MONDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2011
ENGLISH EDITORIAL
Consulting Editor FELIX SOH
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Editor
YEOW KAI CHAI
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Deputy Editor
SARAH NG
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News Editor
SUJIN THOMAS
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Assistant
News Editor
KENNY CHEE
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Business Editor SURESH MENON
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Entertainment/
Lifestyle Editor
JILL ALPHONSO
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Sports Editor
CHIA HAN KEONG
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Art & Design
Director
PETER WILLIAMS
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Copy Editor
KONG SOON WAH
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YELLOW RIBBON ART
PROGRAMME RAISES $39K
THE Yellow Ribbon Art Adoption
Programme this year has raised
$38,960. The proceeds will be
donated to the Yellow Ribbon
Fund, which supports former
offenders and their families.
The programme allows the
public to bid for works of art
done by inmates and former
offenders.
SHANMUGAM ATTENDS
ASEAN MEETINGS IN NY
MINISTER for Foreign Affairs
and Law K. Shanmugam, who is
in New York for the 66th
Session of the United Nations
General Assembly, attended the
Informal Association of Southeast Asian Nations Ministerial
Meeting last Saturday.
Mr Shanmugam also attended a meeting of the South-east
Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free
Zone Commission.
TAN JEE SAY CALLS FOR
COALITION GOVERNMENT
DIVERSE views from a coalition
government will be more representative of different groups of
people in society than a single
political party, said former
presidential candidate Tan Jee
Say yesterday.
Speaking at a thank-you
lunch for the volunteer helpers
of his campaign, Mr Tan said
such a government can be
stable if political parties in the
coalition accommodate each
other’s interests and concerns.
A3
Teens seen playing deadly game
BY SOPHIE HONG
F
UN and games are being
taken to a whole new extreme by a group of teenagers caught in many stills from
two video clips posted on citizen-journalism website Stomp
yesterday.
Believed to be students from
a school situated in the western
part of Singapore, they were
seen practising the choking
game, also referred to as suffocation roulette or space cowboy.
In both clips – one lasts 39
seconds and the other, 21 seconds – two different boys who
appeared to be about 15 years
old were seen standing with
their backs against a wall.
A schoolmate was then seen
applying pressure on their
throat or chest until they became unconscious.
In one clip, the boy woke up
and smiled sheepishly. In the
other, the other boy stumbled
and hit his face on the ground.
Onlookers hooted and continued filming as he regained consciousness five seconds later,
clutching his head in pain.
my paper tried to reach the
school principal via e-mail and
phone yesterday, but she was
not contactable.
As of 10pm last night, the
Stomp posting attracted at least
17,800 hits and 43 comments,
which ranged from incredulity
to apathy.
Netizen Kpopcrazy said on
Stomp that he tried it when he
was in primary school, while
DANGEROUS HIGH: In one video clip, a schoolgirl is shown putting her hands around the neck
of a boy. He then passes out and falls to the ground, watched by his friends. (PHOTOS: STOMP)
Powerstomp said “I did that too
in school 25 years ago”, and that
it was “fun”.
Dr Lenny Wan, a wellness and
general practitioner with the Singapore Medical Group (SMG),
said that the activity is called “recreational asphyxiation”, and is
“a high-risk activity undertaken
mainly by adolescents, which involves temporarily obstructing
blood flow to the brain to
achieve a brief euphoric state”.
Said to have been practised
in the West for decades by
young people who wanted a
“drug-free high”, it became widespread in the last decade due to
the advent of YouTube in 2005.
YouTube “enabled millions
of young people to watch and
propagate footage of this activity, potentially ‘normalising’ this
Affluence
behind rise
in cases of
pet abuse
PUPPY
LOVE:
Mr Joel
Foo with
his huskies:
(from left)
Emmy,
Yuki and
Oscar. He
used to fear
dogs as a
child.
BY SHAUN TAN
FOR Mr Joel Foo, offering to
look after Yuki, an unwanted
three-year-old husky, not only
helped him overcome his childhood fear of dogs, but also saw
him becoming the owner of not
one, but three dogs.
The 44-year-old entrepreneur
said yesterday: “I actually hated
dogs, but I offered to look after
Yuki while her previous owner
tried to find someone to adopt
her. (In the end,) I adopted her
because we got along very well.”
However, not all dogs are as
fortunate, based on figures from
the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).
A total of 987 alleged cases of
abuse and neglect were reported
behaviour”, said Dr Wan.
In 2008, the United States’
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention reported that the
choking game was responsible
for the deaths of at least 82 children from 1995 to 2007.
In 2000, a 14-year-old Singapore boy was found dead in his
flat and was reported to have
died because of a similar act.
Said Dr Carol Balhetchet, director of youth services at the
Singapore Children’s Society:
“Teenagers like to know things
through their own experiences.
So when they learn about
strange things like that online,
they want to experiment this behaviour among their peers.”
She added that the trend
took off here about five years
ago, but said that she saw only
(PHOTO:
JOEL FOO)
to the SPCA between July last
year and June this year, a 15 per
cent rise from a year ago.
Ms Corrine Fong, 47, executive director of the SPCA, attributed the rise to the “growing affluence” of pet owners here.
She said: “More people here
now have more money to buy
pets, and, as the number of pet
owners rise, so do the number of
cases of neglect and abandonment.”
She was speaking on the sidelines of a World Animal Day carnival at East Coast Park organised by the SPCA yesterday.
“The most common reasons...are that (the owners) have
no time to look after the pet,
that the maid has gone home, or
that they are downsizing their
house,” she added.
Ms Fong pointed out that
owners needed to be responsible
when choosing pets.
“People like to buy exotic
pets, like chow chows or huskies,
which are not ideally suited to
Singapore’s climate. They require special attention if they are
to live in Singapore,” she said.
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one such case last year.
Medical directors from SMG
told my paper that the human
brain can survive without oxygen for only three to four minutes before extensive brain
damage occurs.
Besides possible brain damage, those who engage in this activity are also susceptible to
physical injuries from falling.
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HELPDESK
Sheepishly:
不好意思地 bù hǎo yì sī de
Asphyxiation: 窒息 zhì xī
Euphoric: 欣快 xīn kuài
Brain damage:
脑损伤 nǎo sǔn shāng
‘Weekend
warriors’
also at risk
FROM PAGE A2
so bad that Mr Liew had
to leave the office in the
afternoon to see a doctor.
He said: “I felt so stiff that
I didn’t want to continue sitting in front of a computer.”
Working adults can avoid
such woes by taking breaks
every 45 minutes to stretch
for about two to three
minutes, said principal
physiotherapist Cai Cong
Cong of Alexandra Hospital.
Mr Low also said that
there is another group of
adult patients prone to injuries – the “weekend warriors”.
These people are mostly
sedentary on weekdays but
active on weekends.
Their bodies, he said, may
not be conditioned to what
they put themselves through.
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