MANILA Sixteen people were wounded in a grenade explosion outside a Catholic church during a Christmas eve mass in the Philippines’ restive southern island of Mindanao, a priest and police said on Saturday. Security forces across Southeast Asia are on alert ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays, as police in Australia and Indonesia said they had foiled bomb plots and Malaysian security forces arrested suspected […]
It turns out there is a downside to spending 120% of your annual income every year from the time you graduate college until that day you turn 40 and finally realize that you’re getting old and have absolutely no liquid assets and no hopes of ever retiring. While the above strategy seemingly makes sense to our elitist, Ivy League-educated central planners at the Fed who have waged […]
A round up of some of 2016’s most significant corporate events and news stories. Smartphone sales © EPA A bright start to the year for Samsung Electronicswent up in smoke, after it took the unprecedented decision to axe its Galaxy Note 7 line, following a spate of safety issues that saw the smartphone banned from aircraft, writes Nic Fildes. The 2016 Galaxy Note iteration won substantial praise […]
SINGAPORE: Flash floods were observed in several parts of Singapore on Saturday (Dec 24), the day before Christmas. According to the Land Transport Authority’s Twitter page, areas affected include Cairnhill Road, Newton Circus and on the Pan Island Expressway (PIE) near the Stevens Road exit. Pedestrians walking in the rain as water floods the streets of Upper Thomson. (Photos: Tiffany Cheng) Photos sent to Channel NewsAsia also […]
A hundred years ago, an arms race between the dominant global superpower the (British Empire) and a rising power (Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany) culminated in the mass slaughter of World War One. The deep mistrust between the United States and the People’s Republic of China has all the potential to spawn a traumatic chapter in international relations. Despite its “pivot” to Asia, the Obama White House was cautious […]
The renminbi’s seemingly endless grind lower against the US dollar has been one of the financial stories of 2016, triggering a wave of capital outflows from China that Goldman Sachs estimates may have totalled $1.1tn since August 2015. The once closely controlled Chinese currency has tumbled 6.5 per cent to an eight-year low of Rmb6.945 against the greenback this year, taking its slide since August 2015 to […]
By Timothy Mclaughlin and Renita D. Young | CHICAGO CHICAGO A Singaporean blogger who has stirred controversy in his home country is being detained by U.S. immigration officials, the Department of Homeland Security said on Friday. Amos Yee, 18, who was jailed earlier this year in the Southeast Asian city-state, was stopped by customs agents at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Dec. 16 as he sought political […]
Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via Strategic-Culture.org, Understanding the objectives and logic that accompany the expansion of nations or empires is always of paramount importance in helping one draw lessons for the future In this series of four articles I intend to lay a very detailed but easily understandable foundation for describing the mechanisms that drive great powers. To succeed, one must analyze the geopolitical theories that over […]
IDC predicts that 35 percent of leading organizations in logistics, health, utilities, and resources will explore the use of robots to automate operations by 2019. What does the future hold for robotics? It’s hard to say, given the rapid pace of change in the field as well as in associated areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. But one thing seems certain: Robots will play an […]
National Development & Investment Company (ASAAS) has announced plans to build a 1.5 million square metre entertainment and leisure destination to be built in Barka, a coastal city in the north of the country. The company said the project will feature an integrated theme park, a wildlife and waterpark, an equestrian centre and edutainment centre as well as several hotels, a residential zone and retail areas. Khalid […]
Panama City: From the Panama Papers to the impeachments of the presidents of Brazil and South Korea, 2016 was a year marked by corruption scandals, and by rising public outrage over graft. The question is, will that translate into a lasting demand for cleaner politics? “A new phenomenon” is being seen, said Jose Ugaz, a renowned Peruvian lawyer and the chairman of Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption […]
Tourism sector veteran Peter Cook, who played a key role in the development of Dubai and Oman’s travel industries, has been appointed as CEO of Atbahrain. Atbahrain, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company, is focused on developing, managing and marketing Bahrain as a travel and tourism destination. Cook brings to Atbahrain more than 30 years of experience in the tourism industry including valuable knowledge […]
By Andrew Osborn and Vladimir Soldatkin | MOSCOW MOSCOW Russia’s Vladimir Putin said on Friday he was unfazed by President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to boost the U.S. nuclear arsenal, praising Trump for being in touch with U.S. public opinion while branding the Democrats sore election losers. Speaking at his annual news conference in Moscow, the Russian president said earlier comments he had made about his country’s own […]
Thousands of men, women and children from Myanmar’s Rohingya minority have fled the country over what the army is calling a crackdown on insurgents. A Wall Street Journal article examines the intensification of a long-simmering conflict between Yangon and the Rohingya Muslims, who are denied citizenship in the predominantly Buddhist Southeast Asian state. Here is a short history of the Rohingya people. 8th Century: The Rohingya, a […]
Filipino beauty pageant winners Parul Shah and Maggie Wilson have emerged victorious on the fifth season of reality-TV programme The Amazing Race Asia. They beat fellow beauty queens Yvonne Lee and Chloe Chen from Malaysia, as well as married couple Eric Tai and Rona Samson, who are also from the Philippines, in the grand finale this week. It was the culmination of 10 legs of competition that […]
For 15 years, Chandran Nair led a top Asian environmental consultancy that was active in China. In 2006, he founded the Global Institute for Tomorrow, a Hong Kong think tank focused on a shift of global power from the West to Asia, at a time when China’s rise is changing the geopolitical balance. Mr. Nair, who was born in Malaysia to a large South Indian family, is the […]
By Manuel Mogato | MANILA MANILA The United States provided the Philippines with $127 million in security assistance in the 12 months ended in September, the biggest sum in about 15 years, overlapping with a stream of angry threats from President Rodrigo Duterte to sever their defence alliance. The U.S. embassy in Manila on Friday confirmed its longtime Asian ally had received a 154 percent increase in […]
Social enterprise Proximity Designs’s 3D printer is making high technology accessible to Myanmar’s impoverished farmers Whizzing across a blue-lit platform with a whirr and a squeak, liquid plastic emanating from its chrome tip, the 3D printer seems a far cry from the muddy, crop-filled fields that fringe Yangon. But in an industrial park south of Myanmar’s commercial hub, the advanced technology is now being used to design […]
From the Panama Papers to the impeachments of presidents of Brazil and South Korea, 2016 was a year marked by corruption scandals, and by rising public outrage over graft. The question is, will that translate into a lasting demand for cleaner politics? “A new phenomenon” is being seen, said Jose Ugaz, a renowned Peruvian lawyer and the chairman of Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, who expressed […]
Net redemptions from emerging market equity funds reached a five-week high in the latest week amid pressure from the rising dollar and uncertainty about trade policy in the US, especially with China. Investors withdrew $3.7bn from emerging market equity funds in the week to Wednesday, according to EPFR Global, with Asia ex-Japan equity funds seeing net redemptions of $2.36bn, the largest since September of 2015. China equity […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. It could be a dinner akin to the disastrous ones in “Meet the Parents,” “Talladega Nights” and “Wedding Crashers.” Or maybe “American Beauty,” where newly unemployed Kevin Spacey turns to his wife (Annette Bening) and daughter (Thora Birch) and says […]
More than four decades after a sweeping British military withdrawal from bases “east of Suez”, the UK is scaling up its defence engagement in the Gulf and Asia in what analysts regard as a recognition of the region’s growing global importance. Britain is reopening a naval support facility in Bahrain, creating a permanent army presence in Oman and establishing new defence staff centres in Dubai and Singapore. […]
Friday 02:50 GMT Overview Asian markets not already shut for the holidays went into retreat, following a negative lead from Wall Street as investors took a breather ahead of the Christmas break. Hot topic Most major global stock markets were on track to finish December in the black, continuing the rally set off by Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in early November. In Asia, Japanese equities have […]
BEIJING Chinese state media on Friday expressed alarm and warned of a “showdown with the U.S.” after President-elect Donald Trump named Peter Navarro, an economist who has urged a hard line against China, to head a new White House National Trade Council. Navarro is an academic and one-time investment adviser who has authored books such as “Death by China: How America Lost its Manufacturing Base”. The book […]
