Archive for March, 2006
NTU Holds First Motor Fest To Connect With New Applicants
SINGAPORE : The Nanyang Technological University held its first-ever Motor Fest over the weekend as a unique way of attracting students to study there.
There were spins, smoke and screeches.
“Basically what we are doing is the current trend of drifting; it’s all about putting the car sideways and holding it there,” stunt driver Sean Khoo said.
The static displays also held the attention of the crowds.
From a Lamborghini to a Lotus and the F430 Ferrari, it was a motor enthusiast’s dream come true.
Bike fans were not forgotten — the displays featured a Harley Davidson Destroyer, dubbed the fastest motorcycle in Singapore.
More conventional and affordable models were taken for a spin by potential buyers.
The Motor Fest was the university’s way of getting people racing to enroll at the campus.
Said Hooi Den Huan, vice dean (corporate services), Nanyang Business School, “We also hope that potential applicants would come to visit NTU look at the exhibition. We have a beautiful campus, a very vibrant community down here and that is something we like to share.”
Indoors, racing of the miniature kind was the rage; for the less adventurous, there were armchair thrills in the form of video games. - CNA /ct
Powered by Channel News Asia
10 Finalists Compete In Asia Fashion Award
SINGAPORE : Ten fashion designer hopefuls are competing in the finals of the Mercedes-Benz Asia Fashion Award.
Now entering its fourth year, the award has a hall of fame including well-known Singapore designer Sven Tan and other highly sought after names from the region.
The finalists from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand are vying for a top prize of US$10,000, as well as an opportunity to showcase his or her winning collections at the Mercedes-Benz Australia Fashion Week in May.
The finalists will each showcase 10 pieces of their works, and these will be judged by a group of international fashion experts and designers, including London-based Singapore designer Ashley Isham.
Ashley Isham says: “I think to be a fashion designer, it’s not just about designing frocks. Because at the end of the day it should be commercial because you want your collection to sell, so that you can use the money to build on your next collection. So commercial success is very important. But it does not mean that you should let go of your creativity because creativity is very, very important.” - CNA/de
Powered by Channel News Asia
Bomb Attacks Ahead Of Argentina Coup Anniversary
BUENOS AIRES : A bomb exploded in Buenos Aires on Thursday on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the military coup that ushered in an era of brutal repression in Argentina.
The attack targeted a showroom belonging to the US car firm Ford, which has been accused by activists of cooperating with the 1976-83 dictatorship during which about 30,000 people disappeared, presumed killed.
The explosion occurred a day after the Argentine government said it had ordered sensitive archives to be opened to help investigators looking into the dictatorship’s crimes.
Another bomb left outside a Mercedes-Benz showroom was found by police before it exploded. Leaflets claimed the attacks in the name of the Rodolfo Walsh group, named after a journalist who disappeared during the junta years.
Former union members who were detained by the military at a Ford plant in the Buenos Aires region last month started legal action against the firm. An investigating magistrate is also looking into the disappearance of 15 Mercedes Benz workers at the time.
President Nestor Kirchner said Thursday that the anniversary of the March 24 coup should be commemmorated with “justice and truth, but without hatred or revenge”.
“I hope that tomorrow Argentinians hold a day of remembrance of the meaning of this coup,” he said in his plea for calm. Kirchner was to appear at a national military college in Buenos Aires for the anniversary.
The move to open up archives by Defence Minister Nilda Garre followed revelations that the military had in the past spied on several Argentine politicians, including Kirchner and Garre.
The military has always denied that it has any record of the brutal repression carried out against opponents of the junta.
Kirchner’s government has sought to meet many demands of human rights groups to act over the junta’s abuses.
It cancelled laws, voted under pressure from the military, that amnestied top officers and has said it will cancel presidential pardons given in the past to officers tried and ordered jailed in 1985.
Most of the 30,000 victims of the junta were believed to have been tortured and assassinated and there is widespread anger that most junta leaders have never been punished.
General Jorge Videla, now 80, who led the coup against President Isabel Martinez de Peron, lives in a Buenos Aires apartment with his wife. He is under house arrest still awaiting a final trial for his role.
Videla’s building was pelted with paint as a week of commemorations of the coup anniversary got underway.
His deputy, Admiral Emilo Massera, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1985, remains outside prison but in a near coma.
Others await trial, including the notorious “Blond Angel of Death” Captain Alfredo Astiz, who has been convicted in France for kidnapping and murdering two French nuns.
Hundreds of police and military accused of murder, torture and human rights violations in the Dirty War continue to live freely following the amnesties and pardons.
Around the country, relatives are still battling to identify bodies of the victims, or to find children taken as babies from junta prisoners and often handed over to the families of their military jailers and torturers.
“Impunity has made society more sick than it was under the dictatorship. They imposed fear, but the impunity has reinforced it over the years,” Adriana Calvo told AFP.
Calvo, arrested while pregnant in 1977, was fortunate to have been released with her baby daughter after a few months in prison, where the girl was born. - AFP /dt
Powered by Channel News Asia