The recent rejection by the drought-stricken Southern African countries of genetically modified ("GM") food donated by the United States mainly on safety grounds and the divergent scientific views on the propriety of their objection, have rekindled the debates on public health implications of GM food consumption and cast shadows on agricultural biotechnology's prospects. This paper examines the disparate scientific views on GM food safety, the place of consumer's choice, legal, and ethical issues in GM food governance in the context of Singapore, which relies entirely on food imports.

The insider trading laws in Singapore have been revamped with the passing of the Securities and Futures Act 2001, a comprehensive legislation dealing with the regulation of securities and futures markets in Singapore. Our new insider trading provisions have been largely modelled after the equivalent provisions in the Australian Corporations Act 2001. This paper seeks to discuss the background for the reforms to insider trading law in Singapore and will argue that these reforms have come about because of an earlier adoption of Australian legislation on securities regulation in the area of initial public offers, entailing a continuity and coherence in the policy rationale for the securities laws in Singapore. This paper will also discuss the Australian origins of the new Singapore provisions and examine comparatively our Singapore provisions with their Australian precedents. I will discuss how the Australian origins may affect the interpretation of these provisions in Singapore. I will also point out a significant difference between our legislation and our Australian precedent, namely, that we have retained a specific provision on connected persons as insiders and have shifted the onus of proof to connected persons to deny that there was insider trading upon the satisfaction of the existence of certain factors.

In this article, the author sets out the case for punishing a person who unsuccessfully attempts the commission of a criminal act to a lesser extent than one who actually completes the same act. A common objection to such a position is that one who attempts should not escape equal punishment on a mere quirk of fate, for it is this, in essence, that separates the attempter from the perpetrator of the completed crime. This objection is misconceived. The rationale behind laying down a lesser punishment for attempts lies not in surrendering what is really a normative judgment to the vagaries of luck, but in the fundamental reality that harmful consequences-which only manifest upon completion of a crime-form a basic part of the societal response and reaction mechanism that is our criminal justice system.