Casino Royale it is not. The country's first casino school is preparing to train the future staff of the much-awaited gambling era in the small city-state. The country will see the casino boom by 2009 with the construction of two casino resorts. The new establishments are expected to bring in more than $1. 4 billion dollars a year for Singapore and will need a minimum of 35,000 staff to run them.

An Australian man was fined by a Singapore Court after he jokingly made a "bomb" comment while on board a flight to Indonesia. Riccardo Paulin, 65, pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of raising a false alarm about a terrorist act.

It's going to be a white Christmas in Baguio City, the summer capital of the Philippines, as some businessmen from South Korea who have made the city their second home, have revealed plans of returning the favor by bringing snow during the holiday season. Acting city Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr said some Korean entrepreneurs have pledged to invest in snow-blowing machines that would be deployed atop buildings to produce snowflakes that would fall on downtown Baguio.

A new restaurant in New York is serving chocolate pizza, warm double chocolate fondue, and is offering syringes that squirt liquid chocolate into customers' mouths. Chocolate By The Bald Man, owned by Israeli restaurateur Max Brenner, is a chocoholics dream. Patrons can get hot chocolate in oval-shaped cups called "hug mugs. " They can also get coffee in a cup that has a pouch for chocolate.

Speaking on Malaysia's first ever "toilet expo," deputy premier Najib Razak rallied for stricter laws to require business owners to stringently maintain clean washrooms. He added that dingy facilities scare away tourists and reflect badly on the country. He said said the cleanliness and beauty of a country's toilets were a measure of how civilized it was.