It seems that people want to announce everything on Facebook, even their imminent demise.
30-year-old Eric L. Ramsey knew his time was up, so he took out his cell phone and posted on his Facebook wall: "Well folkes [sic] im about to get shot. Peace"
As NBC News reports, some of his friends thought he was joking.
However, shortly after his 3:15 a.m. post, he was fatally shot by a policeman.
More Technically Incorrect
The police were searching for Ramsey after he allegedly kidnapped and raped a woman at Central Michigan University, set a house ablaze, stole a sanitation truck, and rammed into the cars of two Michigan State troopers.
The victim of the alleged rape had managed to escape and had alerted the police.
The Isabella County Sheriff, Leo Mioduszewki, said in a press release (PDF): "A short while later, a Crawford County Deputy located the sanitation truck, and the suspect ended up hitting the deputy's car head on. The deputy then got out of the patrol car, ran up to the cab of the pickup, and fired shots, fatally wounding the suspect."
It's not clear what time Ramsey was shot or how he had time to make the Facebook post.
Ramsey isn't the first alleged criminal to have used Facebook during his activity. Two years ago, a man held a woman hostage in a Utah hotel and posted constant updates to his Facebook account.
In the case of Ramsey, Facebook seems to have been the only way he could offer a short goodbye.
BALTIMORE Earl Weaver, the fiery Hall of Fame manager who won 1,480 games with the Baltimore Orioles seemingly was engaged in nearly as many arguments with umpires, has died. He was 82.
Dick Gordon, Weaver's marketing agent, said Saturday that Weaver died while on a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the Orioles. Gordon said Weaver's wife told him that Weaver went back to his cabin after dinner and began choking between 10:30 and 11 Friday night. Gordon said a cause of death has not been determined.
The Duke of Earl, as he was affectionately known in Baltimore, took the Orioles into the World Series four times over 17 seasons but won only one title, in 1970. His .583 winning percentage ranks fifth among managers who served 10 or more seasons in the 20th century.
"Earl Weaver stands alone as the greatest manager in the history of the Orioles organization and one of the greatest in the history of baseball," Orioles owner Peter Angelos said. "This is a sad day for everyone who knew him and for all Orioles fans. Earl made his passion for the Orioles known both on and off the field. On behalf of the Orioles, I extend my condolences to his wife, Marianna, and to his family."
Weaver was a salty-tongued manager who preferred to wait for a three-run homer rather than manufacture a run with a stolen base or a bunt. While some baseball purists argued that strategy, no one could dispute the results.
"He was an intense competitor and smart as a whip when it comes to figuring out ways to beat you," said Davey Johnson, who played under Weaver in the minor leagues and with the Orioles from 1965 to 1972.
Weaver had a reputation as a winner, but umpires knew him as a hothead. Weaver would often turn his hat backward and yell directly into an umpire's face to argue a call or a rule, and after the inevitable ejection he would more often than not kick dirt on home plate or on the umpire's shoes.
He was ejected 91 times, including once in both games of a doubleheader.
Asked once if his reputation might have harmed his chances to gain entry into the Hall of Fame, Weaver admitted, "It probably hurt me."
Those 91 ejections were overshadowed by his five 100-win seasons, six AL East titles and four pennants. Weaver was inducted into the Hall in 1996, 10 years after he managed his final game with Baltimore at the end of an ill-advised comeback.
In 1985, the Orioles' owner at the time, Edward B. Williams, coaxed Weaver away from golf to take over a struggling squad. Weaver donned his uniform No. 4, which had already been retired by the team, and tried to breathe some life into the listless Orioles.
Baltimore went 53-52 over the last half of the 1985 season, but finished seventh in 1986 with a 73-89 record. It was Weaver's only losing season as a major-league manager, and he retired for good after that.
"If I hadn't come back," Weaver said after his final game, "I would be home thinking what it would have been like to manage again. I found out it's work."
Weaver finished with a 1,480-1,060 record. He won Manager of the Year three times.
"I had a successful career, not necessarily a Hall of Fame career, but a successful one," he said.
How much will all the inaugural events cost? It's hard to say.
While most events that occur in the capital have a hard-and-fast budget, the inauguration's many moving parts, safety concerns and large geographic reach make it hard to quantify – especially before the main event.
In 2009, ABC reported the total cost of Obama's first inauguration was $170 million. While incumbent presidents historically spend less on a second inauguration, it's unclear what the total bill will be this time around. Analysis of some of the known appropriations so far puts the total at $13.637 million, but it will no doubt be a much larger price tag when everything is accounted for.
RELATED: 12 Things You Didn't Know About the Inauguration
One of the main chunks missing from this year's tab is the budget for the Presidential Inaugural Committee – the group responsible for using donated money to put together this year's celebrations, including National Day of Service, the Kids' Inaugural Concert, the Parade and the Inaugural Balls.
In 2009, the PIC collected more than $53 million in donations, according to a report filed with the Federal Elections Commission 90 days after the inauguration.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Politically Dressed: Inauguration First Daughters Watch Video
While enthusiasm for the inauguration was running higher that year, it is possible the PIC will haul in more money this time around, as they have eliminated some of the self-imposed regulations on the kinds of donations they can accept. For his first inauguration, President Obama did not take money from corporations or gifts that exceeded $50,000.
In 2013, his committee did away with those rules. PIC spokesman Brent Colburn would not say why the change took place, insisting that each committee operates independently from the precedent set by the inaugurations before – even if staff like Colburn are repeats on the committee from 2009.
RELATED: Inauguration Weekend: A Star-Powered Lineup
The PIC also won't say how much they have already collected or even what their goal was. Colburn explained that these are "moving budgets," which won't stabilize until after the inauguration.
They have, however, released the names of donors on their website weekly. As of Friday afternoon, they were up to 993 donors.
Another leg of the costs is covered by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. They take care of the swearing-in ceremony and the Congressional luncheon. For those events they have a total budget of $1.237 million, down by about $163,000 from 2009. Whereas the PIC budget comes from donations, the American taxpayers foot the bill for the JCCIC.
Beyond those two inauguration-focused groups, there are a myriad of broader organizations that spend money on the inauguration as well.
RELATED: Plenty of Room at the Inns for 2013 Inauguration
A Congressional Research Service report from December says the government spent $22 million reimbursing local and state governments and the National Park Service for their participation in the 2009 inauguration, but that figure is low. The D.C. government alone received twice that amount, according to the mayor's office. Officials from D.C., Maryland and Virginia estimated their total need to be $75 million.
NPS got an appropriation from Congress of $1.2 million so far this year, according to communications officer Carol Johnson, and another $1.4 million went to the U.S. Park Police.
ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army on Saturday carried out a final assault on al Qaeda-linked gunmen holed up in a desert gas plant, killing 11 of the Islamists after they took the lives of seven more foreign hostages, a local source and the state news agency said.
"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a local source familiar with the operation told Reuters.
The state oil and gas company, Sonatrach, said the militants who attacked the plant on Wednesday and took a large number of hostages had booby-trapped the complex with explosives.
The exact death toll among the gunmen and the foreign and Algerian workers at the plant near the town of In Amenas close to the Libyan border remained unclear.
Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 burned bodies at the plant. Efforts were under way to identify the bodies, the source told Reuters, and it was not clear how they had died.
Sixteen foreign hostages were freed on Saturday, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans, two Germans and one Portuguese. Britain said fewer than 10 of its nationals at the plant were unaccounted for.
The attack on the plant swiftly turned into one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades, pushing Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS
It marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.
The captors said their attack was a response to the French offensive. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the week since France launched its strikes.
Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified gas compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to the French intervention in neighboring Mali.
Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.
Before the final assault, different sources had put the number of hostages killed at between 12 and 30, with many foreigners still unaccounted for, among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons and Americans.
The figure of 30 came from an Algerian security source, who said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.
The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.
Leaders of Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed frustration that the assault was ordered without consultation and officials have grumbled at the lack of information.
France's defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, declined to criticize the Algerian response to the crisis, however.
"The Algerian authorities are on their own soil and responding in the fashion they can. The overriding mission is to tackle the terrorists," he told France 3 television.
The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.
VETERAN JIHADIST
The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.
Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.
France says the incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary.
The field commander of the Islamist group that attacked the plant is a veteran fighter from Niger called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, Mauritanian news agencies reported.
Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.
The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in a civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.
Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year.
(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Mark Trevelyan)
SINGAPORE: Reform Party's candidate for the Punggol East by-election Kenneth Jeyaretnam has pledged to donate 10 per cent of his salary to community projects in the ward if he is elected as Member of Parliament.
Speaking to reporters at Rivervale Mall on Saturday evening, Mr Jeyaretnam said this will also go some way towards funding his five-year plan for the constituency.
Giving more details of the plan, the Secretary-General of the Reform Party said he hopes to set up at least one childcare centre in every precinct in Punggol East. The plan also includes starting daycare centres for the elderly.
These centres can be managed by the NTUC, and he is suggesting that subsidies be provided for all.
In addition, Mr Jeyaretnam is proposing to build a cinema at Rivervale Plaza. He also wants to establish a dedicated hotline for residents so that help on estate matters can be given quickly.
To address residents' car parking woes, Mr Jeyaretnam is proposing to allocate car park lots strictly on home ownership and allow only one lot per family.
Other ideas in the five-year plan include providing recycled laptops to needy students.
Trying to get into the SimCity beta is an exercise in patience, but at least the game looks beautiful.
(Credit: Maxis/EA)
Did you miss the last SimCity beta sign-up event? You're in luck, because EA and Maxis want to give you another chance to get in on the beta for the highly anticipated building game. There's a catch, though: beta builders only get to play a snapshot of game for up to one hour at any point between Friday, January 25 and the following Monday, January 28.
Amusingly, the actual process of signing up for the beta might be more difficult than playing the game itself, as the sign-up page seems to have some serious problems going on right now -- most likely due to a high influx of interested participants.
On 10 separate occasions, I was unable to sign up for the SimCity beta, experiencing several errors that would make any gamer with pre-hypertension smash his or her keyboard into smithereens. For example, after signing in with my Origin account, I then had to enter a simple Captcha verification code and was told I entered it incorrectly every time ("Your verification code was incorrect"). I know how to read a Captcha, so, no, you're incorrect EA.
Then, after somehow getting my Captcha code to actually work, the sign-up window disappeared and I was redirected back to the main SimCity Web page, only to see that refresh into a window displaying a Drupal error (the content management system EA uses for the Web site). How wonderful.
The SimCity Twitter account prescribed a remedy for those experiencing these errors: "Heads up, Mayors -- if you're having trouble viewing the #SimCitybeta page, try a hard refresh and clear your cache."
After clearing everything (and I mean absolutely everything, short of throwing my computer out the window) I kept encountering the same set of errors. In fact, I just tried it again, and after clicking on the beta page, it simply disappears into the void. Hopefully the actual game is easier than this horrid beta sign-up experience, which I'm sure will go back to normal after people stop trying to sign up. Good luck.
ALGIERS, Algeria About 30 foreign hostages are still unaccounted for three days into a bloody siege with Islamic militants at a gas plant deep in the Sahara, Algeria's state news service said Friday.
The militants, meanwhile, reportedly offered to trade two American hostages for terror figures jailed in the United States, according to a statement received by a Mauritanian news site that often reports news from North African extremists.
It was the latest development in a hostage drama that began Wednesday when militants seized hundreds of workers from 10 nations at Algeria's remote Ain Amenas natural gas plant. Algerian forces retaliated Thursday by storming the plant in an attempted rescue operation that killed at least four hostages and left leaders around the world expressing strong concerns about the hostages' safety.
Algerian special forces resumed negotiating Friday with the militants holed up in the refinery, according to the Algerian news service, which cited a security source.
The report said nearly 100 of the remaining 132 had been freed by Friday, but it could not account for the remainder.
Militants on Friday offered to trade two American hostages for two prominent terror figures jailed in the United States: Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as "the Blind Sheikh," who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
The offer, according to a Mauritanian news site that frequently broadcasts dispatches from groups linked to al Qaeda, came from Moktar Belmoktar, an extremist commander based in Mali who apparently masterminded the operation.
It could not be independently confirmed.
Algeria's government has kept a tight grip on information, but it was clear that the militant assault that began Wednesday with an attempted bus hijacking has killed at least six people from the plant — and perhaps many more.
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Deaths and survivors in Algerian hostage rescue
Workers kidnapped by the militants came from around the world — Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians. Leaders on Friday expressed strong concerns about how Algeria was handing the situation and its apparent reluctance to communicate.
British Prime Minister David Cameron went before the House of Commons on Friday to provide an update, seeming frustrated that Britain was not told about the military operation despite having "urged we be consulted."
At least one American, Mark Cobb, who had hidden in a meeting room, is known to have gotten out of the gas plant, CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports.
One high-ranking source in the U.S. government told CBS News that four Americans had been freed, one of them injured, after the raid.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday the U.S. is working with the British and Algerian governments to assess what's happening on the ground. Speaking Friday at Kings College in London, Panetta said the U.S. is "working around the clock to ensure the safe return of our citizens."
Panetta said the terrorists should be on notice that they'll find no sanctuary in Algeria or North Africa.
He said anyone who looks to attack the U.S. will have "no place to hide."
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said President Obama was receiving regular updates from his national security team and was in constant contact with the Algerian government, stressing that "our first priority is the safety and security of the hostages. "
Terrorized hostages from Ireland and Norway trickled out of the Ain Amenas plant, 800 miles south of Algiers, the capital. BP, which jointly operates the plant, said it had begun to evacuate employees from Algeria.
On Friday, up to around 20 people, including some Americans, were being evacuated from the country, a spokesperson for the U.S. African Command said. AFRICOM said those with injuries would recieve medical treatment en route to Europe, but would not specify the extent of the injuries or the final destination within Europe for the evacuees.
"This is a large and complex site and they are still pursuing terrorists and possibly some of the hostages," Cameron said. He told lawmakers the situation remained fluid and dangerous, saying "part of the threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, a threat still remains in another part."
Algeria's army-dominated government, hardened by decades of fighting Islamist militants, shrugged aside foreign offers of help and drove ahead alone.
The U.S. government sent an unarmed surveillance drone to the BP-operated site, near the border with Libya, but it could do little more than watch Thursday's military intervention. British intelligence and security officials were on the ground in Algeria's capital but were not at the installation, said a British official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
A U.S. official said while some Americans escaped, other Americans were either still held or unaccounted for.
El Mokhtar Ould Sidi, editor of the Mauritanian news site ANI, said several calls on Thursday came from the kidnappers themselves giving their demands and describing the situation.
"They were clearly in a situation of war, the spokesman who contacted us was giving orders to his colleagues and you could hear the sounds of war in the background.... He threatened to kill all the hostages if the Algerian forces tried to liberate them," he said.
With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.
Militants claimed 35 hostages died when the military helicopters opened fire as they were transporting hostages from the living quarters to the main factory area where other workers were being held.
The group — led by a Mali-based al Qaeda offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday's military assault — but garnered a global audience.
The militants made it clear that their attack was in revenge for the French intervention against Islamists who have taken over large parts of neighboring Mali. France has encountered fierce resistance from the extremist groups in Mali and failed to persuade many Western allies to join in the actual combat.
Even violence-scarred Algerians were stunned by the brazen hostage-taking Wednesday, the biggest in northern Africa in years and the first to include Americans as targets. Mass fighting in the 1990s had largely spared the lucrative oil and gas industry that gives Algeria its economic independence and regional weight.
The official Algerian news agency said four hostages were killed in Thursday's operation, two Britons and two Filipinos. Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, died Wednesday in the initial militant ambush on a bus ferrying foreign workers to an airport. Citing hospital officials, it said six Algerians and seven foreigners were injured.
APS said some 600 local workers were safely freed in the raid — but many of those were reportedly released the day before by the militants themselves.
One Irish hostage managed to escape: electrician Stephen McFaul, who'd worked in North Africa's oil and natural gas fields off and on for 15 years. His family said the militants let hostages call their families to press the kidnappers' demands.
"He phoned me at 9 o'clock to say al Qaeda were holding him, kidnapped, and to contact the Irish government, for they wanted publicity. Nightmare, so it was. Never want to do it again. He'll not be back! He'll take a job here in Belfast like the rest of us," said his mother, Marie.
Dylan, McFaul's 13-year-old son, started crying as he talked to Ulster Television. "I feel over the moon, just really excited. I just can't wait for him to get home," he said.
Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend "Lennay Kekua" may have hoaxed other unsuspecting suitors.
"Catfish" movie director and actor Ariel Schulman told "Good Morning America" today that he believes there may have been "a few other people duped by the fake Lennay character."
Schulman and his brother Nev Schulman have been looking into the elaborate scam and claim to be corresponding with various players involved. They have come to believe that there were "a lot of other people that she was corresponding with before and maybe even during her relationship [with Te'o]."
Nev Schulman was the subject of the 2010 movie "Catfish," which spawned the TV series, because he himself was sucked in by an Internet pretender -- or a "catfish" -- who built an elaborate fake life.
As questions mount about Te'o's possible role in the complex scam, the number one question is whether Te'o was unknowingly ensnared, as he says, or whether he was complicit in the scam.
"I stand by the guy. My heart goes out to him," Ariel Schulman said. His brother has reached out to Te'o, but has not heard back.
"He had his heart broken," Schulman said. "He was grieving for someone, whether she existed or not. Those were real feelings."
Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
Manti Te'o Hoax: Was He Duped or Did He Know? Watch Video
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Click here for a who's who in the Manti Te'o case
Te'o has kept a low-profile since the news of the scandal broke. He released a statement calling the situation "incredibly embarrassing" and maintaining that he was a victim of the hoax.
He was captured briefly by news cameras on Thursday at a Florida training facility, but has not spoken publicly.
As for the woman whose photo was used as the face of Lennay Kekua, "Inside Edition" has identified her as Diane O'Meara who is very much alive. The show caught up with her on Thursday, but she declined to comment.
ABC News' legal analyst Dan Abrams said that O'Meara may be the one person in the scandal with the power to sue since her likeness was taken and used without her permission.
As for Te'o, even if he knew about the deception, it appears that he did not do anything illegal.
"He's allowed to lie to the public. He's allowed to lie to the media. He's not allowed to lie to the authorities," Abrams said on "Good Morning America."
Questions also remain about the timeline of events and when Te'o discovered that the "love of his life," as he called her, was nothing more than a fake Internet persona.
According to Notre Dame's timeline of events, Te'o learned his girlfriend didn't exist on Dec. 6.
But in a Dec. 8 interview with South Bend, Ind., TV station WSBT, Te'o said, "I really got hit with cancer. I lost both my grandparents an my girlfriend to cancer." And on Dec. 11, he talked about his girlfriend in a newspaper interview.
Te'o alerted Notre Dame on Dec. 26 about the scam, the university said.
Click here for more scandalous public confessions.
Skeptics have also cited comments by Te'o's father Brian Te'o who told a newspaper how Kekua used to visit his son in Hawaii.
Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the university launched their own investigation.
"Our investigators, through their work, were able to discover online chatter between the perpetrators," Swarbrick said at a Wednesday news conference. "That was sort of the ultimate proof."
ALGIERS (Reuters) - About 60 foreigners were still being held hostage or missing inside a gas plant on Friday after Algerian forces stormed the desert complex to free hundreds of captives taken by Islamist militants, who threatened to attack other energy installations.
The attack, which plunged capitals around the world into crisis mode, is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.
"We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part," British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.
A local Algerian source said 60 foreigners were still in the facility and some were being held hostage, but it was unclear how many and how many might be in hiding elsewhere in the sprawling compound. It was also not known whether some might have been killed and the bodies not found.
Those still unaccounted for included 10 from Japan, eight Norwegians and a number of Britons put by Cameron at "less than 30". Washington has said a number of Americans were among the hostages, without giving details, and the local source said a U.S. aircraft landed nearby on Friday.
As Western leaders clamored for news of their nationals, several expressed anger they had not been consulted by the Algerian government about its decision to storm the facility.
Algeria's state news agency said earlier more than half of 132 foreign hostages were freed and that the army had rescued 650 hostages, 573 of whom were Algerians.
"(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome' before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held," it said, quoting a security source.
Thirty hostages, including several Westerners, were killed during Thursday's assault, the source said, along with at least 18 of their captors, who said they had taken the site as retaliation for French intervention against Islamists in neighboring Mali.
(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London and Padraic Halpin and Conor Humprhies in Dublin; Writing by Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
SINGAPORE : The sale of units in the Forestville executive condominium (EC) development was stopped because the developer had launched the project for sale based on a plan with unapproved changes, said the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).
In an email reply to Channel NewsAsia on Friday, URA clarified that "the Forestville case should not be linked or confused with the release of the new measures".
The new measures cap the maximum strata floor area of new EC units at 160 square metres, restrict the sale of new dual-key EC units to multi-generational families and subject private enclosed spaces and private roof terraces to development charges.
URA said Forestville "had obtained provisional permission from URA before the policy changes", so it is not subject to the new measures as their designs had been finalised.
The other EC development that had obtained provisional permission as at 11 January 2013, before the policy change, is a project at Woodlands Ave 6/Woodlands Drive 16 that is developed by Opal Star and Binjai Holdings.
A fourth measure, which states that "developers of future EC sale sites from the Government Land Sales (GLS) programme will only be allowed to launch units for sale 15 months from the date of award of the sites or after the physical completion of foundation works", will only apply to new GLS sites awarded on or after 12 Jan 2013.
This will not affect the Forestville project as well as six other EC sites last year.
