kueytoc

I juz can't believe he's still wanna be HERO when he's gonna be ZERO$ soon ! Sigh, so highly educated yet 'foolish at heart' ! Ngoi did not feel 'cheated' by ex-lover Wednesday • September 27, 2006 Leong Wee Keat weekeat@newstoday.com.sg DESPITE the fact that she had conned him of money, and investigators' warnings not to talk to her, Bryan Ngoi Kok Ann (picture) let his ex-lover Guo Juan move in with him in August last year for three months. This was after he came under investigation for passing false information to a government official about her paying her husband to go into marriage. The revelation came during the prosecution's cross examination of the Nanyang Technological University don yesterday. Ngoi, 46, told the court he did not feel "cheated" by his ex-lover despite being told that she was married after he had loaned her $10,000 and paid for their trip to China. He also admitted to the court what he did not tell Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) investigators earlier — that Ms Guo, 26, had moved in with him in August last year, after he had been placed under bail-bond while he was being investigated. The former nightclub singer was kicked out of the house by her husband. During her three-month stay with him, Ngoi claimed, they did not discuss the case. He also said he did not confront Ms Guo about a tape recording of her telling her other ex-lover, Mr Augustine Yee, that her marriage was an "arranged one". Ngoi said, "It was supposed to be a secret and I did not see any point or purpose in letting her know about it." While investigators have been unable to contact Ms Guo since April, Ngoi told the court he had last spoken to her last month, through a friend in China. Yesterday, Deputy Public Prosecutor David Khoo suggested that Ngoi had tried to leverage on his role as chairman of the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority's (ICA) Citizenship Advisory Committee to check on Ms Guo's marital status. DPP Khoo suggested that Ngoi had tried to portray information in his email to ICA officer Clarence Yeo in October 2003 as "reliable and important". Ngoi had just learnt, on a trip to China together, that Ms Guo, a China national, had entered Singapore on a "visiting relative social pass". Ngoi said he only wanted to find out the authenticity of this pass — he denied sending the email to find out if Ms Guo was married. The court also learnt that Ms Guo was not the only woman Ngoi had ###### with between October 2003 and August 2005 — there were "one to two" others. Poring over invoices addressed to "Mr and Mrs Ngoi" from Hotel Inter-Continental, Ngoi admitted to bringing "female friends" to the hotel on 16 occasions, and that some "might also have involved Ms Guo". The trial continues today. Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

No updates for the time being...

Well, I wouldn't want to take another chance as long as it is a sand-sifting goby. In a captive environment, nobody can tell if it will behave.

show us more pics of ya nice AT.

if u have tangs or angels, keeping plant/algae may not work cos' may become 'botak' after few days.

aiyoh, go down & see 'real stuff' better mah.

wah how I wish mine will disappear juz like yours. I'm trying to get rid of this joker for a year now without success. It has completely gone bonkers spitting sands all over my softies, clams, mushies, etc. My advise to u is avoid this 'bomber' at all costs if u are planning to keep corals on ya sandbed.

Excellent Service !

or u mean must learn to 'talk-###### sing-song'.

Ah Beng got YTs, Swallowtails Angels, nice avg size 'frenchies' like tis...

Enjoy !

Wah, good choice dude. U really got sharp eyes for 'exotic corals' cos' not many people know. To think abt it, I should have gotten another pz.

Any reefer who wants to own uncommon orangy-tipped ALVEOS should head down to IWARNA immed. Not many prize pzs left !

Excellent macro shots. Mmmm...guess it's about time that I return to diving again.

Hi fellow reefers, Selling a used SKIMZ Calcium Reactor CR1000 for $300 cash & carry only. Include ARM cal media. Powered by Eheim pump 1048. Used about 6 mths. Pl PM me to confirm collection. Cheers.../ED

The Billionaires' Club Edited by Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin Forbes.com A nine-figure fortune won't get you much mention these days, at least not in these pages. This year, for the first time, everyone on The Forbes 400 has at least $1 billion. The collective net worth of the nation's wealthiest climbed $120 billion, to $1.25 trillion. Surging real estate, oil and other asset prices paved the way for 28 new members. Developer John P. Manning used political savvy to build a $1.1 billion fortune, in part by brokering low-income housing projects. Chesapeake Energy founders Aubrey McClendon and Tom L. Ward are two of the oil fortunes added to the list. Pouring 40 million caffeinated drinks a week landed Starbucks honcho Howard Schultz on our list of America's 400 richest. Manny Mashouf placed his skimpy women's wear on TV shows like "Party of Five" and "Ally McBeal;" today he has a $1.5 billion fortune in Bebe clothing stores. Also gracing our list for the first time are Lehman Brothers chief Richard Fuld ($1 billion), hedge fund manager David E. Shaw ($1 billion), mutual fund guru Jonathan Lovelace Jr. ($1.1 billion), Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander ($1.2 billion), leveraged buyout tycoon Leon Black ($2 billion), Google veteran Omid Kordestani ($1.9 billion), Colony Capital's Thomas Barrack ($1 billion), New York City real estate moguls Stephen Ross ($2.5 billion) and Tamir Sapir ($2 billion), and the husband-and-wife computer chip team of Weili Dai ($1 billion) and Sehat Sutardja ($1 billion). Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, who rebuilt his fortune with investments in real estate and restaurants, is among the 14 returnees to this year's list. Netscape pioneer James Clark is another retread; he reinvested his tech proceeds into Miami condos and construction outfit Hyperion Development Group following the burst of the tech bubble six years ago. Also returning is Little Caesar's founder Michael Ilitch ($1.5 billion), car dealership owner Robert Friedkin ($1.2 billion), investors J. Christopher Flowers ($1.2 billion) and Alfred P. West ($1.2 billion), and banking and real estate maven Paul M. Milstein ($3.5 billion). Once again the biggest gainer is casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, with a net worth up $9 billion. Adelson's Las Vegas Sands stock is up 125 percent since its public offering in December 2004. He has made almost $1 million an hour since the 2004 Forbes 400 was published. Another big gainer is Warren Buffett, who added $6 billion. That wealth, and the rest of what he has accumulated as a value investor, will be given away, mostly to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Eight members of last year's list have died, including investor Preston Tisch, Grey Goose vodka creator Sidney Frank, and James and Margaret Cargill, two cousins who inherited a stake in the world's largest commodities company from William W. Cargill. Thirty-four people couldn't keep up, or gave their money away. They include leveraged buyout tycoon Theodore Forstmann, poultry man Donald Tyson, real estate investors John Arrillaga and Richard Peery, and fashionista Richard Hayne. Husband-and-wife banking team Herbert and Marion Sandler dropped from our rankings after giving away more than $1 billion combined to charity. Reported by: Emily Douglas, Elyse Graham and Duncan Greenberg with Christopher Helman and Adam Kemezis. Additional reporting by: David Armstrong, Victoria Murphy Barret, William P. Barrett, Erika Brown, Monte Burke, Kerry A. Dolan, Tim Doyle, Jonathan Fahey, Allison Fass, Stephane Fitch, Elizabeth Gregory, Miriam Gottfried, Emily Lambert, Michael Maiello, Peter Newcomb, Deborah Orr, Matthew Rand, Amanda Schupak, Matthew Swibel, Mark Tatge and David Whelan. Art direction: Charles A. Brucaliere. Photo Editor: Gail Toivanen. Database: Mitchel Rand.

well u dun want to repeat another 'Steve Irwin' incident. Oops...

If u gonna have an 'open day' for ya tank, dun forget to invite me hor.

Marine Environment.

Aiyoh, RED SEA lor !

Press release by Asian Banker. Published September 20, 2006 IMF/World Bank: Singapore fails to impress The IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Singapore focused on correcting global imbalances, fighting corruption and apportioning more weight to developing countries. On the sidelines were China and India's currency valuation pressures and a large contingent from the Middle East seeking new ties with Asia. After much careful planning and detailed execution, Singapore appears to have fallen short in its desire to impress the estimated 20,000 delegates in the city-state attending the recent annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. At the heart of the matter was the banning of several prominent civic society organisation (CSOs) activists from entering Singapore, although they had been approved by the world organisations to attend. Also, in the spotlight was the banning of protests by CSOs except in highly restricted areas. The president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, summed up the general sentiment about Singapore at the meetings when he said, “I would argue whether it has to be as authoritarian as it has been and I would certainly argue that at the stage of success they have reached, they would do much better for themselves with a more visionary approach to the process.” As Singapore does not have a strong CSO culture, his comments were generally ignored in the city-state. But some regulars at the annual meetings thought that the IMF and the World Bank were “disingenuous” in their comments against Singapore. One regular delegate pointed out that this year, for the first time, CSOs were not permitted to enter the media room to interact with journalists. Restrictions on the activities of the CSOs worked in the global bodies’ favour – decisions that were well within their control to facilitate. Outside of these concerns, it was business as usual. Mexican finance minister Francisco Gil Diaz, whose country received a slight boost in its quota in the IMF resolution voted this week, refused to join in the cry of other Latin American nations that questioned the quota reform. But Argentina and Brazil were the most vociferous in their protests, along with Egypt and India, countries whose quotas were not increased, unlike China, South Korea and Turkey, whose quotas were. Several Latin American nations are pressing the IMF to use the purchasing power parity (PPP) method of calculating GDP, which would suggest greater representation for a country like Brazil, but not Mexico. The transformation of the IMF representation mechanism promised to be a long drawn issue in the future. The World Bank’s attempt at making the fight against corruption as a central theme of the conference backfired when several central banks' governors questioned instead the world body’s own track record in this area. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist and former World Bank chief economist questioned the president’s own track record when he was deputy secretary of defence in the US government. Little was actually offered about the actual solutions for reducing corruption. Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank who is now investigating the Iraqi Oil for Food programme, remarked that countries that are corrupt should not receive aid. But as more countries are signing bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, bypassing the need for aid from the international bodies, the fight will be a long one. But all parties were united in their grief over the assassination, just before the day of the conference, of Andrei Kozlov, deputy head of the Russian central bank, a champion in the fight against corruption and money laundering who campaigned for stronger governance in his country. Kozlov’s peer in Nigeria, the impassioned executive chairman of the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Nuhu Ribadu said the fight must go on, for the people, as he admonished global financial institutions for protecting the assets of corrupt leaders, such as money stolen by his own country’s former dictator and laundered through banks in Europe. Ribadu called not for making poverty history, but for making the mismanagement of poverty history. More harmonised and effective regulations were a theme for Institute of International Finance annual meetings, held just before the IMF and World Bank meetings. But William Rhodes, senior vice chairman of Citigroup, summed up the challenges best when on the subject of Basel II, said, “In the United States we don’t have our act together yet, and we’re asking other people to do it.” For Asia, central bank governors bemoaned the lack of an amalgamated capital market or a payments and settlements centre, which they see as preventing the region from becoming integrated financially. But the possibility of a single currency like the Euro for the region as a means to this end was shot down by Pridiyathorn Devakula, governor of the Bank of Thailand. On the sidelines of the meeting, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China pared down media speculation that China should revalue its currency as suggested by US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, who was both at the annual meetings and scheduled to visit China after the meeting. Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, however, publicly promised the international community that they will honour financial commitments and give foreign banks “treatment identical to that of local banks by December this year.” Liu, as well as vice minister of finance Li Yong, emphasised the role of small- and medium-enterprises to drive China’s growth. Li went further by admitting that the private sector pays more attention to the environment. Banks from the Gulf Cooperative Countries (GCC) came to Singapore in full force. All the Middle Eastern banks that the Asian Banker interviewed, such as Burgan Bank in Kuwait, Doha Bank in Qatar and Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia emphasised their interest in pursuing trade and infrastructure finance with banks in Asia. Many Middle Eastern banks have the same profile in that they are generally small, highly liquid and therefore need counter-parties to invest in the long term infrastructure projects in the region. Many were in praise of Singapore as a country with a similar model that they would like to emulate. Unfortunately, this was not a sentiment shared by most of the other emerging economies that would have liked to have seen a better functioning social infrastructure. Instead they were greeted by very high security fences and road diversions that some said were excessive and which made it inconvenient to participate in favourite Singaporean pastime of shopping in well air-conditioned malls. Singapore was certainly a victim of its own ambitions to impress.