News Stories

[RRW]

(CNN) -- Two fifth-grade boys armed with a stolen semi-automatic gun, ammunition clip and knife plotted to kill a classmate in Washington state but were thwarted when another student informed a school employee, authorities said Thursday.
The two boys, who told police they considered the girl rude and annoying, won't be tried as adults and will be in court next Wednesday for a capacity hearing, said Tim Rasmussen, the Stevens County prosecuting attorney.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/14/ju...l-murder-plot/

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by MrTerrorist

Enough about guns. Here's something news worthy.

Meteor fall 'injures hundreds' in central Russia

i just recently re-watch Asteroids a 1997 tv movie.

might be a good time to put together a disaster pack

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by RRW

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/14/ju...l-murder-plot/

Interesting how "rude and annoying" is considered a good enough reason to murder. Parents?

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Interesting how "rude and annoying" is considered a good enough reason to murder. Parents?

That or sociopathy. Sometimes kids are born evil.

Either way I'm a little more worried about the Washington state law thing. I get the intent of such statutes; most of the cases go the other way -- children and teenagers cruelly put in harmful environments when they're just first-time offenders of minor crimes, ending up worse than they started -- but what about these kinds of exceptions? What to do when you have little Hitler caught and changing the law just for him will get thousands into trouble?

[ganbaru]

At Bolshoi, show goes on, month after acid horror
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91D1D020130214

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Irenicus

That or sociopathy. Sometimes kids are born evil.

Eh, kids don't have a developed sense of morality or empathy. To an extent all kids are a bit sociopathic.

Of course, there are some kids that don't have the seeds that flower into a full sense of morality past puberty.

[NoemiChan]

Malaysian Arm Forces Surrounds 100 rebels from Philippines

[ganbaru]

White House drafts backup immigration plan, Republicans balk
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91G01O20130217

Youth turning their backs on "Singapore Dream"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91H01J20130218

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Youth turning their backs on "Singapore Dream"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91H01J20130218

There never was a dream in the first place....just a massive dick waving competition enforced on others by those with stale lives

[RRW]

Mary and Rick Todd were anxious about entering the apartment where their oldest son had lived and died. Late last June the couple had flown from Montana to Denver to Los Angeles to a colonial-era house in the Chinatown district of Singapore to try to make sense of an unthinkable loss: Shane Todd, a young engineer who had just wrapped up an 18-month stint with a government research institute known as IME, was dead – an apparent suicide, according to the Singapore police. Mrs Todd felt her heart pounding as she climbed the narrow staircase to his apartment and thought about what the police had told her a day earlier.
Shane had died a week before he was to return to the US. The police said he had drilled holes into his bathroom wall, bolted in a pulley, then slipped a black strap through the pulley and wrapped it around the toilet several times. He then tethered the strap to his neck and jumped from a chair. Shane, 6ft 1in and nearly 200lb, hanged himself from the bathroom door, the autopsy report said.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/afbddb44-7...#axzz2L7g1e94S

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by RRW

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/afbddb44-7...#axzz2L7g1e94S

You'd think that they would at least be competent enough to at least try to stage the scene to fit their report

[SaintessHeart]

Someone from the ISD whacked him? Or the CIA/Chinese intelligence?

That "military application" thing is suspicious. Either Shane was undercover for the CIA to take evidence of the GaN or any military involvement between China and Singapore, or he was silenced because they don't want him to bring this sensitive knowledge back to the US intelligence agencies.

I have always been suspicious at those China PRs serving in our military in certain posts, especially officers. The running joke amongst locals is that we try to memorise their faces and names so we know who to shoot first when SHTF.

EDIT : After more readings on GaN research, I have come to believe that many powers already have some prototype application of the substance in military gear. The research papers should have been very basic and be of little or no use to either China and US, which already has enough data to analyse on their plate. And given how the SPF had made rollover statements alongside IME, plus that the hard disk has been accessed the day before his parents visited, I hazard guess that such an operation is local because with siginificantly larger agency experiences, neither China nor US could have done such a slipshod work. Even special operators have been trained to do IMMEDIATE site exploitation upon completion of an operation, but the hard drive and data seem to have been taken the day before his parents visited.

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by GenjiChan

Malaysian Arm Forces Surrounds 100 rebels from Philippines

We won’t leave Sabah, says Sultan Kiram of Jolo

“Why should we leave our own home? In fact they (the Malaysians) are paying rent (to us),” he told reporters in Manila.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Someone from the ISD whacked him? Or the CIA/Chinese intelligence?

That "military application" thing is suspicious. Either Shane was undercover for the CIA to take evidence of the GaN or any military involvement between China and Singapore, or he was silenced because they don't want him to bring this sensitive knowledge back to the US intelligence agencies.

I have always been suspicious at those China PRs serving in our military in certain posts, especially officers. The running joke amongst locals is that we try to memorise their faces and names so we know who to shoot first when SHTF.

EDIT : After more readings on GaN research, I have come to believe that many powers already have some prototype application of the substance in military gear. The research papers should have been very basic and be of little or no use to either China and US, which already has enough data to analyse on their plate. And given how the SPF had made rollover statements alongside IME, plus that the hard disk has been accessed the day before his parents visited, I hazard guess that such an operation is local because with siginificantly larger agency experiences, neither China nor US could have done such a slipshod work. Even special operators have been trained to do IMMEDIATE site exploitation upon completion of an operation, but the hard drive and data seem to have been taken the day before his parents visited.

Shouldn't it be clear now? The kiling is most likely business related...some china prince somewhere whether a rival or huawei is pissed his business plan is threatened by the guy's resignation.

If it's indeed SG's dark side that made the hit...well it was crappy indeed. And SG stands to gain nothing by killing an American

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

Shouldn't it be clear now? The kiling is most likely business related...some china prince somewhere whether a rival or huawei is pissed his business plan is threatened by the guy's resignation.

If it's indeed SG's dark side that made the hit...well it was crappy indeed. And SG stands to gain nothing by killing an American

Well we caught 2 Russian KGB "flippers", though I suspect that the Americans or the British tossed us a hand. Similarly during the arrest of MSK, I remember reading about how the CIA conveniently poked us about finding a map of our MRT lines in Iraq/Afghanistan.

The operation, from what I have read at FT, looks seriously slipshod. A hit-and-run using a J-plate, or a alley-smackdown at Shanghai Dolly could have been much easier since both can be much easily written off as a diss-attack. But I am guessing that they needed whatever is on his laptop, and they forgot the hard disk.

Secondly, it must have been done by 2 people, probably friends or colleagues. I am suspecting that his girlfriend is probably involved and someone strangled him from behind - one way to tell is to see the markings of the rope on his neck. At 2.1m and 90kg, he is pretty big sized and a tough takedown, so if he hung himself the rope markings on the side of his neck should be pointing upwards instead of downwards, and the markings should encompass only the front half of the neck with slight bruises. But with bruises on his arms, he probably fought someone which is around his size.

Thirdly, the suicide method is too complex. He could have easily ingested an entire box of panadol or antidepressants and down half a bottle of cough syrup, and he should die of a heart failure in around 24 hours, but having to drill holes to hang himself? It is not subtle enough although tracks are covered, and with that hard disk, the methodology of site exploitation is a whole crapload worse than what was trained to soldiers in the SAF.

The SPF probably had a gag order from the ISD, and this run is done by amateurs, not by real professionals who practiced dozens of time around the world. I suspect our own government had a hand but seriously, there isn't enough proof to lift the carpet and look at the cinderblock.

[Cosmic Eagle]

The suicide setup is seriously a dead give away...no one would do that unless he wanted to raise attention or is really naive.

That's why I said business related...the killers were amateurs in the pay of a corporation. That's quite probable. Just that the corporation is the chinese or local equivalent of a big Zaibatsu oligarch

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Youth turning their backs on "Singapore Dream"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91H01J20130218

It's a familiar tale based on a familiar narrative. There is no doubt that there is plenty of disillusionment among Singaporeans — especially in the aftermath of what I consider a poorly defined, poorly researched and poorly presented Population White Paper — with the public outcry culminating in the largest protest in Singapore in many years over the weekend.

The anger is justified, and there's no getting away from it. I share Bertha Henson's cynical disappointment in finding the story of the Hong Lim protest buried in page four of the Sunday edition of The Straits Times, instead of being reported on the front page, where it should have belonged. Instead, we had a lame story about Girl Guides by the Bay on the cover.

Be that as it may, my deeper concern is that amid the outburst, Singaporeans are losing sight of our real problems. I strongly agree that immigration cannot be the solution to our long-term demographic and economic problems but, at the same time, I am very leery of suggestions that economic growth is not important for Singapore.

People who claim that have very little idea of just what it means to allow the economy to shrink — we will go down a slippery slope of decline that will be very difficult to recover from, if Japan's example is anything to go by.

A top-heavy economy like Singapore's, limited by a very tiny resource base, has to keep spinning in order to stay upright. We have ceased to be cost-competitive since the late 1990s, and can therefore compete only on the basis of prospects. Once we lose the prospect of growth, corporations will flee, and businesses will start failing. We'd be staring structural recession in the eye if we allow the spinning top to topple.

In short, we cannot afford to be cavalier about economic growth. The question isn't whether we should forgo growth to get the good things in life. It's the other way round: how good can we make our country without forsaking economic growth altogether.

And the hard truth is no one has a politically and economically sound solution to this problem in the short term. Sure, we need to achieve growth through productivity gains. That's easy to say, but how do we actually achieve that at a time when Singaporeans, especially the bottom 20 per cent income earners, simply want more pay? The two objectives are at odds with one another. What opposition speakers haven't dwelt on is the price of the economic restructuring they are clamouring for — we can try to force businesses to upgrade into capital-intensive production, but as the experience of the United States shows, that will lead to a wrenching period of structural unemployment for a generation of low-skilled Singaporean workers made redundant.

Are we prepared to pay that short- to medium-term price? For someone like me, with savings and transferable skills to bank on, I could easily say, sure, let's go ahead. Meanwhile, for the people at the bottom, I'd be effectively saying, "Too bad dudes, shape up or ship out."

In principle, it isn't a bad thing to allow for more creative destruction in our economy. In fact, I would wholly recommend it, especially in my industry, which is far too coddled by a cosy Government-mandated duopoly. What I think many opposition supporters haven't fully considered is the social price we will have to pay in the process. There is no free lunch, and every decision will come with a cost. The grave mistake is in thinking there is a pain-free alternative to the Government's plans, however flawed they may be.

Basically, we're caught between a rock and a hard place. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Originally Posted by RRW

Death in Singapore

As for this story, I can say only that there is far too much we don't know for anyone to make reasonable guesses about what did or did not happen. The article reads a bit too much like a spy thriller for my liking, and my first instinct is to cry "bullshit", but, again, given how little we actually know, I can't say that with any confidence.

As for the insinuations of police incompetence, given recent developments, it's sad that I can't dismiss it outright either.

[Cosmic Eagle]

They are using the wrong policy for economic growth

I don't see any real capital gains like new production centers and shit or a larger percentage of the population getting into the unis or increased wages or a more diverse scientific field apart from the traditional petrochemical and electronics.

Everything these days is focused on finance and services...where's the real capital in that. Also, the thing about a large percentage of the immigrants being domestic helpers and construction workers reveals just how reliant the people here are on needing to be served as well as the terrible state of the construction sector in general. A plant (as in the earthmoving equipment) operator elsewhere earns loads more than a builder operating a plant here...=.=

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

It's a familiar tale based on a familiar narrative. There is no doubt that there is plenty of disillusionment among Singaporeans — especially in the aftermath of what I consider a poorly defined, poorly researched and poorly presented Population White Paper — with the public outcry culminating in the largest protest in Singapore in many years over the weekend.

The anger is justified, and there's no getting away from it. I share Bertha Henson's cynical disappointment in finding the story of the Hong Lim protest buried in page four of the Sunday edition of The Straits Times, instead of being reported on the front page, where it should have belonged. Instead, we had a lame story about Girl Guides by the Bay on the cover.

Be that as it may, my deeper concern is that amid the outburst, Singaporeans are losing sight of our real problems. I strongly agree that immigration cannot be the solution to our long-term demographic and economic problems but, at the same time, I am very leery of suggestions that economic growth is not important for Singapore.

People who claim that have very little idea of just what it means to allow the economy to shrink — we will go down a slippery slope of decline that will be very difficult to recover from, if Japan's example is anything to go by.

A top-heavy economy like Singapore's, limited by a very tiny resource base, has to keep spinning in order to stay upright. We have ceased to be cost-competitive since the late 1990s, and can therefore compete only on the basis of prospects. Once we lose the prospect of growth, corporations will flee, and businesses will start failing. We'd be staring structural recession in the eye if we allow the spinning top to topple.

In short, we cannot afford to be cavalier about economic growth. The question isn't whether we should forgo growth to get the good things in life. It's the other way round: how good can we make our country without forsaking economic growth altogether.

And the hard truth is no one has a politically and economically sound solution to this problem in the short term. Sure, we need to achieve growth through productivity gains. That's easy to say, but how do we actually achieve that at a time when Singaporeans, especially the bottom 20 per cent income earners, simply want more pay? The two objectives are at odds with one another. What opposition speakers haven't dwelt on is the price of the economic restructuring they are clamouring for — we can try to force businesses to upgrade into capital-intensive production, but as the experience of the United States shows, that will lead to a wrenching period of structural unemployment for a generation of low-skilled Singaporean workers made redundant.

Are we prepared to pay that short- to medium-term price? For someone like me, with savings and transferable skills to bank on, I could easily say, sure, let's go ahead. Meanwhile, for the people at the bottom, I'd be effectively saying, "Too bad dudes, shape up or ship out."

In principle, it isn't a bad thing to allow for more creative destruction in our economy. In fact, I would wholly recommend it, especially in my industry, which is far too coddled by a cosy Government-mandated duopoly. What I think many opposition supporters haven't fully considered is the social price we will have to pay in the process. There is no free lunch, and every decision will come with a cost. The grave mistake is in thinking there is pain-free alternative to the Government's heavily flawed plans.

Basically, we're caught between a rock and a hard place. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't.

You are a local journalist! You are not supposed to publish anything against the government and their methods of running the society! Report him for sedition!

The problem is about the "transferable skills" part. Our education system is too oriented towards specialisation, meaning which the lower end of YOUR generation, who are not as good in academics, will be literally phased like a plasma ball hitting a rabbit. Mine is still okay, but with the excessive competition, wage depression, rising costs of living, and age catching up, they can't simply do that courier/warehouse work they have done for the past 20 years since dropping out of school.

I currently hold 2 jobs, and I have to save up to finish my university because the bank refuses to lend. My superiors are foreigners sending money out of the country and looking for some reason related to "productivity" to cut our wages when it is just gross mismanagement and lack of creative strategies during the downward movement of a business cycle. And with the lack of SMEs to buy, they just dug themselves a hole by entering a market called Singapore.

Time is running out with all those cinderblocks being swept under the carpet. We risk either a contraction or a civil war - I support a civil war so at least I can vent my discontent by shooting at random people. *sarcastic*

As for this story, I can say only that there is far too much we don't know for anyone to make reasonable guesses about what did or did not happen. The article reads a bit too much like a spy thriller for my liking, and my first instinct is to cry "bullshit", but, again, given how little we actually know, I can't say that with confidence either.

As for the insinuations about police incompetence, given recent developments, it's sad that I can't rule it out right away either.

I have actually little confidence in our police force of today, it is not as strong and dedicated as before with a bunch of people signing on just for that iron rice bowl when they get filtered out by our ludicrous standards of our education system.

My friend was robbed outside a disco once and that bugger was one hell of a runner, we gave chase but lost him, and the police took half-an-hour to arrive. All they do is record a statement then replied with a "Sorry but we have to close this case" in less than a week.

Coupled with the lack of riot police at the recent protest (I estimated only one platoon of PTT riot police on standby based on pictures a friend took), I think we can say that the SPF, has in fact, become an old tiger. Looks fierce, experienced fighter, but not as mean as before.

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

They are using the wrong policy for economic growth

I don't see any real capital gains like new production centers and shit or a larger percentage of the population getting into the unis or increased wages or a more diverse scientific field apart from the traditional petrochemical and electronics.

Everything these days is focused on finance and services...where's the real capital in that. Also, the thing about a large percentage of the immigrants being domestic helpers and construction workers reveals just how reliant the people here are on needing to be served as well as the terrible state of the construction sector in general. A plant (as in the earthmoving equipment) operator elsewhere earns loads more than a builder operating a plant here...=.=

The problem with finance and services from a macroeconomic POV, according to self-employed traders/investors, is that it creates no material value, it is simply a process of wealth transfer. Wealth as it is defined in material goods and services, money is simply a medium for it to change hands upon.

As for the construction sector, it has always been a big problem because nobody in the equation wants to lose money building homes. The government, technically, lost billions they never got back since constructing the first flats at Queenstown post Bukit Ho Swee. If the HDB is a private organisation, it would be as deep in debt as Bear Stearns.

They need to wise up and tell themselves that they can never get that money back, and move on.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

You are a local journalist! You are not supposed to publish anything against the government and their methods of running the society! Report him for sedition!

The problem is about the "transferable skills" part. Our education system is too oriented towards specialisation, meaning which the lower end of YOUR generation, who are not as good in academics, will be literally phased like a plasma ball hitting a rabbit. Mine is still okay, but with the excessive competition, wage depression and rising costs of living, we can barely afford to even feed our parents, or to sustain on just 1 job.

I currently hold 2 jobs, and I have to save up to finish my university because the bank refuses to lend. My superiors are foreigners sending money out of the country and looking for some reason related to "productivity" to cut our wages when it is just gross mismanagement and lack of creative strategies during the downward movement of a business cycle.

Time is running out with all those cinderblocks being swept under the carpet. We risk either a contraction or a civil war - I support a civil war so at least I can vent by discontent by shooting at random people. *sarcastic*

Indeed...economic growth as used by the high lords is the biggest joke ever. So out of sync with reality. Do you see any capital at all? It seems like the corporations here run on air.

Japan has a crappy economy but at least their wages are good for some reason