Ripple effect of US economic woes

How the current financial crisis developed?

>> Cheap money led to low interest rates, which encouraged sub-prime mortgages and consumer debt.

>> Sub-prime loans were packaged with lower-risk “normal” mortgages into mortgage-backed securities.

>> Such securities became highly desirable in investment portfolios

>> But market uncertainty has led to a loss of confidence in the value of such securities.

>> A plunge in their value has cascaded through other financial instruments like derivatives.

>> Financial institutions which insure such securities – moniline insurers – have also been affected.

>> The potential ripple effect of monoline insurers defaulting is particularly great, since they insure all bonds, not just sub-primes.

>> The ensuing credit crunch affects businesses and households – the “real economy”

TST, Mar 19 2008’s review

Australia set to revamp education system

New national curriculum focusing on science, history and English to roll out in 2011

A REVAMP of education in Australia will see the launch of a new national curriculum in schools, with the government drawing on the success of systems in other countries, including Singapore.

At present, lessons in Australia’s schools are operated on a state-by-state basis, with each state deciding on its own programme. The result has been as many as 18 different history and English courses being offered nationwide.

The national curriculum, due to be introduced in 2011, will make the same courses available in every Australian school. It will focus on the sciences, history and English, and will draw on the success of education systems overseas.

Education chiefs are said to be particularly impressed with Singapore’s emphasis on science and mathematics and plan  to pursue a similar policy in Australia. They are also believed to be looking at teaching materials from China, South Korea and Finland.

The Labor government’s proposed national curriculum follows years of national debate on the issue and growing concern that the state education authorities have – from an ideological viewpoint – hijacked school syllabuses.

Critics claims this has not only led to the unnecessary and costly duplication of courses, but to a rise in the so-called “post-modern” approach to education, in which examinations based on popular culture are given as much emphasis as more formal subjects.

Under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plans the focus will be on the sciences, history and English for all Australian pupils from kindergarten to the age of 18.

In maths and science, younger primary students will be required to understand multiplication tables and fractions, and scientific concepts such as gravity. This means they will have to start learning such topics at a younger age. In English, meanwhile, older primary students should have a command of basic grammar and spelling before heading off the secondary school.

It is a measure of past failures in these areas that has made it necessary for the government to list such goals.

Fundamental to this latest education initiative is the desire to save money and to make life easier for the 80,000 school age children who move to other states each years, often because their parents find work elsewhere.

A national curriculum will mean that a pupil moving between Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria will not be disadvantaged, Mr Rudd said.

The newly-appointed chairman of the Government’s National Curriculum Board, Professor Barry Mc Gaw, is known to be concerned about a slide in maths and reading standards among young Australians and wants greater emphasis placed on boosting the skills of high-performing students

 In a recent interview, he said there was too much concentration on improving the results of students at the bottom end of the performance scale and not enough on those at the top.

“It’s perfectly true to say that we should be worrying about kids who don’t get the basic skills,” he told the Melbourne Age. “But if we talk as though that’s the only problem, I think we begin to lose focus on the development of really high-level skills – they are the skills on which further learning depends,” he added.

he will spend the next three years determining what constitutes world class curriculums, before launching the Australian model.

TST, Mar 19 2008, World

Deterring Terror

US using a combination of tactics, including a psy-war in cyberspace, quiet diplomacy and local vigilance.    

In the days immediately after the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, members of US President George W. Bush’s war Cabinet declared that it would be impossible to deter the most fervent extremists from carrying out deadly terrorist missions. 

Since then, however, administrations, military and intelligence officials have begun to change their view.

After piercing together a more nuanced portrait of terrorist organisations, they say there is reason to believe that a combination of efforts could in fact establish something akin to the posture of deterrence, the strategy that helped protect the United States from a Soviet nuclear attack during the Cold War. 

As part of this strategy, their effort has been to mute Al-Qaeda’s message, turn the jihadi movement’s own weaknesses against it and illuminate Al-Qaeda’s errors whenever possible. 

A primary focus has become cyberspace, which is the global safe haven of terrorist networks.

To counter efforts by o to plot attacks, raise money and recruit new members on the Internet, the government has mounted a secret campaign to plant bogus e-mail messages and website postings, with the intent to sow confusion, dissent and distrust among militant organisations, officials confirm.

At the same time, American diplomats are working quietly behind the scenes with Middle Eastern partners to amplify the speeches and writings of prominent Islamics clerics who are renouncing terrorist violence.

At the local level, the authorities are experimenting with new ways to keep potential terrorists off guard.

In New York City, as many as 100 police officers in squad cars from every precinct converge twice daily at randomly selected times and at randomly selected sites, like Times Square or the financial district, to rehearse their response to a terrorist attack. 

City police officials say the operations are believed to be a crucial tactic to keep extremists guessing as to when and where a large police presence may materialise at any hour.     

“What we’ve developed since 9/11, in six or seven years, is a better understanding of the support that is necessary for terrorists, the network which provides that support, whether it’s financial or material or expertise,” said Mr Michael Leiter, acting director of the National Counter-terrorism Centre.”

“We’ve now begun to develop more sophisticated thoughts about deterrence, looking at each one of those individually,” Mr Leiter said in an interview. 

“Terrorists don’t operate in a vacuum.”

For obvious reasons, it is harder to deter terrorists than it was to deter a Soviet attack.

Terrorists hold no obvious targets for American retaliation as Soviet cities, factories, military bases and silos were under the Cold War deterrence doctrine.

So American officials have spent the last several years trying to identify other types of “territory” that extremists hold dear, and they say they believe that one important aspect may be the terrorists’ reputation and credibility with Muslims.    

In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, specially trained teams have recovered computer hard drives used by terrorists and are turning the terrorists’ tools against them.

“If you can learn something about whatever is on those hard drives, whatever that information might be, you could instil doubt on their part by just counter-messaging whatever it is they said they wanted to do or planned to do,” said Brigadier-General Mark Schissler, director of cyber-operations for the Air Force.

It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify – but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world.

Senior Bush administration officials point to promising developments.

Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorised jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraw to fight the American-led forces.

Such dissent are serving to widen rifts between Al-Qauea leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say.

TST, Mar 19 2008, World

Is your doctor offering to help you look : Slimmer? Younger? Fair-skinned?

The Health Ministry says: Be careful of unproven ‘non-mainstream’ treatments.

It is called “aesthetic medicine” and aims to help people fix their real or imagined flaws – sagging skin, wringkles and more.

A health Ministry check found more than half Singapore’s general practitioners offering a variety of these treatments. Patients have been lapping them up, even if it means forking out hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Now the ministry has identified several treatments patients should be careful with, including the three below.

a) Mesotherapy – A non-surgical procedure involving tiny injections to break down fat. It claimes to dissolve the fat, carrying it through the blood-stream to be expelled from the body.

b) Skin whitening injections - Injections aimed at reducing blemishes like ache scars, wrinkles, and chicken pox marks.

c) Gwoth harmone treatments – It replaces testosterone using either injections or creams applied to the skin. Human growth hormones are then delivered through micro-injections.

It advises patients to ask their doctors for evidence that these treatments work and to check if there are any side effects.

Some countries do not allow some of the treatments available here.

The Singapore Medical Council is investigating six doctors, including a specialist, over aesthetic treatments. KK women’s and Children’s Hospital said it dropped a plan to offer the fat-busting mesotherapy procedure at its aesthetic centre.

Department head Vincent Yeow, a pleastic surgeon, said: “We realised there was no scientific basis and teh results are not consistent. 

TST, Mar 19 2008

Tolerance for religious diversity

…….

 We take the religious diversity of Singapore for granted. We are completely mixed in our neighbourhoods, in school and the workplace. It is not uncommon for temples, mosques and churches to be located side by side. Are there problem?

Yes, of course – all the time. But we solve them in a practical way so that everyone has his own space to worship. Everyone has to compromise a little.

But we must not assume that the religious harmony we enjoy is a natural state of affairs. In many parts of the world, religious strife tears countries apart. Such conflicts can be easily occur in Singapore too if we are not careful. To keep the peace, we must keep working at it both top-down and bottom-up.

The Government’s role is absolutely important. Whatever our individual beliefs, we must always make sure that the state is secular, guaranteeing the freedom of all religiouns. The laws we enact must take into account the interest of Singaporeans as a whole and not just those of a particular religious group. Without the Government of Singapore acting fairly – the religious matters – and religious harmoney we often take for granted here would not be possible.

From time to time, the Government must act to defuse conflicts. For example, inflammatory films or publication of Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad here in Singapore. When pictures of Jesus Christ were put on the floor of MRT stations as advertisements for the movie Da Vinci Code, LTA had to step in even though the film itself was not banned. Some years ago, Taoist joss sticks grew bigger and bigger until the Government intervened.

While individual Singaporeans might complain about particular actions taken by the Government, on that whole, they know that the Government tries to be fair and even-handed.

Religious leaders also play a critical role. Whenever possible, the Government consults religious leaders so that whatever action that has to be taken is reasonable and not perceived as arbitrary or high-handed. Religious leaders sit on the Presidential Council of Minority Rights and on the Presidential Council for Religious Harmony. Whenever conflicts arise, their views are sought.

Years ago, Muslim religious leaders agreed with MM Lee Kuan Yew to lower the volume of loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer by having the calls broadcast on Malay radio station instead.

Islam and Christianity

The 10 religious represented in the nter-Religious Organisation are Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, the Ba’hai faith and Jainism. Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and the Ba’hai faith are relatively inclusive in their beliefs. Sikhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Jainism are relatively small communities which do not seek to proselytise.

In contrast, Islam and Christianity are relatively exclusive and proselytising. That presents a special challenge not only to Singapore but to many other countries as well.

The interaction between Islam and Christianity over the centuries has been a troubled and difficult one. Memories of the crusades still run deep. Terrorism has complicated matters further. Sept 11 forced religious leaders on both sides to look hard at each other’s positions, wondering whether any reconciliation is possible. In Singapore, Sept 11 and the discovery of the Jemaah Islamiah network encouraged Muslim and Christian leaders to reach out to each other.

We are beginning to see Muslim and Christian leaders reaching out to each other on the global stage. In October last year, more than 100 senior Muslim leaders from around the world, Sunni and Shi’ite, sent an extraordinary letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders proposing theological similarities as a basis for peace and understanding.

Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams  of Canterbury immediately “welcomed the letter”. The Vatican responded positively too and less than two weeks ago, following discussions between senior catholic and Muslim figures in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI gave his approval to the creation of a permanent Catholic-Muslim interfaith forum that will hold its inaugural meeting this November in Rome.

As proposed by Muslim leaders, the theme of the first meeting, whic hthe Pope will attend, is Love of God, Love of Neighbour. The second meeting will be held in a Muslim country in 2010. Such outreach among religious groups is very necessary.

Instructing the young to be tolerant of diversity is crucial. Religious differences are deep differences; they are not superficial and cannot be easily beidged. Any religious group when threatened can react violently. If we do not tolerate diversity in our daily lives in Singapore, our social fabric will be torn apart.\

The Straits Times, Mar 18 2009’s review