After a 21-year ban, the Cosmo girl is set to return to Singapore -- although only in a shrink-wrapped, body-hugging cover to prevent undesired peeping, the government of the tightly controlled city state announced on Monday.
Keeping her company will be the Sex and the City quartet of strong-willed New York women whose exploits in and out of bed have attracted an army of fans around the world.
The move to allow the popular woman's magazine Cosmopolitan back on the shelves -- it was banned two decades ago for "unhealthy values" -- and Sex and The City on cable TV after 10pm is part of a package of measures recommended by the Censorship Review Committee after a 17-month review.
Other changes include alterations to cinema ratings and greater flexibility for arts and theatre events. The last review was in 1992.
They are all part of a wider strategy led by the government-appointed Remaking Singapore committee to shed the republic's staid and prudish image collected over the past years.
But the information minister, Lee Boon Yang, said the Cosmopolitan magazine would not be freely available.
"There are some constraints. It has to be shrink-wrapped to prevent browsing," he said.
The minister also said there would be some tightening of the current censorship laws, particularly as regards children, because the review committee's report found "parental guidance of the young in media consumption is grossly inadequate."
"Censorship exists in all societies ... some more, some less stringent than others," he said. "We will react to changes according to our social norms."
Mild nudity -- such as a naked scene in international smash-hit Titanic -- and a lesbian kiss in arthouse favorite The Hours, were among the high-profile casualties of its censorship.
The ministry said that a more flexible and contextual approach will be taken when dealing with homosexual themes and content.
But radical changes are still unlikely for many years.
"The desire to protect the young from unsuitable content and to respect racial and religious sensitivities remain strong," a ministry statement said.
One example is the relative failure of Speaker's Corner, a government attempt to copy the no-holds-barred oratory venue of the same name in London's Hyde Park.
Only 177 people registered to speak in the last year -- all orators have to get police permission in advance -- compared with 365 in the previous year.
Among headline-grabbing attempts to "remake" Singapore are the relaxation of licensing laws and the end of the ban on bar-top dancing.
After a ban of many years, chewing gum is also now on sale again in Singapore, although only because its prohibition violated a recently signed free-trade deal with the US.
But allowing sugar-free gum obtained via a prescription is only as far as the conservative Singaporean authorities are willing to go, at least for the moment.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion