Tang Wee Sung charged with human organ trafficking

CK Tang’s chairman Tang Wee Sung, 55, was charged in court on Thursday afternoon with trying to buy a kidney from a living donor, for which he was willing to pay $300,000 to a middleman to procure it.

Tang faces three counts – two under the Human Organ Transplant Act which bans the sale of human organs, and another for making a false declaration.

He is said to have arranged with Wang Chin Sing, Whang Sung Lin and other persons to get a kidney from a living donor, Indonesian Sulaiman Damanik, 26, between April and June 19.

The charge states that he agreed to pay $300,000 to Wang for ‘the supply’ of the kidney from Mr Sulaiman in June.

The second charge accuses him of lying to the Commissioner for Oaths that he did not pay any money to procure the organ and that he was related to Mr Sulaiman.

On the third charge, he is said to have also lied in his application to the transplant ethics committee. (story)

Bird flu kills man in Vietnam

Bird flu has killed a man in northern Vietnam, marking the country’s first human case this year, health officials said Wednesday.The 32-year-old man from Tuyen Quang province, about 80 kilometres northwest of Hanoi, died last week, two days after being admitted to the national tropical disease hospital in Hanoi, said To Doan Hong of the provincial Preventive Medicine Centre.

Test results later came back positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus, he said. It was the country’s 48th death reported since the virus began raging across Asia in late 2003. (story)

Singapore bans video game: Mass Effect

So virtual sex in now illegal? It’s just a game. It’s not like people are going to run out and try to find some aliens to have sex with. (although a threesome with and alien and my g/f might be really cool) “Kissing and caressing”?! Come on, that’s just child’s play. I do that on my way to work. (maybe that’s why i get so many dirty looks) I’ll buy it overseas if I have to. It’s going to be a fantastic game.

“Singapore has banned a Microsoft Corp video game which contains a scene showing a human woman and an alien woman kissing and caressing each other, a local newspaper reported on Thursday.The Straits Times said “Mass Effect” — a highly anticipated futuristic space adventure game from Microsoft — was banned by Singapore’s Media Development Authority.

Singapore is the only country to have banned the game, so far, and it is the first Microsoft video game to be banned in the city-state.” (story)

Nightclub fined in human trafficking scheme

A nightclub fed the immigration authorities the story that it had hired four Chinese nationals as stage singers.The truth was that the women weren’t even working there, and were paying the club and a middleman to pull this off.

On Wednesday, Grand Century Nite-Club was fined $12,000 for ‘sponsoring’ the women’s immigration passes.

A district court heard that the club applied for the passes for them between December 2004 and July 2005.

The women, aged between 25 and 31 and seeking extensions on their stay here, had approached the club through a middleman.

Each paid the man between $400 and $500 every time she needed to extend their stay; each also paid the club $600 each time she required it to apply for the passes on her behalf. (story)