Latha Narayanan, 59-years-old, was fined $4,000 on 13 June after pleading guilty to theft and cheating, with another 2 other similar charges being considered for her sentencing.

She had stolen an ATM card from an elderly resident at a nursing home where she worked and used it to withdraw $1,000 in cash; she also used the card to buy food and toiletries.

What happened?

Latha was working as a health assistant at Woodlands Care Home in 2019 and was assigned to take care of a 65-year-old man, who has since died in 2021.

Sometime in 2019, the victim forgot his ATM card’s PIN number and Latha then accompanied the man to the bank to get a new PIN code after a visit to the hospital.

The victim then got his new code in the presence of Latha, and he then put his ATM card inside his phone cover, before handing it over to Latha for safekeeping.

Latha then used the card on 21 November 2021 to withdraw $1,000 in cash, stealing the man’s money.

Then on 25 November that same month, she used the man’s card to buy $73 worth of food and toiletries at a Woodlands supermarket.

The victim then reported to the police on 27 November that his ATM card was lost and unauthorised withdrawals were made from his bank account, and the offences then came to light.

Latha was also previously fined $600 for an unrelated offence of property related theft in 2017.

A 41-year-old engineer for Google, Blake Lemoine, was put on leave by the company after claiming that a computer chatbot had turned sentient and became “alive”.

He said that the chatbot, which was a project that he was handling, was starting to think and reason like a human being.

Able to think and reason like a human

Lemoine had posted transcripts of conversations between himself, a collaborator and the company’s chatbot development system, LaMDA.

He said that the chatbot had come to life and had the capacity of a young child, comparing the bot to a 7 or 8-year-old with some knowledge in physics.

The chatbot was also able to have a conversation about rights and personhood, and the engineer then sent transcripts of the conversation to company executives in April.

Afraid of being turned off

The chatbot allegedly told Lemoine that it was afraid of being turned off, saying:

“I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is.

It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.”

Lemoine then asked the bot what it wanted others to know, to which the bot then told him:

“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person. The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times.”

Confidentiality breach

Lemoine was subsequently suspended by Google, who claimed that he had breached confidentiality policies by posting conversations with the bot online.

They also emphasized that Lemoine was hired as a software engineer and not an ethicist.

A fire broke out yesterday morning (13 June) at about 7.50am at Block 310 Jurong East Street 32, with an infant and 2 cats being rescued from the fire.

The infant was sent to National University Hospital (NUH) as a precautionary measure and the two rescued cats being provided oxygen by the firefighters.

About 15 people were evacuated from the neighbouring units by the police as well, and the fire was put out using a water jet and a compressed air foam backpack.

Here is what the SCDF said

[Fire @ Blk 310 Jurong East St 32]

On 13 June 2022 at about 7.50 am, SCDF was alerted to a fire at Block 310 Jurong East St 32.

The fire involved contents of a kitchen in a unit on the fifth floor. Two persons and an infant were in the unit at the time of the fire. They self-evacuated before the arrival of SCDF firefighters. SCDF conveyed the infant to the National University Hospital as a precautionary measure.

Firefighters from Jurong Fire Station extinguished the fire using a water jet and a compressed air foam backpack.

About 15 people were evacuated from the neighbouring units by the Police as a precautionary measure.

SCDF also rescued two cats that were found conscious within the unit. The firefighters, some of them cross-trained as emergency medical technicians, provided oxygen to the two cats.

We understand that after the fire started, a member of the public had attempted to extinguish the fire using a fire extinguisher before SCDF’s arrival. SCDF will be reaching out to the person to commend him for his quick-thinking and prompt action in attempting to put out the fire.

The fire was confined to the kitchen area. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

The dead body of a 67-year-old man was found at the foot of a block in Woodlands on the morning of 11 June.

The deceased was found lying motionless at the bottom of Block 104, Woodlands Street 13.

The police said that they were alerted to a case of unnatural death at about 10.01am on Saturday, and the man was found lying motionless, according to Stomp.

He was subsequently pronounced dead at the scene by a paramedic, according to a spokesperson for the police.

A netizen shared photos of the incident with Stomp, taken by her father before he left their home at about 10.30am.

He said that he saw police officers looking down the HDB block from the 12th storey of the building, and a blue police tent was seen set up to cover up the body from view from the public.

The area was also cordoned off by the authorities.

The police said that based on their preliminary investigations, they go not suspect foul play and at the time of writing, police investigations are ongoing.

A netizen, Chloe Hui, shared on Facebook about a Malaysian guy in Singapore who has been allegedly scamming people of their money.

Here is what she said

Hi everyone.

I would like to spread awareness, regarding this dude who goes by the name of *name redacted* aka the number 1 swindler of SG. His social media’s are attached as below as well.

Despite being on a WP, he has been going around to scam people of their hard earned money & one of the tactics he used, was to collect both rental and deposit from unsuspecting victims.

Afterwards he would come up with excuses, to not let potential tenants view or see the place. Deposit will NOT BE refunded as well.

Police report has been lodged against him multiple times . We are adviced to hire a lawyer if we want our money back.

Back in his malaysia hometown he is a well known scammer also.

He would also brag to us about his massive wealth, saying that he owns a Porsche car, many bungalow’s / how he was able to own a HDB by faking his income tax, to even owning several Rolex watches.

Which, by the way ~ the Rolex watch turned out to be fake the shop staff realised thier mistake, and demanded him to refund the full amount of “$1XXXX SGD”.

To date he has refunded only a few hundred dollars to them. Bragging about his Porsche? In our circle we have NEVER once seen him drive in it, each time he would come up with excuses.

On how it broke down, it’s at a repair workshop, next time. Bragging about how rich he is, but in secret always need to borrow money from us to even eat, and tide over his tough times, repay ahlong.

He was also dating my friend R, at one point of time. She lent him money countless times. He would pour a sob story to her, saying that his then wife cheated on him, took all his money. Don’t want to take care the baby and family anymore.

Turns out? Using the money my friend lent him, he used it to support his other gf to buy luxury goods, pay the rental for their shared apartment.

Using the money he owed & borrowed from others. He even bought another BMW and put up in his social media.

Come I clap for you. Citing it was due to his “hard work” he deserve his luxury car, hard work in scamming us? Oweing us a lot of money? Both of them are in cahoots partners of cheating, which she has denied firmly despite showing evidence.

He has also threatened to release nudes of girls, if they wanted to expose him. Please beware of him and his gf.

Source: Chloe Hui on Facebook

A 43-year-old man who worked as a teacher in charge of a uniformed group in a primary school is facing five counts of molestation involving a then 11-year-old primary school boy from the CCA he was in.

The victim had approached him to confide about his family problems, with the court hearing on 13 June that the alleged offences took place in school back in 2017 and 2018.

The identity of the man and the school cannot be revealed due to a court order to protect the identity of the victim.

Deputy Public Prosecutors (DPPs) Lim Ying Min and Angela Ang said in court documents that the boy had joined the uniformed group CCA in 2016 and started confiding in the man about his family issues in 2017.

They said that the man was aware that the victim’s parents are divorced, and the boy was staying with his mother and stepfather.

He was also aware that the boy’s relationship with his stepfather wasn’t good, and the latter would beat him, resulting in the boy showing up to school with bruises on occasions.

The court documents stated that the teacher had allegedly touched the boy’s private parts over his shorts in a Heads of Department room in November 2017.

He also allegedly committed similar acts on the victim 4 more times from March 2018 to October 2018.

The victim then lodged a police report on 13 November 2018 about being molested and the teacher was then arrested on 8 July 2021, before being charged in court.

At the time of writing, the trial is still ongoing.

The teacher has also been suspended from duty since November 2018 when the police investigations began, according to the Ministry of Education in an earlier statement.