LONDON - MILLVINA Dean, the last remaining survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, died on Sunday at a care home in England, the BBC reported, citing two of her friends. She was 97.

Dean was a two-month-old baby and her family were emigrating to Kansas in the United States when the Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage in 1912.

She was placed in a sack and carried to safety. Her mother and brother also survived, but her father was among the 1,500 passengers and crew who died.

Two of Dean’s unnamed friends told the BBC that she died at the care home in Hampshire, in southern England. She had spent most of her life in Southampton in the county of Hampton, from where the Titanic set out.

Dean had been struggling to pay the bills for her care home and in October 2008 raised 31,150 pounds (S$80,000) by auctioning off items from the liner.

She was forced to sell a 100-year-old suitcase filled with clothes which was donated to her family by the people of New York when they arrived in the United States after being rescued.

Rare prints of the liner signed by the artists along with compensation letters sent to her mother by the Titanic Relief Fund also went under the hammer in Devizes, south-west England.

The last remaining US survivor, Lillian Asplund, died in her home in May 2006 at the age of 99. She was just five years old when the Titanic went down. 

Question: How did Mas Selemat escape? Here's the answer.

JEMAAH Islamiah militant Mas Selamat Kastari took to wearing women’s clothes to escape detection after breaking out from the Whitley Road Detention Centre in Singapore last year.

Harian Metro reported that the terrorist wore several layers of clothing, which he could quickly shed and change to cover his tracks.

The Malay tabloid said Mas Selamat had used drains as his escape route to the beach in Woodlands, from which he swam across 2km under the cover of night to Stulang Laut in Johor Baru, using only children’s arm buoys as aid.

A source said he had been planning his escape for a year by constantly testing how long the guards at the centre would allow him to remain in the toilet.

> Berita Harian reported that the Kedah state financial office had been directed to submit to the Mentri Besar all the records put in by an executive council member suspected of excessive claims.

Kedah Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Azizan Abdul Razak said he had also directed the office to check if the executive council member had made his claims according to procedures and guidelines.

He was reported as saying that he would meet with the executive council member, who is currently overseas.

The daily also quoted Malay sian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief commissioner Datuk Seri Ahmad Said Hamdan as saying that investigations showed there was no case against former Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said for corruption.

However, he did not discount the possibility that other names linked to the case might have abused their powers in awarding contracts.

He also declined to elaborate if the ministry’s officials and her two senior officers – from whom MACC had recorded statements – were involved.

The Star daily on its Web site says the Health Ministry has confirmed that a woman who had returned from the United States recently was infected with the H1N1 virus.

It said on Saturday that she was a friend of a 21-year-old man who was also infected with the virus and that they were both on the same flight. She remains hospitalized in northern Penang state.

Health Ministry officials couldn't be immediately reached for comment. -- AP

According to a poll by Microsoft Windows Mobile, popping the question over the phone is a big no-no, say 89 per cent of local respondents.

This finding is in stark contrast to consumers in China and India, where more than 50 per cent of those polled in a similar study said it was fine to propose marriage using a mobile phone.

Yet, nearly half of the respondents admit they have flirted with someone other than their partner via their mobile phones, with 12 per cent saying they have actually broken up with someone using short message service (SMS).

The poll seems to reinforce perceptions that Singaporeans are very attached to their mobile phones, with nearly 65 per cent even using their phones while in the loo. About half of the respondents also admit to taking calls while in business meetings, a third say they take calls during weddings and 18 per cent take calls even at a funeral.

Ironically, while 93 per cent of respondents say they have used their phones during a meal with others, 46 per cent say that it is 'inconsiderate' of others to use their phones for a chit chat while in a restaurant.

Conducted in April this year, the poll surveyed 100 Singaporeans above the age of 18. Similar surveys were also conducted with over 2,500 respondents in Australia, China, Japan, India and Taiwan.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is ranked 10th, while the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) was placed 14th by QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, which compiled the rankings.

Universities in Hong Kong did particularly well. The University of Hong Kong topped the list, followed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Universiy of Science and Technology in fourth place.

Nunzio Quacquarelli, managing director of QS , said: 'The results of the QS.com Asian University Rankings focus on regionally relevant measures of excellence, with the top performing universities distinguished not only by quality, but also by high productivity of research, compared to their regional peers.'

He added : 'Singapore's universities have performed particularly well, with strong faculty to student ratio results. These results, combined with those of the Times Higher Education - QS World University Rankings, place Singapore's universities on the world scale for quality higher education.'

NUS was placed 30th and NTU 77th in last year's rankings.

TO VILLAGERS in the sleepy village of Kampung Tawakal in Skudai, Malaysia, Mas Selamat Kastari was the meticulous gardener tending his patch of fruit trees.

To the outside world, the gardener was really a terrorist bomb-maker.

But such are the many masks of Mas Selamat that for eight months his immediate neighbours did not suspect anything until a police raid one April morning.

The villagers did not know he was Singapore's most wanted terrorist. From what they saw of him, he was ordinary, if a little private.

Neighbours said Mas Selamat kept mostly to himself and avoided eye contact.

They also said he had no visitors while he was staying at the two-storey concrete house built on stilts.

Mr Wasilan Suaudi, 53, who lives in the house next door, told The New Paper that he found out from Johar Hassan that he was a relative's son who was in a crisis and needed a place to live.

Johar lived with his family on the top floor while Mas Selamat stayed on the ground floor.

Johar, said to be a fellow JI member, was arrested by Malaysian Security Branch officers on the same day as Mas Selamat.

According to Mr Wasilan, Johar, who is in his 50s, lived in the house with his wife, a housewife, and three children aged between 3 and 12.

Neighbours said the house actually belongs to Johar's dad and it had been vacant for a while before Johar's family moved in about two years ago.

Another neighbour, Mr Jamian Simin, 70, a retiree, said Johar's father had told him that Mas Selamat was Johar's cousin.

'Johar's father said that his limping was because he had fallen from a ladder and hurt his leg at a construction site,' said Mr Jamian in Malay.

Mr Jamian did not doubt this as he knew Johar was a contractor himself.

Mas Selamat quickly blended into the life in this quiet backwater of fewer than 100 villagers who mostly kept to themselves.

Even though he was a wanted man, he did not behave or live like someone on the run, according to accounts from neighbours.

The only telling sign was that he hardly ventured out of the house's compound, leaving only to get daily necessities from a grocery store along the main road outside the village.

And he usually did this at night.

He was mostly seen working in the large garden, about the size of two basketball courts, said Mr Wasilan.

Mr Wasilan, who owns a food shop near the village, said in Malay: 'Before he came, the garden was in a complete mess. He was the one who cleaned it up.'

Mr Wasilan even led The New Paper team to a small plot of land where he said Mas Selamat had planted bittergourd, groundnuts and tapioca.

He also showed us the fruit trees with branches heavily laden with rambutans, mangosteens and jackfruits as testimony to the terrorist's green fingers.

The New Paper team counted at least six different varieties of fruit trees in the garden.

Mr Wasilan added that he often saw Mas Selamat working in the garden, wearing tattered T-shirts, long pants and yellow boots.

On occasion, Mr Wasilan said that he would speak to Mas Selamat while he was working in his garden, but their conversations never went beyond simple questions like whether he had eaten.

Mr Wasilan claimed that he never asked and did not know his new neighbour's name, addressing him only as 'abang', which is Malay for brother, when he spoke to him.

Describing him as a nice and soft-spoken man, Mr Wasilan never suspected that Mas Selamat was a terrorist and a wanted man.

He said: 'Sometimes, I see him playing with the children in the garden.'

He added that the children would also follow Mas Selamat when he went fishing by a small stream about 20m behind the house.

He would then prepare and cook the small fish he caught at a makeshift kitchen behind the house.

Asked how they felt about having a terrorist live within their midst, Mr Jamian said that he was worried as he did not know what Mas Selamat had done while he was living in the house.

Mr Wasilan, however, simply shrugged his shoulders.

He said: 'I'm not scared because I didn't know he was a wanted man. By the time I found out, he was already caught.'

No one would say what would have happened if Mas Selamat hadn't been recaptured.

Would he have continued in his idyllic routine?

The village's name - Tawakal - is actually Arabic for surrendering yourself and putting your trust in God.

By assuming the idyllic life of a simple villager, Mas Selamat appeared to have surrendered himself to the kampung that became his refuge, and his prison.

'He was quite open about it and injected his own views on the subject. He told us very firmly not to even think of trying it,' said Min Jia, 16.

These workshops are held during school hours. 'We learn about different forms of intimacy and how we shouldn't befriend strangers online. I found the classes quite useful and, in fact, I cheered with the class when the teachers told us not to have sex,' she said.

I wonder how many teenagers out there are still pure? LOL....Anyway, applause to the student who said 'no' to pre-martial sex. 

Instead of staying home to twiddle your thumbs, recruiters had say that by taking up part-time jobs or offering freelance services could, besides helping to make ends meet and provide other tangible benefits too.

'A part-time position can allow workers to explore different lines of work for a broader experience; mothers can explore the flexibility of working at home,' said Mr Dhirendra Shantilal, senior vice-president (Asia Pacific) of recruitment firm Kelly Services.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak disclosed this to Malaysian media yesterday, hours after Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng told local media the JI leader escaped Singapore by swimming across the narrow stretch of water that separates Singapore from Johor, with the help of an 'improvised flotation device'.

Datuk Seri Najib told Malaysian reporters: 'We apprehended him here (in Malaysia), his main focus at the time was Singapore. He was planning a lot of things in Singapore.'

He did not provide details, but said he had 'mentioned this' to Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong when they met in Pattaya, Thailand, on April 10-11 for the Asean summit that was eventually aborted because of protests.

Mr Lee was 'very happy and grateful that Malaysia has succeeded in apprehending Mas Selamat', said Mr Najib.

Mas Selamat, leader of a group of Singaporean JI members, escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Centre on Feb 27 last year.

He was captured in Johor on April 1, according to regional intelligence sources The Straits Times spoke to.

This was confirmed by Mr Wong at a press conference in Singapore yesterday, the same day The Straits Times broke the news of the capture.

Mr Wong said that as far as the authorities know, no local JI network was involved in aiding Mas Selamat's dash from Whitley to Singapore's northern shore.

Mr Wong, who is also Home Affairs Minister, said the Singapore Government did not inform the public of the capture earlier because doing so could jeopardise operational secrecy and perhaps even endanger sources of information.

GOOGLE can now call itself a billion-dollar brand.

A business survey found that the search engine giant has become the world's first $100 billion ($148b) brand.

Its value was almost 25 per cent more than its rival, Microsoft, according to the annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Brands report.

Google's label value rose 16 per cent in just one year.

While the overall value of the top 100 brands has risen by 2 per cent in the past year despite the turbulence in the global economy.

It is the third year in a row that Google has secured the top spot.

'Google's rank has been driven by fantastic financial performance and equity value,' said Mr Peter Walshe, the global account director at Millward Brown.

Ms Lorraine Twohill, Google's marketing manager, told The Daily Telegraph: 'We know that without consumers you have nothing and there is a great element of trust in us.

'We think about the consumer first and expect everything else to fall into place after that.

'We don't feel big. We still work in little, scrappy teams and we feel very small.'

Google, formed at Stanford University by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, went up 16 per cent in brand value in the past year to just break the US$100b mark.

Industries that saw their value grow over the past year are mostly 'stay at home' brands, said the Millward Brown research.

Coffee companies like Nescafe benefited from cutbacks on drinking expensive lattes in Starbucks and other coffee shops, for instance.

Soft drinks, fast food and beer brands also grew as more people stayed at home to eat and drink while online sites like eBay and Amazon also grew.

Car companies, insurers, clothing brands and, not surprisingly, financial institutions were the ones that suffer the most, the research found.

'In the current environment, where the value of many businesses has fallen, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times,' said Millward Brown Optimor chief Joanna Seddon.

The top five brands are:

1. Google: US$100b

2. Microsoft: US$76b

3. Coca-Cola: US$68b

3. IBM: US$67b

4. McDonald's: US$67b