A woman poses to have her photograph taken in the graffiti and street art covered designated skate area on the South Bank in London on July 7, 2010. (AFP photo)

In "The FlipSide", local blogger Belmont Lay lets loose on local politics, culture and society. To be taken with a pinch of salt and parental permission is advised. In this post, he talks about how government-endorsed graffiti only makes the authorities look bad.

In case you haven't heard, there will be a new programme come September to teach the public how to create graffiti art in public places approved by the authorities.

This is very likely the government's attempt to make the public think that it can be cool, funky and forward-looking for endorsing street art. Technically, it's a project of the Singapore Street Festival, which is supported by the National Youth Council.

This new programme was even announced to coincide with the court case where the Sticker Lady and her accomplice pleaded guilty to several counts of mischief for illegally spray painting and pasting stickers on public property.

So the most important question then: what are the real effects of such

Click to explore. (CBC)

Reports of brutal rapes of foreign tourists in India and Brazil in recent months have rocked the international travel industry.

According to data cited by The Atlantic, visitors to India have dropped 25 percent since December's fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a bus in the capital of New Delhi, and 35 percent among female travelers. And that data was compiled before March 16, when a Swiss woman who was touring the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh by bicycle with her husband was gang-raped by a group of eight men.

In Madhya Pradesh, there are nine reported rapes every day, according to the Washington Post.

In Brazil, where an American tourist was raped by three men over the course of six hours on Monday, reports of rapes have risen 150 percent since 2009, The Atlantic reported.

Not surprisingly, Brazil and India are among the most dangerous places to travel, according to an interactive map produced by Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs.

But they're not the most dangerous: North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Mali, Niger, Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Somalia are countries where would-be tourists are warned to "avoid all travel."

For other countries, like Libya, visitors are cautioned to "avoid non-essential travel."

The color-coded danger map also includes region- and time-specific warnings. In Pakistan, tourists are told to avoid:

Digital reconstruction of

It sounds like something out of a horror movie. But Italian scientists say that the “Gate to Hell” is the real deal—poisonous vapors and all.

The announcement of the finding of the ruins of Pluto’s Gate (Plutonium in Latin) at an archeology conference in Turkey last month, was recently reported by Discovery News. Francesco D'Andria, professor of classic archaeology at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy, who has been excavating the ancient Greco-Roman World Heritage Site of Hierapolis for years, led the research team.

D’Andria told Discovery News he used ancient mythology as his guide to locate the legendary portal to the underworld. “We found the Plutonium by reconstructing the route of a thermal spring. Indeed, Pamukkale' springs, which produce the famous white travertine terraces originate from this cave.”

Scribes like Cicero and the Greek geographer Strabo mentioned the gate to hell as located at the ancient site in Turkey, noted Discovery, but nobody had been able to find

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Public-listed media company Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has agreed to purchase online car portal sgCarMart (SGCM) in a deal that could be worth up to S$60 million.

Both The Straits Times and The Business Times reported on Tuesday that the deal includes SGCM’s online vehicle classified site, car auction platform, online marketing site as well as a service provider for car loans, insurance and settlement services.

The site was founded in 2004 by friends Vincent Tan, Tan Jin-glun and Seah Hon Hui, when they were engineering students at the National University of Singapore. They are now all 32 years old.

Originally a car classifieds service, sgCarMart now also provides car loans, insurance and valuation services.

According to the site, it has about 10,000 car listings and attracts over 2.2 million visitors every month.

SPH said the final price is dependent on performance targets and will be paid in cash.

In an interview with The Straits Times, Mr Vincent Tan said he believed that the

Two of mrbrown's children - Joy and Isaac

The wife and I are in Bali as I write this, taking a little break from work. We do this once a year on average, without the kids. While we still take the kids to short holidays during their school holidays, we make the time to be with each other as husband and wife too.

The wife has learned to let go of her children. She used to angst over our kid-less trips, and miss the kids a lot. But now, she is much better at enjoying herself without feeling guilty. And the kids have also learned to be totally cool without their parents for a few days, enjoying the company of our capable helper and my mom. Even their uncles, my brothers, chip in to take my kids out for a movie or a trip to the Science Centre, in our absence.

I find children, and parents, rather clingy these days. Maybe in our affluence, we forget that it is totally fine to let kids develop some resilience.

One neighbour, a psychologist whom we have never met, once approached my mother at the void deck and told her, "I have been

If you travel often or are fond of consuming shellfish, protect yourself by getting hepatitis A vaccinated. (ThinkStock photo)

Your chances of getting infected by the hepatitis A virus increase if you travel often and consume plenty of raw or partially cooked shellfish. But you don’t have to quell your wanderlust or your love of seafood if you take some basic precautions against hepatitis A infection.

“Plan to have hepatitis A vaccination one to two weeks before travelling, particularly if you are visiting places where sanitary conditions and hygienic practices are poor,” says Dr Limin Wijaya, Consultant at Singapore General Hospital’s Travel Clinic.

A booster shot (given six months later) could give you immunity for another 20 years.

Maintaining good personal hygiene, such as washing your hands after visiting the toilet, and avoiding raw foods and unbottled water when you are overseas, are among other precautions you can take to prevent an hepatitis A infection.

Related video: Health tips when travelling overseas

Most reported cases of hepatitis A infection acquired in Singapore are due to eating

Through my work, I get to spend a lot of time with students.

As you’d expect, the education system has a huge impact on students’ development. I’m intrigued at how the system shapes them, both positively and negatively.

I’ve observed that there’s a deep disconnect between what students learn in school and what actually goes on in the “real world”.

Reflecting on my own journey through the education system (I spent 12 years in the Singapore system and four years in the US one), I realize there are many things you’ll need to unlearn from your schooling experience if you want to both survive and thrive later on.

How to prepare for long-term success

Yes, we need education reform. More than that, we need an education revolution. But while we push to make this revolution happen, it isn’t the focus of this article.

This article is about generating awareness and inspiring action—at an individual level—about what we need to unlearn from school.

This will prepare us for long-lasting success in

By Natasha Goh for Ascendant Assets Pte Ltd

The name “Iskandar” is on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days, and it is impossible to perform one's duty as a property consultant in Singapore without at least rudimentary knowledge of neighbouring Malaysia’s rapidly developing special economic zone.

Thrice the size of Singapore, Iskandar is set to be a modern metropolis buzzing with economic activity, a conglomeration of various exciting growth sectors, including nine key economic clusters: financial advisory and consulting, creative industries, logistics, leisure and tourism, education, health care, electrical and electronics, petrochemical and oleo-chemical, food and agro-processing. What really piqued my interest was the chief executive of Iskandar, Ismail Ibrahim’s clearly articulated intent to make Iskandar Malaysia “a place to invest, work, live and play.”

The success of Iskandar will ultimately pivot on this – whether they are able to successfully integrate the four vital