Taiwan records no new COVID-19 cases, total kept at 393

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)^[I] is a Taiwanese nationalist and liberal political party in Taiwan.^[4][7][8] Controlling both the Taiwan Presidency and the unicameral Legislative Yuan, it is the majority ruling party and the dominant party in the Pan-Green Coalition

SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Tuesday (April 14) announced 334 new cases of Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed infections here to 3,252.

Trains and buses are to run at reduced frequency as ridership on public transport plunges in the current circuit breaker period.

From Wednesday (April 15), buses will run at longer intervals, while train service will be similarly adjusted from Friday.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said daily bus ridership has nosedived by more than 71 per cent and that of train by 75 per cent compared with ridership before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The adjustments ensured "sufficient space for commuters to maintain safe distancing from one another", the regulator added in a statement following queries from The Straits Times.

Kim Huat WFH Day 7

Kim Huat WFH Day 7

China reported 89 new coronavirus cases on April 13, down from 108 the previous day, the health authority said on Tuesday (April 14).

Of the total, 86 were imported, down from 98 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said.

China's state broadcaster had reported earlier that 79 of the day's imported cases were in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, which shares a border with Russia.

Grim daily reality

 From her apartment in Brooklyn, Ms Abigail Chan, a Singaporean who has lived in New York City for 21 years, has to place her conference calls - she is in the private equity business - on mute until sounds from the street fade.

For weeks now, the soundtrack of New York City has not been the roar of the traffic, nor the rattle and thunder of the tracks, nor the daily hubbub of the iconic economic engine and melting pot of almost 19 million people.

It has been the wail of sirens as ambulances race through empty streets.

"I get sirens all the time, day in, day out," she told The Straits Times.

Ms Chan, 43, would normally be travelling every month to all corners of the United States, but has been holed up in her apartment for over a month now as Covid-19 ravages the city.

Judge Yap said in her judgement that the woman’s claims were justified.

The judge noted that the main charge or “sting” which the woman needed to justify was that Dr Ong and Dr Chan had colluded to take advantage of vulnerable female patients, that they used their position as doctors to source for patients to have sex with, and that they exchanged information about these women.

Based on the evidence including what the defendant and Dr Chan said during cross-examination, Judge Yap concluded that the main charge was “substantially” true for the following reasons:

Dr Ong sought to have sex with the woman, who was Dr Chan’s patient, even if they were in a personal relationship. Dr Chan continued to supply the woman with Xanax, a drug to help her anxiety, during their relationship. During cross-examination, Dr Ong admitted that he had suggested Dr Chan, the defendant and another party have group sex. This, the judge said, showed that the woman was “de facto” Dr Chan’s patient and Dr Ong had colluded with Dr Chan to have sex with her.

A series of WhatsApp messages between the two doctors included messages where Dr Ong shared a patient’s contact details with Dr Chan and told him to “feel free to play your game”, and also made a reference to having anal sex with the patient. Judge Yap said that she found Dr Ong’s explanation that this was a bad joke to be “incredulous”. The messages, she said, “clearly show” that the two doctors were colluding to take advantage of a female patient.

The messages also showed that the two doctors were colluding with each other to look for women to have sex. Dr Ong introduced women he was having sex with to Dr Chan, in exchange for him to do the same. In one such instance, he had shared a naked photo of a woman to give Dr Chan a “preview”. Dr Chan admitted that Dr Ong did eventually introduce the woman to him and he went on to have sex with her.

The judge also said she rejected the argument by Dr Ong’s lawyer that there was no proof that the patients whom the doctors had sex with were “vulnerable”.

“The relationship between doctor and patient is necessarily one of trust,” she said. 

A surgeon in private practice has lost his defamation suit against a woman who told other doctors that he and another senior consultant were taking advantage of vulnerable female patients to have sex with them.

Dr Julian Ong Kian Peng, who runs a private practice at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, claimed that his reputation and well-being had suffered distress as a result.

However, his lawsuit, which started in July 2018, was dismissed with costs by District Judge Lynette Yap on April 3. The judge found that the defendant’s claims were justified.

The defendant, Ms Serene Tiong, is a business development manager at Thomson Medical Centre, who had an extra-marital affair with the other doctor in question, Dr Chan Herng Nieng, a senior consultant of psychiatry at Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

She was also his patient at the time.


In particular, she noted that Dr Chan is a psychiatrist whose practice involves patients with mental health issues where a “high level of trust between doctor and patient is required”. 

“To be clear, it is this court’s view that any doctor who seeks to have sex with his patient or pass a patient to another doctor to have sex with that patient, is interacting with a vulnerable person vis-a-vis that doctor,” said Judge Yap.

Taxi driver Tony Foo, 36, was coming to terms with the decline in his income over recent weeks when another problem arose. Renovations for the resale flat he was planning to move into were suddenly halted on Tuesday (April 7) when the circuit breaker measures came into full effect.

With the buyers of his current home refusing to delay their April 30 move-in date, Mr Foo would have to turn to hotel rooms when the time comes.

Mr Foo told TODAY that he reached out to HDB on Monday for help, and was initially told that nothing can be done unless he and the buyers come to a mutual agreement. In view of Mr Shanmugam's announcement, he was offered the extension till Thursday.

But he said the extension would have been unhelpful to him. “Most of the workers from my contractor’s company returned to Malaysia on Saturday and Sunday. Even if I (had) wanted to extend the renovations, there’s no one left to do the work," he said.

Because of Singapore’s past reserves, the nation did not have to spend “precious time negotiating with creditors or dealing with detractors”, but instead spent the hours deliberating hard over the challenges posed by Covid-19 to the nation, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Tuesday (April 7).

The Government does not view the reserves “as a piggy bank to be broken at will” in order to provide a convenient source of additional revenue, said Mr Heng, who is also Finance Minister, in his round-up speech in Parliament to the debate

Said Mr Heng in response: “If we had succumbed to the political pressure to spend more of our reserves in good years, we would not have had the war chest to deal with critical moments, such as now. And to do even more, if necessary, even in the next term of Government.”

“Indeed, this crisis has reaffirmed the value of our key institutions and the key tenets of our prudent fiscal policy – to spend prudently, invest wisely, and plan consistently for the long-term.”

bak kut teh

A man who allegedly left home to eat bak kut teh the night he returned from Myanmar, despite being given a 14-day stay-home notice, has been charged in court.

Alan Tham Xiang Sheng, 34, was served the notice on March 23 and was to stay home until April 6. Those entering Singapore are placed under stay-home notices to minimise the spread of Covid-19.

But Tham's charge sheet showed that between 3.40pm and 10pm on March 23, he allegedly visited:

A Koufu food centre at Changi Airport Terminal 3

Peninsula Plaza at 111 North Bridge Road

The Kampung Admiralty Foodfare hawker centre

An NTUC FairPrice supermarket at Block 676 Woodlands Drive 71

After the charges were read to him on Tuesday (April 7), Tham told the court that he would like to plead guilty.

He said he had “already explained everything”, but the authorities did not accept his account. 

In an interview with The Straits Times on March 25, Tham said he was under the impression that he was still allowed to leave home on the day of his return from Myanmar, and that his stay-home notice would begin only at midnight.

He faces one charge under Section 21A(1) of the Infectious Diseases Act. The provision states that a person who knows or has reason to suspect that he is a carrier or contact of an infectious disease shall not expose others to the risk of infection by his presence or conduct in any public place.

he 55-year-old, who had no travel history to any affected country and wishes to be known only as Ben, spent 13 days in the intensive care unit (ICU) of Alexandra Hospital (AH).

Doctors say that 80 per cent of the patients infected by the coronavirus suffer only mild symptoms. Only 5 per cent of the cases turn out to be as severe as Ben's, who literally had to fight for his life.

He was so touched by the treatment he received that he returned to the hospital last Friday to thank the staff. Here is an account of his struggle.

It was the nurses who helped him piece together what had happened. He also read the messages that his family members sent to one another.

"I honestly didn't realise how critical my condition was. I only saw from the messages that my brother sent to my family. One message said my condition had improved but I was unconscious."

The nurses would call him by his name. When he soiled himself, they would clean up after him. They would "turn me to the left, turn me to the right... and move me to a more comfortable position".

He said he felt bad on occasions when he had to call for help just a few minutes after the nurse left his room.

"They have to put on their protective gear every time they come, but they never complained."

"The nurse actually took the trouble to comb my hair. How many people actually comb your hair for you?

"There was one day when I asked if I could get a disposable shaver. The nurse actually went to get one for me so I was very touched."

The doctors and nurses who walked past his room and whom he did not recognise would wave and smile at him.

“While we have said that marriage is an equal cooperative partnership of efforts, this does not mean that the contributions of both parties in a marriage are always equal.

While she had asked for help from the court to arrange a meeting with her children, the judges said that they were all adults now in their 20s “and can make their own decisions about meeting her”.

half of your property

when people asked us to marry, we threw back a question:
in future, no matter what has happened, she will get half of your property

yes, we have seen cases after cases and knew its pitfalls. there are things that money counts in the end. and they are things which can come to past in many ways which are out of control.
however, it is expected because they have planned it before you get married.
they are after your monies and not your love.
sadly speaking, it is human nature and we blame no one

They’ve been linked to road rage, pathological gambling, and complicated acts of fraud. Some make us less neurotic, and others may even shape our social relationships. It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains. Why? And should there be warnings on packets?

Patient Five” was in his late 50s when a trip to the doctors changed his life.

He had diabetes, and he had signed up for a study to see if taking a “statin” – a kind of cholesterol-lowering drug – might help. So far, so normal.

But soon after he began the treatment, his wife began to notice a sinister transformation. A previously reasonable man, he became explosively angry and – out of nowhere – developed a tendency for road rage. During one memorable episode, he warned his family to keep away, lest he put them in hospital. 

Out of fear of what might happen, Patient Five stopped driving. Even as a passenger, his outbursts often forced his wife to abandon their journeys and turn back. Afterwards, she’d leave him alone to watch TV and calm down. She became increasingly fearful for her own safety.

Then one day, Patient Five had an epiphany. “He was like, ‘Wow, it really seems that these problems started when I enrolled in this study’,” says Beatrice Golomb, who leads a research group at the University of California, San Diego.

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Alarmed, the couple turned to the study’s organisers. “They were very hostile. They said that the two couldn’t possibly be related, that he needed to keep taking the medication, and that he should stay in the study,” says Golomb.

Ironically, by this point the patient was so cantankerous that he flatly ignored the doctors’ advice. “He swore roundly, stormed out of the office and stopped taking the drug immediately,” she says. Two weeks later, he had his personality back.

Others have not been so lucky. Over the years, Golomb has collected reports from patients across the United States – tales of broken marriages, destroyed careers, and a surprising number of men who have come unnervingly close to murdering their wives. In almost every case, the symptoms began when they started taking statins, then promptly returned to normal when they stopped; one man repeated this cycle five times before he realised what was going on.

According to Golomb, this is typical – in her experience, most patients struggle to recognise their own behavioural changes, let alone connect them to their medication. In some instances, the realisation comes too late: the researcher was contacted by the families of a number of people, including an internationally renowned scientist and a former editor of a legal publication, who took their own lives.

We’re all familiar with the mind-bending properties of psychedelic drugs – but it turns out ordinary medications can be just as potent. From paracetamol (known as acetaminophen in the US) to antihistamines, statins, asthma medications and antidepressants, there’s emerging evidence that they can make us impulsive, angry, or restless, diminish our empathy for strangers, and even manipulate fundamental aspects of our personalities, such as how neurotic we are.

In most people, these changes are extremely subtle. But in some they can also be dramatic.

The list of potential culprits includes some of the most widely consumed drugs on the planet

Back in 2011, a French father-of-two sued the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, claiming that the drug he was taking for Parkinson’s disease had turned him into a gambler and gay sex addict, and was responsible for risky behaviours that had led to him being raped.

Then in 2015, a man who targeted young girls on the internet used the argument that the anti-obesity drug Duromine made him do it – he said that it reduced his ability to control his impulses. Every now and again, murderers try to blame sedatives or antidepressants for their offences.

If these claims are true, the implications are profound. The list of potential culprits includes some of the most widely consumed drugs on the planet, meaning that even if the effects are small at an individual level, they could be shaping the personalities of millions of people. 

Research into these effects couldn’t come at a better time. The world is in the midst of a crisis of over-medication, with the US alone buying up 49,000 tonnes of paracetamol every year – equivalent to about 298 paracetamol tablets per person – and the average American consuming $1,200 worth of prescription medications over the same period. And as the global population ages, our drug-lust is set to spiral even further out of control; in the UK, one in 10 people over the age of 65 already takes eight medications every week.

How are all these medications affecting our brains? And should there be warnings on packets?

Golomb first suspected a connection between statins and personality changes nearly two decades ago, after a series of mysterious discoveries, such as that people with lower cholesterol levels are more likely to die violent deaths. Then one day, she was chatting to a cholesterol expert about the potential link in the hallway at her work, when he brushed it off as obviously nonsense. “And I said ‘how do we know that?’,” she says.

Filled with fresh determination, Golomb scoured the scientific and medical literature for clues. “There was shockingly more evidence than I had imagined,” she says. For one thing, she uncovered findings that if you put primates on a low-cholesterol diet, they become more aggressive.

Golomb remains convinced that lower cholesterol can cause behavioural changes in both men and women

There was even a potential mechanism: lowering the animals’ cholesterol seemed to affect their levels of serotonin, an important brain chemical thought to be involved in regulating mood and social behaviour in animals. Even fruit flies start fighting if you mess up their serotonin levels, but it also has some unpleasant effects in people – studies have linked it to violence, impulsivity, suicide and murder.

If statins were affecting people’s brains, this was likely to be a direct consequence of their ability to lower cholesterol.  

Since then, more direct evidence has emerged. Several studies have supported a potential link between irritability and statins, including a randomised controlled trial – the gold-standard of scientific research – that Golomb led, involving more than 1,000 people. It found that the drug increased aggression in post-menopausal women though, oddly, not in men.

In 2018, a study uncovered the same effect in fish. Giving statins to Nile tilapia made them more confrontational and – crucially – altered the levels of serotonin in their brains. This suggests that the mechanism that links cholesterol and violence may have been around for millions of years.

Golomb remains convinced that lower cholesterol, and, by extension, statins, can cause behavioural changes in both men and women, though the strength of the effect varies drastically from person to person. “There are lines of evidence converging,” she says, citing a study she conducted in Sweden, which involved comparing a database of the cholesterol levels of 250,000 people with local crime records. “Even adjusting for confounding factors, it was still the case that people with lower cholesterol at baseline were significantly more likely to be arrested for violent crimes.”.

But Golomb’s most unsettling discovery isn’t so much the impact that ordinary drugs can have on who we are – it’s the lack of interest in uncovering it. “There’s much more of an emphasis on things that doctors can easily measure,” she says, explaining that, for a long time, research into the side-effects of statins was all focused on the muscles and liver, because any problems in these organs can be detected using standard blood tests.

This is something that Dominik Mischkowski, a pain researcher from Ohio University, has also noticed. “There is a remarkable gap in the research actually, when it comes to the effects of medication on personality and behaviour,” he says. “We know a lot about the physiological effects of these drugs – whether they have physical side effects or not, you know. But we don't understand how they influence human behaviour.”

Mischkowski’s own research has uncovered a sinister side-effect of paracetamol. For a long time, scientists have known that the drug blunts physical pain by reducing activity in certain brain areas, such as the insular cortex, which plays an important role in our emotions. These areas are involved in our experience of social pain, too – and intriguingly, paracetamol can make us feel better after a rejection.

Mischkowski wondered whether painkillers might be making it harder to experience empathy

And recent research has revealed that this patch of cerebral real-estate is more crowded than anyone previously thought, because it turns out the brain’s pain centres also share their home with empathy.

For example, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans have shown that the same areas of our brain become active when we’re experiencing “positive empathy” –pleasure on other people’s behalf – as when we’re experiencing pain.

Given these facts, Mischkowski wondered whether painkillers might be making it harder to experience empathy. Earlier this year, together with colleagues from Ohio University and Ohio State University, he recruited some students and spilt them into two groups. One received a standard 1,000mg dose of paracetamol, while the other was given a placebo. Then he asked them to read scenarios about uplifting experiences that had happened to other people, such as the good fortune of “Alex”, who finally plucked up the courage to ask a girl on a date (she said yes).

The results revealed that paracetamol significantly reduces our ability to feel positive empathy – a result with implications for how the drug is shaping the social relationships of millions of people every day. Though the experiment didn’t look at negative empathy – where we experience and relate to other people’s pain – Mischkowski suspects that this would also be more difficult to summon after taking the drug.

“I'm not entirely junior anymore as a researcher, and to be honest, this line of research is really the most worrisome that I've ever conducted,” he says. “Especially because I’m well aware of the numbers [of people] involved. When you give somebody a drug, you don’t just give it to a person – you give it to a social system. And we really don’t understand the effects of these medications in the broader context.”

Empathy doesn’t just determine if you’re a “nice” person, or if you cry while you’re watching sad movies. The emotion comes with many practical benefits, including more stable romantic relationships, better-adjusted children, and more successful careers – some scientists have even suggested that it’s responsible for the triumph of our species. In fact, a quick glance at its many benefits reveals that casually lowering a person’s ability to empathise is no trivial matter. 

Scientists have known for a while that the medications used to treat asthma are sometimes associated with behavioural changes, such as an increase in hyperactivity

Technically, paracetamol isn’t changing our personalities, because the effects only last a few hours and few of us take it continuously. But Mischkowski stresses that we do need to be informed about the ways it affects us, so that we can use our common sense. “Just like we should be aware that you shouldn't get in front of the wheel if you're under the influence of alcohol, you don't want to take paracetamol and then put yourself into a situation that requires you to be emotionally responsive – like having a serious conversation with a partner or co-worker.”

One reason medications can have such psychological clout is that the body isn’t just a bag of separate organs, awash with chemicals with well-defined roles – instead, it’s a network, in which many different processes are linked.

For example, scientists have known for a while that the medications used to treat asthma are sometimes associated with behavioural changes, such as an increase in hyperactivity and the development of ADHD symptoms. Then, more recently, research uncovered a mysterious connection between the two disorders themselves; having one increases the risk of having the other by 45-53%. No one knows why, but one idea is that asthma medications bring on ADHD symptoms by altering levels or serotonin or inflammatory chemicals, which are thought to be involved in the development of both conditions.

Sometimes these links are more obvious. Back in 2009, a team of psychologists from Northwestern University, Illinois, decided to check if antidepressants might be affecting our personalities. In particular, the team were interested in neuroticism. This “Big Five” personality trait is epitomised by anxious feelings, such as fear, jealousy, envy and guilt.

For the study, the team recruited adults who had moderate to severe depression. They gave one third of the study’s participants the antidepressant paroxetine (a kind of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)), one third a placebo, and one third talking therapy. They then checked to see how their mood and personalities changed from the beginning to the end of a 16-week treatment.

“We found that massive changes in neuroticism were brought about by the medicine and not very much at all by the placebo [or the therapy],” says Robert DeRubeis, who was involved in the study. “It was quite striking.”

The idea that antidepressants are affecting neuroticism directly is intriguing

The big surprise was that, though the antidepressants did make the participants feel less depressed, the reduction in neuroticism was much more powerful – and their influence on neuroticism was independent of their impact on depression. The patients on antidepressants also started to score more highly for extroversion.

It’s important to note that it was a relatively small study, and no one has tried to repeat the results yet, so they may not be totally reliable. But the idea that antidepressants are affecting neuroticism directly is intriguing. One idea is that the trait is linked to level of serotonin in the brain, which is altered by the SSRIs. 

While becoming less neurotic might sound like an appealing side-effect, it’s not necessarily all good news. That’s because this aspect of our personalities is something of a double-edged sword; yes, it’s been associated with all kinds of unpleasant outcomes, such as an earlier death, but it’s also thought that anxious over-thinking might be helpful. For example, neurotic individuals tend to be more risk-averse, and in certain situations worrying can improve a person’s performance.

What [the American psychiatrist] Peter Kramer warned us about was that when some people are on antidepressants, what can happen is that they begin not to care about things that people care about,” says DeRubeis. If the results do hold up, should patients be warned about how their treatment might change them?

“If I were advising a friend, I would certainly want them to be on the lookout for those kinds of undesirable effects, just like they would naturally be looking out for other side-effects, like whether they're gaining weight, and so on,” says DeRubeis.

At this point it’s worth pointing out that no one is arguing that people should stop taking their medication. Despite their subtle effects on the brain, antidepressants have been shown to help prevent suicides, cholesterol-lowering drugs save tens of thousands of lives every year, and paracetamol is on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential drugs because of its ability to relieve pain. But it is important that people are informed about any potential psychological side-effects.

The association with impulsive behaviours makes sense, because L-dopa is essentially providing the brain with a dose of extra dopamine

The matter takes on a whole new urgency, when you consider that some personality changes can be dramatic. There’s solid evidence that the drug L-dopa, which is used to treat Parkinson’s disease, increases the risk of Impulse Control Disorders (ICDs) – a group of problems that make it more difficult to resist temptations and urges.

Consequently, the drug can have life-ruining consequences, as some patients suddenly start taking more risks, becoming pathological gamblers, excessive shoppers, and sex pests. In 2009, a drug with similar properties hit the headlines, after a man with Parkinson’s committed a £45,000 ($60,000) ticket scam. He blamed it on his medication, claiming that it had completely changed his personality.

The association with impulsive behaviours makes sense, because L-dopa is essentially providing the brain with a dose of extra dopamine – in Parkinson’s disease the part of the brain that produces it is progressively destroyed – and the hormone is involved in providing us with feelings of pleasure and reward.

Experts agree that L-dopa is the most effective treatment for many of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and it’s prescribed to thousands of people in the US every year. This is despite a long list of possible side effects that accompanies the medication, which explicitly mentions the risk of unusually strong urges, such as for gambling or sex.

In fact, DeRubeis, Golomb and Mischkowski are all of the opinion that the drugs they’re studying will continue to be used, regardless of their potential psychological side-effects. "We are human beings, you know," says Mischkowski. "We take a lot of stuff that is not necessarily always good in every circumstance. I always use the example of alcohol, because it's also a painkiller, like paracetamol. We take it because we feel that it has a benefit for us, and it's OK as long as you take it in the right circumstances and you don't consume too much.".

But in order to minimise any undesirable effects and get the most out of the staggering quantities of medications that we all take each day, Mischkowski reiterates that we need to know more. Because at the moment, he says, how they are affecting the behaviour of individuals – and even entire societies – is largely a mystery. 

Singapore's Death Row Nun | Sister Gerard Fernandez | Coconuts TV

for leslie, it is to do the right thing and not to do the things right.
if we have authority, we would have asked her to work straightaway, knowing that she loves to work
and by giving work, it is giving her life.
running is our life and we know what it means.

50 is really just a number

“Winning the (first) gold in the third SEA Games after winning two silvers - unbelievable.”

A former national swimmer, she represented Singapore at the 1981 SEA Games, aged 12, and the next Games two years later.

At her first Games, she claimed a silver in the 4x100 medley relay and followed that up with a silver in the 200m breaststroke in 1983. 

But a gold eluded her until 36 years later, when Singapore claimed victory in the women’s underwater hockey 4x4 competition on Wednesday.

“It feels incredible, awesome, unbelievable. I don’t know if anyone else has done or is doing what I’m doing,” said Tham, now 50.

“I hope that it also sends a message out to everyone that age is really just a number and that you are only as old as you feel.”

“It has taken many years of refining the skill because it’s really a combination of fitness - both aerobic and anaerobic, as well as skills ... speed teamwork, knowing how each of your other teammate plays so that you can just predict the move and follow up that move.”

Prior to returning to the Philippines, Tham - who is the oldest member of the women’s underwater hockey side - would get stunned reactions from most when told she would be competing at the Games again.

“Ninety-nine per cent of the reactions is one of incredulity. People take a while to get it, that I’m actually doing this,” Tham, who works as a lawyer, said. 

SEA Games: Indonesia ends Singapore's 27-gold streak in men's water polo

Dr Yeo, in a statement through his lawyer Lek Siang Pheng, said he was happy to be vindicated by the court.

"Truly, I am very sorry for the eventual poor outcome for Madam Goh, but I know my team and I at the NUH have done our very best for her," he added.

He also said it was regrettable that the family relied on "wrong medical expert opinions" and decided to sue instead of accepting his honest explanation for her outcome.

The family of Madam Goh Guan Sin was also ordered to pay her hospital bills, which amounted to $397,478.78 as of July 26 this year and continues to be incurred.

Madam Goh, 70, has been hospitalised at NUH since her operation and her family has repeatedly rejected the hospital's suggestion to move her to a step-down care facility.

she pleads not guilty

A former Boston College student pleaded not guilty on Friday (Nov 22) to charges of involuntary manslaughter stemming from what prosecutors said was her role in encouraging her boyfriend to commit suicide.

A lawyer for Inyoung You, 21, entered the plea on her behalf during a hearing in Suffolk County Superior Court after she returned from South Korea to face charges brought last month over the May 20 suicide of her college boyfriend, who leaped to his death from a parking garage hours before his graduation.

Prosecutors point to thousands of text messages that You exchanged with Alexander Urtula as evidence showing she was physically, verbally and psychologically abusive to the 22-year-old and told him to "go kill himself" and to "go die."

"These text messages demonstrate the power dynamic of the relationship," assistant district attorney Caitlin Grasso said in court.

Her bail was set at US$5,000 (S$6,800) cash, and You was ordered to surrender her passport.

Her lawyer, Steven Kim, in remarks aired on television criticised Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins' handling of the widely-reported case as a "cheap pursuit of headlines."

Prosecutors say an investigation found that You used attempts and threats to harm herself to control Urtula and isolate him from friends and family.

They say she was also aware of his suicidal thoughts when she encouraged him to kill himself.

Urtula spent the night before his death with You in her dorm room, Grasso said.

After Urtula the next day texted her and his brother saying he was going to take his own life, You used her cellphone to track his location to a parking garage in the Roxbury neighbourhood of Boston and was on its roof when he jumped, Grasso said.

Earlier this week, You through a public relations firm released to the Boston Globe text messages she exchanged with Urtula the day of his death suggesting she tried to stop him and sought to have his brother intervene.

The allegations bore similarities to the high-profile Massachusetts case of Michelle Carter, who was convicted in 2017 of involuntary manslaughter and accused of goading her teenage boyfriend into committing suicide with text messages and phone calls.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld her conviction in February. Her lawyers call the case an "unprecedented" instance of someone being convicted of involuntary manslaughter based on words alone and have asked the US Supreme Court to overturn it.

Former Boston College Student Charged In Boyfriend's Suicide Pleads Not ...