New Delhi, Mar. 25 : The annual bilateral naval exercises between the Indian Navy and the Republic of Singapore Navy `SIMBEX 2009' commenced in the Andaman Sea on Wednesday.

SIMBEX, an acronym for `Singapore India Maritime Bilateral Exercise', was formalised a decade-and-a-half ago, when RSN ships began training in Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) with the Indian Navy, in 1994.

As a part of the 16th annual SIMBEX, exercise units will also exercise in the South China Sea until 02 April 2009.

Singapore - A Singapore court on Wednesday charged a property agent with seriously hurting the eye of his Indonesian maid and 10 other counts of maid abuse, a news report said.

Lim Beng Tai, 38, is charged with several beatings of the maid, identified as Ms Jasmiati, 25, the online edition of Straits Times newspaper reported.

Lim's wife, Connie Ng Lay Har, also 38, is accused of punching the maid once and slamming the victim's right hand in a car.

Singapore - Singapore's parliament passed controversial legislation which allows reimbursement of living organ donors, media reports said Wednesday.

After a heated two-day debate, in which some legislators raised concerns that the new law might lead to open organ trading, four of the 84 members of parliament abstained the final vote and one voted against, the Straits Times newspaper reported.

Eighty-two legislators in Singapore's parliament are from the People's Action Party, which has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965.

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Singapore - A Singapore court on Monday sentenced an Australian project manager who threw his Thai wife out of their fourth-floor bedroom window to 25 months in jail, media reports said.

The court found Jason John Porteous, 36, who pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter, to have been suffering from depression and alcoholism at the time of the May 17 incident.

Porteous was originally accused of attempted murder, but after a psychiatric assessment the charge was lessened.

Singapore - Singapore's poorest were hit hardest by rising prices for food, housing and electricity in 2008, as the city-state's inflation climbed to its highest level in 28 years, data published by the Department of Statistics on Monday said.

Singapore's consumer price index (CPI) for general households rose by 6.5 per cent in 2008, the highest level since
1981 when it came up to 8.2 per cent.

It was more than triple the 2.1-per-cent increase of 2007.