center for Interreligious Understanding.

He was standing underneath the red brick watchtower over the main entrance to Birkenau, the largest of more than 40 camps that made up the Auschwitz complex. This was where the Nazis installed four gas chambers and crematoria to speed up the murder and disposal of people, who were mostly Jews, from across Europe.
More understanding

Auschwitz-Birkenau, set up by the Germans in Nazi-occupied Poland, is largely intact and is now a museum. Historians estimate 1.1 million people were killed there - one million of them were Jews but there were also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others.

"I think that when someone wants to deny the Holocaust or think that it is exaggerated, which many of them do and certainly many of their followers do, when they come here and see it, their experience is such that they can no longer think that," Rabbi Bemporad said.

Beside the ruins of one of the gas chambers - the Germans blew them up as they retreated, in an effort to hide their crimes - the Muslim leaders paused for a moment's silence.

"You may read every book about the Holocaust but it's nothing like when you see this place where people were burned," said Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America.

"This is the building, the bricks. If they were to speak to you and I, they would tell you how many cries and screams they have heard."

Mr Magid, who is originally from Sudan, first visited Auschwitz-Birkenau during a trip organised for American imams in 2010. He said the experience had led him to hold an annual Seder, a Jewish ceremonial meal, at his mosque in Virginia where he invites people to listen to the story of a Holocaust survivor who was saved by a Muslim family.

"We go back more committed to human rights and more understanding of conflicts and how to resolve them, but also to be careful of a curriculum that teaches racism and hatred," he said

Earlier, the group had taken photos as they walked around an exhibition in the red brick barrack blocks at Auschwitz, about 2 miles (3kms) from Birkenau.

They made comments such as "Can you imagine?" and "It's beyond comprehension" as they saw a great pile of hair shorn from women prisoners that was used to make rudimentary textiles. They shook their heads as they saw faded children's shoes and dolls in glass cases.

After they had seen just two of the 14 exhibition blocks, some of the group asked for a break and they knelt in prayer beside the camp's execution wall.

Barakat Hasan, a Palestinian imam and director of the Center for Studies and Islamic Media in Jerusalem, said he "didn't know many details about the Holocaust" before the trip.

"I felt my heart bleeding when I was looking at all this. I was fighting back tears," he said through an interpreter. "As a Palestinian living under occupation, I feel sympathy for the pain and injustice that was inflicted on the Jews," he added.

Mr Hasan said he did not believe there were people in the Muslim world who denied the Holocaust happened, but he said there was discussion in his community about whether the commonly quoted figure of six million Jewish victims was correct.

"Maybe now after seeing what I've seen, maybe the numbers are correct also," he said, adding that he would write articles and mention his trip on Facebook.

As he walked along the railway line and unloading ramp at Birkenau - where the trains hauling cattle cars crammed with Jews arrived - Ahmet Muharrem Atlig, a Turkish imam and secretary general of the Journalists and Writers Foundation in Istanbul, said he wept when he saw a photograph that showed children looking scared as they got off a train.

"Unfortunately the Muslim communities and congregation don't know much about the Holocaust," he said.

"Yes, we've heard something. But we have to come and see what happened here. It's not just about Jews, or Christians, this is all about human beings because the human race suffered here."

The OAU: Fifty years on

Seeking African unity for 50 years

The Organisation of African Unity was formed 50 years ago - on 25 May 1963. It was a compromise between those who wanted something like a United States of Africa and those who wanted each country to remain independent.

It was based in Addis Ababa the capital of Ethiopia, one of just two African countries never to have been colonised. The body became the African Union in 2002.The link provides 3 vies on the achievements of the OAU


1957: Leaders of Africa's three independent republics - Liberia, Ghana and Guinea - met to discuss liberating the rest of the continent

1963: OAU founded
Initially concentrated on ending colonial and white minority rule in countries such as Angola, Mozambique (1975), Zimbabwe (1980), Namibia (1990) and South Africa (1994)

1984: Morocco leaves OAU after OAU recognised independence of Western Sahara

2002: OAU became the African Union, designed to work for economic integration

AU ended policy of non-interference in domestic affairs - it has suspended several countries after coups, while OAU had been criticised as a "dictators' club"

AU has sent peacekeepers to Darfur and Somalia

2011: South Sudan becomes 54th member of AU (Morocco has not rejoined)

2012: Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma becomes first female head of AU commission

UN Development Progarmme Report

The latest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report [Link] ranks Singapore 18th out of 187 countries in the world in the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) for 2012.

The UN’s HDI is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices to rank countries. It was developed in 1990 as an index to look beyond GDP growth as a measure of a country’s well-being. It is published by the UNDP annually and serves as a frame of reference for both social and economic development of countries in the world.

The 10 top countries in the world are:

1. Norway
2. Australia
3. US
4. Netherlands
5. Germany
6. New Zealand
7. Ireland
7. Sweden
9. Switzerland
10. Japan

Other Asian economies ahead of Singapore include South Korea (12th) and Hong Kong (13th).

One of the most glaring deficiencies for Singapore is the expected number of years of schooling, which registered 14.4 in the report. This is about two years less than the average of “very high HDI” countries (16.3 years). The expected years of schooling indicates the number of years of schooling that a child of school entrance age can expect to receive.

An analyst said, “This suggests a smaller proportion of Singaporeans attend university or graduate schools, as compared with its comparable peers despite its very high standing in terms of income per capita and life expectancy.”

Indeed, Minister Khaw Boon Wan seemed to discourage ITE and polytechnic graduates from pursuing a university degree at an ‘Our Singapore Conversation’ dialogue held on 4 May 2013.

Singaporeans do not need to be university graduates to be successful, he said.

“If they cannot find jobs, what is the point? You own a degree, but so what? That you can’t eat it. If that cannot give you a good life, a good job, it is meaningless,” he elaborated.

He was responding to a participant who said the government should set aside more university places for Institute of Technical Education and polytechnic graduates.

Said Mr Khaw, “Can you have a whole country where 100 per cent are graduates? I am not so sure.”

“What you do not want is to create huge graduate unemployment.”

In the past, PM Lee said that polytechnic graduates have many good options after leaving school, and they need not aim for university degrees.

Singapore may not have to be a “whole country where 100 per cent are graduates” but certainly, looking at the UNDP report, Singapore can do better in terms of the HDI component, “expected years of schooling”.

Mr Khaw may be interested to know that the “expected years of schooling” for the 3 Asian countries ahead of Singapore are:

Japan – 15.3
Korea – 17.2
Hong Kong – 15.5

http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/05/11/un-report-shows-sg-deficient-in-expected-years-of-schooling/

Singapore falls to record-low place in press freedom ranking

Singapore falls to record-low place in press freedom ranking
Yahoo! Newsroom
By Shah Salimat | Yahoo! Newsroom – Sat, May 4, 2013

Singapore fell 14 places to a record 149th position in terms of press freedom, according to an annual report by non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RWB).

Coming ahead of World Press Freedom Day, which was observed Friday, the report showed this is the city-state’s worst performance since the index was established in 2002.

On the list, Singapore is wedged in between Russia and Iraq, with Myanmar just two places behind. The former junta-led country jumped up 18 spots in this year’s ranking.

Neighbouring Malaysia dropped 23 places to 145th over repeated censorship efforts and a crackdown on the Bersih 3.0 protest in April. Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea stayed at the bottom three, while Finland stayed on top of the list followed by the Netherlands and Norway.

Mali was the biggest jumper, moving 74 spots down amid a military coup and subsequent media bias. Malawi was the biggest riser, moving 71 spots up, after an end to the Mutharika dictatorship marked by excesses and violence.

In this year's Freedom of The Press report published Wednesday by Freedom House, Singapore's press was rated "Not Free" and was ranked 153rd in the world, tied with Afghanistan, Iraq and Qatar. Norway and Sweden tied for tops, while North Korea and Turkmenistan tied for the bottom two.

Both reports come amid recent events that have rocked the media industry in Singapore. Outspoken academic Cherian George, who has called for more press freedom in the city-state, was denied tenure at Nanyang Technological University, sparking outrage among academics, colleagues and students.

Last month, comics artist Leslie Chew was arrested for alleged sedition, with charges relating to two comic strips, including one that contained the words “Malay population… Deliberately suppressed by a racist government.”

Filmmaker Lynn Lee was questioned for two videos she posted in January this year of interviews with former Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) bus drivers He Jun Ling and Liu Xiang Ying. Both drivers alleged police abuse while they were held in custody.

Amid the continued rise of new media in Singapore, there have been several instances over the past year of letters of demand being sent to bloggers and online media commentators to apologise and take down remarks that allegedly defamed government officials or the courts.

Earlier this year, blogger Alex Au received a letter of demand from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s lawyer that prompted the writer to apologise and take down an article and 21 comments regarding the sale of software by town councils to a firm owned by the ruling People’s Action Party.

The Real Singapore, a user-generated content website, was also asked twice to post an apology over comments allegedly defaming Defence Minister Ng Eng Hean.

The Attorney General's Chambers also asked the website to post an apology for comments made by users over the case of China national Yuan Zhenghua, who was sentenced to 25 months jail for stealing a taxi and killing a cleaner at Changi Airport’s Budget terminal. The site has refused to put up the apology.

Guy Stewart Callendar: Global warming discovery

Guy Stewart Callendar: Global warming discovery

By Zoe Applegate BBC News Online

Seventy-five years ago an amateur scientist made a breakthrough discovery in the field of climate change.

Guy Stewart Callendar linked global warming to CO2 emissions but his work went largely unnoticed at the time.

Now the anniversary of his discovery has been commemorated by two leading climate scientists.

Prof Phil Jones, from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and Dr Ed Hawkins, from the University of Reading, have published a paper looking at Callendar's legacy.

Prof Jones said the steam engineer's work was "groundbreaking".

Callendar, born in Montreal, Canada in 1898, made all his calculations by hand in his spare time, decades before the effects of global warming became widely debated.

The son of English physicist Hugh Longbourne Callendar, who studied thermodynamics, Callendar worked from his home in West Sussex

A steam engineer by profession, his research first appeared in the quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in April 1938.
'Fundamental contribution'

Prof Jones, of the UEA's Climatic Research Unit, and Dr Hawkins, from Reading's National Centre for Atmospheric Science, have had their commemorative research paper on Callendar published in the same journal this month.

"Callendar was the first to discover that the planet had warmed," said Prof Jones.

"He collected world temperature measurements and suggested that this warming was related to carbon dioxide emissions."

This became known for a time as the "Callendar Effect".

He is still relatively unknown as a scientist but his contribution was fundamental to climate science today," said Prof Jones.

Callendar, who died in 1964, aged 66, thought global warming was good because it would stop what he called "deadly glaciers" returning and could boost the growth of crops at high latitude.

Although Callendar's estimates on global warming were quite simple, Dr Hawkins said they had proved fairly accurate compared with modern analysis.

However, some people remain sceptical about the relationship between carbon emissions and climate change first identified by Callendar.

Dr Hawkins said: "Scientists at the time also couldn't really believe that humans could impact such a large system as the climate - a problem that climate science still encounters from some people today, despite the compelling evidence to the contrary."

N Ireland Stormont Assembly becomes dull

Northern Ireland Assembly become dull?
25/4/013

Mark Simpson By Mark Simpson BBC Correspondent

Has the
The artist Noel Murphy who painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003 Artist Noel Murphy painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003

The retirement of some of the big names from Stormont politics has led to complaints that the Northern Ireland Assembly has become too dull.

It may be the most stable government in Northern Ireland for a generation, but some believe it is too boring.

In recent years a number of household names have either retired from politics or left Stormont.

These include former DUP leader Ian Paisley, Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams and Nobel peace prize winners John Hume and David Trimble.

At the same time, some of the most colourful speakers of recent times are no longer in the assembly, such as Ulster Unionist John Taylor, the SDLP's Seamus Mallon, the unionist Bob McCartney and the late David Ervine, former leader of the PUP.

The peace talks chairman, former senator George Mitchell, recently brought his son, Andrew, to watch a Stormont debate but left early after the teenager complained of boredom.

Senator Mitchell was delighted with what he saw; he said it proved that normal politics had been established.

So does it matter if politics is dull, as long as it delivers?

Monica McWilliams, a former assembly member for the Women's Coalition, believes Stormont should be judged on results rather than personalities.

She said: "I think it's really important to have a new generation of politicians.

"Unfortunately, everyone thinks it's very easy to have a go at politicians. They work night and day, they don't often get the credit for that.

"If you go to any assembly or legislative body in the world, it is boring. That's just the nature of legislative bodies."

The former UK Unionist leader, Bob McCartney, believes the politicians at Stormont could do much better.

He said: "They're dull, boring and second rate.

"They get up and they read a prepared statement that has no connection with what has gone before and even less with what is to come.

"Churchill used to say a good speech was a sustained logical argument, presented in the most attractive language possible.
'Sunlight'

"Now if you use that as your criteria for colour, there's very little colour in the assembly."

But is the lack of colour more to do with the stability of politics than the people involved?

Was the era of Paisley, Adams and Hume really a more charismatic political age?

The artist Noel Murphy who painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003, reckons the passage of time can colour views of the past.

He said: "The eyes of the world were on us. It's a great place when you're in the sunlight.

"Clinton was a friend and Mandela. But when the eyes of the world go away, being in the shadows is a much colder place.

"The personalities weren't necessarily charismatic, the events were.

"Today it's bland because the events are, not necessarily the characters."

Not everyone will agree with the County Antrim artist.

If it ain’t broke, hurry and fix it: Interview with TTSH CEO

PROFESSOR Philip Choo, 54, CEO of Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), doesn’t take strong stands in a loud voice. He makes insightful remarks in gentle tones. He doesn’t hold forth at meetings. He rallies people behind the scenes.

The self-confessed introvert finds public speeches and functions especially wearying, and walks 12km thrice a week to decompress in solitude.

It was severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003 that brought out the leader in him.

Then head of general medicine at TTSH, he stepped up to the plate, took tough decisions to recall all doctors on leave, excused no one from duty, and donned the N95 mask himself in the wards daily.

As Sars claimed 33 lives and fevers raged around him, he believed he would not outlive the outbreak. But he did and was awarded a Public Service Star.

Ten years on, he never talks about Sars, having filed it away as a “difficult time”. But the lessons that have stayed with him have emboldened him to take unpopular decisions today.

He is now in the thick of restructuring TTSH and the National Healthcare Group (Regional Health) which oversees health care in the central region of Singapore and where he is deputy group CEO. He feels he is up against Singapore’s fast-ageing population and the surge in sufferers of multiple chronic diseases.

Worldwide, he notes, even the world’s richest countries are mired in health-care bills. In the United States, Europe and Japan, with 13, 17 and 23 per cent of people aged over 65 respectively, one of the largest areas of expenditure is now health care, with the cost likely to escalate as their populations grey further. In Singapore, about 9 per cent of the population is above 65 today, with numbers expected to triple by 2030.

He notes that Singapore’s current hospital-centric health-care system, as with most developed countries, is just too costly.

It is great at acute episodic care, say taking care of a road accident victim, but lousy for those living with longstanding chronic diseases, like stroke and heart failure, he charges.

“I know I’m on a failed model. Today, we all wait for patients with problems to come to us. But unless you break from that cycle, start to put in resources to maintain the health of the general population, you will end up broke, like where the rest of the world is today.”
He wants Singapore to be the exception.

Standardising health care

CONTROVERSIALLY, he is looking at bringing business principles for efficiency into health care. He talks about kaizen (Japanese continuous improvement philosophy) and “lean manufacturing” (systematically reducing waste) non-stop, which he learnt from the Toyota car factory in Japan during a study visit there in 2007. Over the past four years, he’s been busy introducing standardisation of care like assembly lines and categorising patients like car models.

He’s met with a chorus of outrage, he admits. “Standardisation” in health care is almost heresy to health-care workers, who have been taught to zoom in on the patient before them and offer individualised care, he notes.

But why should health care not follow the compulsory rule of business, which is to reduce variation, he argues. It’s entirely possible to plan as a system, as Disney theme parks and all hotels do, but deliver care in a personal manner.

“In health care, we already do that every single day. I roughly know what my patients need but I talk to them as individuals, demonstrating empathy,” he cites.

But won’t standardisation constrict care delivery since no two patients and diseases are created alike?

He disagrees. “You take what is best after research and experimentation and standardise it, so everybody gets the same good care every time. It’s the highest common denominator, not the lowest. Can you imagine flight safety with no standardisation, if we allow each pilot to check in his own way before take-off? Some days he does this much and other days he doesn’t? We’ll be horrified.”

Dr Kaizen

WHAT he’s done over the last few years is to divert almost a third of people who used to be admitted to TTSH elsewhere to be cared for in other settings.

Close to 70 per cent of all surgical procedures at TTSH, for example, are now done as day surgery.

Patients, who used to stay up to three days, have their care compacted into one. The moment their condition stabilises, patients are funnelled into community hospitals nearby. TTSH’s accident and emergency department also admits patients, for example with mild pneumonia, directly into the community hospitals. Teams have been sent in to expand care in nine nursing homes, so the ailing can be kept there.

He’s also working on identifying and grouping patients with similar needs together, taking a leaf from the Toyota plant, which he notes produces Lexuses, Camrys and Corollas all in the same assembly line because “they require roughly the same things”.

Of the central zone his National Healthcare Group (NHG) oversees, which has a total population of 1.4 million, only 350,000 have been treated at TTSH, its specialist clinics and nine poly- clinics. Using the data of the 350,000, he’s trying to categorise them into five groups – well, simple, complicated, serious, frail – based on how many chronic diseases they have and the level of complications.

With that, he’s designing a common template care model for each group. The aim: To maintain patients within each category as far as possible. For example, keeping the “well” healthy, preventing hospital admission for the “simple” and the “complicated” by phoning them often to check on them, cutting down admissions for the “serious” group by actively managing their care and preventing worsening of the “frail”.

After that, he plans to “get to know” the remaining 1.05 million who have never used public health care and are unknown to him.

“Today we don’t know them, we have to wait for them to become unwell to see us. The thinking is ‘I’m so busy, I’m not going to go out to look for more patients’. But we have to change that mindset as it represents a very expensive model of care we can’t afford,” he laments. “More knowledge, not less, is better. If I know my population and who is at risk but has not sought help, I can come up with specific intervention programmes.”

For starters, NHG is working with other agencies to do a door-to-door survey on Toa Payoh rental flat dwellers. They will list each resident’s health and social needs, offer them health screenings, and design a working model to deliver help to them in a coordinated fashion.

If there’s one thing he hopes to get done in his lifetime, it’s to get his new health-care model, offering good, affordable, standardised care, up and running.

Singapore, he believes, is about the only country able to plan for it right now. It still has a stable government able to think long- term, long-staying leaders at the operational level to carry it out and sufficient reserves to invest in the future, he says.

Old before his time

HE WAS the third of four children of a Singaporean general practitioner who practised in Kota Baru in Kelantan and a Malaysian housewife.

A year after the May 13, 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur, his parents sent him to study here at age 10 with his siblings and brought them up by phone.

At St Michael’s Primary, St Joseph’s Institution and Catholic Junior College, he struggled with dyslexia and had to memorise facts up to 40 times for exams.

During school holidays in Kota Baru, watching the respect accorded to his father by the townsfolk, he was drawn to medicine – the only one among his siblings, who all worked in finance jobs.

As a University of Singapore medical student and young doctor, he found himself inexplicably gravitating towards older patients. “I can’t explain it but I feel comfortable with the elderly. I know what goes through their minds, I can understand what they say or don’t say.”

He chose to delve into geriatrics in Glasgow, a sub-speciality of internal medicine and family medicine that focuses on the care of elderly people, because he “didn’t want to choose between organs but wanted to see the whole patient”. His more practical peers dissuaded him. It was the antithesis of the “perfect specialisation” – old patients were usually poor, the working hours punishing, with little potential for going into private practice.

But he relished it, especially the challenge of caring for the frail elderly with vague bed histories and multiple problems, coupled often with mental issues and physical disabilities too.

He became Singapore’s first geriatrician in 1990 and worked towards setting up a dedicated department at TTSH and making geriatric medicine “an accepted speciality in its own right”. By 1994, he was head of department, then appointed divisional chairman of medicine a year later. Post-Sars, he was named chairman of the medical board from 2003 to 2011, before he assumed the CEO role two years ago.

Autumnal lessons

HE IS thankful for the retrospective life lessons attending to autumnal patients has bestowed on him. He has seen patients with 10 kids, all unwilling to look after them. And those with one kid who sacrificed everything to care for them. He’s surmised it all boils down to the depth of bonds forged. His conclusion: “You reap what you sow.”

He identifies so closely with his elderly charges that he has told off a woman complaining loudly about the inconvenience of her mother’s care within earshot of her daughter. He told her: “Stop what you’re doing. Your daughter will think this is the right way to treat her mother.” It resulted in an angry letter of complaint, he adds sheepishly.

The father of two children aged 22 and 19 – the older one is studying medicine here – who is separated from his family physician wife, spends a quarter of his time doing a couple of outpatient clinics and teaching once a week.

He reflects: “You get great joy when you work as a doctor but the change is actually limited to individual patients. But if you can change systems and mindsets, you broaden your reach a lot more. The issue is that the returns take a longer time to come back to you.”

He’s also reconciled to the naysaying. “If you are trying to change the system, you can expect a lot of noes because you are a deviation from the norm. Once you accept that as part of life, it’s fine,” he says with a shrug.

He doesn’t lose sleep or take the opposition personally. Sars and his older patients taught him to forge on, regardless.

suelong@sph.com.sg
http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/case-you-missed-it/story/if-it-ain%E2%80%99t-broke-hurry-and-fix-it-20130331

This story was first published in The Straits Times on March 29, 2013

China acknowledges 'cancer villages'

China acknowledges 'cancer villages'

BBC 23 Feb 2013

China's environment ministry appears to have acknowledged the existence of so-called "cancer villages" after years of public speculation about the impact of pollution in certain areas.

For years campaigners have said cancer rates in some villages near factories and polluted waterways have shot up.

There have been many calls for China to be more transparent on pollution.

The latest report from the environment ministry is entitled "Guard against and control risks presented by chemicals to the environment during the 12th Five-Year period (2011-2015)".

It says that the widespread production and consumption of harmful chemicals forbidden in many developed nations are still found in China.

"The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution," it said.

The report goes on to acknowledge that such chemicals could pose a long-term risk to human health, making a direct link to the so-called "cancer villages".

"There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions," it said.
Beijing smog

The BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing says that as China has experienced rapid development, stories about so-called cancer villages have become more frequent.

And China has witnessed growing public anger over air pollution and industrial waste caused by industrial development.

Media coverage of conditions in these so-called "cancer villages" has been widespread. In 2009, one Chinese journalist published a map identifying dozens of apparently affected villages.

In 2007 the BBC visited the small hamlet of Shangba in southern China where one scientist was studying the cause and effects of pollution on the village.

He found high levels of poisonous heavy metals in the water and believed there was a direct connection between incidences of cancer and mining in the area.

Until now, there has been little comment from the government on such allegations.

Environmental lawyer Wang Canfa, who runs a pollution aid centre in Beijing, told the AFP news agency that it was the first time the "cancer village" phrase had appeared in a ministry document.

Last month - Beijing - and several other cities - were blanketed in smog that soared past levels considered hazardous by the World Health Organisation.

The choking pollution provoked a public outcry and led to a highly charged debate about the costs of the country's rapid economic development, our correspondent says.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21545868

China's 'leftover women', unmarried at 27

China's 'leftover women', unmarried at 27
By Mary Kay Magistad PRI's The World, Beijing

Over 27? Unmarried? Female? In China, you could be labelled a "leftover woman" by the state - but some professional Chinese women these days are happy being single.


Huang Yuanyuan is working late at her job in a Beijing radio newsroom. She's also stressing out about the fact that the next day, she'll turn 29.

"Scary. I'm one year older," she says. "I'm nervous."

Why?

"Because I'm still single. I have no boyfriend. I'm under big pressure to get married."

Huang is a confident, personable young woman with a good salary, her own apartment, an MA from one of China's top universities, and a wealth of friends.

Still, she knows that these days, single, urban, educated women like her in China are called "sheng nu" or "leftover women" - and it stings.

She feels pressure from her friends and her family, and the message gets hammered in by China's state-run media too.

Even the website of the government's supposedly feminist All-China Women's Federation featured articles about "leftover women" - until enough women complained.

State-run media started using the term "sheng nu" in 2007. That same year the government warned that China's gender imbalance - caused by selective abortions because of the one-child policy - was a serious problem.

National Bureau of Statistics data shows there are now about 20 million more men under 30 than women under 30.

"Ever since 2007, the state media have aggressively disseminated this term in surveys, and news reports, and columns, and cartoons and pictures, basically stigmatising educated women over the age of 27 or 30 who are still single," says Leta Hong-Fincher, an American doing a sociology PhD at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Census figures for China show that around one in five women aged 25-29 is unmarried.

The proportion of unmarried men that age is higher - over a third. But that doesn't mean they will easily match up, since Chinese men tend to "marry down", both in terms of age and educational attainment.

"There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women," says Huang Yuanyuan. "The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men. So if you are a leftover woman, you are A-quality."

But it's the "A-quality" of intelligent and educated women that the government most wants to procreate, according to Leta Hong-Fincher. She cites a statement on population put out by the State Council - China's cabinet - in 2007.

"It said China faced unprecedented population pressures, and that the overall quality of the population is too low, so the country has to upgrade the quality of the population."

Some local governments in China have taken to organising matchmaking events, where educated young women can meet eligible bachelors.

The goal is not only to improve the gene pool, believes Fincher, but to get as many men paired off and tied down in marriage as possible - to reduce, as far as possible, the army of restless, single men who could cause social havoc.

But the tendency to look down on women of a certain age who aren't married isn't exclusively an attitude promoted by the government.

Chen (not her real name), who works for an investment consulting company, knows this all too well.

She's single and enjoying life in Beijing, far away from parents in a conservative southern city who, she says, are ashamed that they have an unmarried 38-year-old daughter.

"They don't want to take me with them to gatherings, because they don't want others to know they have a daughter so old but still not married," she says.

"They're afraid their friends and neighbours will regard me as abnormal. And my parents would also feel they were totally losing face, when their friends all have grandkids already."

Chen's parents have tried setting her up on blind dates. At one point her father threatened to disown her if she wasn't married before the end of the year.

Now they say if she's not going to find a man, she should come back home and live with them.

Chen knows what she wants - someone who is "honest and responsible", and good company, or no-one at all.

Meanwhile, the state-run media keep up a barrage of messages aimed at just this sort of "picky" educated woman.

"Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult," reads an excerpt from an article titled, Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy, posted on the website of the All-China Federation of Women in March 2011.

It continues: "These girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realise that as women age, they are worth less and less. So by the time they get their MA or PhD, they are already old - like yellowed pearls."

Ouch.

The All-China Federation of Women used to have more than 15 articles on its website on the subject of "leftover women" - offering tips on how to stand out from a crowd, matchmaking advice, and even a psychological analysis of why a woman would want to marry late.

In the last few months, it has dropped the term from its website, and now refers to "old" unmarried women (which it classes as over 27, or sometimes over 30), but the expression remains widely used elsewhere.

"It's caught on like a fad, but it belittles older, unmarried women - so the media should stop using this term, and should instead respect women's human rights," says Fan Aiguo, secretary general of the China Association of Marriage and Family Studies, an independent group that is part of the All-China Federation of Women.

If it sounds odd to call women "leftover" at 27 or 30, China has a long tradition of women marrying young. But the age of marriage has been rising, as it often does in places where women become more educated.

In 1950, the average age for urban Chinese women to marry for the first time was just under 20. By the 1980s it was 25, and now it's... about 27.

A 29-year-old marketing executive, who uses the English name Elissa, says being single at her age isn't half bad.

"Living alone, I can do whatever I like. I can hang out with my good friends whenever I like," she says. "I love my job, and I can do a lot of stuff all by myself - like reading, like going to theatres.

"I have many single friends around me, so we can spend a lot of time together."

Sure, she says, during a hurried lunch break, her parents would like her to find someone, and she has gone on a few blind dates, for their sake. But, she says, they've been a "disaster".

"I didn't do these things because I wanted to, but because my parents wanted it, and I wanted them to stop worrying. But I don't believe in the blind dates. How can you get to know a person in this way?"

Elissa says she'd love to meet the right man, but it will happen when it happens. Meanwhile, life is good - and she has to get back to work.

Mary Kay Magistad is the East Asia correspondent for The World - a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH

'
Who are you calling "leftover"? Huang Yuanyuan (front) and her colleague Wang Tingting

The best time to get married is

Nine out of 10 men in China think women should get married before 27
Sixty per cent say the ideal time is 25-27
One per cent believe the best age for a woman to get married is 31-35

Source: 2010 National Marriage Survey

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21320560

Flashback: America's 'leftover women' furore


Cover of Newsweek magazine from June 1986, with the headline "The Marriage Crunch"

In the US, women of a certain age might remember a 1986 Newsweek article that said women who weren't married by 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of finding a husband.

It created a wave of anxiety in educated, professional women at the time, and was widely quoted - e.g. in the film Sleepless in Seattle.

Newsweek eventually admitted it was wrong, and a follow-up study found that two-thirds of the single, college-educated American women who were 40 in 1986 had married by 2010.

Putting a face to the conflict in Thailand's south By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok

Putting a face to the conflict in Thailand's south
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok



Nine years ago, a forgotten conflict in the far south of Thailand flared up in the most dramatic way.

Gunmen raided a military arms depot, killing the four guards and making off with around 400 assault rifles.

Three months later waves of insurgents, armed with some of those captured weapons, launched co-ordinated attacks on 11 police posts in an almost suicidal fashion - 107 of them were killed, including 32 who had taken shelter in the historic Krue Se mosque in Pattani.

The insurgency, as it is now known, has killed more than 5,000 people, 550 of them members of the Thai security forces.

Most of the attacks have been on a small scale - drive-by shootings by gunmen on motorbikes, small roadside bombs detonated by mobile phones, gruesome beheadings of traders or rubber-tappers heading to work in the early morning.

The violence has never spread beyond the three-and-a-half provinces next to the Malaysian border, which have predominantly Malay Muslim populations. The almost daily attacks rarely make headlines, and the insurgents, who are mainly young Muslim men, make few statements and do not acknowledge any centralised leadership.

Theirs remains a faceless movement, although they are presumed to be fighting for the goal of an independent Islamic state, inspired by the old Malay sultanate of Pattani, which used to govern this region until it was annexed by Thailand in 1909.

But last week, a failed insurgent assault on a Thai marine base lifted the mask for a moment.

The marines had been warned and met the night-time raiders with booby traps and volleys of gunfire.

Sixteen of the militants were killed, their bodies strewn among the rubber trees. Most of them were well-known by the Thai authorities. Some were local - from the village of Tanyong, just a 10-minute drive from the base.

Many of the people in this region do not speak Thai and do not readily talk to outsiders, especially journalists. There is a climate of fear, created by the years of insurgent attacks and military retaliation.

Proud of death

But the day after the marine base raid, the families of three of the insurgents who lived next door to each other in Tanyong were receiving visitors and speaking.

I met the father and widow of 25-year-old Sa-oudi Alee. Both said they were proud of the way he had died, fighting for his beliefs.

Darunee Alee has been left to bring up their 18-month-old son, but refused to be downcast.

Why did Sa-oudi feel he had to join the insurgents, I asked?

She said that like many of the other insurgents, he became involved after the Tak Bai incident in October 2004, when the Thai army detained dozens of Muslim men and piled them, tied up, on top of each other in trucks before driving them for three hours.

Seventy-eight of them died on the journey from being crushed or suffocated.

Sa-oudi had spent two years in jail and was released last year. His passport showed he had also travelled six times to Malaysia between 2007 and 2008, although his family were unclear what he was doing there.

Darunee's father-in-law, Matohe Alee, has eight surviving children, six of them boys. Would he allow them to follow their brother and join the insurgency?

Marohso Jantarawadee, shown here with his wife, was the leader of the group

He would try to stop them, he said, but they don't always listen.
Murmurs of approval

Marta Majid has three young daughters. She knew her husband, Hasem, was involved with the insurgents. He stayed away from home and the army often searched her house.

But his violent death clearly came as a shock and she looked bewildered. Most of his head was blown off in the attack, and she described having to identify him by the shape of his lower jaw.

Just down the road, a steady stream of neighbours was filing through the brand-new home of Marohso Jantarawadee to pay their respects to his widow, Rusanee.

He was the commander of the operation against the base and one of Thailand's most wanted men, with more than 12 arrest warrants against him and a price on his head.

Through her tears, Rusanee said she felt honoured to have been his wife, although she grieved that their young son would never know his father.

There were murmurs of approval from the visitors in the house. None questioned an insurgent campaign which has targeted teachers, Buddhist monks and anyone working for the Thai state.

Instead they recounted their own narrative, of repeated harassment by the authorities.

On the road outside, a platoon of Thai soldiers patrolled carefully, keeping a lookout for ambushes, prodding gingerly in the thick, tropical vegetation for possible bombs.

They have a good idea who the insurgent families are, but have found it hard to track down leaders in a movement which is so fragmented.

Sometimes suspected insurgents are taken in for questioning.

At times in the past they have been tortured, although the military has been presenting its most conciliatory face after last week's attack, regretting the loss of life and referring to the insurgents as "Thai citizens, like us".

The death of Marohso, though, is clearly seen as a coup.

'Historical mistrust'

But it will not change the course of the conflict, said Don Pathan, a long-time reporter and researcher on Thailand's deep south.

Most of the people here share the same sentiment, the same historical mistrust of the Thai state", he said.

"They often look at these insurgents as local heroes. They may not agree with the brutality but I can assure you they share the same sentiments.

"And a lot of these the insurgents are their kids, their nephews, their neighbours' nephews - they are not going to turn them in."

He warned that although the insurgents use the language of jihad, and some of the methods of other jihadist groups, the conflict is at heart about Malay-Pattani nationalism and not Islam.

There are few signs that this or any other Thai government recognises that.

The current Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra did propose some form of autonomy during her election campaign two years ago, but quickly dropped it in the face of opposition from the military.

The army, the police, local politicians and the insurgents are all believed to make significant money from the rampant smuggling of everything from drugs, to people, to diesel fuel, in this border region.

There seems little incentive to risk bold initiatives that might end the fighting.

And so it grinds on, into its tenth year.

Prince Phillip jokes about large number of FT nurses in UK

Prince Philip jokes about large number of FT nurses in UK
http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/02/21/prince-philip-jokes-about-large-number-of-ft-nurses-in-uk/

With the many Filipino nurses working in UK, even the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, who is the husband of Queen Elizabeth, was prompted to joke that Philippines must be “half empty”.

He made the remark during a visit to Luton and Dunstable Hospital. The Duke met a Filipino nurse and told her jokingly, “The Philippines must be half empty – you’re all here running the NHS.”

The Filipino nurse laughed.

A spokesperson for the hospital said the visit of the duke had been “hugely motivational”.

However, the hospital spokesperson would not comment on the duke’s conversation with the nurse but said the hospital had not held a recent recruiting campaign in the Philippines.

“Luton is a very cosmopolitan town and the working staff at Luton and Dunstable Hospital reflects that,” the spokesperson said.

16,184 (2.4%) of the 670,000 nurses currently in the UK are from the Philippines.

Responding to Tuesday’s visit to Luton, Buckingham Palace said it would not comment on a private conversation.

During the previous Labour govt under Gordon Brown, immigration rules were relaxed, resulting in a surge of immigration into UK. UK’s immigrant population jumped by 3 million in the 10 years from 2001 to 2011, with 1 in 8 (about 13%) residents now are foreign-born [Link].

Last month, at the Fabian Society, UK Labour party chief, Ed Miliband admitted the last Labour government (then under Gordon Brown) did not do enough for ordinary people, becoming distant on issues such as immigration.

As a result, the Labour government lost heavily in the last UK General Election in 2010. The Labour party lost 91 parliamentary seats from 349 seats (53.7%) to 258 (39.7%). It lost control of the majority in parliament, giving way to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to form the current coalition govt in UK. Gordon Brown stepped down as the Labour party chief and Ed Miliband succeeded him.

Miliband is distancing himself from his mentor, Gordon Brown, who famously described a Rochdale voter as a “bigoted woman” after she raised concerns with Brown, then PM, about immigration during the election.

Miliband said, “I bow to nobody in my celebration of the multi-ethnic, diverse nature of Britain. But high levels of migration were having huge effects on the lives of people in Britain – and too often those in power seemed not to accept this. The fact that they didn’t, explains partly why people turned against us in the last general election.”

In another public speech in Jun last year, Miliband also conceded that his party had “got things wrong” on immigration.

He said that people who worry about immigration should not be characterised as bigots – a reference to the same famous incident when his predecessor Gordon Brown, described the Rochdale voter as a “bigoted woman”.

Miliband said, “Worrying about immigration, talking about immigration, thinking about immigration, does not make them bigots. Not in any way.”