Pregnant Australian Blogger Sentenced to 10 Months in Singapore For Bashing Filipinos

Blogger Ai Takagi of Australia was found guilty of sedition by Singapore Court for violating their law against speech that instigates racial and religious discord. The 23 year-old will be serving her 10 months prison sentence while she's pregnant. She published posts back in 2014 on now shut-down Real Singapore website that is provoking "unwarranted hatred against foreigners in Singapore" according to Judge Salina Ishak.

In one of her blog posts, she quoted a Singaporean who allegedly quit his job claiming that Filipinos in his company were treated better than his countrymen. The post reportedly described Filipinos as "two-faced" and "relentless back-stabbers".

She is 8 weeks pregnant and she had pleaded guilty to the charges and expressed remorse during the proceedings. Her Singaporean husband Yang Kaiheng, with whom she ran the website, is due to go on trial on similar charges.

Remittances All time High hit $2 billion in July

MANILA, Philippines - Remittances by Filipinos working and living overseas reached $2 billion in July, growing 5.4% year-on-year, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas showed.

Remittances in the January to July period hit $13.3 billion, 5.3% up from the previous year.

"Driving the uptrend during the 7-month period were robust remittance flows from both land-based OF workers with work contracts of one year or more ($10 billion) as well as sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts ($3 billion) which grew by 2.8% and 13.7% respectively," the BSP said.

The BSP expects 5% growth in total cash remittances this year.

Major sources of remittances during the first 7 months of the year were US (43.4% of total), Canada (9.6%), Saudi Arabia (7.5%), United Kingdom (4.8%), Japan (4.9%), United Arab Emirates (4.1%) and Singapore (4%).

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