The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro
The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro |
- Japanese sports teacher beats boy in YouTube video
- Internal panic within City Harvest
- Visa fee system not against Act
| Japanese sports teacher beats boy in YouTube video Posted: TOKYO (AFP) - A video emerged Wednesday showing a volleyball coach repeatedly slapping a schoolboy -- just days after Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Olympics -- in the latest example of brutality to tarnish Japanese sport. Separately, world judo champion Shohei Ono was slapped with a three-month ban for physically abusing junior members of his university judo squad. A short clip posted on YouTube and other video-sharing sites showed the teacher at a senior high school in central Japan smacking the student's face at least 13 times in 16 seconds. It was authenticated by the school. The episode was captured on a mobile phone by another student during a practice game near Gifu city. By Wednesday evening it had garnered some 1.6 million viewings on YouTube. "Don't joke around, kid! Do you understand? You're stupid," the teacher yells in the video as he repeatedly slaps the student's face. According to the school, the teacher has admitted the physical abuse of the second-grader, saying: "I wanted to shake him up, but I went about it the wrong way". Students in Japan are 16 or 17 years old in second grade of high school. Toshitaka Shiozawa, assistant principal of Hamamatsu Nittai Senior High School, told AFP the 41-year-old teacher had also beaten another student on the same day. He declined to reveal the teacher's name.  The volleyball coach slapped the student's face at least 13 times in 16 seconds Neither student suffered any lasting injuries in the attacks, Shiozawa said, adding the school was considering disciplining the teacher as "we regard the act as corporal punishment". The school held an emergency meeting with parents of students on the volleyball team Tuesday evening, at which the teacher and the school principal apologised, Shiozawa added. In May last year, the same teacher also slapped a student's face, causing a nosebleed, but the school did not take any punitive measures "because the student did not complain", he said. In a separate case in western Japan, nearly 70 junior high school students were left with injuries on their feet after being ordered by their teachers to run barefoot, local media said. The students were forced to run up to 1.2 kilometres (0.7 miles) over ground heated up by strong sunshine because they were late for an exercise at a sport festival at a junior high school in Kobe, news reports said. Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available. Japan banned corporal punishment in schools after World War II, but it remains far from uncommon, particularly in sports education, despite a number of high-profile cases. In December, a teenager killed himself following repeated physical abuse from his high-school basketball coach in Osaka, western Japan. Also on Wednesday, the All Japan Judo Federation hit Ono with a three-month suspension which will keep him out of all international and domestic competitions for the remainder of the year. Ono won the men's 73-kilo title at last month's world championships in Rio. Japan's judo community was rocked in January when it emerged the coach of the national women's team was found to have beaten athletes, sometimes using a bamboo sword, calling his charges "ugly" and telling them to "die" in the run-up to the London Olympics. The latest incident came a week after Japan was awarded the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games, and followed an announcement that the government was to create a sports agency to boost elite athletes' performance. Mieko Ae, professor and sports psychologist at Tokyo Women's College of Physical Education, said many coaches in Japan believe physical abuse can improve students' performance. "In order to get rid of sports abuse, we have to change this way of thinking and if necessary, we should consider introducing measures on those who break the rules," Ae said. "Extreme sports bullying is not discipline, it's a crime. It's time to remove all violence from sports." The video can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlpNLR_IbdQ |
| Internal panic within City Harvest Posted: The Ren Ci scandal sparked an internal panic within the City Harvest Church, with church leaders frantically trying to ensure that their own investments in church-linked companies were aboveboard, a court heard. This happened in 2008, about a year after the church had invested S$13mil (RM33.5mil) in Xtron Productions, a music production firm that was managing City Harvest co-founder Ho Yeow Sun's singing career at the time. Several of the six church leaders accused of misusing church funds had in fact reached out to auditor Foong Daw Ching and prepared documents about the church's transactions for him to review. This was shown through telephone logs and text messages which were produced by the church leaders' defence team yesterday. The defence also strongly suggested that Foong had in fact read and discussed one particular document with the accused. This set out the church's relationship to Xtron and other companies, as well as the legal risks that the financial transactions could entail. Foong, who had earlier insisted that he did not recall seeing this document, admitted: "I would have read it and there must have been some discussion." Defence lawyers have been trying to prove that Foong gave the accused detailed advice about various allegedly suspect transactions, and that church leaders had followed his advice. City Harvest founder Kong Hee, who is Ho's husband, and five of his deputies are on trial for alleged misuse of S$50mil (RM128mil) in church funds. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network |
| Visa fee system not against Act Posted: The Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) said that it had found Visa Worldwide's multilateral interchange fee system (MIF) compliant with the Competition Act here. Interchange fees are fees paid by the banks that process purchases on behalf of store to Visa. The fees are ultimately borne by retailers, who have to pay the banks that process their purchases a certain percentage. Retailers have complained that the fees are too high and are not transparent. CCS' assessment was in response to Visa Worldwide which wanted to know whether its MIF system would violate the Competition Act. In particular, the Section 34 prohibition against anti-competitive agreements. After reviewing the case, CCS said that it had not found any evidence suggesting that "the MIF system had resulted in an appreciable adverse effect on competition in Singapore". It has thus concluded that it did not infringe upon the Act. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network |
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