Singapore  - A Singapore court sentenced a former trader of Japanese
company Mitsui Oil to five years in jail on Wednesday for hiding some
81 million US dollars of losses after some of his trading bets went
wrong, media reports said.

Noriyuki Yamazaki, 37, pleaded guilty of falsifying accounts between
April and October 2006. He put in false prices for the petroleum
product naphta, which prevented the head office from finding out the
true scale of his losses.

Yamazaki had believed that the prices would turn and that he would be

Singapore  - Singapore is likely to experience its worst ever recession and may lose 99,000 jobs by mid-2010, a DBS Bank report said Wednesday.

"Policy measures that have been put forth so far will help to cushion the blows but the worst of the labour market cycle is yet to come," the DBS researchers warned.

On account of the sharp collapse in global demand and export sales, Singapore's economy is likely to experience its worst ever growth rate this year with a GDP contraction of 4.8 per cent.

Singapore - Singapore shares closed up 2.3 per cent Mon

Singapore - A Singapore court sentenced a former primary school teacher and married woman to 10 months in jail on Monday for having sex with a 15-year-old student, local media reported.

The 32-year-old woman, a mother of two, had developed an intimate relationship with her young charge when he was 14 years old and after they had gone on an overseas school trip.

After the trip they stayed in touch through frequent telephone calls and SMS messages. The woman declared the boy her godson and began showering him with care and attention.

The relationship continued even after he left primary school to go to secondary school.

Singapore - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the city-state has to prepare for hard times and some years of lower economic growth in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, local media reported Monday.

Lee said it was unlikely that things would return anytime soon to what they were during the boom years from 2004-07, when Singapore's annual economic growth reached an average of 8 per cent, the Straits Times newspaper reported.