Thursday #sgroundup: Nigerian in Singapore does not have Ebola
Here are the top trending stories for today in case you missed them:
Nigerian woman in Singapore triggers Ebola scare, but tests negative
A Nigerian woman sent to a Singapore hospital isolation unit on Thursday does not have Ebola as initially suspected, the Straits Times reported.
Philip Choo, chief executive of the government hospital where the woman was sent, said it was a false alarm and the woman had been discharged, the newspaper said.
Sun Ho's US album release scrapped due to CAD investigations into City Harvest: Kong Hee
The planned release of pop singer Ho Yeow Sun's first full English music album in the US in 2010 was cancelled because of Singapore authorities' investigations into City Harvest Church, the megachurch's co-founder Kong Hee said in court on Thursday.
Kong, alongside four other City Harvest Church leaders and former member Chew Eng Han, is accused of misappropriating more than $50 million worth of church funds to finance his wife Sun Ho's singing career.
On his fourth day on the witness stand, Kong said that Ho having to remain in Singapore after being summoned in June 2010 by the Commercial Affairs Department drove her to miss her 17 August album drop date.
Iraqi army, militants clash west of Baghdad
Clashes between Iraqi troops and Sunni militants west of Baghdad killed at least four children on Thursday as the United Nations announced its highest level of emergency for the Arab country's humanitarian crisis in the wake of the onslaught by the extremist Islamic State group.
Since their blitz offensive in June, the al-Qaida-breakaway group has overrun much of Iraq's north and west and driven out hundreds of thousands from their homes. The push has displaced members of the minority Christian and Yazidi religious communities and threatened Iraqi Kurds in the Kurdish autonomous region in the north.
The U.N. on Wednesday declared the situation in Iraq a "Level 3 Emergency" — a development that will trigger additional goods, funds and assets to respond to the needs of the displaced, said U.N. special representative Nickolay Mladenov, pointing to the "scale and complexity of the current humanitarian catastrophe."
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/un-says-iraq-humanitarian-crisis-highest-level-072135558.html
Pope to Koreas: Avoid 'fruitless' shows of force
Pope Francis called Thursday for renewed efforts to forge peace on the war-divided Korean Peninsula and for both sides to avoid "fruitless" criticisms and shows of force, opening a five-day visit to South Korea with a message of reconciliation as Seoul's rival, North Korea, fired five projectiles into the sea.
North Korea has a long history of making sure it is not forgotten during high-profile events in the South, and Thursday's apparent test firing off its eastern coast made its presence felt.
In the first speech of his first trip to Asia, Francis told South Korean President Park Geun-hye and government officials that peace required forgiveness, cooperation and mutual respect. He said diplomacy must be encouraged so that listening and dialogue replace "mutual recriminations, fruitless criticisms and displays of force."
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/pope-first-south-korean-visit-25-years-155620637.html
Australian hospital accidentally declares 200 patients dead
An Australian hospital apologized on Thursday after mistakenly sending out death notices for 200 of its - very much alive - patients.
Austin Hospital, in Australia's second most populous city of Melbourne, erroneously killed off the patients when it faxed death notices to their family doctors.
The notices were the result of an inadvertent change to the templates the hospital sends to doctors once a patient has been discharged, operator Austin Health said in a statement.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/australian-hospital-accidentally-declares-200-patients-dead-063004985.html
