Ng How Yue New Permanent Secretary Appointments

SINGAPORE: The Public Service Division, Prime Minister's Office, on Friday announced changes to several Permanent Secretary appointments.

It said the Ministry of Trade and Industry will get a new Second Permanent Secretary from October 1.

He is Mr Ng How Yue, who is currently the Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister.

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He will replace Mrs Ow Foong Pheng, who will be appointed Permanent Secretary for Trade and Industry.

In addition, from October 2, Mr Teo Ming Kian, who is currently the Permanent Secretary for National Research and Development and Advisor (Special Projects) for the Ministry of Finance, will relinquish both his appointments at the end of his re-employment.

Ms Yong Ying-I, Permanent Secretary for Health, will be appointed concurrently as Permanent Secretary for National Research and Development.

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Earthquake;D.C. monuments 'stable' after 5.9 magnitude quake

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 struck near Washington, D.C., the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter was in Mineral, Virginia. Did you feel it? Send CNN an iReport. The quake was four miles deep, according to the USGS.

Update 3:28 p.m. ET: The White House and adjacent buildings evacuated as a precaution following the earthquake have been given the all-clear, the U.S. Secret Service said. The FBI and Justice Department have also reopened evacuated buildings.

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Update 3:25 p.m. ET: East Coast residents should be prepared to feel aftershocks from Tuesday's earthquake, a U.S. Geological Survey official said.

Update 3:22 p.m. ET: The North Anna nuclear power plant, which located closest to the epicenter of Tuesday's earthquake in Virginia, is shut down and in a safe condition, a company official and the Louisa County public information office report. There has been no release of nuclear material, Louisa County spokeswoman Amanda Reidelbach said.

Update 3:04 p.m. ET: All national monuments and parks in Washington are "stable but closed" following Tuesday's earthquake, a United States Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser said. A couple of minor injuries and some minor structural damage have been reported in Washington, following Tuesday's earthquake, according to Schlosser.

Part of the central tower of the National Cathedral, the highest point in Washington, D.C., was damaged, according to spokesman Richard Weinberg. "It looks like three of the pinnacles have broken off the central tower," Weinberg told CNN.

Update 3:02 p.m. ET: Amtrak is reporting service disruptions between Washington and Baltimore because of the earthquake, the company reported on Twitter.

Aftershocks are a concern, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told CNN. "People should be expecting (them), especially over the next hour or two," she said.

The quake was felt in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City and on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where President Barack Obama is vacationing. It's unknown if the president felt the quake.

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The Pentagon has been evacuated, CNN's Barbara Starr reports. "When the building began shaking rather violently, hundreds of people began streaming out," she said, because many people thought that the building was under attack. Starr was standing in the Pentagon's press office when the roof started to shake.

Cell phone service has been disrupted in New York City, CNN learned within minutes of the quake.

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Earthquakes Today

Two very unusual earthquakes have struck in Colorado and Virginia today. While no injuries or damage have yet been reported, the Virginia quake was felt across a wide area, from New York down to Atlanta. Damage is expected in the Virginia quake.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to the US Geological Survey (USGS) The Virginia quake is a 5.9 and the one in Colorado is a magnitude 5.3.

People in the Washington DC and New York city areas report feeling the quake strongly, especially in high rise buildings. Many first considered that a terrorist strike had occurred, but quickly realized that it was a quake. High rise buildings were evacuated and people milled about outside, unsure if it was safe to return. Thousands of people remian evacuated at this hour.

The USGS recommends caution around brick structures and suggests that water lines be checked for damage. While aftershocks will occur, in all but a few percentage of cases, they diminish in intensity and should not cause any significant disruption.

In Colorado, the early AM quake shook houses and rattled windows, but harmed nobody. Some rocks were reported on nearby highways, but no significant disruptions were reported.

Quakes do strike the central and eastern US, but they are very uncommon. It is especially uncommon to see two seismic events occur on the same day, but there is no evidence the two events are linked in an y way. Under Colorado, tectonic activity, especially volcanic activity, while not manifest on the surface, does cause quakes throughout the central US. 

About 500 earthquakes above 6.0 occur around the world every year, but Virginia has only experienced 25 such quakes since statehood.

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Kim Kardashian Wedding News

Kim Kardashian Wedding News Kim Kardashian has been spotted in New York City, shopping for expensive gifts for her extravagant wedding, according to the latest Kim Kardashian wedding news. The 30-year-old reality TV star revealed she is very calm with the closeness of her wedding, which is scheduled for August 20, 2011. The bride-to-be told reporters covering the Kim Kardashian wedding news that she landed in the Big Apple, where she had a dress fitting session with fashion designer Vera Wang, and took

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another flight to Los Angeles at noon. She went on to add that she spent nearly eleven hours on a plane to visit New York for about three hours devoted to her dress fitting and a small shopping tour on the East Coast before she landed in Hollywood again.

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Kim Kardashian Wedding News 

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Meteor Shower Tonight

The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight with up to 100 meteors per hour striking the sky overhead. We have the bad luck to have a nearly full moon, causing many of those meteors to go unnoticed in the glare of its bright disc. Nevertheless, the Perseid shower has many fast, bright meteors — even occasional fireballs — which cannot be hidden by the Moon.
 Meteor Shower Tonight

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The best time for viewing will be in the pre-dawn hours when the radiant of the shower in Perseus will be high and the moon will be low in the west. Although the shower peaks tonight, it will taper off over the next week or so. You may still see one next week, so keep an eye out if you can get out before dawn.
Meteor showers get their name from the area of the sky from which they appear to radiate. The nearly parallel paths of the meteors seem to spread out from a point up in the sky, just as lines appear to converge on the horizon. That doesn’t mean that all of the meteors will stream from that point. Far from it! A given shower meteor can appear anywhere in the sky, since it can strike the earth’s atmosphere at any point. The direction of its path will move away from the radiant. This is rather like looking up at raindrops. They seem to come from a point overhead, even if they are not falling directly on you.
Learn more about Perseus at tonight’s 7:00 show, Legends of the Night Sky — Perseus and Andromeda, at the Astronaut Memorial Planetarium. The Planetarium is tucked away at the back of the Brevard Community College Cocoa campus.

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The Astronaut Memorial Planetarium on the BCC Cocoa campus presents shows at 7, 8 and 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday evenings, with matinee shows at 2 and 3 p.m. Wednesdays.

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